Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi was a good boss who remembered the names of his employees and supported them when required. However, sometimes too much of a good thing can also be bad.
PRS Oberoi or Prithvi Raj Singh Oberoi (Biki)- This name was an integral part of my life when I got married. My husband used to work as an airport manager for the Oberoi hotels. Mine was an arranged marriage. When my parents heard that he was working as an airport manager, they assumed it to be a good post. We were told that he had been working in the same hotel chain for the last 15 years. For my parents, at that time, it signified stability.
My husband Mohit was a ‘bhakt’ of PRS Oberoi. For him, his Oberoi sir was GOD. His day began and ended with Mr. Oberoi said this and Mr. Oberoi said that. He was in awe of the man who despite having thousands of employees would always address him (a mere airport manager according to him) by his name. Every time he would land at the Delhi Airport, it was Mohit and his team who would receive him when he embarked from his private jet and see him off in his car. Sometimes, he would pick him up from his farmhouse in Chattarpur and escort him to the airport, get him through the customs and then bid him adieu as he hopped aboard his private jet. Whenever we used to meet during our brief courtship period, it was most about how he told Mr. Oberoi about his impending arranged marriage and how he would advise him about the various dos and don’ts of marriage.
My introduction to PRS Oberoi was a brief hello during our wedding reception. But his gift, a pink silk brocade saree became a hot topic of discussion for months.
‘Mr. Oberoi is so generous, Mr. Oberoi has such good taste, Mr. Oberoi went out of his way to get you this saree, you should be grateful’, dialogues like these popped up in every discussion. Yes, the saree was beautiful no doubt but it wasn’t exactly Burj Khalifa to be honest. It was just a brocade saree, slightly more expensive than what you would ordinarily spend on a sari!
For our honeymoon, we went to Udaipur. We stayed at the Trident Hotel (at an employee discount of course!). The facilities were excellent as is the case with all Oberoi properties. However, that did not last long since my husband got a heart attack in the next couple of days. A few of our relatives in Udaipur helped my husband to get admitted to the city hospital there. Here too, the magnanimous Mr. Oberoi and his company helped us to foot the bill. Afterwards, we flew back to Delhi where Mohit got admitted to Escorts for his angioplasty and there too it was Mr. Oberoi to the rescue. Naturally when he recovered, he was completely indebited to Mr. Oberoi which meant even longer work hours, zero work life balance and no family life.
As a wife of some one who has spent more than a decade in an organization (he started off as an intern and graduated to a manager) , I have gleaned some interesting insights.
One, if you happen to marry someone like that beware that your husband will always be more loyal to the company than to you! Forget work life balance! The boss may have thousands of employees but if he calls an employee by his name every time he meets him, then the employee is likely to lay down his life for him (actually and figuratively). At times, when he was late, I would berate his organization but my husband could hear nothing against his beloved ‘Mr. Oberoi’ despite the long working hours or the crazy schedule he had to follow owing to his boss’s erratic comings and goings. In India, particularly in the Northern regions winters is the time for extensive tourism business. In Delhi, owing to the fog during winters most flights are either delayed or postponed and it is these times that the hotels capitalize on and earn huge revenues from the airlines and customers. Mohit’s job was to ensure that all the customers stay at the Oberoi Hotels rather than any other five-star property and this job was an all-nighter during those times.
Secondly, your husband will always try to emulate the life style of his boss to the best of his ability regardless of his ability to do so.
In our home, it was all about how Mr. Oberoi eats a rich diet or how he eats gold or silver ‘bhasm’ which makes him so healthy and hearty. He would always narrate an incident of how he happened to visit Oberoi Farm in Chattarpur where Mr. Oberoi’s personal chef was preparing his food and how he made him taste it and Mohit literally sweated because the food was ‘pure and potent’ because of the bhasms. Or it was also about how Mr. Oberoi despite his old age (he was about 80 at the time) was always surrounded by beautiful women who were immaculately dressed 24 X7.
Another aspect of being such an employee for such a boss is also about emulating everything he sees in the office in his own home. Since he worked in the hotel industry, my husband wanted the home to resemble a hotel too. It had to be spick and span, all the curtains vacuumed and the bedsheets pristine and tightly tucked in. His logic? ‘When Mr. Oberoi’s home could be like that, why can’t his own home follow suit?’ Of course, a tiny detail that is conveniently missed out is that hotel has a huge house keeping staff that is especially hired for this purpose while the home has just one employee- his wife. He wanted his wife to also resemble one of the hotel’s female employees- immaculate saree, coiffed hair and perfectly made up face every day, each day. An impossible target which was obviously never met!
Once Mohit told me that the Oberoi Hotels sell cakes on a discounted rates to their employees. When I tasted the cake, I was floored! I jokingly told Mohit that he is the luckiest person in the world to get such cakes at such a low cost. Mohit made a face and said, ‘I know what you mean but now I cannot even taste these cakes because during my earlier days in The Oberoi, my friend who was a chef and knew about my love for these cakes used to open the walk in refrigerator for me and lock me up there till I had my fill. Now, I cannot even look at them!
If you observe the lives of most of these super achievers of the world, they are known more for their work than their ‘perfect’ family life. Probably that’s the reason why their work grows and cracks appear in their family life. But when people around them try to emulate their formula for their own success, it doesn’t work out because those people don’t have either the financials or the support or the help to lead such a crazy jet setting life. The result? Frustration and addiction to alcohol or smoking or other such vices grows and health declines. One fine day, as was his usual custom, Mohit accompanied the company officials to their chartered plane at the airport and saw them off. Perhaps he was tired, so while returning in the bus he placed his head on the window to take a quick nap. He never woke up. He had suffered a heart attack.
In better days, whenever asked about his love for his boss and the Oberoi hotels, Mohit often used to sing Raj Kapoor’s famous song ‘Jeena yahan, marna yahan, iske siva jaana kahan….’. He lived that till the end.
Though I have only met the man once, Mr. P R S Oberoi has been a part of my life in more ways than one and has taught me many important lessons for the rest of my life. The most important out of them is that a good boss sometimes is not necessarily a good thing for a hardworking employee. Sometimes it leads to the employees undoing too and if that happens there is no one to blame!
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