I can’t even mention that corporate heads maintain secret diaries, for the public and top publishers will be after them. Sometimes these lead to wrong conclusions like the one about my secret diary having only abuses of our hated rival, Coke.
The truth is far different. A leading Chennai daily carried an item from Davos on how my outlook on life changed following a visit to my mom in Chennai after I became the Pepsi chief in 2006. My secret diary contained titbits from my personal life but almost nothing about my boyfriends, real or imaginary. When I once visited my mom in Chennai after a long break, my plans to sleep till noon were disrupted by mom who told me to get up early as friends and relatives were coming home to meet me.
This was unfair. When can daughters sleep late except during vacations? But mom was happy that the guests did not praise me but showered kudos on her for bringing her daughter up the right way, which included waking her up early during vacations. This anecdote was much appreciated at Davos. After returning from a ‘Pepsi’ vacation, I wrote to the parents of my directors thanking them for bringing them up the right way which enabled me to appoint them to high posts. This, of course did not apply to those parents who dissuaded their sons and daughters from gulping down soft drinks. I am someone who firmly believes that loyalty to the firm is more important than parental praise. This loyalty influences my hiring policy too. When a person who I wanted to hire said he was already committed to another offer, I phoned his mother to apply a bit of ‘Mama pressure’. This worked and we got the bloke. When The Hindu report on this was published, I was surprised to be inundated with offers from Bollywood, all of them offering me “Maa roles”. Out of touch with Bollywood tastes, I learnt much later about the important role moms play in Hindi cinema. Shashi baba’s famous line in Deewar, “Mere paas maa hain”, is now apparently an immortal dialogue. I compared this fictitious mom with my real mom. She would have been happy had the Big B retorted, “Mere paas Pepsi bhi hain.”
At Davos, I told everyone I owed my success to my parents though I was deprived of several hundreds of hours of sleep by mom. While most parents today returned the school report cards of their children without reading them, my Mom went over them with a fine toothcomb. Today everyone in my staff starts work only after showing me their report days duly signed by their moms. We are now where we are only because of such traditions.
The Mumbai-based satirist is the creator of ‘Trishanku’; E-mail your secret diarist: vgangadhar70 AT gmail.com
