From Al's Diary....What was that again?

I was associated with Toshali Resorts International for a little over 3 years. During this time I was privy to some hilarious experiences which have left me with a rich repertoire of anecdotes. These anecdotes have the makings of entertaining drawing room natter with friends, on a leisurely evening or two.Let me recount a few of them for my readers.

The people in TRI, from the Directors to the junior executives, formed a milieu of cross-cultural personalities. The diverse ways of talking, the choice of words, the accents, the pronunciations - all carried a distinct Pan-Indian flavour! This made for a heady cocktail of unbelieavable hilarity.

Take the case of one of the General Managers. I shall never forget the earnestness with which he breezed into my office one morning to propose that " aal journal managers must be alotted steam cars or state cars". At least, phonetically, this is what I heard. I was foxed, to say the least. However, soon enough, I reasoned that our GM(of good North Indian stock) was, perhaps, being funny. It was obviously his humorous way of suggesting some innovations in cost-saving by converting the company's vehicles into steam-driven ones! But,when he started talking about prestige of the senior management, I realised that I was on the wrong track. By some nimble mental footwork, based on years of exposure to the vast possibilities of North Indian pronunciations, I finally realised that he was actually advocating that all General Managers be provided with big cars by the company, like the Esteem(Maruti) or the Estate(Tata). So much for innovations and cost-reductions!

On another occasion, the same worthy gentlemen was coaxing me into coming to his house for a stag lunch on a Sunday. Quite honestly,for various reasons, I did not find the idea welcome. So I demurred saying he lived vary far away and I did not know that part of the city at all. At this, he gave me a massive thump on the back and assured me that "it is no praablem yaar! I live in Palam Gaon. You know Palam Vihar sir ji? My rasidence is a mere crow's throw from there!" Crow's throw? That was a new one alright! I thought to myself that only an uber-confident North Indian could so unabashedly synthesize "as the crow flies" and " a stone's throw" to come out with a completely original howler such as this!! I could not wait to go home and tell Kumi and the kids about this. Obviously, I also shared this with many of my friends. Boy was it a hit! So much so that I heard one friend narrating the experience some time later as one of his own and, that too, in my presence!!! Talk about stolen thunder!

The eastern states of India do not lag far behind either in producing innovative and unique conversational masterpieces. TRI is an Orissa based company and, naturally, the owners and Directors mostly hail from that state. The MD, a tubby man of pleasant disposition, had foxed me early on in my stint with the company with some classic Oriya-accented pieces like - launch,doll,lob,ROM. Only later did I come to realise that he actually meant lunch,dull,love,rum, etc. How was I to know that the alphabet u is given a wide berth by a majority of Oriyas?

One day, in the weekly morning conference of the top management, we discovered that all were present except the big boss himself. Naturally,we waited and sure enough, after 10 minutes or so he appeared and started to apologise forthwith. " Sorry for the late" he began. "Actually what happened was that I was arrested!" We were all taken aback and were anxious to know what transpired. It seems his driver jumped a red light and was pulled up and challaned by the cops. That is how he was " arrested!" He added for our benefit that "The problem was that I had no monny. Fortunately Mr. Bhora (read Vohra) was also passing that way and he stopped to escape me from the police and absconded me in his car!" He further lamented that "too many traffic signals are being installed. Yesterday while going home I discovered that our locality has become a totally red-light area!!"

During one morning conference the big boss had all of us stumped by his indictment of all "overnight fly-byers". He exhorted us to be extra vigilant in protecting the goodwill and good reputation of our product, our organisation and the credibility of the industry as a whole. Although we recognized the importance of the goodwill and credibility part, the rest of us were much exercised about the mystery of the "overnight fly-byer" phenomenon. Our attempts to tactfully elicit the meaning of this expression produced no satisfactory result, especially since the MD was not very fond of being questioned about his pronouncements. Only when he made a couple of references to some new, wet-behind-the-ears Time Share operators who had turned out to be the "here today, gone tomorrow" type, did it dawn on us that he was actually talking about the fly-by-night operators who had suddenly mushroomed in the industry!!! It is needless to point out that the lunch hour in the office was a specially boisterous one that day!

One day our assistant manager in the Customer Relations department, burst into my room, somehow uttered a "good morning sir" and flung herself into a chair, before I could even say Jack Robinson! On top of that she broke out into a paroxysm of uncontrollable laughter!

Considering the fact that it was well short of 9.30am and she was a habitual late comer, I was completely baffled at the turn of events. Why the laughter (in particular), I was asking myself? Well, eventually the young lady gathered herself and explained that she had purposely come in early to appraise me of what she had experienced the previous evening in a meeting with the MD.

On the previous day, the head of the Customer Relations department had been on leave. As a result of this, the big boss had asked my early visitor to see him at 5.00pm to discuss various issues related to that section. As the discussion progressed the boss lost track of the time. Many of the client-related points were complicated and my visitor, being a junior, was struggling at times to fill in. Suddenly the big boss asked her "you are missing your boss, no?" Our young friend very candidly said "yes sir, she has vast exoerience in this field and she really helps me out whenever I have any problem, especially in important discussions like this". The big boss looked dismayed and hastily clarified "No no no! I am talking about your "chotor bos" - you have missed it, no! It is already 7.00pm!" The Assistant Manager (CR) claimed, that as soon as she realised that the boss was in fact referrring to the Chartered Bus that she availed of every day, she excused herself for the night and ran away lest she burst out laughing on his face!

One of the officials, who was a popular man, was in charge of Toshali Sands, the company's resort on the Konarak-Puri Marine Drive in Orissa. Although he operated out of Sands, there came a time when he was given the additional responsibility of Toshali Royal View, Kufri in Himachal Pradesh. Obviously, this meant a lot of travel to and fro for him. One day, when he was visiting the Corporate Office in Delhi en route Kufri, I asked him if he even knew where he would spend the next week in, at any given point of time. He was very frank and forthright about his plight. He said " it is bheri difficolt. You see I have both my legs on one side!" I am still trying to figure out that one!!

The eastern states of India also contain West Bengal. Needless to say we had a fair number of Bengalis too in the organisation. One such gentleman was in our Admin Dept. This man was excellent in getting a job done - any job. However, while he was very high on delivery, he was a bit rustic in his spoken English. He became a source of a lot of hilarity in office by his doings - whether yelling at the top of his voice on the telephone "I want you. I want you now!" while asking a girl employee to report to office or whether ordering "bhanilla with cadbury" for dessert (meaning vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce!) during an annual departmental lunch in a restaurant.

But the piece de resistance came at one of the official dinners at my residence. These dinners at our home had become a half-yearly feature by popular demand of our Advisor, Mr. Pran K Choudhury. On one occasion such a party was sprung on me at a couple of hours' notice. Therefore I had no alternative but to ask some caterer to put up the dinner. And, since I would be stuck in office till late, I designated Manager Admin to look after everything, food, drinks, service, etc to help out Kumi who was still in office.

The evening went off well. I had whispered into the ears of Mr. Admin to keep a discreet eye on the bar and the bartenders. He must have taken his task a little too seriously for, soon enough, I discovered a merry twinkle in his eyes and a new-found verbosity, both of which were quite uncharacteristic of him.

Just a few days earlier, I had finalised a new house for our MD. It was no mean task because he kept dilly dallying inordinately till the prospective landlord gave us an ultimatum. Only then was the deal clinched. Earlier, I had deputed our man in Admin. to carry out the initial search and short list 2 houses for my final approval before I invited the MD to see it.

At the dinner, after being suitably primed by a few large ones, our man from Admin suddenly dropped his reticence and decided to join in on the conversation. He approached the MD and announced with glassy eyes and a pasted smile "You are bhery lucky sir,you phound new house! You are bhery lucky sir." After this, every now and then he would stagger up to the MD and repeat "You are bhery lucky sir!" I had to quietly lead him awsy from the MD by asking him to check up on the caterer. Even then, off and on he would be back to accost the MD with the familiar refrain of "You are bhery lucky sir!"

Anyway, the evening progressed nicely. Everybody appeared to be in a mellow and jovial mood. The conversation ranged from the latest blockbuster on screen to the Pokhran II blast. In the meantime,the periodic reminder to the MD of "You are bhery lucky sir!" continued with metronomic regularity. So,finally, when the caterer informrd me that dinner was ready to be served, the news came as a great relief to me in my capacity of an embarrassed host! But I had counted my blessing a little too early! Before I could even approach the guests to invite them over to the buffet, our over-zealous man from Admin. had artfully dodged past me, planted himself right in front of the MD and announced "You are bhery lucky sir, dinner is served!"