In September I returned to Bombay from my Samian hideout keeping 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 “Number One Outsourcing” and it was legitimate unlike many of the Indian boiler room operations selling fraud fueled fabricated dreams sucking out money from Europeans and North Americans. I had a phalanx 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 based on high short-term profits. His meant immediate cutting of expenses and damn any long-term consequences. Greed was the name of the game so why not benefit from what could not be stopped! I recall an enormous client of mine, a huge global financial institution headquartered in Cleveland, having been encouraged by American financial institution regulators to move jobs offshore as a “risk reduction strategy”. Sell out your domestic labour force to “protect” financial institutions? Dealing with this contradictory combination of greed and stupidity was a fine business to be in. We had vast complexes in Bombay and Punai “Number One Outsourcing” managed. Please don’t blame the Indians for hundreds of thousands of American and Canadian jobs outsourced to it. If you want to apportion the blame asked who performed the outsourcing and the American government that encouraged them to do so.
One component of the outsourcing was establishing call centres and necessary supporting 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 goat milk 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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