Pursuant to my coming of age (pray, what else was superannuation?), I had to retire from the Indian Air Force. Returning home on the last day of my service, I took off my uniform and put it into the laundry hamper. It was later, I realized, I had passed up that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity available to a soldier, of hanging up his uniform.
I was an embarrassingly non-technical kind of a bloke, who liked to pass himself off as an HR person. Even a dim-witted individual would have realized this, if he had only got to Page 2 of my resume, which had been sent to a well-known placement agency. Months before the uniform gave me up, my well-wishers used to unceasingly assure me that the MNCs/ PSUs would simply grab me the moment they happened to espy my resume.
Those were the happy days. There were a couple of irritants, to be got out of the way. One was that I possessed only one set of formal clothes, euphemistically called a light suit, which over the years had become so light, that all kinds of light used to pass through its fabric rather revealingly. I was apprehensive, I would not cut too dashing a figure, in those rarefied boardrooms in India and abroad. The second concern was that the MNCs might not allow me a couple of weeks’ time, to carry out some urgent repairs to our ancestral house.
I did not hear from anyone during the first week. Nothing happened during the second week too. The ancestral house was duly repaired. Initially, there were those frequent phone calls from my bureaucrat brother, who too had taken it on himself, to find me the right slot. And slowly, but surely, weeks led to months. The phone calls got increasingly less frequent and vanishing was the cheer, like the shine on a cricket ball, being swatted about by Tendulkar. I had, by then, taken to waylaying the village postman. Finally, there was a letter from that renowned placement agency, to the effect that they did not have anything going for me right then and when something suitable came up, they would revert to me and so on. Silently, I patted myself on my back for not rushing to some murderously expensive tailor, for boardroom apparel.
As months stretched to quarters, the image of the villain of the piece started becoming clearer. Mentioned conspiratorially at first and then knowledgeably, it gradually grew into a cacophony. It was recession! Disconcerted, I called on a close friend of an uncle. He was a retired bureaucrat, who was a director in a handful of companies. Pleasantries over, he told me that non-technical military men like me could only aspire for security jobs. I left my resume with him. I got a long and considerate letter from him a few days later. I got the impression, after perusing my credentials, he got the feeling that I was somewhat overqualified for the post of a security person, having to interact with the members of the public, seeking entry through some closed gates, to office complexes. Anyway, he regretted that there were no immediate openings for me in any of his companies. Recession was rearing its ugly head again!
As it happened, I was holding a degree or two, in Economics. As a student of The Delhi School of Economics, I had been taught by Dr. K N Raj, Prof. Amartya Sen (yes, the Nobel Laureate! ), Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati (someone who should have got the Nobel long ago) and their ilk. You might turn round and ask me why I did not launch myself into solving the then prevailing Asian and Russian Economic Riddles. The short answer was that I was incapable of doing so. Economics had always been a big riddle to me, in spite of my trying to learn the subject at the feet of the Masters.
It was a little later that I came to comprehend what recession was all about, on reading the outpourings of a worthy soul, on the subject. Recession was said to have occurred (mind you, it was always in the past tense!), when the economy had registered a negative rate of growth, for two quarters running. It was like water collecting round your feet, with the level rising steadily. Just about the time it hit your waistline, but not earlier, you could take a call on whether you were getting wet and issue a notice to that effect’ To Whomsoever It May Concern’ and hope for the best. One could perhaps raise the question as to what was happening, when the industrial production was falling steadily for over six months and when businesses were folding up or cutting back, all over the country. And yet, according to the mandarins of the Ministry of Finance, as long as they did not say that the economy was not logging a negative rate of growth, everything was hunky-dory. It was not and could not be a recession. All that one had to do was to have abiding faith in the Finance Minister. And if indeed, it was recession, all that one had to do, was to wait for the unstoppable upswing that was just round the corner. I had only one complaint against this approach. If it was not recession, I for one, had been denied a job, that should rightfully have come to me.
An avid watcher of TV programs, I gradually came to the conclusion that I needed to reinvent myself. It emerged that nothing sold, unless it was new or improved or international. Being a Superman was okay by me, but for the fact, that unlike ordinary mortals, the former wore his underpants over his trousers. I was ready to do anything for a job. I beefed up my resume, calling it curriculum vitae and resorted to chopping and squeezing my innate attributes like humility and modesty. It nearly choked me. I told myself that one could not come up with a saleable glass of lime juice, unless one nearly annihilated the said citrus fruit. I knew I was on my way. Along the way, I decided to cock a snook at Standard and Poor for messing around with India’s credit rating and if the need arose, to tell our pal Bill Clinton to blow the recession thing out of my way!
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—About our writer:
M V Kannan is currently a consultant to a software firm in Bangalore, where he was working as the GM-HR & Admin, for over a decade. Earlier, he spent a considerable part of his IAFcareer, writing for the establishment, besides informally engaging himself in editing and proofreading. He continues to enjoy writing on serious and not-so-serious issues. An MA in Economics, from the Delhi School of Economics, he also holds an M.Sc degree in Military Science, from the University of Madras.
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