Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

One morning, a few days later, Haresh arrived at the factory to find that Rao had assigned Lee to do some trivial work of his own.

‘I need Lee,’ said Haresh bluntly. ‘It’s for the HSH order.’

Rao looked at him with distaste down his sharp nose. ‘You can have him when I’ve finished with him,’ he said. ‘He will be working with me this week.’

Lee, who had witnessed the scene, was very embarrassed. He owed his position to Haresh, and he respected him. He did not respect Rao, but Rao was nominally Haresh’s senior in the company structure.

The weekly meeting later that morning in Mukherji’s office produced a display of spectacular fireworks.

Mukherji congratulated Haresh heartily for his work in obtaining the HSH order, which had recently been confirmed. The factory would have been in severe difficulties without it.

‘But the question of labour should be coordinated with Sen Gupta,’ he added.

‘Assuredly,’ said Sen Gupta. He looked pleased. He was supposed to be in charge of labour and personnel, but there was nothing that this lazy man enjoyed more than chewing his paan and delaying any work that needed desperately to be done. Waiting for Sen Gupta to do anything except stare with his bloodshot eyes at a red-stained file was like waiting for a stupa to disintegrate. Sen Gupta had looked sour when Mukherji had praised Haresh.

‘We will have to work a little harder all around, hn? Sen Gupta?’ continued the factory manager. ‘Now, Khanna,’ he continued, turning to Haresh, ‘Sen Gupta has been a bit unhappy of late about your interference in labour. Especially the construction job. He feels he could have hired better men more cheaply — and quicker.’

Actually Sen Gupta was hopping mad — and envious.

Quicker! Sen Gupta! was what Haresh was thinking.

‘Talking of personnel,’ he said aloud, deciding that this was the time to thrash matters out, ‘I’d like to have Lee put back to work on the HSH order.’ He looked at Rao.

‘Back?’ said Mukherji, looking from Haresh to Rao.

‘Yes. Mr Rao decided to—’

Rao interrupted: ‘You will have him back in a week. There is no need to bring it up in this meeting. Mr Mukherji has more important matters to deal with.’

‘I need him now. If we fail in this order do you think they’ll come back to us cap in hand begging us to make more shoes for them? Can’t we get our priorities right? Lee cares about quality. I need him both for design and for the choice of leather.’

‘I care for quality too,’ said Rao with distaste.

‘Tell me another,’ said Haresh hotly. ‘You steal my workers when I most need them — just two days ago two of my clickers disappeared into your department, because your men did not turn up for work. You can’t keep discipline in your area, and you undermine it in mine. Quality is the last thing on your mind.’ Haresh turned to Mukherji. ‘Why do you let him get away with it? You are the factory manager.’

This was rather too direct, but Haresh’s blood was up. ‘I cannot work if my men and my designer are pinched,’ he added.

‘Your designer?’ said Sen Gupta, staring redly at Haresh. ‘Your designer? You had no authority to hold out a job to Lee. Who were you to hire him?’

‘I did not. Mr Mukherji did, with a sanction from Mr Ghosh. I only found him. At least he’s a professional.’

‘And I am not? Before you were born I had learned how to shave,’ said Mr Sen Gupta with hot irrelevance.

‘Professional? Look at this place,’ said Haresh with barely muted scorn. ‘Compare it with Praha or James Hawley or Cooper Allen. How can we hope to keep our customers if we don’t fulfil our orders in time? Or if our quality is below par? They make better brogues in the slums of Brahmpur. The way things are run here is just not professional. You need people who know about shoes, not politics. Who work, and don’t just set up an adda wherever they are.’

‘Unprofessional?’ Sen Gupta seized on Haresh’s remark and gave it a tiny twist. ‘Mr Ghosh will hear of this! You call us unprofessional? You will see, you will see.’

Something about Sen Gupta’s bluster and patent envy made Haresh say:

‘Yes, it is unprofessional.’

‘You heard? You heard?’ Sen Gupta looked at Rao and Mukherji, then turned back to Haresh, his red tongue curled a little at the end, his mouth open. ‘You are calling us unprofessional?’ He pushed his chair not forwards but backwards with rage and puffed out his cheeks. ‘You are getting too big for your boots, yes, for your boots.’ His red eyes half popped out.

Haresh, having blundered in so far, blundered in a little further. ‘Yes, Mr Sen Gupta, that is exactly what I am saying. You are forcing me to be blunt, but it is true, certainly of you. You are unprofessional in every sense — and one of the worst manipulators I have known, not excluding Rao.’

‘Surely,’ said Mukherji, who was trying to act as peacemaker, but who was wounded by the use of the word that Sen Gupta had inveigled out of Haresh, and which he took in a sense that Haresh had not, at least in the first instance, intended. ‘Surely we must improve in any areas where we are deficient. But let us now talk calmly to one another.’ He turned to Rao. ‘You have been with the firm for many years, even before Mr Ghosh bought it and took it over. You are respected by everyone. Sen Gupta and I are comparative newcomers.’ He then said to Haresh: ‘And everyone admires the way you have obtained the HSH order.’ Finally he said to Sen Gupta: ‘Let us leave it at that.’ And he added a pacifying word or two in Bengali.

But Sen Gupta turned towards Haresh, unpacifiable: ‘You have one success,’ he shouted, ‘and you want to take over the whole place.’ He was yelling and waving his hands about, and Haresh, incensed by this ludicrous display, cut in with disgust:

‘I’d run it a good deal better than you, that’s for certain. This thing is run like a Bengali fish-market.’

The words were spoken in the heat of the moment, but were unretractable. The unsavoury Rao was furious; and he was not even a Bengali. Sen Gupta was triumphantly indignant. And the simultaneous insult to Bengal and fish did not go down well with Mukherji either.

‘You have been working too hard,’ he said to Haresh.

That afternoon Haresh was told that Mr Mukherji wanted to see him in his office. Haresh thought it might be something to do with the HSH order, and he brought along a folder containing a week’s work and plans to the office. There Mr Mukherji told him that the HSH order would be handled by Rao, not by him.

Haresh looked at him with a helpless sense of injustice. He shook his head as if to get rid of the last sentence he had heard.

‘I slogged my guts out to get that order, Mr Mukherji, and you know it. It has changed the fortunes of this factory. You virtually promised it would be handled in my department and under my supervision. I’ve told my workmen. What will I tell them now?’

‘I am sorry.’ Mr Mukherji shook his head. ‘It was felt that you had a lot on your plate. Let your new department start up slowly and iron out its problems; it will then be ready to undertake a big job like this. HSH will give us other orders. And I am impressed by the possibilities of this other scheme of yours as well. Everything in good time.’

‘The new department has no problems,’ said Haresh. ‘None. It is already running better than the others. And I’ve been working on the details of fulfilment ever since last week. Look!’ He opened the file. Mr Mukherji shook his head.

Haresh went on, anger building up under his voice: ‘They won’t give us another order if we mess this one up. Give it to Rao and he will butcher the job. I have even worked out how we can fulfil the order almost a fortnight before it is due.’