It was VERY VERY embarrassing. Santanam made me spend the rest of the day sitting with the laptop near the projector changing slides.

Other than that the meeting went well. This group of seven, from all over Mishra’s empire, was the full-time Panchatantra team. All of them were some vice-president or some general manager of something or the other. And they all seemed mortally afraid of the Chairman.

After a point even all of us Dufresne people started referring to Mishra as ‘Chairman’.

Something peculiar happened once the meeting was over. We were walking back out of the hotel when a man from the Tantra team, some general manager of a steel plant in Tamil Nadu, pulled me to a corner and told me that he was very impressed with our presentation and data. He also told me that I was way too young to be the leader of such a team.

Of course I immediately told him that I was NOT the leader. (I saw no harm in taking credit for the data and presentation though.)

But the guy just wouldn’t listen. He smiled sneakily and told me that consultants could be very tricky and the moment I landed in the ‘very very big car’ he’d known that I was really the guy in charge. ‘Don’t try to trick me with this Santanam fellow, okay? Besides we are both Malayalis. Why should we have secrets between us?’

His name was V.J. Babykutty and, as clichéd as it sounds, he asked me where I was from in Kerala and tried to see if we were related to each other in any way.

Turns out that Babykutty’s brother used to work in the Kanjany branch of the South Indian Bank the same time that Thomas Uncle’s son’s wife’s cousin worked in the post office next door. Both of them, apparently, had once gone on a wildcat labour strike together in 1963 and spent a few hours together in the Kanjany police station.

When I spoke to Dad on the way home from work he remembered Babykutty’s brother very well indeed. Dad told me that he was slightly relieved that there was someone who was known to the family with me in Mumbai to help me if I needed anything.

I told Dad that taking any help at all from Babykutty would violate our code of ethics. He said that there was no code of ethics when it came to two Malayalis.

Okay. I need to go now. Loads of things to do. We will probably have another conference call in an hour or so.

Santanam hasn’t spoken to me since we returned from the meeting. I think he is very very pissed about the car mix-up. I need to clear it up with him and Rosita as soon as possible.

13 August 2006

8.25 a.m.

Quick entry to tell you that Babykutty just forwarded an SMS to me. It is a little poem that asks me to thank Jesus Christ for the gift of this morning. And it ends with the words: ‘Till tomorrow … praise the Lord.’