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.