14 September 2013, 12:11 PM IST
At a time when the rupee is in freefall against the US dollar and almost all other international currencies, I recall how I earned my first payment in foreign exchange.
One day in 1983, out of the blue, Bunny said, "Do you want to come to Hong Kong?"
Ogilvy & Mather, the advertising agency where Bunny was the copy chief, was holding its annual international training session. That year it was to be in Hong Kong. Participants would come from all over the world, wherever O&M had their offices. Workshops and training sessions would be conducted by faculty members who'd fly in and out of HK. It was a great cachet to be selected as a participant in the eight-day programme.
O&M was giving Bunny a full-fare economy class ticket, Calcutta-HK-Calcutta. We could exchange this for two cut-price fixed-date tickets on the same route. To save the daily allowance for board and lodging that Bunny was to get from O&M, we arranged to stay with our friends Kan and Indra Wadhwani who lived in the heart of Kowloon. It was going to be our first trip abroad, after seven years.
Kan, a large man with a booming voice, picked us up at Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport. "Welcome to Hahng-Kahng," Kan boomed, in a pastiche of a Sindhi accent. "Indra's making chicken curry for you," he said in the taxi.
The tiny flat was warm with the aroma of curry. It also seemed full of people who kept passing through the stamp-sized dining-cum-living room. There was a lugubrious-looking Sindhi called Robert, and his 20-something son, who appeared to have no name. There were also two or three Chinese-looking girls, who came in and out of various doors.
"Lodgers," said Kan.
Hong Kong boasted some of the most expensive real estate in the world. To help pay the exorbitant rent of their flat on Nathan Road, Kan and Indra had taken in lodgers: Robert & Son, both of whom worked as clerks in some mercantile house, and the two - or was it three? - Chinese-looking young women who were airline cabin crew.
"Where'll Bunny and I sleep?" I asked.
Kan pointed to the living room floor. "Mattresses," he boomed succinctly.
After dinner, mattresses were produced for Bunny and me. I asked Kan if he could give us an alarm clock; Bunny had to wake early to attend the first session of her training programme.
"Don't worry," said Kan. "You won't need an alarm clock. You'll be up in plenty of time."
He wasn't joking. Bunny and I were blasted out of sleep by a taped Gurbani being played at full volume. It was six in the morning. Kan and Robert were drinking tea at the dining table and talking about buying and selling on the stock market, making money. Every second word was a BC or an MC. Kan was right. No need for an alarm clock. Bunny got herself ready and was out of the flat by seven. Indra, a secretary with the UN Commission for Refugees, had already gone to work. I had the rest of the day to myself, to do nothing much in.
"Nonsense," boomed Kan. "You know where you are? You're in Hahng-Kahng, that's where you are. And you know what Hahng-Kahng's all about, why it was created? It was created only for one reason: for people to make money. Here. Breathe through your nose. You get that smell? You know what that smell is? It's the smell of money. Of money waiting to be made. We're going to go out and see how you can make yourself some money."
Kan himself made money by playing the stock market. I said I didn't know anything about stock markets, and anyway had no money with which to play them. I said I didn't know anything about anything, really, except about writing, maybe a little.
"OK," yelled Kan. "So let's go find someone you can write for."
We made a list of Hong Kong-based newspapers and magazines. Every morning, after Bunny and Indra, had gone, Kan and I would set off on our rounds, trying to find freelance writing assignments for me. The newspapers - The South China Morning Post and the Straits Times - said thanks, but no thanks. So did the magazines.
"This isn't going to work," I said. "Let's forget it."
But Kan wouldn't hear of it. "This is Hahng-Kahng," he said. "Smell it? Smell the money? Waiting to be made?"
All I could smell were petrol fumes, the fishy saltiness of the harbour, the frying pork fat of the roadside food stalls, the hot neon that blazed on the shops selling anything you could name, and many things that you couldn't. Was that the smell of money? I didn't know. I'd never smelt money, didn't know what it smelt like. But I had little say in the matter. With Kan shepherding me like a large St Bernard, I plodded through the daily round, from one refusal to the next.
On Day Four we struck pay dirt. Derek Davies, editor-in-chief of Emphasis Inc, which brought out Cathay Pacific's in-flight magazine, Discovery, granted me an audience.
"What were you thinking of writing about?" said Derek, who looked more like a friendly bartender than an editor-in-chief.
Write about? I hadn't got to that part yet. I wanted to write for an HK publication. What about, I hadn't a clue.
"Train travel in India," I said. I don't know why. I hadn't travelled by train in years.
"OK," said Derek. "Since this is the first time you're writing for us, you understand that I can't commission it. You'll have to do it on spec."
"OK," I said, as we shook hands.
"I've got an assignment, on spec," I said to Kan, who was patiently waiting on the street for me. He thumped me on the back in congratulation, almost putting me under a passing double-decker.
Back in Calcutta, I wrote the piece. Twelve hundred words on train travel in India, as seen through the eyes of a child. I posted the article. I waited. I stared in disbelief at the telex that came a week later. They liked the article. They were going to use it. They would pay me HK$300 for it.
HK$300. About Rs 1,200. Despite what Kan had said, Hahng-Kahng would never make me rich. I guess nothing could. But that $300 was the first foreign money I'd ever made through writing. It was money that money couldn't buy.
"Too bad we won't be going abroad any time soon to spend it," I said to Bunny.
I didn't know how wrong I was going to be.
(To be continued.)
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