Non-owner CEOs of some of India's largest publicly listed firms, regularly feted on the covers of business magazines and who live in company-supplied apartments in downtown Mumbai, discover that the day they retire they face the prospect of leaving Mumbai or moving to the deep suburbs, writes Ajit Balakrishnan
"Are you going abroad to do a PhD?" I asked him.
That could be a plausible reason for him to leave.
After all, he had already, in the short three years that he had worked for us, in the middle of a punishing schedule of writing algorithms crucial for our business, found the time and energy to write two articles for international peer-reviewed journals and co-author with me a chapter in a book of readings on collective intelligence edited by a prominent US academic.
Such interests normally take a person at his age naturally into a life in academia for which a PhD is a prerequisite.
He squirmed a little, but did not meet my eye.
"No, I am not leaving to do a PhD. I am leaving to join a start-up company in Bengaluru."
"Are they giving you more interesting work than we have given you?" I asked.
"No," he said, still looking down.
"Then, are they paying you many times what we are paying you?"
"They are paying me a little more, but that's not the reason I am leaving," he said.
"My parents have been wanting me to get married. So I have been meeting girls from my hometown.
"Every one of them asks me where we will live after we get married.
"I tell them I will rent an apartment in Bombay.
"They ask me whether I don't earn enough to own an apartment of my own.
"I tell them that it is impossible in Bombay even if I travel two hours to and from work.
"When they hear this, that I cannot afford an apartment of my own, these girls quickly lose interest.
"So, I have decided to move to Bengaluru, where I can easily afford the instalments after buying an apartment.
"In Bombay, that is impossible."
I painfully adjusted to the reality of losing this very, very talented young programmer.
I was ready to take up cudgels against Mumbai's real estate industry when a friend from yesteryear called breathlessly.
She was in her fifties, unmarried and sharing with her brother an apartment that her parents had left her -- and, in the process, getting on each other's nerves.
She worked as a secretary in a firm.
Her brother -- although exceedingly bright and with impeccable academic credentials -- had never been adept at negotiating the corporate world; he was now making a meagre living on the occasional consulting assignments that people sent
Bengaluru: Bird flu suspected, 19,000 chicken to be culled
What I want in 2011: 'A 1BHK in Mumbai!'
Parle knocks on Bombay HC doors over Mango Bite
Kingfisher must satisfy DGCA on safety: Ajit Singh
Bombay HC moved to remove anti-Islam video from YouTube