Danger often lurks beneath a calm surface
We discovered someone’s murderous underbelly in Allahabad
Be aware: A calm surface can hide a ruthless aspect.
Some old stories.
I’d like to share a strange story, and one that ought to remind everyone that you should never judge a person by their mild demeanor. Let’s travel back to Allahabad (now, PrayagRaj) for this story.
The first time I passed through Pratapgarh was when I took a bus to a small town called Sultanpur. The bus journey took five hours, and I travelled to Sultanpur to recover money from a distributor who had bounced a cheque. My good fellow gave me a lecture about my soul, predicting I would be reborn as a lower form of biology in my next life, and insisted I eat lunch at his home before he firmly bid me goodbye, even accompanying me to the bus station to ensure I took the bus back to Allahabad that same evening.
I remember my sales rep’s dismayed reaction when our distributor directed us to sit on the floor and eat the traditional Indian way, with a thali on the floor. My sales rep groaned, but I sat carefully, ensuring my trousers did not split at the seams, the way they had split in Nasik a few years earlier.
The route to Sultanpur is via a horrible town called Pratapgarh. Our bus stopped at Pratapgarh both ways, and I drank tea and gobbled a biscuit, not daring to eat anything else in that town where diesel fumes filled the air.
And now, we come to the story.
After creating a strange backdrop, I will now move to the meat of the story. We had two distributors in Allahabad. My predecessor had made the cardinal error of appointing a second distributor. Allahabad was not big enough to sustain two distributors, and both were forever disputing and selling into each other’s territories. Both asked us to document the territory we allocated to each, which was impossible.
In those days, a draconian law–the MRTP (Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act) governed us, prohibiting us from defining a distributor’s sales territory. Doing so would ‘restrict’ their business, exposing us to possible litigation.
Both distributors were terrible, and it was difficult to sack the old distributor, a Sikh family. The law barred us from terminating a distributor without reason. The law required you to document and prove their performance or financial failures before terminating them.
I was the territory’s boss, and both distributors perpetually wined and dined me to win my favor and pass judgment in their favor. The Sikh family even recalled our shared Punjabi heritage—and so the long story wound on. I’d curse my predecessor every time I visited Allahabad.
One night, the Sikh family hired a hoodlum to slap my sales representative as he was about to board the train to Delhi for our monthly meeting.
My boss declared that the attack was an outrage, and that ‘we had the right to defend ourselves.’ That phrase must sound familiar to some people.
I don’t know how the head of our security department in Delhi heard of this incident, but he spoke to my boss and offered to visit Allahabad with us to sort the matter out.
We booked our tickets and our hotel rooms, not suspecting a damned thing, when the head of our security department (Mr. Security) insisted he did not need a room. After we reached Allahabad early one morning, Mr. Security disappeared. We looked for him all over the train station, but it appeared he had either evaporated or had allowed the railway platform to swallow him up.
The two of us then took a rickshaw to our hotel, feasted on our breakfast, and then visited the two distributors, one each day. My boss could be one of those nasty little buggers. He had started his career as a sales representative and then grown in the organization. He knew his sales business, but he was often a nasty piece of work, especially when he’d settle down to consume over half a bottle of booze at night.
The two distributors were the ones who felt his bite on that trip, and I think he took large chunks out of their backsides. In another life, my boss would have been a fine cannibal.
There was no sign from Mr. Security, and those were the days before mobile phones. We had no way of getting in touch with him, and concluded that he had disappeared into the warm arms of a local lady and had decided not to return to Delhi.
Mr. Security presented us with a horrifying solution.
Then, to our utter surprise, Mr. Security rejoined us at the station as we were about to board the train to Delhi. Refusing to answer my boss’s penetrating questions about his absence, he shoved a piece of paper into my hand. I peered at the paper, seeing only a telephone number written on the crumpled surface.
‘What’s this about?’, I remember asking.
‘Call this number whenever you need,’ he said. ‘Give the person at the other end my reference.’
‘Then what?’ I asked. Mr. Security must have thought I was an imbecile.
‘Tell him what you want done, and it will be done.’
‘Meaning?’ That was my boss joining the ranks of the imbeciles.
‘Oh, whatever you want,’ he continued. ‘Do you want their house burned down? It will be done. Do you want their throats slit? It will be done. Do you want their wives, daughters, or mothers raped? It will be done.’
I assure you, my boss and I almost fainted, and wished the platform would swallow us up. We had wished for a resolution, but not such a drastic resolution to the mess. My boss refused to accept the paper, insisting I keep it safe in my wallet. Damned hell!
Mr. Security had been rather taciturn on the journey to Allahabad, not uttering so much as a word throughout the journey. On the return journey, he changed, becoming loquacious, warm, and almost boastful. He didn’t seem bothered by the other people in the train, or the ticket checker, as he spoke to us of abductions, murders, rapes, robberies, and other carnage committed by his associates.
I remember gawking at him, wondering if this was the same quiet, humble, polite, almost self-effacing person I interacted with in Delhi. My boss and I cuddled next to each other in a corner of our little bed in the coach.
Neither could believe that, beneath the calm exterior of the person we had been talking to for several years lurked one who could ensure the earth swallowed us up in a jiffy. Not for the first, or the last, time did I realize that when you strip your pretentious corporate titles aside, you can be as naked and defenseless as the other person on the street.
Danger often lurks beneath a calm exterior.
Danger often lurks beneath a calm surface, waiting for the right moment to crawl out and create mayhem.
Another crazy chap in Bhilai. Young Mr Dormouse.
The same thing happened when I did my summer training in Bhilai years back. I liked a Russian woman, and so did a seasoned senior engineer. One day, we went to have tea with a batchmate who lived in Bhilai. He was quiet and almost as invisible as a dormouse in college. When he heard about the little competition for the Russian woman, he calmly assured me he could clear my path by having my competitor killed. I remember jumping from my comfy chair, assuring him I did not wish death on anyone, and then I looked hard at him, trying to define the college dormouse.
Later, I learned that the engineer married that beautiful Russian woman, and I hope they had a good marriage!
There is a saying—‘Delhi is far away.’ They have the same saying in China, ‘Beijing is far away.’ When you are far from the capital, the emperor’s reach becomes tenuous, and the law of the bandit takes over.
Danger lurks in strange places, rearing its head when you least expect it. I have learned to be polite when I leave Delhi. Delhi may be far away, but when I travel to distant towns, I always wish to return in one piece. So far, I have been successful, and I intend to maintain a spotless record!
Did we behave like Trump or other leaders? Yes.
After writing out the post above, I took some time to reflect on my writing, and realized that my boss and I behaved like Trump is behaving now, or how many ‘leaders’ behave. I’ve combed through my memory’s dusty alleys, and have not been successful in discovering a rational reason for taking our security office along to Allahabad.
We could have visited the town, had a proper conversation with our distributor, and practiced diplomacy to find a solution.
Instead, we took the security officer along, without a clear plan or any real idea of what we wanted to achieve with his visit. Maybe we thought a show of force would scare the distributor.
To our credit, when he presented us with an awful proposition (read - bombing school children), we panicked and shied away. In the end, we found a solution through dialogue.
I kept that crumpled slip of paper for a few days, then discarded it.