Chapter 3: Red against White - a Mukt & Jia scoop

“What’s the word on the referendum, mate?” George looked up from his whiskey and visibly recoiled from the latest entrant to the Sunday Club lounge who had thrown this question to the air, expecting someone, anyone to answer. No one did, busy as they were in their particularly balmy June afternoon beers, gin and tonics or as in George’s case, fine single malts.

Perhaps no one cared enough to answer the question, either. The Brexit Referendum, as it was being called, was to take place in a couple of days, on the 23rd of June 2016. Except for the media and the activist groups highlighted in the media, most others hadn’t yet given much thought to which way they should vote. It’s not that they didn’t have an opinion, but in most cases, George used to tell whoever cared for his opinion, it was that they thought it wouldn’t matter, one way or the other.

As for George, he had decided to vote for Brexit. While he didn’t feel that Britain’s exit from the European Union could change anything in his own life, he felt that since he was going to vote, what with him being the responsible citizen, he might as well vote with his small set of friends who had all decided that Britain’s best course was to go all alone.

The rational part of George’s mind, if he chose to listen to it, was saying something else though. He worked actively with a multi-cultural, multi-national group at his workplace. In fact, the company he worked for was not even headquartered in Europe. It was an Indian company that boasted of employees from 41 nationalities, each with a different culture, set of values, and native language. What all of them did share however, was a love for technology and deep respect for diversity and staying together amidst innate differences.

NanoIdeas had started as a nanotechnology innovation company in India more than a decade ago and had only gone from strength to strength in all these years. Most of the original founders had left the company over the years as it changed its focus from nanotechnology to more broad-based innovation geared at improving the balance in the environment and society at large. ESG Investors, a new breed that invested their money in companies that scored high on Environmental, Social, and Governance factors, had backed the current CEO, Jia, to the hilt as she drove NanoIdeas’ efforts in developing technology that helped global companies counter the unwanted byproducts of their growth.

Apart from her decision to lead NanoIdeas into becoming a thought leader in technology that could enable ESG focused (and not just compliant) growth, Jia also wanted her company’s work to be recognized and hopefully emulated at a global level. She had decided to move to London pretty soon after she joined NanoIdeas as its co-founder. As the President of Global Innovation Outreach (GIO) department that she had created, Jia wanted to be centrally located to not just take her work to developed economy companies that had contributed the most to where the world was headed, in good ways and bad, but also to connect with fellow innovators worldwide who had better access to resources that could facilitate groundbreaking innovation in technology.

As Jia’s Chief of Staff in the London office of NanoIdeas ever since she moved in around the time of the Great Financial Crisis in 2008, George had gone on to know her really well. When Jia hired him, George, like many others he knew, had just been handed the pink slip after having worked with the infamous Lehman Brothers Investment Bank for his entire career of nearly two decades at the time, ever since he graduated from the prestigious London School of Business and joined the bank as a management trainee.

He knew nothing of what this new company did at the time, his work profile having been mostly centered around arranging and managing money. Jia and most of her colleagues at NanoIdeas who had set up the London office, knew nothing about money and George thought that providence couldn’t have made a better match. Over the years, George had learnt a little more about technology and Jia’s passion for creating a difference by leaving a legacy that would enable the world, as we know it, to last more than another generation or two. Jia in turn, knew more about the language of money, how investors looked at new ventures, what they need to hear to put their money into something not in vogue.

George's relationship with Jia had extended beyond work for a few years now. From Chief of Staff at work, he had soon turned into the one friend that Jia could turn to for all things London that she needed help on. Being at the top of the chain of command, Jia found it difficult to let her hair down in front of most of her colleagues. For some reason though, she had hit it off differently with George. Despite their age difference (Jia was nearly fifteen years younger), Jia found it easy to hang out with George, confide in him, and even go crazy in a pub or two, always knowing that George had her back.

George appreciated this special relationship and was proud of his friend and boss, not just for the leader she was at work, but more importantly for the kind-hearted, practically emotional, and emotionally intelligent person that she was. George had opened his heart, life, family, and home to Jia with his twin daughters idolizing her and looking forward to every visit that Jia made to their modest home in the outskirts of London. Rita, George’s wife, pampered Jia no end and apart from stuffing her with her excellent cooking, coached her on the London society life every time she met her. With her Soho Fashion Consultant days that she had given up after her daughters got into High School, Rita’s advice was something that Jia really fancied and valued.

George could feel Jia’s gratitude for this relationship that she shared with him. It wasn’t that Jia’s treatment of George at work was preferential or any different from how she was with her other colleagues. Nevertheless, she had that ease when she was around him, given he was the closest to family she had. George was the only confidante Jia seemed to have, at least as far as he knew. And needless to mention, he knew things about her, more than anyone else at work or in her life did. He knew, for example, that Jia’s decision to move to London was not purely professional.

Jia was looking for her brother. George was really surprised when she had mentioned Mukt, her brother, for the first time. It was after his twins had settled down for the night following an uncharacteristically late thanksgiving dinner, a good two years after she had settled in London. Jia had had a little more than her quota of two drinks of gin and tonic. George and Rita were relaxed too, recounting tales from their courtship, some of which they hadn’t shared with anyone else except each other. Before Jia let it slip that she had come to London to look for her brother, George and almost everyone at the London office had thought that she had no living relative and was pretty much a loner as far as her social life was concerned.

Even when she did mention her brother and the fact that she had been looking for him for the past few years, George didn’t know if Mukt was lost somewhere, or had lost touch with Jia, or was simply lost in something that he couldn’t get out of. Despite what Jia shared that day, she wasn’t very clear about the details. George and Rita knew better than to probe at the time.

George was concerned, though. He wanted to help Jia in any way that he could. He spoke to the old-timers in the company, those who knew Jia before she came to London. He figured that Jia had been extremely close to Mukt and after the death of their parents, the two were inseparable and the only people looking out for each other. He could also find out that the last time any of Jia’s colleagues had heard of or met Mukt, was ten years ago, back in 2006 when Jia had just about joined NanoIdeas.