Raja was trying for a good job as his salary was only 180 rupees per month in M.I.T. So he applied for a trainee in Standard Motors at Vandalur in Madras.Mr.K.P.Ramaswamy (K.P.R.) Banu’s uncle who was a director in Parry and Co knew the Chairman Gopalakrishna Iyer of Standard Motors and K.P.R. phoned and had a talk with him. Raja got an interview and got an appointment order too. In the meantime Kameswarar Dikshitar had written a letter to M.N.Iyer son of Mahadevan Meenakshi’s eldest brother who was a director in I.C.I. India (Pvt) Ltd and Raja got an interview letter from I.C.I. Madras Regional Office sometime in January 1959. He went for the interview and an Englishman Mr.Cameron and Mr.Hyman the Regional Manager of Madras Office and Mr.Vasudevan Manager of Rubber Chemicals Department interviewed Raja and about 2 other candidates. There were more than three thousand applicants for this vacancy as Sales Executive in Plastics Department in I.C.I. Madras. This was filtered to a dozen applicants in the first interview and later in the final interview to three applicants. Raja was finally selected and then Cameron and Hayman did a lot of bargaining on the salary packet and Raja managed to convince them and got the maximum amount in that particular grade of salary. His take home pay will be 450 rupees per month almost the salary an I.A.S. sub collector was getting at that time. In Standard Motors the training period was three years and the stipend offered was only 220 rupees per month. After confirmation the pay as Assistant Engineer will be about 320 rupees or so. Raja’s close friend Parry’s Raja too went for the interview in Standard Motors but was told he will be taken as a trainee if one of the three trainees selected did not join the company. Parry’s Raja knew Raja had been offered a sales job in I.C.I. at a higher remuneration and wanted him to decide if he was joining I.C.I. Raja decided to join I.C.I. for Parry’s Raja’s sake and also since he liked the atmosphere in I.C.I. very much. Thus Parry’s Raja was very grateful to Raja for this magnificent gesture and both became very good friends for life. Raja joined the Plastics department for which Mr.Vasudevan was overall in charge and Mr.S.T.L.Narasimhan was his immediate boss. There was another Salesman Mr. P.S.Rao an Andhra middle aged gentleman hailing from Guntur and an experienced person. The headquarters for both of them was Madras and they must travel anywhere in south. Most of the plastics were imported from Imperial Chemical Industries United Kingdom and of it Perspex sheets opaque and transparent were very much in demand. I.C.I. in India was the managing agent and also the sole selling agent for the products manufactured by their public limited factories Alkali Chemical Corporation of India(A.C.C.I) in Rishra Calcutta Indian Explosives :Limited(I.E.L.) in Kanpur, and Chemicals and Fibers India Limited(C.A.F.I.) in Bombay. They were also sole selling agents for dyes manufactured by Atul Dyes in collaboration with Imperial Chemical Industries U.K. which was too in Bombay.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 10:18:09 +0000
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