MERRY MEADOWS - Chapter 4 - Executive Suite Cloak & Dagger

Meanwhile, JJ’s public relations efforts at the Royal Rodale Club had succeeded beyond all expectations. The TCS corporate clients loved it and lapped it up, and the pressure was on to continue much after the 20^th anniversary celebrations had been brought to a close. Seeing the response the TCS management formed within it the Management Services Division, the forerunner of Octara.

The credit for all of this went to JJ, for it was an open secret that Najeeb Nayyer had been opposed to this kind of deployment of the marketing budget. It did not help improve Najeeb’s frame of mind. Because of his shortsightedness he had been clearly outmaneuvered and isolated, even as JJ and Saqib formed a working relationship that appeared to be working very well.

Najeeb tried to bulk up his operations credentials by enlisting in the Executive MBA program at the Lahore University for Management Sciences (LUMS), and arranged for an all expenses paid trip for me to Lahore to cover the program for Connect. It made good editorial sense to cover a private sector initiative in higher education meant for mid career executives, a runaway success that had become the talk of academia the world over. 

That was one heck of a memorable trip, my second trip to LUMS where I had been once before while working on the task force for the improvement of higher education in Pakistan a couple of years earlier. But that trip had been far too hectic and focused for me to partake of the pleasures of a return to academia. Then too I had stayed at the Rausing Center, as also on this occasion.

The Motor was one good thing that Najeeb had going for him. But all good things come to an end for those who don’t appreciate them, and some of them do so rather abruptly and violently. I remember the occasion quite distinctly. Tausif Agha, Najeeb and I were at the Karachi Gymkhana Club meeting over tea.

Tausif, one of the early pioneers of motor sports in Pakistan with his racing track in Gharo, had just pulled off a very successful Go-Karts endurance rally, and we were due to dissect it for the few performance gaps that might have existed, and plan the next event.

Tausif also had his eyes on the Formula 1’s entry into the Middle East, and had been recruited onto the team that would build in Bahrain a multimillion dollars Formula 1 track. The Motor appeared all set for a gear change, and I was mentally gearing up for the big time.

Najeeb arrived and informed us that he had parted ways with TCS. It had been acrimonious and much bad blood had been shed. I was stunned. For the next one hour Najeeb paced the lawn talking into his cell phone, while Tausif and I made small talk albeit not without difficulty.

TCS had played a huge role in making possible the Go-Kart endurance rally, with over 50 of its personnel serving as volunteer course marshals, in addition to entering a racing team led by the young and dashing TCS executive and motorsports enthusiast, Rehan Ally Agha. Najeeb Nayyer had clearly gone bonkers and lost his marbles.

Surely Najeeb was exaggerating. It couldn’t be as bad as that. Surely the matter was retrievable. But I was not privy to the whole story, and increasingly I had a bad feeling that told me that some part of my time and effort invested was about to be lost.

That is exactly what happened. My friend of old, Ali Leghari, issued me an ultimatum on behalf of TCS. I was either with them, or against them. The Motor in Pakistan was about to be bombed back to the Stone Age.

Merry Meadows - Memoirs of an entrepreneur