Dus Hazaar Theek Hai?

That innocent question was put forward to one of us at TeamXtreme, by an employer (back then), wanting to know if that amount was enough for him to get a job done. Since then, it has been an inside joke at TeamXtreme & it works like laughter therapy in bad times. Our biggest weakness, has been money, sometimes excess of it & at times nill. We never knew how the hell to quote a price, how to ensure we got paid and the biggest glitch is what to do with the money that we got. Our meta-goals (money per se) have been larger than 70mm, so the neat little sums always went for noble causes like parties, parties & more parties.

Thank God for some saner additions to TeamXtreme, the 'neat little sums' are now taken care of with fantastic efficiency. As a bunch of creative campers, the idea of money always was "money is what it can buy for you" & it still is a way of life for many in the team. We hate to bargain on creative products. To us it has always been our holy cow. You can't afford it? Too bad. Try again when you are richer.

Gradually we realized that it is an exercise in futility to expect that creativity holds any value, especially in the small town that we operated from. So that led us to Xtreme frustration, but at least we had found out other avenues to make up for the loss . So 'CONSULTANCY' became the magic word. The only thing that worked against us was the lack of facial hair and our torn jeans. It took us some time to correct that, but once we did, we ensured that we wore the best ties in town and that almost intimidated the 'Gutkha' chewing money-bags whom we were dealing with.

But thanks to our skills at 'bol bachan' we undid the damage that was caused by the designer ties. So now we were at a place where we could intimidate the client and make him feel at home, all at once. As goes the famous dialogue in RGV's Company "khaas aadmi ko ye maloom hona chahiye ke wo kabhi bhi aam ho sakta hai" or something like that. So that was taken care of.

Along the way we picked up our lessons and that enriched us more than any MBA degree could ever have. Money management, people management, corprate communications, making power-point presentations & making a pitch etc. were all learnt by doing. Some mistakes were made along the way but those mistakes have ensured that we never repeat them thanks to the fools we had then made out of ourselves in front of the then-messiahs-but-now-insignificant clients. How's that you B-School white collars?

When in doubt, set back or generally down, we just look at the mirror and ask ourselves the life-changing question: Dus Hazaar Theek Hai? Not that it solves the problem, but it does facilitate a good hearty guffaw.