In September I returned to Bombay. I kept myself occupied with the various businesses I had on the go that had been managed by trusted advisors over the past few years. I had sold the gold mining business my father had built up a few years ago and diversified.
My newest business was called “Number One Outsourcing” and it was legitimate unlike all the boiler room operations selling fraud fueled fabricated dreams to suck out money from Europeans and North Americans. I had a whole host of well-educated Indians capable, with some extensive training, to fill jobs outsourced by the wealthy nations. First world corporations were in a cost cutting frenzy to pump up salaries of senior management interested in big bonus payoffs for high profits in the short term. Greed was the name of the game so why not benefit from what could not be stopped! I recall a very big client of mine. It was a huge global financial institution headquartered in Cleveland. It had actually been encouraged by American regulators to move jobs offshore as a risk reduction strategy. Sell out your domestic labour force to “protect” financial institutions. Dealing with this combination of greed and stupidity was a fine business to be in. We had vast complexes in Bombay and Punnai my company managed. Please don’t blame the Indians for hundreds of thousands of jobs outsourced to it. If you want to apportion the blame asked who did the outsourcing!
One part of the outsourcing was establishing call centres and necessary infrastructure. Many of my clients didn’t mind their customers dealing with Indian call centres despite the fact of horrific phone communication and very heavy Indian accents their customers had difficulty understanding. Who cares about these matters when profits could skyrocket.
My “Bombay Fried Okra” chain was doing well. Dress up staff in American fast foodish outfits and replicate fast food restaurant décor and assembly line food. The menu was simple. Fried curried okra and biscuits, fried curried eggplant sandwiches, Indian fries and ox milkshakes were popular. We also featured McTandoori sandwiches.
Perhaps the business that was the most rewarding but not highly profitable was managing my late mother’s music catalogue. Not known by many was the fact she had written two John Lennon songs “Curry Fields Forever” being the most popular. After John’s death his record sales rocketed and so did royalties for Juanita Wallabong my mom.
On my spare time I managed to squeeze a few polo games in with my old school chums who were working at the Bombay British Consulate. I worked with a couple of them to start a distillery for a new Indian Scotch Whisky “Bombay Blues” which you may recall was the style of blues my mom had invented. Little did I know that whisky would feature in my Romanian plans for Cyclops.
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