ANZ Grindlays Bank:Does Stanchart have the Soul?

Once upon a time there was a Bank...called ANZ Grindlays and there were a bunch of people called G-57.I was one of those 57 when banking was 10-2pm,a leisurely lunch cooked in the canteen and finishing up by 5pm.

Some of my seniors had worked two generations(in some cases three),most came from solid middle class Bengali families(bhadralok) were very particular about the accuracy of work and proud to be part of an English owned Bank.

I joined late April,was handed a brochure where I was required to visit existing clients and get references for new business.It rained so hard one morning that my area of operation-Park Street-Chowringhee-Free School street(also called Mirza Ghalib street) was inundated in a knee deep muddy brown torrent but so great was the passion that I did my bit and went back soaked to the bone with squelchy shoes(umbrellas were for ninnys!)

Its when i started handling ops that i realised that I had met almost all the regular clients and it was very easy interacting(you will understand if i say i used to be so shy that any visitors made me hide under the cot when i was a kid) and was quickly forgiven for the odd delay.

A lot of characters in the ensuing years left an indelible impression-Anupama the HR head and later my boss,Nandita my first Branch Manager who left for Australia,the temperamental Sandeepa who treated bank officers to such a verbal dressing down that their ears literally smoked.The suave Mr Bimbhett leading the region and his attempts to be called by his first name when lads like me couldnt think beyond 'SIR'.

The merger of branches when Stanchart first made a move to buyout ANZ in Asia,middle East after the meltdown of the so called tiger economies....Thailand,Indonesia,Malaysia

Wonderful collegues.....Geraldine in NRI services and her musician husband Chiro...helping in learning to handle new clients,Ratna...Relationship manager who heels would go clickity clack while she walked down the passage at 41 Chowringhee.Sandip and his ever smiling attitude,Hira Lal Singh in Cash fixing all issues and knowing who to talk to,Sujit Yagnik,never refusing to help even though he had too much work.The sophisticated Mrs Ragini Atal,newscaster turned branch manager who gave me the freedom to be(and finally took me to IDBI Bank).

We worked hard but it did not seem so,we learned so much without feeling it to be a burden.It was cause we believed that we were contributing to the growth of an organisation and we felt we BELONGED!

The months I worked after the takeover by Standard Chartered Bank were different-I might be seeing a chimera,maybe i felt it was different after all most of the people were the same.But,there was a coldness and a rigidity that did not exist before.And such things make one restless.Maybe carrying on would have been easy.....and i do feel that with the brand of 'Grindlays"buried...a bit of our soul went with it.

A lot of wonderful memories,friends(and thanks to Facebook for the re-acquaintance!!) and lessons learned have served me well all these years.

The Sound of Silence

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful
-Victor Hugo

Modern Life reminds me of a patient hooked up to a multitude of monitors,wired up to read every signal,every pulse.A mobile(or a couple),a laptop,ipad,ipod have become common accessories for the normal business executive today.

Already we are never truly alone.A decade ago a trek in the Himalayan wilderness meant being out of reach of modern communication for a few days.Today a satphone follows you into deserts and mountains without a blip.Vacations have never been the same again after blackberry took the onus to cross our professional lives with the personal!!

The Haves want to try to live like the havenots and the Have Nots want everything that the Haves have!What a circus.In the years to come a truly rich or satisfied person will be one who can afford to simply switch off from all these gadgets.The normal 9 to 5 person including yours truly can ill afford that luxury.

The ssuration of the breeze on alpine peaks and in the Valley of Flowers,lying on dry grass on a full moon night looking up at the stars,snorkelling off the coral reef with moray eels for company...these are the sounds of silence.

How many have known even a few moments of complete silence?without any ambient noise to disturb the reverie?How many have gone for 2 days without seeing another human being?How many have stood on a mountain knowing its just them at that point in time?

Disconnect,disavow modernity if only for a few minutes every week,cause this modern life casts an opaque film over us...something that gnaws at the edges of our soul.On my disparate travels across the length and breadth of India,I met so many westerners from USA,Germany,Israel,France,USSR in the 1980-1990s who had given up the creature comforts of their life including social security and joined ISCKON or Krishna Consciousness,simply living in the high hills etc just trying to connect to their soul.

I would think to myself ,how could they give up on stuff that to me in my teens sounded like heaven.I do not know if there really is a Soul,but I damn well know how important it is.

Tiger,Tiger...burning bright

I see these huge gory campaigns to save the tiger.It hurts and saddens me that intelligent people for their own selfish ends are spending funds not where they should but where its seen that they are trying to make an effort.

I who have followed the Tiger in most of the National Parks in India - Corbett,Kanha,Ranthambore,Dudwa,Simlipal,Betla,Gorumara,Mudumalai,Periyar and having travelled almost the whole of India in search of this beautiful predator for a snatched glimpse.I know in the coming decade they will be wiped out unless we can lessen the population pressure on our forests and most importantly educate the new generation that nature exists in 'Balance' and destroying animals as well as plants and trees is a sure way to kill oneself.

What my friend Jonathan Scott is trying in teaching the Masai about lions is what we need here in India.Short term gain will kill all the tigers,leopards,Bison as we have killed the Indian Cheetah,the dhole or Indian wild dog and the Asian Lion which are wiped out in 99% of their range.

A personal story,I live in the house i was born in four decades ago in the middle of urban,crowded Kolkata.Yet,an animal survives which till a decade back i dint believe existed in the city-the Indian Palm Civet.It lived in orchards and abandoned factories and only when a building boom happened in early 2000s did it start coming into our neighbourhood and stealing fruits and vegetables.I got my first glimpse of this greyish black dog faced cat that can climb with amazing agility and has a strong tail for balance.

This unfortunately is the story of our forests and wild creatures in every part of this country.A great legacy will be lost and we in our daily routine just dont care.

Its when we realise what a rich flora and fauna we are blessed with is when we will start caring.Talking to the average joe on the street who just wants his 'cool'quotient and doesnt care if he/she gasses the neighbours in the process!!

A Dreamer's Song of Fear

We will never know if George Mallory was the first man to climb Everest.When asked just before the climb on the north east col where he disappeared for ever in 1924,why he wanted to climb Everest,his reply,"Because Its There" are not only the most famous three words spoken in mountaineering,they also illustrate why man as an animal(sic)has attained the numero uno status on the planet.

 Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
                                        - Edgar Allan Poe

Are we not all dreamers?some more restless than others,but restless nevertheless.We may not wander the oceans to discover continents like Columbus did or travel the continents like Ibn Batuta,or be the first woman to fly an airplane - Amelia Earhart.

Yet,there lies in all of us a certain yearning,an urge to do things that we feel are beyond our abilities,fears that are beyond our control.

How many try?I mean really try!

Most are afraid of failing,some of the shame of failing,a few of the fear of failure.Those miniscule,minute minority that truly Lives without ego become the Thor HeyerDahls who ride the Oceans with their Kon Tikis.

The true titans who we worshipped as Apollo,Athena,Artemis,Zeus....the true Greek Gods.Fear and Dreams that push us in disproportionate avenues and the half that dominates gives us our personality.

I have known true fear a few times....being chased by an enraged Elephant at Betla Wildlife Santuarty,an icy,dark night on the Kedarkantha Mountain,attack by a Himalayan Black Bear in Garwhal.First,it was  simply a relief that I had survived.Second, the fear of having felt fear,third,the question of whether I had behaved as expected.

Cette clarté sombre qui tombe des étoiles - Pierre Corneille

This dark brightness that falls from the stars

Fear is a creative urge,it makes me explore the limits of my abilities and it makes me feel alive.I cannot claim to know how you the Reader have felt or how you understand your dreams through your fears.I certainly am trying to to come to terms with mine!

And it feels like a half awakened dream where the real story lies just beyond comprehension.

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The River of Faith - Ganga

Paens have been written about the Ganges since time immemorial.Documentaries made,battle fought,kingdoms have come and gone but the River goes on.

Sitting on the frigid bank one autumnal evening at Gangotri I thought about myself.About the changes I had seen along its banks in three decades.Trekking on the Pindari Glacier at Gaumukh where the river appears out of a cave shaped like the mouth of a cow.Its so called landing place from its celestial abode.

The rushed gigantic flow through the "surajkund" at Gangotri,where it meets the first town that sprung up on its banks.Onto Rudraprayag where the Bhagirathi and Mandaki merge to form what we know as the river 'Ganges'.

On it flows to Haridwar and Rishikesh where millions of Indians and foreigners including the Steve Jobs of the world come to find spirituality.The "aarti"with lighted lamps in the evenings,the incense in the air,the thousands of voices raised in prayer.

To the confluence at prayag in Allahabad.Its amazing how different the journeys of India's 2 major rivers are-the Ganga and The Yamuna.At one point they are separated by just a couple of mountain valleys and maybe 50kms as the crow flies.But while the Yamuna loses strength and becomes a muddy ooze at Delhi,the Ganga seems to gain strength and power as it progress over the flood plains.

The sheer human vitality of the 'Kumbh"Mela,the meeting of the Ganga,Yamuna and the mysterious never seen Saraswati river can only be experienced Live.When i was 10years old had gone with my parents and we hired a boat to take us out into the middle of the river where the Saraswati was supposed to flow almost below the waters of the two other rivers.I dipped my hand in the river and felt an ice cold current when the water was blood warm.Could i really feel another river or was it my imagination?

Almost at the end of a 2000km journey the Ganga or Hooghly flows laziliy past Kolkata where the royal bengal tigers would once have come to drink its waters.Into a riverine delta it turns winding into a thousand different tributaries and islands that are large enough for human habitation.

From frigid tundra to hot tropical forests have been provided by its waters and I who have rafted on its waters,dipped to wash my sins(I hope)at Har-Ki-Pauri in Haridwar.

The Guru of Innovation

"Your time is limited so do not waste it living someone else's life.Don't be trapped by Dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking.Don't let the noise of other's opinion drown out your own inner voice.And most important,have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.They somehow already know what you truly want to be.Everthing else is secondary".Steve Jobs

There comes a tide in the lives of mice and men when some rise up over others and stand as a beacon to what each one of us wants to be.I see around me a lot of brave men and women who struggle in their daily lifes,who innovate to keep their children and their spouses happy,who find new ways of giving joy......yet....we only remember a few like a Mother Teresa,Steve Jobs,Nelson Mandela etc

Its important to have role models and equally important to understand what they mean to us and what they want to say.For me my teacher in standard IX-X,Br.Kyle,an Irishman,remains the closest thing to god on earth that I have known.His insights into my character almost 23 years after i studied under him continues to amaze me and the subtle way he understood and encouraged my love for books and the arts and sports and turned me from a shy,introvert kid into a confident man has its roots and genesis in 1988.

I am sure each one of us has such examples of people who have touched our life and made a difference...we must hold onto those memories and spread the positives around.The selfishness that pervades our cities is self defeating,instead of leaving a better legacy for our children what we succeed in doing is to teach them to be more selfish,repressive and dogmatic.

There is a Steve Jobs in all of us just that we are too afraid of leaving the safety of the herd to chase our dreams.Afraid of failing.Afraid of ridicule.Afraid of being too different?Yet on FB i find people i shall not name,whose middle name is "conformity",paying verbose tribute to the Guru!

Walk in the rain,jump of a mountain,glide down a waterfall......Its just this One Life!!

My City:Calcutta-Part II

Our administrators say that they will make our city akin to London,but do we seriously need another London?The squalor that greets the centuries old streets has become a close friend,the stench could be bottled and sold on the Champs Elysee as some kind of retro perfume that reminds of an older age when sanitation even in welfare states was a misnomer!

One bursts out of the cloying streets onto the banks of the majestic Hooghly,a broad brown serpent lazily turning towards the Bay of Bengal a few hundred kilometres down the road,its current like muscles beneath the water.When crossing from one bank to the other on rickety steamers i used to sometimes catch a glimpse of a porpoise or river dolphin,alas the pollution has killed them mostly.No fancy yachts or ships just a few fishermen in their row boats reminding of times when the jungle must have grown right down to the banks and the Tigers would have come to the water's edge for a drink.

The Victoria Memorial,the National Library,The Mint,Fort William-buildings from Calcutta's colonial past,of the exploits of Hastings,Cornwallis,Curzon,Bentinck-the birth of a city and of institutions that still endure.

The Maidan-on a monsoon afternoon,glowing green in the rain with the far corners enveloped in mist adding a multi-dimensional quality,a space to walk barefeet on the grass,Calcutta's own Hyde Park.The horse drawn buggies that a century ago must have been a rage!Now alas the horses side drooping with hunger and a mule like staunchness that transfers itself to the inhabitants.

The butchers on the road give new meaning to "fresh meat",the cacophony of traffic-is it dust or petrol fumes that rise into the atmosphere?

Yet...

The only city that has produced Tagore,Jagadish Chandra Bose,Mother Teresa,Netaji Subhas,Ramanujam and Amartya Sen.Where there is a street that only houses book shops-College Street.Where street theatre was born and Satyajit Ray gave us science fiction in Bengali.

Its true the city you live in trasfers a bit of itself into your soul.It has in me.Calcutta will always be Calcutta to me,i do not want another London.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it-Aldous Huxley