I first met Bhaskar when I was a callow 28-year-old journalist at The Economic Times. He was the head of Response-West, the No. 2 position in the sales superstructure of the hallowed Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.
I had got into a huge fight with senior members of his sales team and had riled them up by saying that they did not know how to sell. All hell broke loose that day at the Old Lady of Boribunder.
Bhaskar got up from his swivel chair and I was darned sure he’d risen to show me the door. Instead, he told his team that I made sense, that we must go back to the drawing board to reimagine, repackage, relaunch and resell the struggling colour magazine I worked for back in the late-1990s. “Young man, you’ll have to show equal commitment and raise the quality bar on the product too,” he finally said to me in a voice that meant business.
That was Bhaskar for you. Always on the side of the underdog.
That was Bhaskar for you. Always on the side of the underdog. Always willing to pick up the gauntlet. Always happy to back the impetuous and the aggressive if he saw some spark.
He went on to become the self-effacing President of Response, taking over from the swashbuckling and charismatic Pradeep Guha, the man who had in many ways defined the flamboyant culture of the Times group in the nineties.
Bhaskar replaced flamboyance with flair and evenness of temper. Not many were willing to give BD (as he was lovingly called) a chance in hell to succeed the formidable PG. But Bhaskar, with tenacity, talent and temerity went onto to lead Response like a philosopher-king, leaving his stamp on the organisation by delivering frenetic growth for the next five years.
Bhaskar, with tenacity, talent and temerity went onto to lead Response like a philosopher-king
He worked hard, bloody hard. The L&T chairman would be proud of him save the fact that he could stare endlessly at his lovely wife Shoma. “Bhaskar has prepared me well for a life without Bhaskar. He would leave home at 9 am, come back from office at 9 pm, then clear the files late into the night after dinner. I think I will manage without him,” Shoma told me recently when the doctors had all but given up. “But where would I have ever found a man like Bhaskar — an intellectual and yet so much fun.”
I couldn’t agree more. He would keep us in splits, be it stories of the Times group and its idiosyncratic ways, or the many Bhaskar-isms he would spout ever so often. He recently told a columnist to write his obituary and show it to him. “What’s the point of you writing all the good stuff about me if I can’t even read it,” said BD a few months after he figured out that the strain of cancer he was fighting was a deadly one.
Read more: “You had an amazing life, rest in peace,” writes Bhaskar Das’s wife
Bhaskar was passionate about books and higher studies; his colleagues often called him a professor. He could quote Tom Peters and Jim Collins just as easily as he would recall articles from the Harvard Business Review and The Economist. In his heart of hearts I think he harboured ambitions of being an editor. He definitely had a huge soft corner for journalists and loved spending time with them.
A three-time PhD and an author of two books, Bhaskar was a workaholic, slogging pretty much till his last days from the hospital. “I have three offers in the market,” he told me a few months back, “and I’ve got to get back soon to them after my chemotherapy is done.”
“Bhaskar has prepared me well for a life without Bhaskar…,” his wife Shoma said.
More than an intellectual, he was a quintessential salesman. “I can’t sit in office all day, I like to be in the market,” he used to say. His day would not be complete before making three or four sales calls in every city he visited. Folklore has it that he’d gone to meet the then chief minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi in connection with some advertising deal on behalf of the Times group. The moment Modi entered the room, Bhaskar sprang up as only Bhaskar does, and completely disarmed Modi by holding out his hand: “I am Das. Your Das.” Modi, I’m told, broke into mild laughter, and the master salesman had struck the deal.
If there’s one person from whom I’ve learnt the most important leadership lessons, it’s Bhaskar. He would rarely call juniors to his room, but instead would walk across to their desks or cubicles. He would so often walk into my cubicle in ET while I was an assistant editor and he the tall President of the mighty Bennett.
Once, as the editor of The Economic Times, I had struck off from the list of ET awards invitees a big client of the Times group. “He’s not kosher and he doesn’t make the cut,” I told Bhaskar. Politely, BD shot back: “You’re becoming arrogant, young man. Let’s not bite the hand that feeds us.” Those words ring in my ears still, louder than ever before.
“This is a journey we all have to go through and I’m doing it now.” – BD
Of the many shades of Bhaskar, a less-known one perhaps, is that he was very spiritually inclined —and evolved. Unhappy with our increments one year, I barged into his room and tried to provoke him: “Bhaskar, you don’t deserve a 3% increment! Is this why we work so hard?” He looked indulgently at me and said: “I’m not working for the money, Rahul. I thank God that I’m alive, that I’m breathing this very moment.”
I could never appreciate his sang-froid, not up until now. I met him in the ICU a few days before the cancer began to spread rapidly. “See you, captain, on the other side,” he told me as I fought back my tears. “This is a journey we all have to go through and I’m doing it now.”
He’s left me with something to figure out even now.