Preface
You cannot choose your parents or your children, they say.
Well, you can run away from oppressive parents, or opt to remain childless.
But, you cannot avoid bosses. Wherever you go to earn a living, there will be a boss. You have to live with your bosses. Let me tell you how I lived with mine.
This series will be published every alternate Friday.
Meet the Terminator
He was a 6’3”, 140 kg bald Scotsman with thick glasses that made his eyes look like those of an owl.
He was very intelligent, a tireless worker, meticulous in detail and very knowledgeable about banking. But, he was a dyed-in-the-wool obnoxious character.
He was the fifth son of a poor Scottish family in a little fishing village near Aberdeen in Scotland, living in a modest home with the “john” in the backyard. He told me later that early in life he had learnt to eat fast because otherwise his elder brothers would grab whatever was left on his plate after they had finished their own portions.
He had started life as a messenger boy in the Royal Bank of Scotland at the age of 17 and had worked his way up to the rank of general manager in my bank.
He was clever and cunning, ferocious and feared, dynamic and diabolical, magnanimous and Machiavellian, generous and grudging………..an amalgam of many different traits, both good and bad.
He called himself the “Terminator” because he enjoyed terminating people. Let me call him “T” from now on.
To explain the context, this was in the Middle East. Staff comprised 90% expatriates and only 10% locals. The locals got promoted, while the expats strived hard to retain their jobs and not get fired, which could happen at any time and for no reason.
After a successful term as general manager in Pakistan, T was brought to the head office as GM for the whole bank. Immediately he set about cleaning house, ruthlessly.
His targeted several Indians who had been brought from a Bank several years earlier and installed in top positions in the head office. Not that these chaps were incompetent, but T wanted his own men around him, people he could trust.
The first of these was the head of corporate banking, a seasoned veteran banker with long cultivated survival skills. He played golf with the Irish bosses at the government owned airline, poker with the American bosses in the oil companies, and Holi and “teen patti” (3 card game) with the big Indian traders. He nurtured the locals in the bank and swapped dirty stories with the Brits in high positions.
T went after him with a vengeance.
Day after day he harassed and humiliated the poor guy, often in public, blaming him for the slightest errors or lack of performance in corporate banking and generally making his life intolerable. Finally, the poor chap couldn’t take it anymore.
“I have proved myself for 10 years in the bank”, he told T. “Why do I have to take all this from you?”
“For what you have done in these 10 years, you have been paid”, replied T. “For what you will be paid today you have to prove yourself today.”
The unfortunate fellow resigned soon thereafter, denying T the pleasure of terminating him.
Another target was my boss.
A word about my boss. He was a “Tam Brahm” (Tamil Brahmin), well educated, totally honest, very competent, firm but fair, and genial too. I had struck up a good rapport with him right from day one. We became good friends and also bridge partners. I will call him RK.
Every day T would call RK to his office and harangue him about something or the other, often for hours at end. RK used to return to his office looking completely exhausted and visibly upset. After recovering he would tell me about T’s latest rantings. It seemed RK tried very hard to please T by complying with his every wish, but T would never be satisfied.
I was living a sheltered life under RK’s shadow, shielded from any contact with T and hoping that it stayed that way. I did my work, played my bridge, and was reasonably content.
Unfortunately, six months later disaster struck.
RK was in his early 40s, just a couple of years older than me, a strict vegetarian, non-smoker, non-drinker and adherent to a very regimented lifestyle. He used to play badminton thrice a week, walk for an hour another three days a week, and go to the temple every Friday. Inexplicably he was struck with lung cancer and passed away within just one month.
I was now reporting directly to T as the acting head of credit, absolutely in the firing line.
I spent a tumultuous two years working for T.
I offer some glimpses into life with this boss.
(
Deserting engineering after a year in a factory, Amitabha Banerjee did an MBA in the US and returned to India. Choosing work-to-live over live-to-work, he joined banking and worked for various banks in India and the Middle East. Post retirement, he returned to his hometown Kolkata and is now spending his golden years travelling the world (until Covid, that is), playing bridge, befriending Netflix & Prime Video and writing in his wife’s travel blog.)
