Monday 9 September 2013

Breakfast "like" Tiffany's

Anand was a man of his words, and he decided to meet me this Monday, though it wasn't fair on his time but on Anjali's insistence and to be fair to his own curiosity about me, we decided to meet at MacDonald's in the hallowed grounds of Connaught Place,"think Times Square," in Delhi.  I was no stranger to this place having gone with friends and folks many times over, however to Anand it must have seemed like beneath his dignity to come to a commoners place like this one.  I had discussed this with Anjali before, "and damn I was so happy she heard me out," and she had suggested that instead of going to the Lalit, where a breakfast would cost Rs 1200 per buffet breakfast, I take him to a place I was comfortable going, "and I wish it wasn't about the money," but hey, I am a reasonable man and quickly acquiesced to her suggestion.

It was another fine morning when I landed at Connaught Place and to my surprise Anand was already there, checking out the menu, "was he as hungry for Mac muffins," actually I preferred the hash browns as well and Anjali and me would sit at the window sofa for hours and not waste a single morsel of the meal, "more so me," she was pretty weight conscious and though not a size zero, she was heading to gym fit.  Anand himself looked fit, "a man out of the Vogue Magazine," and soon as he saw me he escorted me to the table he had made his mobile and laptop comfortable on.  One look at the laptop and I knew it was going to be business on the go, "business at 8 am ?," hey come on party boy where is your sense of entertainment, I kept my mobile on the table and looked around for the morning newspaper, "I had to play the part to," Anjali had taught me well and part I would play now.  We ordered and sat down to talk, he was curious about my profession and I told him some about the relationships I was building for some people, I had established a contact list and generated leads based on that contact list for companies, having experienced both back end and front end experiments I was fairly smart at setting up systems and operating procedures for Sales and Marketing.

Anand sounded suitably impressed, "at least by the sounds of it," and though I wasn't entirely sure yet I carried on, my philosophy in life today stood at "Action after Thought," Anjali had hammered into me that Anand could help me in what I was doing and I was going to make the most of this one hour with him.  We spoke about my work in details, spanning the past 5 years of my career,"and I sounded like a school kid in glee," we had good laugh about how I had advised some people about leaving their current jobs if it didn't suit their requirement, or at least stop cribbing about their present one if they couldn't leave it, "best possible advice," he had said straight away and I believe he meant it.  Thoughts were going on in my mind and they were streaming away as I spoke, there was the thought of needing a Venture Capitalist for my business, of making and displaying presentations to Anand as also setting up a project report, but I held all thoughts back and concentrated on making this warm up talk, like a pre-interview set up, and Anand was warming up to it, he told me about the commission game that he was playing with a lot of businesses, "just what I wanted to hear," it was the "I will do the work, you just work on your commissions," that I wanted to come through in this talk, "and by the looks of it," my plan had worked.

My head was clear as a baby when I walked out of MacDonald's, "happy as a bat in the night," and called up Anjali immediately and told her the meeting was over, she was at work and my enthusiasm was infectious, I drove home thinking about what Anand had said at the end of the meeting, he had sounded optimistic, "which was more than my enthusiasm," and had asked me to prepare everything from scratch including a project report, he had snapped his laptop shut and handed a pen drive over to me, "Use it to give me the data that I require," and I will call you next week.
All it takes is a friend to make more friends.

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