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The
numbers have foretold it all along. India, for those who hadn't
noticed, boasts a population in excess of a billion. A small proportion
(but a large absolute number) go to good schools (mostly engineering
ones), better B-schools, and then seek their fortunes in global
corporations. Today, thanks largely to the mathematics of it all,
there are several Indians in corner rooms of companies all over
the world. The same math would seem to indicate that an Indian
will soon win Wimbledon, have a podium finish or two in Formula
1, even become the world's #1 golf player. Just as, applied to
a different sample, it (the math) would say that it is only a
matter of time before one of the several thousand smart young
Indians that go to B-school, then work for a multinational corporation,
decides to write about it all. Working for a large corporation
is serious business but it has, as a certain Stanley Bing will
vouch, more than its fair share of comic moments. Mix Bing with
the math, and it becomes evident that humorous fiction set in
corporate India is a genre whose time has come (in a relative
way; this, after all, is a market where English fiction sells
so little as to make any book that sells over 10,000 copies a
best-seller) and Swati Kaushal, an author whose time has come.
 Swati,
who? Swati, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management,
Calcutta, a former employee of Nestle India and Nokia India, and
currently a home-maker in the us where husband Vivek works with
GE, that's who. Piece of Cake is the book in question, and it
is built around a protagonist who could well have been based on
the author herself: Minal, a manager at International Foods where
she launches and manages a new brand of cake-mixes. There's a
little bit of everything (and everyone) in Piece of Cake: ill-tempered
bosses, bitchy colleagues, cut-throat competitors, even it's-time-my-daughter-got-married
mothers. The book may not be autobiographical, but as Kaushal
admits, it is inspired by her own experiences. "I have been
in meetings with advertising agencies that seemed surreal; I was
once mistaken for a temporary secretary by a senior manager who
started dictating notes to me; and I have sold the virtues of
Maggi cubes (a product from the Nestle stable) to dhaba owners
in the Haryana hinterland," she rattles off.
| PIECES OF CAKE |
| I have been making
a quiet study of the peculiarities and distinguishing traits
of the 'Sales Manager' species for sometime now, and the findings
are truly remarkable. For instance, it is uncanny how all
the really big egos, smooth tongues and small brains in the
International Foods world have inexplicably landed up in Sales.
The tougher, smarter ones have worked their way up and are
leaders to contend with. The lucky ones have worked their
way out to other jobs, much chastened and vastly improved
by the experience. And the rest, the ones that got left behind
to circle endlessly in the rough waters of the trade, are
the irreparably delusional and chauvinistic lot of current
International Foods sales managers.
This last sub-species is surprisingly homogenous. Fancy
black loafers with patterned socks, pot bellies and a suboptimal
use of deodorant are key identifying traits. Moustaches
occur in most varieties, as do gold watches and cellphones.
There is one important difference, though, between the
two distinct strains that are commonly found. It is the
look in their eyes. The punier ones have that 'I'm king
of my territory, no one messes with me' expression, and
the uglier ones the 'I don't see too many women in my job,
so don't mind if I mentally undress you' leer. Shinde, I
noted gratefully, belonged to the former category.
- Excerpted from Piece
of Cake
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Piece of Cake is a sub-set of commercial fiction,
a term used (condescendingly by writer-writers, and with dollar-dreams
in their eyes by publishers) to describe books meant for the masses
(think detective fiction, thrillers, pulp-fantasies and the like),
as against literary fiction. Set in corporate India, it should
appeal to the few hundreds of thousands that share Kaushal's background.
"It is for the young, especially those who are single and
highly-motivated," she says. "Eventually, all their
life's high and low points-friendship, love, conflicts, challenges-have
their origin in the workplace." The book, published in December
2004, has met with reasonable success, says Thomas Abraham, President,
Penguin India, the publisher. "We have already sold 5,000
copies of Piece of Cake, which is quite a feat for a debutant
author." Kaushal is no Lauren Weisberger, Piece of Cake,
no The Devil Wears Prada (on The New York Times hardcover best-sellers
listing for six months), and International Foods is no Runway
magazine, but at one level, the book works. And even as Penguin
plans to market Piece of Cake more aggressively, and Kaushal hopes
to finish her second book by the end of the year (it is set in
contemporary India is all she will give away), Nestle India's
chief flak catcher insists that neither he, nor anyone else in
the company has heard of the book or been asked their opinion
on it by someone else. That's a pity. Piece of Cake is the kind
of book that should be part of every management trainee's orientation
kit.
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