WHAT'S IN A LETTER

The other day I went to watch Rael Padamsee’s presentation of the all time favourite “Sound of Music” at the NCPA. Great show at a great place.

But there is another story associated with this. During the interval my husband introduced us to an old acquaintance of his, rather an old client. Since we had heard interesting anecdotes about this gentleman, my daughter and I had no problem in placing him the moment we shook hands with him. He was an enormous seventy-five year old Parsi gentleman (could be more!), an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist by profession, coming from an old family of doctors. Among the stories heard about him were his sudden appearances at my husband’s office perched on a Harley Davidson motorbike. He owned cars with fabulous names which everyone can remember except me. Among them was an open top sports model of Merc! He came to see my husband for his various insurance needs and was extremely pleased with him for having helped him to get a printout of his medical registration number from the MCI site.He had misplaced his own papers and the ‘bungling fools’ in his alma mater Grant Medical College could not help him to locate the same. But thanks to the click of a button he had the important piece of paper in his hand!

After some exchange of preliminary small talk, my ears caught him saying something about having invested some two lakhs that evening in MAPRO. Oh, I thought… Maharashtra Agro Products! Anyway since the play was about to begin we went back to our seats. It was most enjoyable but I could not help thinking about MAPRO. Why would anyone want to buy two lakhs worth jams, jellies and juices! What on earth would he do with all that stuff ! From what I had gathered from my husband, I knew that he was fabulously rich and spent most of his time abroad. So for him two lakhs was nothing. Never mind … let that man do what he wanted with his money. Dalip Tahil was singing “Edelweiss”… I decided to give all idle thoughts a rest and enjoy the song!

On the way back I asked my husband why on earth would anyone want to spend two lakhs on that stuff and my husband was taken by surprise and he remarked “Why not?” I decided to give it a break. Cartons and cartons of jams, juices, fruit concentrates…may be he was a generous soul and would distribute among all his friends and neighbours.

Next morning, armed with an Economic Times, I felt more enlightened…may be he had invested in shares of MAPRO. I was extremely bad about financial matters but assumed that just as you can invest in shares of various companies you could also buy shares in MAPRO…. that seemed to be the most plausible explanation.

As I was serving breakfast to my husband and daughter I found them talking about the old doctor and my incredulity at his decision to become tech savvy. That is when it struck me like a bolt of lightning….Oh my god! All this time I was thinking about MAPRO when actually it was MacPro!

Forgive me O' Steve Jobs for I know not what I say!

DS