Forwards Ki Duniya… A matter of muda

The Taj hotel group had invited Mr. Masai Imai from Japan to hold a workshop for its staff.

The staff were very skeptical – the hotel is doing excellent business, this person from Japan has no exposure to hotel industry – what exactly is he going to teach?

But everybody gathered as planned for the workshop in the conference hall sharp at 9 am.

Mr. Masai was introduced to them – a not so impressive personality, nor the English all that good; spoke as if he was first formulating each sentence in Japanese and then translating it into rather clumsy English.

“Good morning! Let’s start work. I am told this is a workshop; but I see neither work nor shop.
So let’s proceed where work is happening Let’s start with the first room on the first floor.”

Mr. Masai, followed by the senior management, the participants, the video camera crew trouped out of the conference room and proceeded to the destination.

That happened to be the laundry room of the hotel.
Mr. Masai entered the room and stood at the window, “beautiful view!” he said.

The staff knew it; they need not invite a Japanese consultant to tell them this!
“A room with such a beautiful view is being wasted as a laundry room. Shift the laundry to the basement and convert this into a guest room.”

Aa Haa! Now nobody had ever thought about that!

The manager said, “Yes, it can be done.”

“Then let’s do it,” Mr. Masai said.

“Yes sir, I will make a note of this and we will include it in the report on the workshop that will be prepared.” Said the Manager

“Excuse me, but there is nothing to note down in this. Let’s just do it,
just now.” Mr. Masai.

“Just now?” Manager

“Yes, decide on a room on the ground floor/basement and shift the stuff out of this room right away. It should take a couple of hours, right?” asked Mr. Masai.

“Yes.” Manager.

“Let’s come back here just before lunch. By then all this stuff will have got shifted out and the room must be ready with the carpets, furniture etc. and from today you can start earning the few thousand that you charge your customers for a night.”

“Ok, Sir.” The manager had no option.

The next destination was the pantry. The group entered. At the entrance were two huge sinks full of plates to be washed.

Mr. Masai removed his jacket and started washing the plates.

“Sir, Please, what are you doing?” the manager didn’t know what to say and what to do.

“Why, I am washing the plates”, Mr. Masai.

“But sir, there is staff here to do that.” Manager Mr. Masai continued
washing, “I think sink is for washing plates, there are stands here to keep the plates and the plates should go into the stands.”

All the officials wondered – did they require a consultant to tell them this?

After finishing the job, Mr. Masai asked, “How many plates do you have?’
“Plenty, so that there should never be any shortage.” answered the Manager.

Mr. Masai said, “We have a word in Japanese -‘Muda’. Muda means delay, Muda means unnecessary spending. One lesson to be learned in this workshop is to avoid both. If you have plenty of plates, there will be delay in cleaning them up. The first step to correct this situation is to remove all the excess plates.”

“Yes, we will say this in the report.” Manager.

“No, wasting our time in writing the report is again an instance of ‘Muda’.
We must pack the extra plates in a box right away and send these to whichever other section of Taj requires these. Throughout the workshop now we will find out where all we find this ‘Muda’ hidden.”

And then at every spot and session, the staff eagerly awaited to find out Muda and learn how to avoid it.

On the last day, Mr. Masai told a story.

“A Japanese and an American, both fond of hunting, met in a jungle. They entered deep jungle and suddenly realized that they had run out of bullets.
Just then they heard a lion roaring. Both started running. But the Japanese took a short break to put on his sports shoes.
The American said, “What are you doing? We must first get to the car.”

The Japanese responded, “No. I only have to ensure that I remain ahead of you.”

All the participants engrossed in listening to the story, realized suddenly that the lion would stop after getting his victim!

“The lesson is: competition in today’s world is so fierce, that it is important to stay ahead of other, even by just a couple of steps. And you have such a huge and naturally well endowed country. If you remember to curtail your production expenditure and give the best quality always, you will be miles ahead as compared to so many other countries in the world.”, concluded Mr. Masai.

It is never late to learn…let us take out all the MUDA OUT OF OUR LIVES.

By Invitation: The Missed Beat

Shiva Kumar, the unofficial ‘minutes of the party’ writer of my music lovers group on FB, on the dinner party thrown in my `honour’ during my Bangalore visit in August 2017. As always, Shiva has written beautifully, full of wit and humour.

++++++++++++

THE MISSED BEAT
(Sorry, thora interchange ka gadbad ho gaya.
That should read ‘THE BIST MEET’)
This report was held up on account of a “No Breakfast No Report” agitation that didn’t turn out to be so successful, because both days I was made to have breakfast and continue my agitation thereafter. Two days wasted. No lassoons learnt.
So this is the aankhon dekha haal delivered teen din ke baad.
***
So there we were, Cad and I, sitting on the short dividing wall between walkway and lawn of Jayamahal Palace hotel at 10:15 p.m., twiddling our thumbs, as the mist began to fall gently. He was checking his mobile for signs of the arriving cab, while I was looking at the dwindling battery charge on my own handset and wondering if it would last till I reached home. Thirty minutes we sat there. I could have had one more pint of the chilled stuff. Cheh!
The cab never arrived. Instead, a message arrived on Cad’s mobile that the driver had cancelled. After 30 minutes of waiting. Shame on cancelling drivers! We decided to leg it to the gate and try our luck there.
Our luck held somewhat, for we did not have to wave down more than three autowallahs. The third one quietly downed the meter and asked us to hop in. We did, gratefully. As we sped homeward, Cad told me a story or two about his days in the IIMK Hostel, about coins deposited in a bowl to be used in emergencies, about army vehicles dropping off essential supplies, about freshly ironed shirts being allowed to be freely borrowed for special occasions when one had to look presentable to the party of the other part, … He had come to that interesting one about that …, when he had to get off. To be completed during the next drop off.
But what is all this about returning home at 10:30, a good half-an-hour after Cad’s regulation time to hit the sack? Well, it all started like this about four and a half hours before that …
There I was, my right leg twined around my left, my left hand gripping the mobile and my right hand doing calisthenics. I was trying to get the pitch right for “Din soona Sooraj bina, aur Chanda bin rain” before lighting the lamp. I tried two, three times and, failing miserably, put it off for tomorrow. And was about to put off the phone, when it rang.
The caller was Cad and he was asking me where I was. “Right here”, I answered and he wondered where that was. Some little confusion. After untangling my answer from the question, I was told that I was expected to be at Jayamahal Palace Hotel, or else. I jumped up from my seat, untangled my right leg from around my left leg (it was actually the other way round, I untangled first and jumped up after), changed into more presentable clothing and legged it to JPH.
Darkness had fallen when I reached JPH. As I walked up the drive to our favourite North West corner, I saw that our usual table was occupied by a small group including a kid of indeterminate age, two ladies of indeterminate ages and a couple of gents of indeterminate ages. That didn’t look right. Too many indeterminates. I looked around and saw that the group at the next table looked more determinate. Right. As I walked up, I saw a man of not unreasonable girth in a maroon shirt and an open photographer’s jacket stand up, extend his hand towards me and say something that sounded like “I am the best”. Which he was. I shook the outstretched hand and introduced myself.
“I am Shiv”.
“I am Bist”.
Before this interesting dialogue between the best and the second best could continue, an elegantly attired lady at the far end of the table stood up, shook the table thrice for attention and, pointing an outstretched hand at me, said, “Hoy, so there you are!” Which I couldn’t and didn’t dare deny, because there I was. She wrung my hand for good measure. And before I could unwring it, she passed it on to a bearded chap who wrung it again and said “Hi” in a tone that brooked no opposition. Followed by a third wring from a second bearded chap. I was about to wring for help when I saw two familiar faces. Thank goodness for familiar faces. I did Namaste to them.
Reading from twelve o’ clock in an anticlockwise direction, the jacketed chap was Raju Bist, the ace, the bearded chap was Ramdas, our in-house Dev Anand fan, and the other bearded chap was Rohan, the Bist-in-law, both hiding behind the zarebas for reasons known only to themselves. I stood at six o’clock. The lady in the next seat, needless to say, was Vibha Ghai, the law. Heramba Cadambi was Heramba Cadambi and Shantheri was the Mallaya with an A. Good. In that order.
We made small talk for a while. Someone, I think it was Cad, asked Shanteri if she had become leaner and she replied “Na, lean nahi, Nalini ho gayi.” She became Ms. Nalini for the evening.
As I settled myself into my seat and my beer was delivered to me, I took an invigorating sip and, noting to myself that I had totally disrupted whatever conversation was going on before my arrival, told Cad about his filmi quiz that had kept me busy the whole morning. He decided to do the quiz again for the benefit of the others at the table who had all missed it. I was banned from answering.
Shanteri, Ms. Nalini, was the proper Quiz Master. She put the questions with enough intrigue in them resulting in even the passing waiters stopping to scratch their heads. At one particular question, Cad hinted that it just might be a Dev Anand song and Ramdass sat up with a glint in his eye. Raju babu clicked his tongue. Vibha Ghai closed her eyes and willed the answer to come out. Another question, another hint from Cad which brought another glint to Ramdass’ eye, another closed eye response from VG. It was another Dev Anand song. Raju babu clicked his tongue again. I think he was missing his camera, fine photographer that he is. In between the questions and answers, he told us how, when trying to get an interview with Devsaab and dialling his number, the Evergreen Star himself answered the phone and readily granted the interview without much ado.
At one point, Raju babu even got ready to sing a Marathi song, but it very smartly turned around and had me singing two-two lines instead, of two-two Marathi songs, that too with the same two-two words! And that moment, of getting Raju babu to sing, was lost!
Vibha Ghai spoke about an accordion which had to be sold because it could not be repaired. This touched a sad chord in all of us. She spoke about getting a new accordion via crowd-funding. Now that’s a thought! While the accordion is one of my favourite instruments that we are sadly seeing much less of these days, the problem was that it had too many buttons!
Cad spoke of his Hohner harmonica, his greatly prized possession, with buttons and all, that was stolen from his room when he was living his student life in the IIMK Hostel. He was greatly affected by this and resolved never to play one again. Much later, a friend got him another Hohner. Cad mentioned that it was a more basic model, without buttons. He didn’t mention whether it had a zip or Velcro instead. He did however mention that Dilip Rajwade bhai was his senior and didn’t figure in any way in the harmonica episode.
Shanteri mentioned something about a kerfuffle during the weekend at Alliance Francaise de Bengaluru and told us to make suru that we are theru. We agreedu.
We missed quite a few beats: two hours was just not enough for us to get Rajubhai to reminisce about his interviews with Dev Anand or for Ramdas to tell us his own anecdotes or for Vibha to sing a song or three or for Shanteri to talk about her plays, or for Cad to recall his hostel days! Or for that matter, for Rohan to talk to us about his father-in-law.
Time fairly flew and Vibha Ghai got her first reminder call. She promptly called a cab and very soon it came and she left, promising to meet again soon. Raju and Rohan pushed off soon after. Ramdass bravely offered to drop Shanteri and she gladly accepted. Which left Cad and me standing at the edge of the lawn, waiting for the cab that, ultimately, never came. Which story I have already narrated at the beginning of this report. Back to the top, if you want to read it again.