Manoj - the mentor

I was waiting outside the office for 2 or possibly 3 hours seeking an appointment with a self professed busy man a Vice president, no less. Finally he deigned to see me and handed over a final year project to me and introduced me to his reportee - a Mr. Manoj. It took him all of 2 minutes, but he made me wait. 

I went to meet this Manoj outside his office and Manoj said, lets catch up over tea. "My stupid boss does this to everyone. Makes people wait. I saw you sitting there, but I had no idea you had come to see him. But anyway, start coming from tomorrow, we will start on the project"

And thus it was that my association with Manoj happened. I don't remember much about the final year project, but when my final job posting happened, it happened at the same place. 

I thanked Manoj about it. "Oh, we were asked to hire a CA, but I convinced my boss to hire you since you had already done the final year project with us, so we were allocated a Management trainee and here you are"

Manoj was a maverick and a Chartered Accountant. Two words that usually dont go together and if they do it is usually a bad sign. But Manoj was a maverick Chartered Accountant. 

His boss was a terrible person - among other things - most bad qualities of a leader were embodied, internalised in him - as I later discovered as a Leadership practitioner. In effect, I learnt all that one should not do as a leader from him - but that is for a later write up about the two bosses we worked under. 

Manoj was my mentor in the first job and I could not have asked for a better mentor. We were similar. Both scatterbrained (his term), both very ok to bend rules - but he was the fearless one and I was the one afraid to take steps. His confidence made me do things, I never could have imagined doing. Computers at the desk were just about happening in the workplace and we soon got a desktop each. He promptly tried to install linux on the machine and promptly crashed it. He was a jugaadu (street smart) - there was no situation he could not handle and he created such situations by the dozens and kept handling them each day. After all, what do you in a company that spent more than it made? I contributed to the mess often (we worked similarly) and he had to clear them in the early days.

And while all this was happening, he was also my confidante and gave me some of the pithiest advice.

When I wanted to talk to my "crush" who I had never spoken to - he said, "Call karo. Max what will happen? She wont talk or she wont be there" 

I did and she was there and we managed to speak for a few mns. I did not take much initiative after that and in 6 months her marriage was announced. He told me, "dont worry. one day you will meet her husband and you will look at him and think, I was pretty good" Whether that happened or not, he always made me laugh with responses such as these. 

And he said, "Apun lambe race ka ghoda hai. Bas itna hi sochne ka"

All these small things are speedbreakers in your highway of life Neela - dont worry. 

You and I are similar - we "get" things easily (at work), so we become lazy and do not push ourselves further. 

We had many situations at work where his street smartness worked well and enabled me to learn. 

He also offered his pithy advice to the group of management trainees who joined with me. And every one of them who met my mentor told me, how incredibly lucky I was. 

Our association continued well past the first job and he is someone I will always remember as the one who got me started in my real corporate world experience.