Someone I met Part 1 continued

I met someone recently and we spoke about lots of things. Although, I am a writer by profession now but I studied to work in the textile industry. My father belongs to this industry and I aspired to grow in it too. Circumstances changed that and I spoke to this somewhat about the industry and his growth and he narrated few instances that I thought I must share. This is the same someone I shared with you before...Mr Kapur, he currently heads the South Asia sourcing operations of a major Department Store in the US. And this is how he narrated few of his tales, some might overlap with the ones I’ve put before, but they have additional information added to them now. I thoroughly enjoyed them.. Hope you do too. And he says

But things are much more different now from what they where say two decades ago in the quota regime, where we had to fight for every contract, each deal was a coveted one. Today if your product is good you get the deal. In those times we had to get the pricing right, packaging right everything right and still lost business. I remember having passed out from the elite IIFT school, I was ready for hard work but for the corporate concept/world hard work. So working with the Murugappa Group, my stint here had been 8-10 months, I remember it distinctly, I was in Aurai, Bhadohi sending a shipment of Gabbeh, shabby and loom knotted rugs to one of our buyers and we were getting pressed for time. We had to send the shipment and the labour to load the consignment was small in number, so me and my friend we just rolled up our sleeves and got along with the labour and started picking up rugs with our hands and loading it so that we could help to make the shipment in time. The labour kept telling us “Please leave it boss”, but we had to do it with them because there was no time and we wanted to all we could do to help and finish the work.

Also I remember in the early years I would go to niche areas in India for cotton sheeting products. I would have to venture into areas like Solapur, Jalgaon in Maharashtra; Bharuch, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Kalol in Gujarat Madurai, Tirunel velli, Tuticorin, Salem in South and we had to keep costs low. So I travelled by second class railways wherever it would take me and by the lowest accommodation to my destination. We would have tea in the clay kullars or local snacks that were available on each station of different state as if it was a delicacy.

In those years I would have to travel abroad to meet suppliers and get orders for my company. Being a vegetarian who has a strict mushroom allergy can be a huge challenge for a frequent traveller. After returning from trips feeling pretty bovine most of the times, what with the variety of leaves I'd get to eat in my insipid salads, it would be time for some stuffed 'aloo paranthas' immediately on getting back home. This was a tradition that my beloved mother started years back, either she would make them and pack them in Tiffin so that when I return at wee hours in the morning I could have them or she would leave a message on the kitchen counter and I would go under the Moolchand flyover(Delhi) and half them there. I wonder if the guy still exists.

I just love travelling with my family. We've done several places in India - beaches, hill stations, wild life reserves et al. The highlight was a fortnight long road trip we did across Rajasthan when my son was all of two years. This we did in the last days of December and I remember it so clearly because I fought with my wife for it, it was New Year’s Eve, and we were in Bikaner without any booking for proper accommodation. There was a complete festive surrounding on the desert and we were on the sand dunes with just 3 charpai’s to sleep on. My wife took my son on one, I was on another and our loyal servant on the third. We somehow spent that night out in the open but the next day we checked in to proper accommodation.

These are few of my sweet memories from my early travel days. In those early days when we had to be frugal and literally save every buck but now things are different.

 

 

Someone I met 2

I have been holidaying in Bhimtal and here sitting at a lodge I happened to meet a social worker from England. She’s worked in different capacities all over the world. For quite a few years, she is settled in India. Telling us about few of her experiences she narrates how difficult it was to dissuade people in North Thailand against sending their daughters for human trafficking. People over there would cry and tell her, “We can’t help it, we had taken debt and now our girls are being taken away to repay it. The local authorities are mixed with the perpetrators and there is very slow criminal justice. They take away our daughters forcibly”.

She has worked with the impoverished class in Uganda and tried instilling in them the importance of local authority and their need to respect them and not fight them. Now she is settled in the hills of Uttrakhand and goes from village to village and tries to set up local schools that can educate the children, especially the girls. “The girls,” she says “are not readily sent to school in villages. So my basic aim has been to get in touch with small NGO’s and give power of education to children, though  I have tried to focus on going from house to house and tell them the need to educate girls.”

She continues to say, “I plan on staying few years more in India, work and take small breaks and travel. I want to get a better grasp of the culture; after all I too have originated from it. I recently was duped in Varanasi where I took my first religious holiday. I had heard of the reputation of the town as that being of a temple town and was very interested in going there. Yes, there were good lord too many temples there. The pandit ji there duped me of couple of thousands in doing some ‘puja’ that would make my ancestors rest in peace. In spite of that I loved the town with its Kashi Vishwanath temple that I’ve learnt is one of the important Shiva temple and saw the famous aarti on one of the ghats. Oh! the sight was gorgeous. Also nearby was the Sarnath just a mere 13 km away. Isipatana is mentioned by the Buddha as one of the four places of pilgrimage which his devout followers should visit, if they wanted to visit a place for that reason. It was also the sight of the Buddha's Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta , which was his first teaching after attaining enlightenment, in which he taught the four noble truths and the teachings associated with it”

And she is lost in thought for couple of minutes and then tells how interesting her years in India have been mixed with experiences related to culture, like the one of puja’s and it helping one’s ancestors rest in peace. “Well you see from where I come, these things are improbable and slightly hard to digest. But if this is my ancestor’s culture I do need to give it a chance and try and understand their believes. I plan on visiting Puri next month. It’s got beautiful architecture they say and has an important Vishnu temple.”

She pauses and then says, “How do you remember all the Gods and Goddesses. There are too many and I keep on getting confused. There are too many sects and variations in the Hindu culture itself. Till now I have only prayed to the all mighty Jesus of the Roman Catholic Church.” And she laughs at it.

Yes it’s a little obscure when you think of it and the so many Gods and Goddesses and their significant places to worship and then I wonder whether this Lady who has grown up with understanding of the Christian faith, has a Cambridge degree in International Sociology, is well versed in different languages will ever be able to understand the nuances of the Hindu religion and our Indian culture. Well her stay in India in so many years has made her quite proficient with the Hindi language at least. I wished her luck for her future endeavors and came back to my lodge.

Someone I met series

Ok so this idea of someone I met came from the caravan magazine and I decided myself to write about a few interesting people I met. I've already started with Someone I met- Mr Kapur. Hope you liked it now its time for someone I met 2. Hope u like this lady too

Someone I met

So here’s the story of Mr Manu Kapur whom I met recently at a social function. He has studied from IIFT in Delhi and has worked for various coveted companies.  He has been associated with International Trading / Retailing / Sourcing for over two  decades. He has had the chance of working with coveted organizations like the Murugappa Group, Metro AG, Li & Fung, Reliance Retail and IKEA. I currently head the South Asia sourcing operations of a major Department Store in the US.

He has been travelling since 1994. What seemed charming and exciting at first (a phase that was extremely short lived)' over the years has been an absolute nuisance something that he’d gladly give up if he had the opportunity to. The happiest part of his 3 year stint at Reliance Retail clearly was the fact that he wasn't travelling at all, except domestically, which strangely he don't mind as much. His travels have taken him far and wide - Pakistan & Bangladesh several times, since He’s handled the business operations of these countries on several occasions in the past and does so currently too. He’s also travelled extensively in Europe, North America, South East Asia, North Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

Several interesting incidents (some pretty scary at the time) come to mind in terms of travel over the years - being mugged at a sleepy railway station in a small town near Amsterdam, getting into an altercation with a fake policeman demanding money in Prague, speaking through the night with a colleague from Russia that he had never met or spoken with before till earlier that evening, to name a few.

One of the highlights though was this - He was in Bangkok several years back for a Buying Trip. The day went really well and they transacted business worth several million Duetsche Marks (pre Euro days) on the spot. To celebrate, the Chief Buyer of the group He was working with then decided to buy them a couple of rounds of drinks. After guzzling a couple of litres of beer, they decided to walk across to a famous Japanese restaurant for dinner. Each one of them ended up drinking more 'saki' than they could handle. They left the place, hand in hand (more out of support against stumbling than out of affection for each other) and then for some strange reason decided on hitting the hotel discotheque for some champagne. No prizes for guessing what followed - they passed out in our respective rooms. He woke up at noon for an 8 am meeting and doesn't recall getting ready in a shorter span of time. When he reached the conference room at the hotel, he found it deserted. The first thought in his mind was that everyone was probably out for lunch and that he would be skinned alive. A couple of minutes later, on enquiring from a hotel attendant, he found out (much to his relief) that he was the first person to show up for the meeting. Nobody came in for the half hour that he hung around in the room. He happily left after realizing that the others were probably still asleep. They reconvened at 8 am the following morning.

He’s a strict vegetarian so I asked how he has managed that? Being a vegetarian who has a strict mushroom allergy can be a huge challenge for a frequent traveller. After returning from trips feeling pretty bovine most of the times, what with the variety of leaves He’d get to eat in his insipid salads, it would be time for some stuffed 'aloo paranthas' immediately on getting back home. This was a tradition that his beloved mother started years back and even now, every single time He get back from a trip, irrespective of whether He’s hungry or not, purely sentimentally and out of extreme love for his mother, He religiously eats 'aloo paranthas' on his return - generally in the wee hours of the morning. 

Though he travels so much for work Ironically, He just loves travelling with his family. They've done several places in India - beaches, hill stations, wild life reserves et al. The highlight was a fortnight long road trip they did across Rajasthan.

Internationally, They've travelled as a family to Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, China, Vietnam and Cambodia. The finest trip that he feels he had was this summer, when they went to Vietnam and Cambodia. It was absolutely perfect - great weather, lots of interesting things to do and great food.

One funny incident was when they drove down from Phnom Pehn in Cambodia to Siem Reap, to visit the famous Angkor Wat temples. They anticipated the journey to be much shorter than the 6 hours it took. As a result, they ended up getting to Siem Reap almost around the time that entry to Angkor Wat closes. They decided to visit the temples the next morning and go to a vantage point to watch the sunset that evening. His 9 year old daughter, who hadn't particularly enjoyed the ride, was very upset that they'd travelled six hours 'just for a sunset' and threw a huge tantrum.

 

 

 

Mahabharat and Ramayan saved the Day

 My nephew all of eight years was visiting us during his winter vacation. Being a nice aunt I wanted to welcome him with a gift, something that would be enhancing and educational and yet something that he would enjoy. Knowing his love for books, I went to the Om Book Shop outlet at Great India Place, Noida. I absolutely love their range and mix of books; they have a book available for everybody.

I wanted to buy something different and not the usual Enid Blyton’s because I have no clue about which ones he has and which he doesn’t. I was looking around when I saw these series of books that Om Book Shop has developed in their own publishing house. It’s the mythological series of picture books. There are many titles available ranging from Krishna, Ganesha, 365 Mythological Tales, Ramayana etc.

 

I totally fell in love with their Mahabharata. The language in the book is easy to understand. It has beautiful glossy pictures explaining the scenes. The story is not very detailed and not too abridged. The book is divided into chapters marking the major events of the epic. The pictorial narrative moves smoothly and effortlessly keeping you engrossed. It not only seemed a befitting gift for my nephew to educate him about our mythological and cultural beliefs but it seemed a good read too. The book is not age specific, I ended up buying it for my niece whose 4 years so that my sister can read it out to her and explain it in between if the need be and I also bought a copy for myself. I think all Moms’ need to get a look at it. It’s beautifully amazing.