I have always been chary about HR initiatives in any company. You know, those team-building exercises like a bunch of executives going rock-climbing, or managers asked to fall backwards from a height into the arms of his colleagues to establish trust and confidence. So when I learned that our young HR manager had scheduled an intra-company 20:20 match, I was, well, sceptical.

The only time I have been in an HR exercise was at the beginning of my career, when I was bundled off by an employer to attend a three-day workshop. The aim: to get in touch with yourself. To my growing horror, I learnt that everyone else attending had had severe childhood traumas, suffered from unfathomable insecurities, and had considered suicide at least twice. People wept, and grown men broke down, and I realised that I was a total loser. Here were all these MBA-types whose success had been shaped by all the tragedy they had gone through, and here was I, fathered by totally average parents and who had led a totally average life. No ups and downs, crests and troughs, no trauma, no nothing. I was disgusted with my parents. Could not at least one of them been an alcoholic?

At which point, the conductor of the workshop fixed me with an eagle eye and asked: “Have you ever thought how your obituary would read?” Before I could reply in the negative, all the others clamoured yes yes. I hastily agreed. The in-charge then said to me: “You have been singularly uncooperative through this course, and I am going to give you an F, and you will have to come back again next year.” That was it. The obituary I then recited was such a moving piece of work that a Dostoevsky, if he had been present, would have paid me a fortune for exclusive rights to the story of my life.

... contd.