L&T Medical at Mysore The Beginning (A Satire) (Vol 22) Down Memory Lane!

     

Tower Bridge London

MLDP the end : This is the continuation of my L&T MLDP Experience at Chennai where I left off (Satire on L&T MLDP Vol 12 and Vol 13). After MLDP Dept closure at Chennai was announced by Management I opted to take up a new position in L&T Medical a new group formed at Mysore works in the year 1990. I had never been to Mysore till then although visited Bangalore many times. All that I know was it is a sleepy city not vibrant like my hometown Chennai.

 Mysore and "THE ICON":   Our opinion of Mysore changed after a few years stay there. The impact was such that in 2015 when I coauthored with dear blogger friend Nathan our first fiction  "THE ICON" (Published by Cinnamon Teal Goa Print and Kindle edition) it was based on Mysore and Bangalore and not my hometown Chennai. Our hero an IT Czar is born and brought up in Mysore and the entire novel is written about places in Karnataka. It was  written like a movie screenplay with the intention of  seeing our work in the silver screen  by a Bollywood Director who  could convert this to a good movie.😊 Alas but we never found that lucky producer yet being outside that film circle and the book is gathering dust! Someday hopefully we will see the light if south directors  who are ruling Bollywood now will find this screenplay! That was the end of our dream! 😞

 Why L&T Medical?  Coming back to MLDP the only option to remain in Chennai was to join one floor up 8th floor in VRC to join marketing which was not my cup of tea. My dear friend TKP joined there from MLDP and had a great career in Marketing in L&T. The irony is that after so many years avoiding marketing ,at this age now started my career in Marketing as East Coast Regional Head! 😊Another great accomplishment is by my dear MLDP colleague PMS who from being a Draughtsman at MLDP then reached the position of VP Marketing in Remington Rand. Salute him.👍 Nothing is impossible and sky is the limit! 

Introduction to new role : The DGM of L&T Mysore came to meet me at MLDP and collect my passport for technology transfer at UK. He might have decided to take me into L&T Medical based on my prior technology transfer experience on Yaskawa PLCs from Japan. We orphan of MLDP must be accommodated somewhere as per the L&T culture then different from now. 😔

He asked me about my knowledge on ECG and PMS. I have never heard these jargons. Is ECG the abbreviation for take it easy? The only PMS I know was our friend draughtsman PM Sethumadhavan (PMS) of MLDP. I kept silent. He opened his suitcase and dropped a few catalogues of Kontron where I am assigned for technology transfer. When I saw the waveforms going up and down on the catalogue it reminded me about snake and ladder, I used to play with my grandmother. Again, I remained silent. He understood that I have not prepared anything and might have thought for a moment should I take the passport or not? Having already decided on my selection he had no choice but to educate me. He told me to go one day earlier to Bombay when I go for visa and meet Dr SM at Powai who is the Head of L&T Medical and get briefed about the product before leaving for Kontron. He collected the passport finally. 

VISA and Team gathering at Mumbhai: There were 7 L&Tites selected for technology transfer for 4 medical companies at the same time. NR and me to Kontron UK for PMS, MMS, SAR and LNK to Kontron France for Ultrasound and ABD and GRM to ERBE Germany for Electro Surgery and to Italy for ECG. Except SAR who is also from MLDP the rest were from Mysore works. We all met first time at Bombay to collect our visa from Thomas Cook. Those days there was no united Euro and we had to get passport for each country we visit. It would have been expensive to get visas later. One of our team members (MMS?) had a Master plan to ask Thomas Cook to get visas for all the 8 countries in India itself and we pay in Rs.  We paid only a nominal amount from our pocket and got 8 countries visas before leaving for the trip with an opportunity seeing each other in the weekends.😁 There was an unwritten Master Sightseeing Plan agreement agreed by us that the host of that country should entertain the colleagues coming from other countries that weekend. We got the visas and exchanged Dollar for British Pound the most expensive currency than dollar and our allowances absolute value went down (British are always proud of Sterling performance of their Pound Sterling) 😀

First Meeting with Dr : I went to Powai to meet my future boss Dr SM. Dr was super busy and when I introduced myself and wanted to know about PMS, he opened the map. Don’t worry about PMS he said we will do later but showed me the places in Europe which I must visit for sightseeing. I became excited and looked forward to work under him after coming back.

Trafalgar Square London

Flight to UK :  Our L&T team destination being UK,France and Germany there were back to back flights that night and we decided to chalk out our plan of visiting the countries after we settle down. We had no idea where we are going to stay and as we landed in Heathrow Airport by British Airways flight.

Ravindran with Charles Dickens at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum London

Accommodation :  Our stay was arranged at a Kontron Employee JFs home. We are supposed to go Kontron with the employee and come back. We did not ask for this arrangement. I was not comfortable from day 1 confined to a room. NR was more adaptable and could manage better. Kontron host JS who was our main contact for the tech transfer  said this arrangement was done so that we can be close to work. The week went. On Friday and when I saw the bill for boarding and lodging per person at the breakfast table, I was shocked. Almost our entire allowance will go for this stay. What will happen to our plan of visiting our colleagues at Europe? How can we be host to our L&Tites if we live here? How much money we will be left for purchases? Those were the immediate thoughts. 

Trafalgar Square London

Apartment Search: That Saturday using my known contacts at London started looking for an alternative. I was told there was a furnished apartment available for 500 Pound Sterling. It was far but well connected through the Metro That will save us enough money. We went and saw the apartment and liked. The same weekend we moved there. I came to know later from NR that the host JF needed money for her marriage and JS used our trip for the same. NR is such a magnanimous person who did not mind if our money can help for the marriage and reluctantly moved out. 

Ravi at Madame Tussauds 

Kontron Feedback : On following Monday after shifting  as we came to Kontron the entire atmosphere changed. JS became cold and indifferent as we had not gone with their plan. JS was especially unhappy with me from then on being the deal-breaker. I have gone to Japan for technology transfer and Japanese made us comfortable all through that 3 month (See Vol 9 and 10 of this series) and treated us royally. Here we have come to the place of royalty who ruled us in the past. The British pride could be seen everywhere from Kontron to most of the places we visited. Well, all said and done everyone cannot be Japanese the nicest most humble people I have ever seen in my life. 

Problem: The next weekend we were planning to go to Amsterdam to join our L&T team who had booked hotel for stay. I got the call from DGM Mysore L&T while working in Kontron. L&T has received complaint from Kontron that we went on our own against their arrangement for stay. We have chosen to stay far which could impact training. JS went further that while we had no money to pay for their arrangement, we have money to go to Amsterdam. 😠

DGM was upset and asked have we come for training or sightseeing? I assured him that our moving out will not have any impact on the training. I became nervous and not having experience to manage this difficult situation. I could see the rough road ahead in technology transfer. I called MMS our group leader (Thalaivar also as he had more followers in Mysore 😁) who was in France and said what to do as things are not going well in all fronts. He asked me to take it easy and we had to consider our interest. We can talk on this when we meet them in Amsterdam. 

Buckingham Palace Entrance  London 

Financial Situation:  There were severe restrictions from RBI on foreign exchange those days. The daily allowance we got will be just sufficient if can save on accommodation. While in Japan we chose the Yaskawa dorm which helped in saving money here sharing the apartment made us plan trips to Europe. We did not have that much allowance to go by air for sightseeing. We chose the common man route taking British rail on Friday evening which will reach the nearby port where we will get into the ship at midnight. The ship will reach the other European side Saturday morning. We will take the train from that port to where we want to go. The same story Train-Ship-Train Sunday evening and back on Monday morning at UK. This is how we travelled to all the places most economical stressful but economical.

Parade at Buckingham Palace London

 What was unique about Amsterdam and other Europe places this 7 Men army visited in my next! 

 To be Concluded