Mango Diaries- Episode Two

Discover the Mango in People and that is what our Mango Diaries is all about. I am a firm believer of the fact that there is inherent sweetness in people, and it becomes even more sweeter when they become a part of your life. They create such a lasting impression in your life, that they constitute a chapter in your sweet memories, each time you recall them. I am truly blessed that my Orchard of life has many such personalities who according to me have donned the Mango Badge of Honour. Today is about one such personality. Ladies & Gentlemen Todays Mango Diaries is one of my Ex-Bosses Mr Vikram Dasu.

In the Year 2010 I changed jobs from Odyssey in Chennai to Homeshop18 in Bangalore. Anticipation was high, lots of expectations and a dream job in the booming Ecommerce industry took me to Bengaluru as it is called now. A Tall, bespectacled gentleman, Narasimha was assigned as my interim boss. Narasimha will also be a part of Mango Diaries, so more about him in that episode. Anyways, as soon as I reached the city of Gardens, Narasimha called me and said, "Look Karthik we have a Gentleman called Vikram joining us. He has had a vast experience in the corporate world and his last assignment was with Microsoft"

So here I was at Cafe Coffee Day on Victoria Road to meet Mr Vikram Dasu. The visualization in my mind was that He must be a fairly elderly gentleman, gray hair, well built and a stern look. So I looked around the cafe to be disappointed that none matched my thinking. Like they show in the movies, the eyes scanned all the tables  before finally zooming on to one particular table where a Young Boy(Sorry Vikram if you are reading this :) ) was seated, very thin and you could easily mistake him to be the boy next door. Anyways my guess was right and He indeed happened to be Vikram-my future boss. We finished with our customary introductions and looks can be very deceiving as they say. In my mind, lack of clarity puzzled me into a very funny question based on Vikram's physical appearance. Here was a six feet well built gentle giant(Me) getting into a conversation with a tiny looking Vikram. "So Do I report into You?" was the question from me. Vikram has that beautiful humour that you latch on to once you know him better. A Typical answer in this case was "Unfortunately You Do"

Slowly the boss and the subordinate got into an extremely friendly relationship, more of friends and very less Bossy, in fact none at all. Vikram is a large hearted man and has huge amounts of concern for those around him, elephantine memory with a knack of remembering birthdays. Tonnes of Humour and oodles of goodness. He was a Boss who protected me with a ever loving shield, at several occasions and once or twice from the point of no return. 

He was away from his family in Hyderabad and me away from mine in Chennai, however I did find a shelter above my head in the form of my uncle and aunty. One of those days I invited Vikram for dinner to my aunts house. My uncle was extra compassionate with me and gave me his Maruti 800 to weave around the roads in Bangalore. So the day I invited Vikram home, I told Vikram that I will drive him to my aunts place and Vikram quite graciously accepted to be driven, little were both of us to realize the incident to follow. Vikram got into the rickety Maruti 800, we drove past the picturesque Ulsoor lake, reached near the Gurudwara when the car stalled. What an incident with the Boss seated next to you. Anyways I did not know what to do. I had that sympathetic look on my face, no words exchanged for a few moments and then the all important question popped out of nowhere, the second one after "Do I report into you?" This time around the question was "Can you please get down and push the Car?" :)  Any other Boss would have been fuming but here was Vikram as cool as cucumber, got off the car and pushed the car to parking safety with me in the Drivers seat. How the Car got back to Driving ways is another story. It so happened that a mechanic was passing by at that precise moment when our car stalled. He also coincidentally had everything that was needed to get the car started and he helped us almost in no time.

Vikram continues to be in touch on a regular basis though our professional lives took different paths in 2014. He continues to be as large hearted as he was while we worked together. He still remembers birthdays and loves the Chennai Kutcheri. He makes some of the best Power Point Presentations that I have ever come across, To work with him and for him was a very rare piece of good fortune for me. Vikram Dasu is now a part of My Mango Diaries Hall of Fame.