Nirmal @ Nariman Point

Move to Bandra was a boon in many ways, saving an hour of commuting for starters, in a city where time is money.Bandra is undoubtedly the best suburb in Mumbai I've experienced -Truly Cosmo and very alive. There is a surreal charm with Bandra and every time I go there cannot stop getting this feeling that somebody just plucked a part of idyllic Goa and placed it in the heart of Mumbai. I and Vijay Simha moved into Dreamland of  Carter Road and the other bachelor pad was at Bandstand where Nadu and Rudra lived care of the Rodrigues on bullock road. Dreamland needs its own showtime and will cover it separately soon! 

Starbucks today at Nirmal where
there was a Kairali Showroom

Ponnapa moved as a boss from Bangalore, also into Bandra. Always fun and a bundle of energy, we got additional perk of ride with Ponappa to  office in his car. What a difference 5 min made in mornings- clear Mahim causeway at 815, reach Nariman point in half an hour. 820?- spend an hour on the road! This aspect of Mumbai - difference few minutes can make - has not changed yet, except that the choke points have shifted.

Nirmal building where the office was, apparently was the first skyscraper of Nariman Point, Located across the Oberoi, Express towers etc, it housed offices of many important companies apart from Asian Paints - TCS, Business, India, Ulka, Enron etc. While the head office was on 5th floor, the PMG office was on the 14th floor of Nirmal along with Business India. The 14th floor was was redone recently and swank. The bosses were in 2 cabins at one end, we had this open space with workstations for eight of us facing each other and then the staff enclosure with Lakshman, Nilu, Ramaswamy and Vaithy as the centre that managed our actions. And there was pipe music anyone got to decide to play. 

Harshad Mehta and his Lexus
were talk of the town 

The mornings started with the ONGC  canteen boy ( a few floors above) coming and serving breakfast specials. 1992 was the time when the big bull Harshad Mehta was raging. The buzz in the morning was stock talk with interesting chatter on stock market, tips on forward trading, which stocks are hot which are not. Not that we all traded in stocks but it ignited the mornings. 

There were no computers, mobiles etc. IOM (Inter Office Memos) were dictated and staff took down in shorthand and typed and communicated. The telephone operators could practically know who spoke to who and would page or leave messages. the floor also had the canteen which served a Gujarati Thali with a daily special item. This was such a luxury if you had to escape the alternate with street food from ' Hungry Eyes' vans dishing out hot chinese food or Cold Dabbas arriving through Dabbavalas. There was a customary stroll post lunch when the group went down for Energee drink from Aarey, a Fruit plate and polishing it off with Panditji's paan. Mid day stock tips would also be floating around, as one got whiff of Sea breeze, recharging us before we got back to work.

Energee - Elaichi was favourite then, now
fidn cold coffee too!!

The flux of team continued and I think at one point there were just four of us (Nadu, Rudra, Vijay and self) in place of eight. One of the high points of such a close knit group was we got spotted for a research amongst young groups spending time together at office and outside. We had got treated to dinner in a restaurant of our choice in Bandra and got handed over a different brand of imported scotch each, that ignited a few parties that year. 

Come May-June we had the preparations for the annual sales conference and hectic preparations. The script and conference AV got done with the agency and Alka's creative inputs. The presentations had to be done in slides set in film based slides which had a turnaround time of a few weeks to typeset, proofread and sequence them. Given the size of the teams the task of arranging these conferences and especially the projection required planning. We had to have spare carousels, spare slide projector (as bulbs could blow off). The slides had to be numbers with a marker. Bharat as our Boss, would make us put down a detailed check list so that we don't miss anything. I still remember one of the check list items to be a 'tweezer' to pull out slides if they get stuck - a lot depended on detailing then and now, Devil lies in the....!

Another interesting annual event was called Paintaloon at the plant at Ankleshwar.  The place was considered remote and this event was unique in the corporate worl and was a great effort to bond. An HO team went with family from across functions for a weekend where there were tournaments between the plant teams and HO. The families going from HO stayed with the families of the Plant team in the colony. Apart from fun that the games brought out, it was good bonding for families and reminded me of cultural events at Campuses. 

Two faces that changed India forever

End 1992 saw the pulling down of Babri Masjid and tensions ran high in Mumbai. There were riots and curfue in parts of Mumbai. I and a trainee who joined earlier that year went to donate blood for a good friend who was due to deliver! It was a fulfilling experience doing it amidst the riots. Fortunately everything went well and blood went for another cause and I got a good friend for life in Kartik who was one with me to give blood.

1992 was another eventful year for India too- Narasimha Rao and Man Mohan Singh grounded them selves and hopes of green shoots started. Harshad Mehta and Babri happened and if my memory serves right I got my credit card from Central Bank where we had a salary account.