Ram Ray. Much Pearls. To Many.

Ram Ray.

Much Pearls. To Many.

At an impressionable age, encountering a boss with distinguished impressions was my biggest challenge when I moved from Ernst & Young to Response. The responsibility to establish a technology driven finance management system in 1984, was the first ever, I assume, in an advertising agency in India. The task was a much less challenge, however.

With the background of transforming accounting systems from the traditional book keeping into a digitised information system for large corporations such as American Express Travel Services, Bata or even the Indian enterprise like the Hindustan Motors or Orient Paper and Industries, I needed to understand the transactional flow in an advertising business and apply that to the technology available. 

Only Ram Ray could explain the financial transactional flow as I was the first accounting employee. He offered a Mac, and a senior Informational Technology Consultant, Mr Bedi who would design the software, as my only support.

The environment at Response was inspiring. Almost everyone wanted to develop the best work. If they didn’t, Ram Ray was mammothly present with his roving eyes in finding them circumvent the his standards - usually higher than the best standards. His eyes would zoom into the pantry and the work desks as much.

In my interactions, I guess he knew he was not too sharp in the financial discipline, much like most advertising managers, however legendary they may be. Very soon I had a visiting Consultant, followed by a senior finance professional. 

In under a year the system was established, reducing my work to allocating expense heads to the cash flow. At the same time, advertising had begun to inspire me as a career. 

Communication was my greatest shortcoming. Yet it was communication that drove the spirit in me. 

Ram Ray’s virtue of benevolence among his several unique traits, worked in my favour, when he agreed to give me an opportunity to move over to Account management from Accounting management. He asked me as bluntly as he would address a rookie, “What if you fail as an Account Manager?”. I had worked upon the courage to answer that as bluntly: I will quit Response. His next question: “How long should the test be?”. I was a bit clever there, when I said, working under him it should be just a quarter, yet I hoped six months was not a big ask. 

That is when Ram Ray caught me in a zone that belonged to him entirely. It was coincidental that I was the first Account Manager as well at Response. Until then, it was just him and others from Media, Creative or Research seconding, or supporting him.

Cruelty of sorts was heaped upon me as he begun to review my expressions of the conversations in a meeting, as a formal Service Report. 

Six months later, I was not asked to leave, even though a few other Account Managers had joined. But I was the only slave between the clients and Ram Ray. I was crushed like keema in rolls that Calcuttans enjoyed for a meal or between meals; and, Ram Ray could enjoy anytime of the day. 

The greater I was crushed, the deeper was my determination to sneak into what made him a giant. 

I continue my attempts to express better, a learning I grant him alone as the source of my inspiration. Minimal words, better expressed, as I call that practice. Express to the individual alone you relate to, never as a standard narrative. I am very certain he would dump most of what I write or say, as no where close to linguistically acceptable English. 

I would not bother. And, continue. He was never explicit, yet he taught me hard, not to allow appreciations or ridicule come in the way of what you are committed to doing, or dedicated to learning uniquely.

I got over the hangover of being impressive, or be impressed. Let those virtues be in the passing. The inner being is better preserved if the impressions, or the expectations based on impressions are left behind as garbage in the bin, while the pursuit to get better lives. 

So, Ram Ray, in his own style, never concluded if I was a good enough Account Manager. Pushing me to find if I believed so. 

Inspired by his style of taking a larger leap to conclude if anything was good enough, I sought interviews, outside Response, and Calcutta. When I concluded with an opportunity with HTA, Delhi, I knew Ram Ray had made me what, like most of his trainees, I would have expected from my term with him. 

He stayed in touch. He would often Inbox a few articles, or, have a quick chat. I also found his recommendation on my LinkedIn profile, without asking.

I knew he was not keeping well. Yet I was selfish enough to be proud that I was not a sundry in his list, whenever I found his notes in my Inbox. They stopped about six months ago. I sensed the Master will not be longer to reassure me that I existed in his mind.

I have met legends, or known them. I cannot relate to him as another legend or a star. He left a distinct mark on people he knew. In a way of his own. Distinct and distinguishable.