Zindagi ka safar

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.