The year 1970 was one of boundless energy. There was youth, there was ambition and the future looked full of promise. It was a time which brought to mind Wordsworth?s famous lines:
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
But to be young was very heaven!
I rode on the back of ten years of experience in the textile division of DCM Ltd, the shortened name of The Delhi Cloth & General Mills Co. Ltd. By this time, it was among the top five private companies in the country and had diversified into sugar, edible oils, chemicals, fertilizers, rayon and plastics.
The founder?s family included my father, Bharat Ram, who was chairman and managing director; my uncle Charat Ram, also a managing director; my elder cousin, Bansi Dhar; and myself. The company had a number of independent directors and by the standards of those times was quite professionally managed. The operations were clearly divided under my father and uncle. The textiles division was one of those overseen by my father, and I was the executive director in-charge. Bansi Dhar reported to my uncle. My brother Arun, who was five years younger, was assigned to a subsidiary company manufacturing nylon tyre cord, again under my father. Vivek, nine years my junior, reported to me.
This thumbnail sketch is important for the story that unfolds hereafter.
Things were going well for me professionally and personally. I had an MBA degree with a major in economics from the University of Michigan and, six years later, a four-month stint at the Harvard Business School. Being the first in the family to have studied abroad, I was apprehensive, when I returned with a degree, about being accepted in a traditional business environment. I remembered Professor Griffin, whom I had once asked, ?Do you think after an education at a US university, I will be able to fit into the Indian business culture?? Pat came the reply, ?Dear young man, at this school we train you to be misfits so that you can change the culture of the organization you work for!? Anyway, my fears seemed unfounded. I was welcomed warmly by my grandfather.
In a few days, however, things changed. I was inducted into Swatantra Bharat Mills on 1 April 1960?April Fools? Day! But there was nothing funny about this. My father passed orders that I was to report for work before 6.30 every morning, stand in line at the labour gate and get my attendance stamped like all other workers. There was another gate, of course, for officers who made their entry at 9 a.m. The workers? shift ended at 2.30 p.m. but I was expected to leave only with the officers after five in the evening. This I suppose was my father?s way of ridding my mind of false notions about a foreign education. The routine continued for six months, after which my uncle intervened and put me in charge of an ailing silk mill?an adjunct of Swatantra Bharat?which wove and processed synthetic fabric. The mill was turned around in three months, raising my stock in the company. I no longer entered through the labour gate.
B.D. Pathak, an engineer who had joined the company around the same time as my father, was his right hand man and in charge of the textile operations. A powerful orator, he had total command over the lives of the workmen. He not only knew each one by name, but also the names of their children.
While he revelled in the adulation of those who vied to touch his feet, he could be a formidable foe in the event of labour trouble. In the paternalistic style of my grandfather, he was involved in promoting sports, dramatics, cultural events and, most of all, wrestling.
I remember the time when he invited me to watch a series of wrestling bouts. Having not yet shed the American practice, I donned a coat and tie. Midway through the bouts he stopped the contest and looked at me as if he were sizing me up. I swear I thought he was planning to put me in the ring. Then to my vast relief, he announced that I would address the audience as the new scion of the DCM family. I became tongue-tied. My Hindi was rusty and peppered with English, but it did not seem to matter to the wrestlers. They appeared more interested in observing my strange mannerisms and assessing my potential as a wrestler.
Pathak?s counterpart in marketing was a man who could not have been more different. He was a graduate of the London School of Economics and his stint with Lever Brothers had given him the attitude of a ?brown sahib?. He joined DCM in the mid-1940s. It speaks of my grandfather?s foresight that he brought such a man into a company perceived by many to be comprised of ?dhotiwallas?.
N.R. Thadani was given full charge of marketing and asked to build the export business. To this he devoted his energies with enthusiasm. By the time I came on the scene, one-third of the towels bought in Britain were made at DCM. Retailing in the home market was also a passion with Thadani. This led to a rather creative brainwave. At a time when fashion shows were hardly known in India he retained a pair of rather forward-looking Parsi sisters to organize fashion pageants at leading hotels in Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta. Nothing could keep me away from watching the bevies of beautiful girls clad in DCM?s bath towels. There were, of course, other fabrics too.
One of the models was Persis Khambatta, who went on to become Miss India and later acted in a slew of Hollywood films, including Star Trek. In later years Maneka, who would one day marry Sanjay Gandhi, posed for a series of advertisements in DCM towels.
Excerpted with the permission of Penguin Books India from?From the Brink of Bankruptcy: The DCM Story
(Read Sunil Jain?s review of the book at https://www.financialexpress.com/news/beneath-the-banyan-tree/783961/0)