Jakartan experience taught me there was a 5th dimension to learning: Arun Jain

The family won’t forget the ‘Indonesian safari’ in a hurry. What saved the day was Arun’s own stoic faith in himself and the resilience his religion had taught him. Then there was yoga and meditation and the 11-day-long solitude, ‘‘almost like vipassana’’.

‘‘The experience has strengthened my inner resolve. I could have bribed my way out, but didn’t. I can’t pay a bribe, that’s why I came to Chennai from New Delhi to do business. It is much easier to do business here.’’

Reconstructing the sequence of events, he recalls the 28th-floor board room of Bank Arth Graha: ‘‘Rajiv (Malhotra, the Polaris vice-president) and I were shut up inside and very scared. We called up the Indian Embassy and they responded promptly.’’ Charge d’ Affaire Amar Sinha sent over Indian embassy personnel to rescue the duo, ‘‘but the Arth Graha CEO rebuffed him and sent him back’’.

The next to visit them was a police officer. ‘‘He came into the board room and asked me, ‘Are you kidnapped?’ and took some photos with us in the board room to make it seem as if a normal meeting was on.’’

‘‘It was like a relapse into history, back to the 16th or 17th century, when kings used to go for negotiations to other rulers’ courts and ended up as prisoners. Remember how Aurangazeb captured Shivaji?’’

Polaris has come out of the whole ordeal unscathed and the Indonesian encounter is certainly no reflection on the Indian software industry’s credibility, asserts Arun. ‘‘We have never exploited anybody like this. Even when the Enron deal broke down, there was no rancour,’’ he points out.

‘‘They (Indonesians) did not know how to handle the situation. Their market is big but they don’t know how to handle sophisticated technology.’’

The stay in the detention was sobering though. ‘‘There were ten cells in all, with a living room, television and cooking facilities. With time hanging heavy, he did what many an Indian before him had done.

Proudly displaying two closely-scrawled notebooks, he says, ‘‘I filled these up; quite a change from working on a computer! The prison dairies contain minutely-detailed strategies on Polaris’ future. It was like an unscheduled vacation.

There were quite a few interesting people in the detention centre including a firebrand local activist and a British consultant who had formerly been with MRF, India. ‘‘He told me he had been there for 40 days but the British embassy had done nothing to help him.’’

The flight back home after the release was ‘‘a truly liberating experience, literally. The first thought that crossed my mind was, ‘Now I am out of there and they can’t get me anymore’.’’

Arun sees his ordeal as the time for Indian corporate industry to network and create a ‘negative list’; to know who the bad customers are. ‘‘I’ve been talking to Kiran Karnik and Narayana Moorthy and we have decided to look at the whole region differently.’’

Back in Chennai, Manju Jain had been on a pilgrimage. ‘‘There was this fear that he was in custody and it was like in the movies. I didn’t break into tears but I spent a tortured night. I had the gut feeling he would be back soon. For the first time in my life, I visited so many temples.’’ It was Arun himself who called her from Jakarta to inform her of his release. She was on her way to Puttabarthi at that time.

‘‘I was thankful it was all over, so were my son and three-year-old daughter. Finally, we could all be together again’’, is how she sums up.