A couple who inspired me

I do not remember whether I have blogged about people who have inspired me. There have been a few in my 60+ years, but the couple who inspired me most were friends I made in Madras in the early 1970s.

Prem and Titi Sadanand become bosom friends in a very short space of time after he joined MRF as the Staff Assistant to the Managing Director.

Prem was given the task of driving the organisation into a shape fit as a professional company. He had to retain the family values and yet make it professional.

Prem was a real professional, having studied at Harvard. He came from a noble background as his father was the owner / editor of one of Bombay's best known newspapers, the Free Press Journal, and known for his courage to write the truth.

That certainly rubbed off on Prem, but he had immense diplomatic skills.

He and I hit it off from day one as we both smoked heavily and drank heavily (that was the time I did drink and smoke - I have not touched cigarettes and alcohol for the last 26 years!).

I was helping to put a plastic factory belonging to MM Group into some sort of shape as it was providing vital plastic film for the tyre production activity. But it was decided that the company should expand its role into avenues other than MRF.

Prem was asked to work with me.

Coming from a scientific research and production background, I had no idea of business principles, except from a classroom standpoint. With the short space of four weeks, Prem taught me the ins and outs of production management and control.

We used to sit the whole day in his office where he would learn about plastics technology from me while he taught me how to control factory output and production and implement cost control without moving an inch from the chair. It was amazing how much this man knew and how well he could teach.

After work we would retire to his home where his wife, an outstanding personality in her own right would have a glass of whiskey ready for each of us and we would continue our discussions where he would probe into family situations so that he could stay ahead of the rat race and deliver the results that the family expected from a top flight manager like him.

It is amazing how much I learnt from these two individuals - social skills, management skills, negotiation skills, family values, and above all the art of decision making. They helped me put my Consulting Company on track and it was Prem and Titis's handling of my life that made me understand how to leave when the going was good.

Prem had worked in the jute industry and the glass industry. He was a complete personality in that he knew his technology and his management. If it was not for him the plastics packaging fibre industry would never have caught on as he used his knowledge of the jute industry to develop the coating technolgy for high density polyethylene woven fabric to make it suitable for packaging fertilisers, sugar, and other mateials in direct competition with jute. He used my knowledge of plastics to be able to drive the new small scale rafia producers along a path that has taken them to the top of the world in economic packaging.

Very few people know this role of Prem which has affected the lives of millions of Indians. I do!

When I moved from Madras to Bangalore, what I missed most was my times with them.

Sadly Prem died of a massive heart attack when he was just in his mid forties. But he had set his wife up in a great furniture business that went alongside all her artistic skills and helped her survive his loss at that young age.

Today, I learnt that Titi had passed on. Titi was the daughter of the brilliant man (Sointi) who patented the Arsenic Pentoxide treatment for preservation of wood. He sold the patent to Bell Labs in the USA who kept it under wraps till the patent ran out and then made billions out of that technology.

Ascu Hickson Ltd., the Indian company which did this treatment of wood in India was run by Titi's brother, Teddy!

I have thought of both Titi and Prem often, as also their only daughter, Bobo's, who was the apple of their eyes and who was always there to greet me - Uncle Sushil.

Although I had not seen Titi for the last 10 years, the inspiration that the two of them gave me never left me through all my working life and now into my retirement.

May Titi rest in peace. She deserves it.