An officer and a gentleman - A tibute to Wg. Cdr. (Retd.) Dinesh Kumar

I just now heard of the passing of Wg. Cdr. (Retd.) Dinesh Kumar. He was 88.

He was the executive director of Kirloskar Electric where I worked for nearly 18 years. I had a few opportunities to interact with him and was always amazed by his natural courteousness. As a tribute to him I recall here two instances of my interactions with him that are etched in my mind.

(Some terms and names mentioned are for my former colleagues from Kirloskar Electric and other readers may ignore them)

The Wg. Cdr. was one of his periodic visits to the Mysore unit. Some twenty of us were in a meeting with him in the board room behind the Chief Executive’s office. The Wg. Cdr. asked a question and, as the head of the Quality Assurance department, I had to answer the question, though I don’t remember the exact issue now.

I was sitting right next to him and I said apologetically that his question required a lengthy answer. He said that it was alright and turned towards me. I went on to give a detailed account of the issue. While I was in the midst of my explanation, Narayanappa, the old gentleman, a casual labourer, who worked in the office of the CEO, walked in with a tray full of coffee cups and plates with biscuits and served everyone at the table. Many at the table picked up their coffee and reached for the biscuits. I continued talking and finished after quite a few minutes. All the while, the Wg. Cdr. listened to me with rapt attention

Once I was done, the Wg. Cdr. thanked me for the explanation and said a good word about the clarity of my presentation and then gently pushed the coffee cup and plate of biscuits towards me and gestured to me towards them and he took his cup only after I had taken mine. All this was done with the greatest natural ease without a hint of artificiality about it.

The other occasion was this. We had a product called Cruiser – a dc drive for machine tool applications. It had a high failure rate and we had many customer complaints. We had many service engineers constantly shuttling between various parts of the country servicing or replacing them. While this was going on, a colleague of mine, Pradeep, and I worked with the then Chief Executive, NAJR, who was a technical wiz, and developed many solutions to stop the failures, experimented on them and were confident that we had solved the problem. The solution included new PCBs to be designed and manufactured, some power devices to be imported, kits designed and prepared for retrofitting at site, Instructions to be prepared for the service engineers how to retrofit on site, and so on and were on the job.

At this juncture the Wg. Cdr. was visiting again and the three of us were with him in the lab discussing the implementation phase of the solutions. We gave him an estimate of the time required. I would have taken it as normal if had just asked us bluntly, “Can’t you do it faster?”

What he did was this. He thought about it for a minute or two and then said to us, “I am sure you know what you are talking about. I have no idea about all that is involved. But, I have to ask you, is there any way you can get this whole thing organised sooner? Please let me know what I can do to help you achieve it and speed things up and I will do it. But please explore the possibilities of getting this done as fast as possible.”

I really admired the humility and frankness of the man. I think we needed his help in expediting the procurement of the imported components and he was as good as his words.

He was a tall imposing man who kept himself fit by running regularly. The only time I met him after I left Kirloskar Electric, was in the campus of Indian Institute of Science where he was running. He stopped briefly and we exchanged a few pleasantries and he was off. 

 

PS.

I talked about this with my friend, Chandru (Short for K Chandrasekhar), and popularly known as KC at work. He has been a friend from my college days and a colleague at Kirloskar Electric for eighteen years. He narrated an incident about the Wing Commander. On my request he wrote the following for me to include here. Following are his words.

 

What makes a Gentleman? 

I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing away of our Wg. Cdr. (Retd.) Dinesh Kumar, last week. I believe that he had been hospitalized and was being treated for pneumonia. I will always remember his upright bearing, the slightly sunken cheeks topped by rather high cheek bones, a pair of bright probing eyes, the immaculate grooming and the quiet dress sense which all bespoke of a true gentleman. When you added his composure, courtesy and politeness, you had all the hallmarks of a truly iconic personality who brought a sense of dignity, grace and charisma to all that he did.

I had the privilege of interacting with him on a number of occasions and among them all I cherish one moment which is evergreen in my memory.

It was around 1986 and our team was engaged in commissioning the first set of Power Electronic drives for a Cold Rolling Mill for a company called Steel Strips Pvt Ltd, near Ludhiana. Operation Blue Star had been carried out about two years previously in 1984 and the scars of it was there for all to see. In the aftermath of it the level of militancy in Punjab was at its peak. In late September, we were witness to a first-hand gory incident which could have ended in tragedy. One morning the factory manager was on his rounds and suddenly a workman pounced on him and stabbed him in the belly. Fortunately he survived the attack. We were all very badly shaken by the incident but we carried on as we had to complete the job and start trial runs before handing over the system for regular production. 

When Wg. Cdr. (Retd.) Dinesh Kumar got to know about the incident he was on a visit to New Delhi. I think he was then Vice-President, heading the Marketing Division at KEC. He made it a point to specifically visit us and enquire about our welfare and see the trial runs in progress. He was extremely happy with what he saw and in his characteristically quiet manner left us a crate of beer as a mark of his appreciation. We were all very junior both in age and service and were touched by his concern and kindness. He also made it a point to let us know that we could contact him on his direct telephone number in case we ran into anything unprecedented. During all our stay, he was the only person who visited us. His quiet demeanour, old world charm, and etiquette were attributes which left a deep imprint on us. In many ways he was the ideal, of which any company could justly be proud of.

All I can say is, in my humble opinion, they don’t make men like him anymore. He was the difference between a corporate being and a human being. The world of today and indeed for that matter the society in which we live in, is a poorer place in the absence of people like him. They say old soldiers never die, they just fade away. In the Wing Commander’s case, his memory will remain with me forever as a shining example of a long forgotten word, which you may remember. Decency.

Musical Memories - An Introduction

 

 

This is an introduction to a series of short posts about incidents I remember from music concerts.

 

I have been an avid listener of music – Karnatak classical, Hindustani, Hindi film music (older the better), western classical, rock and jazz – perhaps in that order in terms of the amount of time I have spent and my familiarity with them. Also, thanks to my parents, I am an avid concert goer. I started attending concerts around five or six years of age. I will recount some tales of my experiences. Almost all of them are about the musicians and not about me, except the first one. I have referred to all the musicians with just their names with no honorifics such as vidwan, vidushi or ustad preceding their names. Though I have great admiration and respect for all the artists I mention, I have chosen to drop the honorifics because I want these to be like a personal conversation during which I would not use them.

1 Mangala

If you stumbled upon this post, reading this introduction might help

 

It was M D Ramanathan’s concert at Budaram Krishnappa’s Ramamandira. When he came to the end of the concert and started singing the Mangala - the last item of all Karnatak music concerts - as usual, people started getting up. He shushed them all and waved his hands to command them to stay seated and said that one should not get up during Mangala. It is sung for the welfare (the literal meaning of Mangala) of everyone including the musicians. So no one should get up. Everyone sat back. Whereas Mangala is normally sung perfunctorily for a couple of minutes in Madhyama kala, he went on to sing an elaborate mangala with raga surati and madhyamavati for nearly twenty minutes in vilamba kaala. What a treat it was!

2 The Heart of the Matter

 

If you stumbled upon this post, reading this introduction might help.

 

It was 1986 and I was in Kharagpur. SPICMACAY had organised a concert and discussion with the flute maestro Hari Prasad Chaurasia. It was large hall and there were carpets on the floor. Chaurasia sat at the centre of the hall and the audience was all around him. After a couple of hours of music, during which the audience steadily thinned, there were only about a fifty of us left.

One student asked, “They say that playing the flute affects the heart. What do you say?”

Chaurasia calmly took his flute, took a deep breath and played a single note, after ten seconds or so I timed him. He held that note for at least one and a half minutes. More like one minute and forty-five seconds.

He then kept the flute down and in a conversational tone asked, “What was that?” Someone said “breath control”. He asked, “What is prANAyAm?” The answer to that too was breath control. He asked, “If prANAyAm can be good for the heart how can this be bad for the heart?” and rested his case.

3 What Religion is This?

 

If you stumbled upon this post, reading this introduction might help

 

SPICMACAY had organised a morning concert of the great “Shahnai Nawaz, Khan Saheb Ustad Bismillah Khan” – that is an announcement before one of his concerts I had heard on All India Radio and it has got lodged in my brain.

 The hall was full and the maestro wove his legendary magic. In the middle of a raag, when everyone was listening mesmerised, he suddenly stopped and asked, in Hindi, “What religion is this?” Then went on, “This is music. It has no language, no religion, no caste . . .  Then he pointed to the plaques hanging from the wall all around the hall, look at them, they are all equal, they all seek the same thing. We are all human beings and we are all together and we should live in peace together.”

 He was pointing at the plaques because each plaque on the wall had a symbol of a religion. And they were beautiful wood inlay works. He found that close to his heart. The audience, mainly students, clapped and cheered.