The Moors Last Sigh

from the piratical pleasures of being my father’s son. But after my medical reverses it became clear that Abraham had begun to look to others for some support; and, in particular, to Adam Braganza, a precocious eighteen-year-old with ears the size of Baby Dumbo’s or of Star TV satellite dishes, who was rising through the ranks of Siodicorp so fast he ought to have died from the bends.
    ‘Mr Adam’, I gradually discovered in the course of my late-night chats with my father – who continued to use me as a kind of confessor for the many sins of his long life – was a youth with a spectacularly chequered past. It seems he was originally the illegitimate child of a Bombay hooligan and an itinerant magician from Shadipur, U.P., and had been unofficially adopted, for a time, by a Bombay man who was missing-believed-dead, having mysteriously disappeared fourteen years ago, not long after his allegedly brutal treatment by government agents during the 1974–1977 Emergency. Since then the boy had been raised in a pink skyscraper at Breach Candy by two elderly Goan Christian ladies who had grown wealthy on the success of their popular range of condiments, Braganza Pickles. He had taken the name of Braganza in the old ladies’ honour, and, after they passed away, had taken over the factory itself. Soon afterwards, as smartly turned out and slick-styled at seventeen as many executives twice his age, he had come to Siodicorp in search of expansion capital, hoping to put the old ladies’ legendary pickles and chutneys into the world market under the snappier brand name of Brag’s . On the modernised packaging which he brought in to show Abraham’s people was the slogan, Plenty to Brag about .
    Which could, it seemed, be said of the boy wonder himself. In what seemed like the blink of an eye he had sold the business to Abraham, who had been quick to see the huge export potential of the brand, especially in countries with substantial NRI (Non-Resident Indian) populations. Now the young Turk was independently wealthy; but in the course of his first meeting with grand old Mr Zogoiby himself, he had so impressed my father with his knowledge both of the latest business and management theories, and of the new communications and information technologies that were just starting to explode into the Indian sector, that Abraham at once invited him to ‘join the Siodi family’ at vice-presidential level, with special responsibility for technical innovation and corporate behaviour. Cashondeliveri Tower started buzzing with the boy’s new notions, developed, apparently, from his study of business practices in Japan, Singapore and around the Pacific Rim, ‘the global capital of Millennium Three,’ as he called it. His memos quickly became legendary. ‘To optimise manpower utilisation, engendering of we-feeling is key,’ they typically said. Executives were therefore ‘encouraged’, that is, instructed, to spend at least twenty minutes a week in small groups of ten or twelve, embracing one another. Further ‘encouragement’ was given to the idea that each employee should offer monthly ‘evaluations’ of his fellows’ strengths and weaknesses – thus turning the building into a tower of hypocritical (overtly huggy-wuggy, secretly stabby-wabby) sneaks. ‘We will be a listening corporation,’ Adam informed us all. ‘What you say, we will carefully note.’ O, those ears were listening, all right. Any poison, any nastiness that was going fell into their capacious depths. ‘All large organisations are a heterogenous mix of trouble-makers, trouble-shooters and healthy people,’ said an Adam memo. ‘Our management expectation is that the trouble-makers will, with your help, be developed.’ (Emphasis added.) Old Abraham loved this stuff. ‘Modern era,’ he told me. ‘Therefore, modern lingo. I just love it! This wet-eared punk with the tough-guy stance. He’s making the joint jump.’
    My own tough-guy stances had been of a different sort; possibly, in Abraham’s view, an outmoded sort – and at any rate all that was over for me now. This was not the time to lay into young Adam Braganza. I kept mum; and smiled. There was a new Adam in Eden. My father invited the youth into the rooftop atrium and within months – weeks! Days! – Siodicorp was moving into computers; to say nothing of cable, fibre-optics, dishes, satellites, telecommunications of every sort; and guess who was running the new show? ‘We’re going to