C. MARTIN

I loved meeting people.  Travelling across India I met senior executives and union leaders in LIC and a number of intellectuals outside.  By and large I had good exposure.  I have covered such interviews in various journals.  I am a freelance-journalist.  It is a work I enjoyed doing then and even now.

When I visited LIC Housing Finance corporate office in Mumbai, I sought an appointment with Shri C. Martin who was General Manager there.  Just a personal visit.  

During an earlier personal visit to Southern Zonal Office in Chennai, a staff member of L&HPF there had informed me, he heard a casual discussion about my work by RM(L&HPF) with Shri Martin. This was the reason why I wanted to meet Shri Martin thinking that he knew me earlier because of this reference in Chennai.

The lady executive in the front office had taken a visitor's slip and asked me to wait.  After a while, she took me to Shri Martin’s cabin.  Believing that everything has been arranged by her, I mildly opened the door. 

What a reception!  I was rudely shocked.  Even before I could say something, Shri Martin got angry.  He might have taken me for a real estate dealer.  Although he angrily asked me to wait outside, my mood was so disturbed that I could not do so.

I went straight to the cabin of Chief General Manager Shri Subramaniam whom I knew earlier in connection with a study I had undertaken at the instance of LIC HFL.  Shri Subramaniam invited me for a lunch and asked his Secretary to arrange it.  In the meantime there was an urgent call for CGM Shri Subramaniam to meet the Chief Executive.  He requested me to wait there and hurriedly left his cabin.

Surprisingly, Shri Martin reached CGM Shri Subramaniam’s cabin after a while. I didn’t know who sent him there.  He sat there.

There was eloquent Silence...

I was waiting there.  For lunch of course in my case.

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* Shri Martin was SDM, Ernakulam Division, for sometime.

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