Inside corporate world
Jaswant Singh

Clueless & Co.
Pratik Basu. Rupa.
Pages 268. Rs 195.

You start reading this book hoping to get a glimpse of the corporate world as at the very outset the author proclaims that the institutions and places described by him are real even if the characters are not. He calls the narrative an "inverted tale" and a "declared work of fiction" and describes all resemblance to "persons living or dead or an indeterminate stage in-between" as coincidental though not unintentional.

As you proceed, you are confronted with a stream of characters and events described in a tongue-in-cheek style, exposing corporate Calcutta (now Kolkata) to a treatment bordering on ridicule. Situations and events pop out of the pages with one comic character after the other, showing that top men in the business world have little to do except gulping beer in the afternoon and dining at exclusive clubs at night.

This light-hearted and highly exaggerated account of the corporate world revolves around three business school graduates who in a moment of impulse decide to put their talents together and launch an enterprise through which they hope to change the face of marketing research. Soon you get acquainted with the crazy characteristics of these men and the wacky nature of the schemes they conceive and plan to execute and the mortifying misadventures they land themselves in. When they try to do business with a liquor barron, his medieval and nawab-like ways put off even these weird characters.

Then there is an unnamed "I", a junior executive in another firm who is tormented at home by an unwelcome guest and by a team of special investigators in his office, and who shows a special talent for landing himself in embarrassing situations. The way he and another colleagues of his manage to get rid of the investigators has all the trappings of a cheap burlesque act. At the end of it, you are left wondering if this is the state of affairs in multinationals then will God Almighty Himself, even if He descends personally from heaven, be able to rescue the business world from a situation where interviews for top-level posts are held in bars over rounds of drinks, appointment letters are drafted during gaps in drinks and the most important factor that determines the fate of a candidate is the shape of his face, in this case, round.

Reading the book, however, you thoroughly enjoy the company of all the crazy characters who take you on a bumpy ride through their misadventures. This irreverent description of the corporate world provides you with plenty of rib-tickling moments as you romp through the pages. It makes entertaining reading even if the events are bizarre.

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