CEO SPECIAL.............. NADIR GODREJ.................. Making Matters Verse

NADIR GODREJ Making Matters Verse  Nadir Godrej is a poet, has serious interests in science and math, and is a popular speaker in verse at business forums — all this when he’s not busy driving innovation at a clutch of Godrej companies Nadir Godrej,62 Managing director, Godrej Industries; chairman, Godrej Agrovet; director, Godrej & Boyce, Godrej Foods and Godrej Consumer Products President of the Indo French Technical Association and the Alliance Francaise Mumbai French awards: “Chevalier de L’Ordre National due Merite” and “The National Order of the Legion of Honour”. Scientist with credit for figuring out how to get fatty alcohol out of vegetable oil; part-time poet and speaker who solely uses verse; mathematician by hobby, now indulging in number-palindromes; loves swimming from island to island — done it in Fiji and Maldives     In 1970 cousins Jamshyd and Nadir Godrej took a break from their studies in the US to spend a summer in the south of France. Nadir’s uncle Nari Dastur was based in Saint-Tropez and the cousins, then aged 21 and 19, made the most of it. While Jamshyd perfected the art of sailing a boat, Nadir mastered the language and made friends. Almost every day Nadir would arrange a boat for Jamshyd to sail and invited lots of local friends to join them on it.     South of France was the California of Europe at the time. Saint-Tropez was only a little distance away from Cannes and Nari Dastur even knew French actress and singer Brigitte Bardot who lived there at the time. Nadir Godrej and French culture gripped each other. He claims he started thinking in French. Today (apart from being the MD of Godrej Industries) he is the president of Alliance Francaise in Mumbai and the French government has also honoured him twice, including with the prestigious “The National Order of the Legion of Honour”. French Alliance Godrej also almost found love in Saint-Tropez. Well, almost, and it is no secret, for Nadir Godrej has written about it in his poem Inflight Movie, the beginning of which we have reproduced alongside. It is also a part of his second book of poetry about to be published in January.     Poetry apart, there are many more areas where Godrej dazzles. He is highly in demand in business forums as a speaker as he delivers his speeches in verse. Elder brother and chairman of Godrej Group Adi Godrej thinks his brother is “unusual” for a businessman and adds: “He is a very learned man in science, math and geography.”     Nadir Godrej’s first book — Life and Other Poems — was published in 1992. That was a slim volume; the new book is in the coffeetable format and is called Nadir Godrej’s Book of Poems. “Because most of these are not really poetry, but speeches in verse,” explains Godrej. Among his Indian influences Godrej counts poets (the late) Nissim Ezekiel and Vikram Seth. There’s also American poet Tim Steele, whose book Missing Measures Godrej had read to learn more about metre and rhyme. Then there is the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin as well as the Romantic era poets from England.     He could have been a serious poet, had he not been born in the Godrej family or had he not been to Stanford and then Harvard after a stint at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); he then also successfully led research on how to get fatty alcohol out of palm oil at Godrej. (Before joining MIT, Godrej had studied for a year at IIT Bombay).     In fact, Nadir Godrej could have been many things — but he actually loves to see himself as a “polymath”. “A jack of all trades if you want to call me that,” he says, “I am a generalist who is able to integrate a lot of functions together.”     One of the areas he excels in is math and mathematical puzzles. Saleem Ahmadullah, a long-time friend and also an independent director of Godrej Industries, says his son would often take his mathematical problems in school to Nadir Godrej for help. “For us, often asking Nadir about something is better than ‘googling’ about it. His general knowledge is immense and he is extremely clever.”     Ahmadullah recalls how Nadir solved a problem at Godrej Industries. “We used to have these long shutdowns for repair and maintenance and it would lead to loss of production. Nadir came up with a way to continue production and do the repairs at the same time.” Sibling Stories Today Nadir is part of a triumvirate along with elder brother Adi Godrej, nine years his senior, and Jamshyd Godrej, chairman Godrej & Boyce.     The brothers Adi and Nadir are a bit like rice and curry — very unlike each other and yet working well in tandem. “Adi thinks in Gujarati, but for me it’s mostly English or French,” says Nadir, who also speaks Hindi, Russian and German. The brothers were children of different decades. “I left for the US in 1963 when I was 17 and he was quite young then. We are much more in touch now as we work together,” says Adi Godrej.     So while Adi is the public face, Nadir has worked largely in the background solving problems for the company. For example, at the palm oil mill of Godrej Industries, Nadir is trying to figure out if biomass can be used to produce enough energy that the mill can actually give some back to the grid. “We are close to the point where green energy costs are about to be similar to thermal energy. While the initial capital costs in green energy are high, if we can fund them with dollar borrowings and then pay dollar interest rates and then compare the cost with the cost of imported coal, we will get a clearer view of the viability of green energy,” he says. “The key is to compare the dollar costs,” Nadir Godrej adds with the delight of a child who has just solved a puzzle.     Another problem that he would like to solve is to produce animal feed without using anything that can also be food for human beings. “High-fibre rice bran extractions is one answer,” he says. He is also working on creating a plant growth promoter homobrassenolide, from stigmasterol as a bio-similar. Plant growth promoters can be directly sprayed on fruits to enhance size. Against the Tide Nadir Godrej also revels in numbers and their peculiarities. His latest muse on the number scale is something called number-palindrome squares. Palindromes are word phrases or numbers that come out the same when spelled or read backwards. “I am working with number palindromes that are perfect squares. So 69696 is the smallest square odd-digit palindrome. Even digit palindromes are rarer as the middle digits have to be same and the smallest even digit palindrome that is also a perfect square is 698896.” (The square root of 69696 is 264 and that of 698896 is 836.) Nadir Godrej himself can be a puzzling subject for a writer, for his story can be approached from many angles. Take swimming, for instance. Godrej is fond of swimming so much that when visiting a group of islands he is wont to swim from one to another. He did it in Fiji and then again in Maldives and then also closer home from Mandwa to Gall Island, off the Mumbai coast. “And in Fiji I had to swim back as there was no transport. Later they told me the water was shark-infested,” says Godrej, obviously delighted at having surprised everyone. Nadir Godrej has also swam in the Dead Sea and in the Great Salt Lake in Utah in the US. “The Dead Sea water has 34% salt while the Great Salt Lake water has 26%. Ocean water has 3-4%. So you cannot really swim in the Dead Sea kind of water, just float,” he offers, and adds: “The Breach Candy club [in south Mumbai] swimming pool also uses half sea water, so I am kind of used to swimming in salty waters.” Corporate honcho Khusroo Suntook often swam with Nadir Godrej at the Breach Candy club. Suntook heads the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai’s Nariman Point, was with cosmetics major Lakme before the Tatas sold it to Unilever and was director of Tata retailing arm Trent Ltd till April 2013. An old friend, Suntook chooses to look beyond his swimming feats. “Well, his swimming was not so good, but he was always a stimulating company. He is a man of many parts and can talk about a range of subjects — from science to astronomy to languages. I remember we spent some time at the Mahabaleshwar club and he explained stuff about the stars,” he says. The Secret Passion Nadir Godrej has one secret passion that he can’t indulge in. It is acting. He was a member of the drama club at MIT in the early 1970s and acted regularly during his college days in the US. While he can’t go on stage now, he has found his own way of flirting with his passion — by delivering speeches in verse. “I am more interested in reciting. The performance is as important as the writing,” says Godrej, and adds that he writes proper poetry only when he is inspired. These days, he gets so many speaking invites that it is a problem as everyone expects him to speak in verse. “It takes time to write speeches in verse,” says Godrej. But clearly this is something he enjoys and the sheer volume of speeches that he has written in verse is a testimony to it — writing verses about economy and business and industry with equal aplomb and delivering them at diverse forums such as the All India Lquid Bulk Importers and Exporters Association or the University Institute of Chemical Technology. While it is different from poetry inspired by the south of France, it makes Nadir Godrej even more rare and different. It also makes him true to his name, which in Persian means unique. •:: Suman Layak ET 131208