Chakra-vyuh

Yesterday, while on a bus, for no particular reason at all, I thought of Chakra.

He was part of the second batch at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad – the batch of 2003 and I met him while evaluating students’ business plans as part of a panel, something I had started doing the earlier year with enthusiasm (“those who can’t do will evaluate”).  I faintly remember an earnest, spectacled chap presenting his team’s plan with a modest air about him. 

A couple of years later, Chakra was seated alongwith me, on the other side this time.  He had done well at ISB, picked a job up and was invited now to be part of the panel because he was considered by the faculty, quite rightly, to be mature and reasoned in his approach.  We briefly chatted with each other and, thereafter kept in occasional touch over email, meeting regularly at ISB on my now-annual pilgrimage to it.  Chakra was always a quiet, gentle sort and quizzed the students with considerable empathy – a far cry from the otherwise brutal examination that most of them were subjected to.  He had a particularly soft corner, in those sessions, for social entrepreneurs and believed  in the transformation power of responsible business. 

Chakra, simply, was a hugely likeable guy. 

I learnt subsequently that he had become the executive assistant to the chairman of Satyam, Ramalinga Raju,  and, while he did show up for the ISB evaluation when he could, he was clearly very busy and preoccupied with work.  He confided that it was a frenetic life that saw no break, with incessant travel, meetings, calls and huddled confabulation, as filled with excitement as it was with stress and, as we would all learn later, anguish.  He truly believed the founder to be a visionary and was, therefore, himself as charged up about his work as he was with the company’s social sector projects – in rural development and healthcare access.

Satyam, as we now know, was setting a frenzied pace, its exclusive focus being on exhibiting growth for its own sake and the sake of market capitalisation, in a ruthless take-no-losers and use-any-means approach to attempted leadership in the software industry.    Corporate history is replete with such examples and, in every case, the means have been dodgy and boldly unethical, yet justified in the language of the business-literate.

Looking back, I cannot imagine how Chakra coped with all of this – the pressure of unremitting performance targets, constant activity, personal stress, the dubious accounting that he must have suspected perhaps and all else – but there was a sense of larger vision, he erroneously believed, that the company’s founder had.  Interestingly, this vision – of transformation, of creating a better India, of leaving the World a better place – is the vision that godmen sell with alacrity to unsuspecting disciples; perhaps just as religion is business today, business is a religion too.  Both pursue wealth for its own sake and believe it to be the tangible indicator of happiness. 

When the company tumbled in 2009, like a pack of well-worn cards piled delicately on each other to create an illusion of commanding height, he was not just personally broken but devastated. The next few months were worse – facing up to a long-denied reality and to regulators, incessant questions on issues he had little clue about, and the deep fear of reprisal and loss of face.

I met him sometime later at ISB as usual and, after the day’s work, we went on a walk on the road that encircles the huge building.  It was more than a walk really, – it was a journey of experience.  His career at Satyam, Chakra explained, had taken a toll on his health and on his family.  His wife chose to leave, unable to cope with his preoccupation and absence and when he expressed genuine contrition and offered to make amends, it was to no avail.  I instantly liked him even more for what he had done; few people we know have the capacity to say “I am sorry,” from their heart and we must applaud their humility.  After all of this, he wanted a break away from corporate life and the city and had gone back to his parents’ home in a village to rebuild his life, possibly by getting involved in agriculture and social entrepreneurship.  We exchanged some ideas while walking, and I went away thinking of just how Life can punch the best of us in the nose, at times to get us back on the path of our dreams.

Chakra got involved in a couple of initiatives and it was invigorating to talk with him over coffee, when we met in 2012 .  He had slimmed down a fair bit and certainly looked happier and relaxed.  I left for the airport  gratified to know that he was on a comeback path, possibly with the support of his batchmates and friends – a necessary support group for the best of us.

A few months later, in early 2013, Chakra was hit by a vehicle while taking a walk in the morning and was killed instantly, the end of a brilliant, humble, idealistic young man, who was robbed of an opportunity to score – possibly a blemish-less hundred - in the second innings.  One could blame the driver of the vehicle (and quite justifiably so), yet, I have never thought of Chakra without thinking in tandem of his ex-boss, now in jail, whose avarice and insane pursuit of a Chimera drove this gentle, intelligent man down the road to nowhere.