50cr worth of cargo, a difficult order, and a sinking ship! Naveen Kapur has for us, this time, an adventurous business thriller with unimaginable fraud, massive monetary loss and lessons for a lifetime! Even though Naveen’s end of the deal was done, instead of walking away he walked the extra mile placing his commitment to the...
“SEÑOR KAPUR – DUMP THE ENTIRE CONSIGNMENT OF VIALS IN OCÉANO ATLÁNTICO”, raged the director de Empresa of a large pharma company in Havana. This foretold a distressing end to my attempts at business in Cuba. Our goods were being condemned to a watery grave! The subject of this dispute was our winning and fulfilling...
“Ni hao -Welcome to Wenzhou, the city of riches!” said the A to Z (Armani to Zegna) designer label clad young man as he bowed in the customary Chinese protocol and reverentially presented his business card, clasping it with both hands. The business card had his Chinese name on one side and his English name...
Afghanistan! The land of the Hindu Kush Mountains, henna bearded Pathans and the romance of Tagore’s Kabuliwala! The Embassy of Afghanistan in New Delhi’s Chanakyapuri, however was more evocative of the war that had ravaged the country for eons. The British, the Russians, the Americans, not to mention the Ancient Greeks had all fought and...
There is something about a 1:00 am phone call that sets my heart racing. The sensation of dread overrides the befuddlement that accompanies my groping for the offending instrument in the pitch dark. No phone call at this unearthly hour could possibly involve good news. I was right. “Mr. Naveen, please save the chickens …this...
“You mean you waited for so many days for an appointment with me just to waste my precious time, young man?“ shouted the elderly, white haired Secretary of the Table Tennis Federation of India. Why this dudgeon? Because I had asked for his help in procuring 3000 Table Tennis tables to fulfill an order I...
“IRAQ!!!!!!! Are you crazy, Cooper” exclaimed my shocked fellow alumnus from St.Stephen’s College – the brightest star in our 1975 batch – Arunava Sen. Our paths had crossed after 18 years by sheer coincidence at the Queen Alia Airport, Amman in the summer of 1996. Arunava was heading to the transit lounge to board a...
“Dobre Utra – Minsk station now…. Next station-Vilnius”, shouted the train attendant. A steaming cup of samovar-brewed tea woke me up from my vodka infused sleep. In January of 1993, the temperature at Byellorussky Station in Moscow had hit a low of -20°C the night before. A substantial medicinal dose of Vodka was more than...
“I’m looking for Mrs. Kerenyi,” I said haltingly to the overalls-clad lady in gumboots sweeping the floor. “Yes, that’s me,” she replied, without missing a stroke of the broom. The person I was speaking with did not come across as a business woman by any stretch of imagination . “No, no, I’m looking for the...
“ GET OUT ”-said the Mudhir al Aam to me in Hama (a small town between Damascus and Aleppo in Syria). This had never happened to me despite having travelled to more than 100 countries in a career spanning more than 40 years in international business!
