FESTIVE SEASON-1974

The Indian calendar is dotted with festivities throughout the year but is dense between September and October beginning with the nine-day Vinayaka Chaturdhi followed by the ten-day Dusserah-Pooja and then the Diwali.

For the group of 35 mainly from what was known as the MSA (Madras Selling Area) and a few from other branches, September - October 1974 was indeed a festive season, for it marked their induction into the Glaxo-Indian community. In September a prayer to the elephant-headed god was in order to seek His blessings for a successful career. If one remembers well, the training stretched through the Dusserah festivities with a promise of Vijay on the Dasami! Diwali was ‘back home’ with the heart lighted by a new joy adding a new lilt to the tune and a new spring to the step! Earlier on, after a gruelling selection process in July they had an agonising wait through August as the induction training programme was to start on September 2.

If the five-and-a-half-foot cots in Sodality House (Bycullah) where the company accommodated them were too short for a couple of tall guys or the ‘princely’ stipend of Rs 350/- and daily allowance of Rs 5/- was measly, it did not matter, for what was to come was a ‘dream come true’, which expression might sound like a cliché but like many clichés, quite true! Yes indeed, as the five-letter logo on the visiting card spelt open sesame in the ‘field’ and not just for doors that were generally closed.

A colleague remembers with great delight that in one of his first visits to a small town a doctor clutched his hand with both his hands to his heart and intoned, “I am so happy a Glaxo medical rep has come to my clinic!” Sounds apocryphal – but quite true! And the five-letter logo was also the bearer’s pride and neighbour’s envy!

GLAXO PHARMA OCTOBER 1974

It was also a time to be in Glaxo where the lingua franca was still English English, to which this writer is partial! Madras Branch had its share of men erudite in this genre led by the scholarly and witty D. R. Nathan; the ‘emphatic’ V. Seetharaman, the soft spoken S. Ramachandran (SRC) and in the lower ranks C. P. Appa Rao whose memos were peppered with Johnsonese - to be more savoured by the few than understood by many!

The trainees did not know it then but Glaxo diaspora was to rule the industry for the next two decades. Tarun Gupta’s Glaxo was the training ground for pharma marketing managers, the equivalent of IIMs of later years! TG’s ateliers and marketing experiments could well find their way into the ‘case studies’ of these premier institutions, but were certainly replicated by many other companies.

TG had in place a team that was the toast of the industry: the erudite K. S. Ramanathan (KSR), whom C. Jagadisan a senior member of the product management team nicknamed ‘the Englishman from Trichy’; the redoubtable Dr. Meswani who could find a killing slot for the doddering Betnelan in Asthma and a number of Bhabhas and Bhatias.

The company had an equally powerful implementation arm in its sales teams. How else did the company climb back to the number 2 slot in the industry rankings in just nine years armed with such ‘pricey’ products as Complex B Glaxo Liquid and Ostocalcium B12 Syrup the unit costs of which never exceeded Rs 5/- and the Beta group as mainstay, the prices of which were actually pushed down by the government not once but twice within the period?

Boy, wasn’t the training programme a lark? It was to last four weeks but was extended by a week when Marketing Manager Irani espied this gem in an answer sheet in the daily test: Betneton contains Betamethasone and Chloramphenicol. (“I can not send you into the market with this kind of knowledge!”) The railways extended it by another week as they could not accommodate the large Madras contingent in the Bombay - Madras mail just yet.

A typical day would commence with a sumptuous subsidized breakfast (priced @ Re 1/-) in the staff canteen and end with dinner in the South Indian restaurant across Bycullah Bridge. A colleague conversant with Hindi commented on the travails of South Indians unfamiliar with the nuances of the language: ‘yeh baaji lao, vo baaji lao’ and helpfully adding, ‘billu mat lao’! Then there was the hilarious moment when a couple of pure vegetarians realised to their horror, with a mouthful, that the fare they were served for lunch on the ‘Biryani day’ was non-vegetarian!

The training did have its highs and lows. It began with an announcement by TG that made many daydream in the day and sleepless in the night, on the first day: “Gentlemen, by the time you go back to the field, you would be drawing a four-figure salary!” A week into the training one member was missing and the newspapers the next day announced the names of a gang that was arrested for smuggling, which unfortunately included him. Those were the days when the government was showcasing COFEPOSA and movie theatres screened a Films Division documentary which commented, ‘the higher the status in the smuggling world the greater the ostentation and vulgarity of greed!’ The ‘emergency’ that the government declared to ‘discipline an errant nation and run trains on time’ was only months in the offing.

A faculty and the interface between the trainees and other faculty was Mr. Choksey, who though lovable had a favourite fellow Gujarati in the batch: ‘Mr. Vyas will throw the latest light on the subject’ as the said Vyas graduated with microbiology as one of the subjects! The faculty composed of an amorphous group: the plain (it would be impolite to use the word ‘simpleton’) Mr. Mallick who every time there was a query rushed to a tome he kept on the table (Let’s see what this fellow says!); the debonair Dr. Kochar (reporting some of his ‘asides’, though delectable then would be politically incorrect today!) the irascible Dr. Kuverjee and of course Dr. Meswani apart from Marketing Managers, KSR, Irani and Venkatesh.

And finally the ‘return to Branch’ had had its share of adventure. The engine of the train to Madras broke down at Guntakal and the guard ‘assured’ everyone that the train would not move till next morning. Two members of the AP team walked into the nearby town, which is about two to three miles from the railway station to visit the movies. As luck would have it they picked up a rather long movie lasting about three hours and after enjoying it slowly walked back to the station.

They were still a mile away when they saw a train chugging out of the station and realised to their horror that it was ‘their’ train. They began running after it on the tracks, at the same time shouting for it to stop. After they ran about two miles they could attract the attention of the guard who peeked out to see two people running behind the train and pulled the brake. Panting and grunting the duo lunged into the guard’s compartment and narrated their tale. The kind guard offered them water which they accepted gratefully and in the next stop moved to their compartment.