How life turns out
In 1993 I was for a brief time with the Pai and Co as an executive in their Trivandrum show room opposite the Ayurveda College. The showroom has since been demolished when the roads were widened. On an ordinary day my staff about five of them were hush hush and whispered to me Rajmohan Pillai, Rajmohan Pillai..., the brother of Rajan Pillai. Rajan Pillai was often in the media as a successful BUsinessman, Perhaps the only one from Kerala so well celebrated. He was a second or third generation businessman with a flamboyant lifestyle according to the media.
Rajmohan had a very close resemblance to his eleder brother Rajan almost ten years his senior. My curiosity was bordering on amusement.
In 1995 when I was in Bihar, the newspapers carried news of the untimely death of Rajan Pillai in unfortunate circumstances. He owned Brittannia at that time. My theorising at that time was not about the person but about the whole of Mallu community who in my opinion are incapable of the business world. The Mallu is too naive in a highflying business world, but more importantly there is a little bit of a communist in its essence of social justice, in every Keralite which makes him too less of a killer.
This looks a little contradictory since the idealogy in discussion swears by bloody revolution but here I am making a distinction between the essence of the ideology, social justice and the turn that it has taken in practice which is nothing short of sheer impractical rhetoric. Both ends have a bit of utopian naivete.
In September 2010, I had an opportunity to interact with Rajmohan Pillai when the Academic Staff College invited him along with two other entrepreneurs to be in a panel discussion on enetrepreneurship for the benefit of the participants of the 27th Refresher course in Commerce and Managament of which I was also a participant. I had asked him a question about managing a conglomerate since we knew as teachers what a conglomerate was. He gave a simplistic answer saying it is only a matter of a few more zeroes.
Saji, a participant asked me later about the answer not being to the query. I said I did not have an answer in my mind rather wanted to have a glimpse into his mind coz I could learn about Conglomerate, SBU and BCG matrix from textboks even otherwise but getting to know the thought process of an entrepreneur that too third generation or for that matter any one moving in a different circleis a rare stuff.
Rajmohan left a book 'A wasted death' about Rajan PIllai's life and death and I read it in one sitting on 17th Sept, 2010. What shook me most was the assertion that if Rajan had not fled Singapore, he would not have died of lack of medical attention in judicial custody. At the most he would have been convicted of a breach of some of the Singapore laws which he could have pleaded guilty and got out with a penalty of a few millions.
I visited the otehr Paico in Trivandrum statue jn, in the same month. I enquired about the old man Kamat who was manager at the showroom and had a mild heart attack while I was there. The kind of amiable person with little or no guile that he was, I expected that him to be long gone after leaving Paico. To my amazement I was told that he was doing well having become an LIC agent and his elder son was in England and his younger son was a teacher. He was doing good business and had become kodipathi many times ..... I wonder which is a celebrated life; Rajan Pillai's or Kamat's?...
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