Mostafa Abdullah Ranjan Banarjee often reccited this line of a poem of Shakti Chattopadhayya, an well known modern Bengali poet who died about ten years ago, at our lunch time আড্ডা (Gossips) at the ICDDR,B; The International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh. I worked at the ICDDR,B for two six year contracts between 1980 and 1994. Ranjan came to Dhaka from Ottawa with his wife Nipa Banarjee. Nipa Banerjee was posted at Dhaka as the Trade Commissioner for Canada. Ranjan himself was an employee of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) where he worked as a Foreign Service Officer and also as a Trade Commissioner. At the ICCDR,B he joined us as a Consultant in our team. He was a fine company and a great connoisseur of food. He discovered so many exotic eateries in the old Dhaka during his three years of stay, which I could never imagine finding all those in my whole life. Guess where he was discovered in Sydney by some of his ex-colleagues of ICDDR,B. Off course it had to be in a restaurant in Blacktown. His one other favorite punch line was that his grandmother had dipped him in the holy waters of the Ganges when he was very young, and thus been absolved of all of his past, present and future sins. So he was free to try out all of the forbidden pleasures of life including devouring গোমাংস (beef) as much as he wished. However this piece is not about Ranjan. I just could not resist using his line to begin this write-up and hence this brief introduction. I do wish to revisit Ranjan and other good friends at some other later time. After leaving ICCR,B I started working for PA Consulting Group (New Zealand) from 1995 in their Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded project in Bangladesh as a Senior Systems Consultant. The project aimed at upgrading the Financial Management System of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) and the Dhaka Electric Supply Company (DESCO). Mr. Peter Stehli, an Englishman, headed the project. Peter in his early seventies, was a professional accountant who was also a graduate of linguistics from the University of London. I was Peter’s number two in the project. Any time he drafted a report, a letter or even a note that was to go out of office, he passed it on to me for my review and comment. Being raised in an environment where the boss could not be wrong, even when one is, I always said fine. After a few days Peter asked me how come I always said ‘fine’ to everything that he gave me for review. I had no answer as I could not tell him that not only our work culture discourages pointing mistakes of the boss but could also be seen as disrespect towards the Superior. Peter explained that he himself could not be right one hundred percent, all the time, and my job as his deputy was to double check that. Once that was cleared, I never had any problem telling him wherever corrections or improvements were required. However, that wasn’t to be the case to be with a senior bureaucrat of the government of Bangladesh, with whom we needed to deal regularly for project activities. This very gentleman was ‘Mr. Know it all’ who took pride in doing all the talking himself and wouldn’t listen much. Besides, his English was rather poor and he had difficulty understanding Peter’s conversations. Most often his responses to Peter had no relevance to the subject matter of the meetings and most encounters ended up in frustrations for us. He used to be always flanked by his deputies in the meetings but none cared to ever point out to him that the boss may not have understood what Peter had said or interpreted in Bangla for him. In one such routine meeting we urgently needed a resolution to an issue very pertinent to the progress of the project. But the boss’s conversation clearly pointed to the fact he did not understand what Peter had requested of him. As our frustrations grew, I decided to speak to him in Bangla to tell him what actually Peter said. As soon as I did that he looked at me with such blood shot eyes that if it had the flames, it sure would have burnt me to the stake. I knew that my days were done with this honorable officer of the government. We returned from the meeting empty handed without any resolution. On our way back I told Peter what had happened. He kept quit and I wasn’t sure what he had thought of it. A couple of days before the next scheduled meeting we were advised that I need not attend the meetings any more. Peter Stehli refused to attend the meeting without me and it had to be cancelled. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) requested Peter to patch up with the officer and suggested that he needed to attend the meetings, even if it was without me. Peter refused and offered to resign instead. Fortunately for us the gentleman got transferred to another ministry soon and the business continued as usual with his replacement. The rumor had it that ADB’s long hand had something to do with the transfer. And I learnt my lesson not to ever tell any Bangladeshi boss that he or she may have got it wrong. Peter resided in Hotel Sheraton for almost first half of his five year tenure in Dhaka. Every morning while leaving for work he used to collect a pocket full of changes in ten taka notes from the cahiers office. The small kids at traffic stops new Peter’s car too well to run for it as soon as it stopped. Peter seemed to know some of these kids even by their names. Peter gave away each of them a ten taka note whenever he could. Our office driver Siraj couldn’t be very happy about it. Siraj often shouted at the kids not to touch the car since they soiled it with their dirty hands. He complained that due to this he needed to wash the car more often than needed. On one such occasion a little girl responded; ‘ক্যান, সাবে আপনেরে ব্যাতন দেয় না’? (What’s your problem? Don’t you get paid for your work’?) Peter wished to know what the girl had said and as I interpreted it, he burst into laughter and gave that girl two additional ten taka notes. He commented ‘given the opportunity she would have made a fine lawyer’. There were few that came to his office at regular intervals and collected handouts from Peter under various pretexts. Since I sat closest to peter’s office he often called me in to interpret for them. Each one had a new story to tell to beg for more and more money at each of these visits. I could figure out that some of the stories were concocted to pry on Peter’s goodness of heart. I used to get upset at times and at one instance I told Peter if he realized that some of these guys are taking him for a ride with made up stories. He looked at me and smiled ‘Don’t you think I can understand that too? Had I been in any one of their shoes, I would have probably done the same thing or worse’. I asked myself; how come I could not think like him. Peter left the project and Bangladesh into retirement in the year 2000. Later in 2003 I assumed the role of Head of the project for PA Consulting Group (USA) under USAID funding. At my work I needed someone with critical knowledge of Bangladesh energy sector to draft me a capital requirement analysis and plan for Bangladesh energy sector. I could not think of any better person than Peter for the job. But I wasn’t sure if he would be interested to come back to work for six to eight weeks from his retirement. I apologetically called him and made the request. He replied ‘for you my friend, anywhere anytime’. Peter came to Dhaka and worked for six weeks. He turned up an output which equaled to at least ten to twelve weeks of work. This was one of my happiest and a proud moment of my professional life. It is not because I had my former boss work for me, but because it was an attempt on my part to show my reverence for him, for the person he had been and for upholding my honor by putting his own job on the line. Thank you Peter. |
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Home Page Published on: 1-Sep-2014 
