Zindagi ka
safar
“Zindagi ka
safar ye kaisa safar…..”
The Nepali
crooner was belting out songs of Kishore Kumar one after another in the night
club in hotel Qutub.
The audience
was enjoying those old songs of Kishore and the crooner was encouraged to sing
more and more. It was past 11pm, the management reminded that it was time to
close. Rana got up and walked to the crooner shoved a handful of 100 rupee
notes in the pocket of the singer and asked him to sing a few more. He not only
gave money to the singer but to all the staff present around in that hall at
that night.
Rana came
back and resumed his drinking! I was impatient and wanted to leave, the
situation spun out of my hand that night in 2004. It all started as evening out
with Rana just after my retirement on that night. He drove from his house in
Punjabi Bagh ,picked me up from Pashchim Vihar and headed for Hotel Qutub of
ITDC .
He had been
a regular in that hotel so we got warm welcome from the entrance to all the way
to the watering hole with live crooner. It was past 8 pm, we were given a seat
near the dais, a kind of preferential seat courtesy generous tipping by Rana.
It was crowded, Rana ordered drink for both with some moghlai dish. He was a jolly
good fellow but a heavy drinker, the evening slowly climbed towards late in the night on and the crowd
started thinning out as closing time of 10.30 pm was approaching.
When the
crooner was singing that song “Zindagi ka safar…” then we two were the only
audience left. For me that experience was new, a drunk host with pocketful of
money and obliged staff falling head over heel to serve as for every service
there was 100 rupee note from Rana to them. I realized that it was not the only
night when he overstayed, this was informed to me by the duty manager. Finally,
I prevailed on him to leave, it was 11.30 by then. While walking out it was
showering of money by Rana to all the staffs we confronted on the way out,
sometimes he called out even the lift operators to give money.
Well folks
that was Rana whom I came to know during my stay in Bhopal. He was supplying aluminum
casting for tap changer to our factory. He was from IIT,Delhi but never joined any
service but started this factory in Faridabad with only BHEL as his customer.
Because of IIT connection he would often come to me and will share his business
woes. His business design with one customer was flawed, I explained him that.
Those days I had just finished reading the book “Who moved my Cheese” which talks
about ever changing scenario of business. I told him if because of some reason
BHEL does not give him order or may be another competitor comes up offering
lower price then what would he do? I gave that book to him to read and advised
him to diversify his activities to other customers. He was highly influenced by
that book. He planned to open another aluminum casting factory with modern
automatic machines targeting the emerging motor bike market. He managed to rope
in an expert on aluminum casting working in neighboring factory supplying to
motor bike manufacturing companies. With the help of that expert he reached out
to Hero Honda for supplying aluminum components for the motor bikes. He
explained me modern motorcycles require their chassis to be stiffer, more
lightweight and look better than what traditional steel tubes could offer.
Modern motorcycles, thus, make use of materials such as aluminum and alloys to
achieve the target. By the time he was
bringing up his new factory I retired in 2003 from BHEL,Bhopal and stayed for
sometimes in our Delhi flat.
He took
heavy loan from banks to build his new factory by collating his sprawling house
of Punjabi Bagh. After my retirement I had visited his new factory which was semi-automatic
with CCTV surveillance. That day in 2004 he was giving me party as his new
factory had become operational.He would often say that he considered me as his mentor because I opened
his eyes through that book “Who moved my Cheese”. He was in heavy debt then so I
think the heavy boozing was to drown all his financial woes. He asked me to be
his advisor in running the business but I declined as I had planned to move to
Calcutta.
After I moved
to Calcutta often he would give ring to share his business results. Ultimately
he paid off all his debts and started making handsome profit. The day he became
debt free he rang me up to inform that finally he was free of financial worries, while talking to me he was slurring due to heavy drinking
as he was cerebrating the occasion.
Unfortunately,
the heavy drinking took his life a few years back, his safar of Zindagi came to
an end.
Whenever I am
in Delhi I often think about him, he used to visit me at Pashchim Vihar. This
article is outcome of that nostalgia and dedicated to him.
