Brave For Free

While the corruption movement rages on, a personal note of sadness intruded yesterday. At breakfast, my mother casually mentioned to me an accident where a coconut tree had fallen on someone, killing him; we dwelled briefly on the freak, tragic nature of it – trees don't usually fall on people in Mumbai, coconut trees even less so – but I didn't think very much of it then. The next morning, a large obituary notice abruptly made the matter more personal. The person in question was Ved Prakash Arya . I have known Ved, on and off, from my early IBM days; he was a customer then. We met again a decade later; him as COO of Pantaloon Retail (Future Group was still in the future) and me as a newly minted CEO of subsidiary company Futurebazaar. I can safely say that I would not have made it through my first year without help, and a key person providing the steadying hand was Ved. He was effectively my boss, but more than formal interaction Ved's off-the-cuff feedback and pointers...