I’m a shameless eavesdropper, from which I might have made a career – surely people will pay for information they would not be otherwise privy to – if it weren’t for the little problem I have of matching conversations with faces, and faces with names. For it’s extraordinary how CEOs who won’t share information even with their executive directors will think nothing of talking carelessly into their mobile phones in very public spaces, bandying about their companies’ plans, or personal intimacies, amidst a chorus of confessions, accusations and updates.
Such as the television professional in the departure lounge of an airport who spent all her waiting time sharing her plans to “invest in a property like India’s Got Talent, or any other reality show, definitely by October”, as much as her need to launch another prime-time hit later this month “though I’d rather we were in the market in time for the two extended weekends coming up”. She spoke with quiet authority, it was clear she was the spender, not the content creator or wimpy creative type — now if I only knew her name, it might be worth a fortune to rival companies.
Or the younger woman who sat quaffing draft beer in the business class lounge oblivious to everybody around her, insisting into her phone that it was simply not possible “to hire the pipsqueak who runs the company” that was clearly being bought over in some grandslam merger, or acquisition. Now that’s one managing director who would appreciate being forewarned that he was likely to be fired and ought to be brushing up his references and looking up a headhunting firm sometime soon — but if only I could make out who was ousting him and thus put two and two together.
Or the gentleman in the aircraft, all buffed nails and Boss tie, who was pleading with the lawyer seated next to him that he couldn’t divorce his wife, or give up his children, though his mistress was making things impossible for him, particularly since they worked together in the same office. I could have asked the lawyer, someone I was on nodding terms with, and very well-known on the elite circuit, the identity of his client — but, of course, I couldn’t remember the lawyer’s name either.
In hotel lobbies, at restaurants, in bars, it’s amazing how much intelligence you can scoop up — provided you know who you’re scooping it from. Heads of companies brief their colleagues on what the minister, or bureaucrat, said, or cleared, or objected to, or rejected, imagining public spaces to be anonymous. Women share their hair, diet and fashion secrets and dole out numbers they would never dream of when face to face with friends who are arch rivals to be first with the next happening dietician or spa therapist.
It was with considerable excitement that I called my wife to hiss into the phone that I had just shaken hands with “I think Aishwarya Rai”. “What does she look like?” my wife asked. “A little plump,” I said, “not as svelte as she looks in her pictures.” “She’s having a baby,” my wife confided, “she’s bound to have put on weight.” “Also somewhat plasticky,” I hesitated, “like she’s not real.” “Everyone says she’s synthetic,” my wife agreed, “and she giggles a lot.” “She isn’t giggling,” I told her, “but she just told the airhostess that she’s a believer in Jijuss. Who,” I asked, “is Jijuss?” “That’s Jesus for you sweetheart,” laughed my wife, “and before your palpitations give you blood pressure, that wasn’t Aishwarya Rai who shook your hands — it was Rakhi Sawant.”
