It is Official

Pawan Verma

MODERN TIMES are indeed complex. People who spend hours looking for work spend hours looking at it, once they get the job. In some cases this infatuation is so strong that the thin line dividing home and office, work and leisure is completely blurred. It was just the other day that my neighbor, a government employee, was sitting at the breakfast table, engrossed in the morning newspaper. As he asked for yet another cup of coffee, his wife shouted back, “what’s wrong with you? Look at the time. Are you not going to office today?” “Office?”, said my startled neighbor, “I thought I was in the office itself.”

A study of both the government sector and the public sector management would reveal one common inadequacy – they do not recognize talent. In both these sectors there are umpteen number of people whose talents are so rich and diverse that it makes them consider their routine jobs dull and drab and look for alternative channels of creativity. This realization dawned upon me a few years ago when I was interviewing some of our employees for promotion. When I asked one young girl if she had any exceptional talents, she was quite forthcoming in mentioning her achievements in solving crossword puzzles and slogan-writing contests. I interrupted her to say that I was talking about something which could be done during office hours. She was vehemently reassuring, “Believe me, sir, it was all during office hours only.”

And then there are people who claim to work for those who work for their institution. They are the conscience-keepers of the institution. They would not mind exploiting the management in order to prevent the management from exploiting them. If in their busy schedule, they forget to avail of even small work-breaks, it is because of their inherent belief that work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. The entire Indian working class owes its gratitude to them for the pioneering idea that pension could start even before retirement.

The greatest invention of today is – tomorrow. I am sure it must have been done either by a government official, or a public sector executive. For them one tomorrow is worth many todays. They would do anything to avoid thinking and expect you to do so as well. Consider, for example, the question on a job application form of a government office: “Have you or any of your relatives ever committed suicide?” But what is important is that they are happy within the empire built by them. As somebody who hopped over from the private business to a police job, remarked, “The hours are satisfactory, the pay is good and best of all, the customer is always wrong.”

Every new day brings home to me the realization that my education of the government and public sector is incomplete. Their agenda is still unfinished as I discovered while talking to a friend who works for a government software project. With vision in his eyes and jingle in his voice, he said to me, “We have developed a computer that’s almost human.” “You mean it can think like humans,” I said. “No” was his reply, “but when it makes a mistake, it can put the blame on another computer.”

(First Published in The Hindustan Times, Edit page, dated 14.12.1999)

Woman in Love

Pawan Verma

SHE WAS undoubtedly in love. There was an unmistakable wistfulness in her eyes and passion in her face as she talked of him. Her voice was full of emotion and she seemed to be completely possessed by the intensity of her feelings. And as I saw her skin glow with radiance, for a moment I thought it was ‘Dove’. But no, my wife said, it was decidedly love.

I knew that there is a certain madness in love and that it makes a deewana of an otherwise normal human being. But that it could happen to her at this stage in life, was difficult to believe. The mother of two school-going children, she looked far from the picture of a lady torn between love and life. She could beat any teenager in the depth and display of her passions. As she came to our house, introduced by a common friend, she kept on talking of her new-found love, his likes and dislikes, how sweetly he sings and how beautifully he dances with her and, above all, how lovingly he calls her ‘Suzie’, an endearment for Suzata.

Her husband, a renowned surgeon, is too busy a person healing others to take care of the loneliness in her life. He is blissfully unaware that there is someone else demanding her attention and that he is no longer at the centre-stage in her life. Her daughters are also too busy with their own studies to take note of the emotional upheaval in their mother’s life.

Out to cultivate a relationship with the family, my wife called on her one winter afternoon. Our lady was knitting a sweater for the new hero in her life. She had attempted at least half-a-dozen patterns from the design-book, but was far from being contented with the outcome. Over a cup of tea, she kept on talking about her new experience in love – her passion for him, his daily routine, his food habits and preferences, and so on. My wife came back home more amused and enlightened than ever before about the futility of cultivating our lady-in-live.

As days passed by, we almost forgot about Suzata and her love, till the day I saw her in the supermarket. She was buying a pullover for her darling love.

I was amused at the heap of pullovers stocked on the counter and the frustration writ large on the face of the salesgirl. Our lady was rejecting one sweater after the other. In some she didn’t like the design, in others she didn’t approve of the colour or pattern.

Finally, she selected one which could meet her taste in colour and shade, pattern and design. But as she continued to be doubtful about the correct size, the frustrated salesgirl suggested to her:

“Madam, why don’t you bring your dog here? We will give him the size that exactly fits him.”

“Oh, no, dear! Try to understand”, she said persuasively, “I want to give him a surprise.”

(First Published in Hindustan Times, Edit page, dated 29.06.1999)

Insured -----for Laughs

Pawan Verma

BEFORE I joined the life insurance industry, I had always believed that life insurance was a serious subject. For the simple reason that although we call it life insurance, we always deal with death and disabilities, trauma and accidents.

I discovered very soon that there was a lighter side to this otherwise serious business as well. On deputation to one of our overseas establishments on the very first day at office, I had a letter on my table for signature. Addressed to a customer who had just been insured for a big sum, it read, “It gives us immense pleasure to inform you that proposal for insurance has been accepted. The first premium under the policy has been adjusted by us and we note that the future premiums will be paid by the widows and orphans.”

Leaving aside the crudity of the message, I was wondering whether the life insurance industry in developed countries had moved so much ahead as to take as to take just one premium and leave the rest to the widows and orphans to pay! It was only when I demanded an explanation from the office assistant that I learnt that our customer was the Chief Executive of the Widows and Orphans’ Society, which had taken insurance on the life of its employee and was going to pay the future premiums.

The incident turned out to be only the beginning of the shape of things to come. As it happened one afternoon, when I was about to leave the office after a busy day, the telephone rang. There was a lady on the other side, saying in a rather concerned and nervous tone that she had just given birth to twins. She was enquiring if it would have any impact on her life insurance policy. Unable to hear her clearly because of a disturbed line, I asked her, “Will you repeat it, madam?” She was firm and decisive, “Not at all, Sir, if I can help it.”

It is not that the other side of insurance, that is, the non-life insurance, has any less life in it. The story goes that one wealthy lady, before going on a trip to Europe, got her entire wardrobe insured. After arriving in London, she found one of her gowns missing. So she sent a message to her insurance company, “Gown lifted in London”. The smart manager unwilling to entertain the claim immediately shot back, “Madam, what do you think our policy covers?”

What is interesting is that there is a lot of synergy generated between these two sides of insurance being managed by two different corporations in India. They immensely contribute to each other’s business. This is beautifully illustrated by the story of the rich farmer whose tractor was stolen. Since the tractor was insured, the insurance company’s manager came to help him fill in the claim forms.

As a value addition to the service provide by the company, the manager also offered the farmer another tractor, suggesting that he could use the same till the claim was processed and he could get the money to buy another one.

The farmer was too happy with the services offered. He said to the manager, “Well, if that is the way your company does its business, why don’t you insure my wife as well?”

(First Published in Hindustan Times, Edit Page, dated 14.02.2000)