Scattered Gems Of Practical Wisdom
Haresh Shah
The train pulls up at some unknown station. The peacefulness of the night turns into a little puppet show for those few minutes. The flickering dim gaslights illuminate the platforms, the guard blowing his whistle, the signal man running in front of the locomotive with his red and green flags, the tea and food vendors reciting their sales pitches, “chai garam babuji, chai garam, garam garam bhajia, khalo saab, aisi puri bhaji aage nahin milengi, pani, thanda pani. (hot tea, hot hot fried dumplings, have some, you won’t find them as delicious at the next stop, cooled water)The people getting off the train and running to the water fountains to fill up their water flasks with fresh drinking water, some sipping the piping hot delicious local chai in clay cups, some savoring the spicy puri bhaji. Sudden burst of activity, the train will pull away in a few minutes, the station would doze off once again. If there is another train arriving in an hour or so, they would just sit around puffing on their chillums, and the next puppet show would begin at the sight of another approaching express. It’s amazing to watch all those people moving around in such synchronized harmony, like in a well choreographed musical. Everyone has his own place, his own kind of product to sell, his own price, his own lyrical voice to recite and get his product to his consumer’s ears and eyes who only have seconds to make up their minds. Make a quick sale. And then once again, they disappear, they fall asleep. The train moves on.
I still feel dreamy and nostalgic about those train rides of more than fifty years ago when I crisscrossed India and played traveling salesman for Wilco – my uncle’s book publishing company. Train stations were some of the biggest outlets for the periodicals and the paperbacks. If there were an impulse buying, the train stations with their continuous transient stream of passengers were it. People would have just enough time to glance at the display out of their windows. It wasn’t good enough just to have a good product tucked away some place under the counter. You had to make sure that your product jumped at them before anyone else’s. As one of the stall managers, Vidya Kapur at Kiul Junction put it, Look Sahib, books are like whores, if the whores and the books are not dolled up and displayed, neither of them sell. What incentive do we have to give your books prime display space and sell more copies?
Pure and simple. True. What incentive did they have to display our titles up front at the standard discount of 25% as compared to other publishers doling out 33% and even up to 40%? The young Sureshchandra Jain in Nagpur throws at me, “We are banyas – business people, we do anything to make money, even sell your books.” And his brother Jagpal Jain in Calcutta even recites a poem of sorts for me: “It doesn’t help sitting on the shore if you are looking for the pearls, all you find on the shore are the shells. For the pearls, you have to explore the depth of the ocean.” Simplistic maybe, but their message was clear. Something no business school or the bestsellers can teach you.
Thus my first lessons in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying came from the folk wisdom of those down home but cunning operators of the book stalls across India. I am still young and naïve, but this month long crisscrossing the sub-continent teaches me more than up until then, fifteen years of schooling.
●●●
My father’s way of dealing with crisis was to not react hastily, but sleep on it. Depending on the time of the day, he would either take a long restful nap or literally sleep it off over the night. And when he woke up, most of the time, the crisis had passed. Or he had woken up with a solution to deal with it. I have inherited this trait from him and must confess, it has served me well. But there are times when you don’t have such an option. Especially in the business world. I run into what could have been a major crisis the very first week of having taken up my job in Germany. It’s almost middle of the night and the crisis has arisen over my denial to sign off on the centerfold of that month’s Playmate Marilyn Cole. The only way to make it better would be to reprint the entire lot. We are talking tens of thousands of Deautsche Marks.
‘Where do we stand with this fucking folder?’ I am standing face-to-face with the publishing director Heinz van Nouhuys, who has taken a special trip from Munich to the printing plant in Essen, with his girlfriend Marianne Schmidt over that election night in Germany on November 19,1972.
‘This is how we stand with the fucking folder.’ I counter, and then sit down. We talk, and then both of us realize some other solution had to be found. I am not yet established enough to make that kind of decision. I call Bob Gutwillig, our group head in Chicago.
What do you think I should do? I ask. There is a brief pause. I could almost hear him figuring out what it would mean in the long run for us to take a harder stand. Do nothing. Go back to your hotel and get a good night’s sleep. Just like what my good old dad would have said. Sky didn’t fall because Marilyn didn’t look quite as radiant. And the goodwill created by our letting go that night puts our partnership on the solid ground.
●●●
I enjoy years of steady growth and the fun but secure work environment under Lee Hall. I am quite comfortable with my role of playing the second fiddle without having to worry about profit and losses, contracts, budgets and the ever present corporate politics. He’s happy that I have taken to the heart his mantra of iron fist in the velvet glove. And I respect his axioms of I don’t like surprises by keeping him informed and always telling him the truth – one thing about lies is that you’ve to have good memory. I am good at my job also because I like people and love what I do. He passes on appropriate compliments to me with comparing my diplomatic way of doing things to that of the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s.
What I appreciate the most about him is that he would give me an assignment, sit down with me and discuss it at length, introduce in minute detail the cast of characters I would meet and work with. Tell me what my mission would be. He may throw in a hint here and there, but all in all, leave it upon me to take it from there and pursue the course of action as I saw fit. His job was then done. He could then close his office door, sit down with his New York Times and put his feet on his desk and light up one of his smuggled Cohibas.
Despite his ivy league stiffness at times, Lee feels special affinity for me, because he has spent some time in India during his youth and remembers fondly those days and also because both of us have come to Playboy from what was and still is the gold standard in the industry – the house of Time Inc. He is pleased that in addition I bring to the equation the solid educational background of two completely different and yet quite compatible fields, including the philosophy of two of the teachers who felt it important also to teach us about the thing called life.
Professor Nadarsha Mody at Jaihind College in Bombay taught us Shakespeare, but would often drift away talking about “life”, instead. If you are thinking God has given us these knuckles on our fingers so that we can count how much money we’ve got, wrong! Because in India we use the knuckles as if they were built-in calculators. When you’re on your death bed and if you could count even half as many friends, you know that you have earned and lived a good life.
Leap forward to our teacher Edwin Banks at London College of Printing, where I studied technologically oriented printing management. He would pound into us time and time again, don’t be afraid of trying anything. Mistakes will be made and sooner you make a mistake, better off you will be. And that you know that the foreman is doing a good job when you walk into the plant and hear the consistent drone of the printing press running, he is sitting on his chair with his feet up on his desk, reading the newspaper. Not the one who is frenetically trying to re-start the press with broken web and the ribbons of paper flying all over.
●●●
This all changes overnight, when after years of Lee having successfully run the department is suddenly usurped in a corporate coup d’état. Now I have a new boss – Bill Stokkan. It takes us a while to adjust to each other. But somehow we manage. Bill leaves me alone even more than Lee did, because he is not a publishing guy who believes that his managers should be able to do their jobs well on their own. But he does find his ways into all his direct reports’ areas more as an advisor/guardian than a boss. I like his modus operandi.
At times it takes me several days or even a couple of weeks to get him to sit down with me. Then suddenly he would show up at my office door just before lunch.
‘Let’s go!’ He would say. Hurriedly, I would collect my files containing things I need to discuss with him and we would dart out of there and walk a couple of blocks to our favorite Japanese restaurant, Hatsuhana, have our first course of sushi and tempura washed down with sake and beer, and then walk next door to the Shucker’s and top it up with fresh soft shell crabs, shrimps and oysters with some chilled vodka.
His favorite jargon is: That’s a no brainer, which would follow quick decisions.
‘Do it.’
‘Let’s discuss.’
‘Not now.’
And we would be done. But Bill is also given to what his other direct reports and I came to call, pontificate! He has an extremely analytical mind in which he has looked at a given situation from every possible angle. And he has a set of business philosophy that is plain and simple and above all fair to everyone concerned. Something I absolutely admire.
We are on our way to Brazil and Argentina. Up are two very delicate contract renewals. I have provided him with copies of the contracts and am giving him rundown on what we maybe up against when sitting down at the negotiating table.
‘They’re right. We should consider giving them reduction in the minimum guarantee!’ This is a new concept to me. He senses it and he knows what the corporate philosophy has been all along.
‘Minimum guarantee shouldn’t be a minimum penalty. I see that we actually make more money than they do!’ This too is a new concept for me.
Aren’t we supposed to be? I don’t even have to ask.
‘We may try to get 51% out of the deal, but even if we end up with 50/50 split, it’s still a win-win situation and therefore a true partnership.’
‘But that would throw off our budget…’
‘Don’t worry about the budget. Just make one up the best you can. In the end you could be either over budget or under budget.’ Well, he is right. But no one has put it to me that way before.
‘Just look at these numbers. What’s in these contracts for our partners? What incentive do they have to invest more and make more money? So they can pay us more in the royalties?’
The question hangs in the air while our Varig flight bound for São Paulo pierces through the dark of the night. His question what incentive do they have? takes me back to ten thousand miles away and twenty five years earlier. And to my month long jaunt across the Indian sub-continent and to a different kind of dark nights, not up in the sky, but down on the earth. And instead of the jet engines roaring, I hear the screeching of locomotives on their tracks and the train slowly inching into a station. And hear the echo of Vidya Kapur, loud and clear:
Look Sahib, books are like whores, if the whores and the books are not dolled up and displayed, neither of them sell. What incentive do we have to give your books prime display space and sell more copies?
© Haresh Shah
Illustration: Celia Rose Marks
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