august 15th, 2006
i am delighted indra nooyi has become head of pepsi.
but why is it that even such an obviously intelligent person as her feels obligated to fall back on 'secular' pandering? it turns out that when she was asked some time ago whether she'd become the ceo of pepsi, she replied 'inshallah'.
this is a strikingly contrived response for a tamil woman from chennai. tamil women from chennai are not in the habit of going around saying 'inshallah'. and it's not that she spent so much time in north india to pick up (what i am told is) the hindi habit of saying this.
so, it's either
a) a fabrication by a journalist
b) a labored attempt at... something (not quite sure what) by ms. nooyi
unless, that is, mr. nooyi is a mohammedan. in which case it stands entirely to reason. as a neo-convert she has to say these things. a bit like, i suppose, another famous indian woman ceo, naina lal kidwai of hsbc whose husband is a mohammedan.
10 comments:
Hi Rajeev,
Here is what I found on the internet about Indra’s religious background.
http://hinduismtoday.com/archives/1998/7/1998-7-17.shtml
She Met Pepsi's Challenge
Joint family by her side, Nooyi shines in business
By Lavina Melwani, New York
If you ever visit the Connecticut home of the Senior Vice President of Strategy Planning for PepsiCo, do remember to take your shoes off before entering. If you forget, at least remember to take them off before entering the large puja room where a light always burns and the air is perfumed with incense. PepsiCo may be as American as mom and apple pie, but Indra K. Nooyi, a powerful executive of this US$31 billion company, is a Hindu and proud of her ancient heritage.
"The great thing about the US is that as long as you're darn good at what you do, people will accept you," observes Nooyi. She relishes the creative challenges of her job at PepsiCo: "My goal is to make sure we are constantly renewing ourselves. When you're ten million dollars in size, it's easy to grow at ten percent. We are 31 billion dollars, which means we have to add $3 billion of revenue every year. It's like adding a company the size of Hershey to PepsiCo every year." Nooyi came to the US from Chennai to earn a Master of Public Policy degree from Yale University. She was Senior Vice President of Strategy Planning for Motorola before joining PepsiCo, and has made it to the top the old-fashioned way, through sheer hard work.
Although hard work, ingenuity and boldness all are important factors for success, Nooyi believes that her Hindu culture is a very powerful anchor for survival and success in this country. She keeps an image of Ganesha in her office, and in fact, some PepsiCo officials who visited India and received images of Ganesha there, having learned that He is the God of Auspicious Beginnings, now keep images in the office. Nooyi thinks nothing of going to a PepsiCo board meeting in a sari, for she believes the corporate world appreciates people who are genuine. "Be yourself" is her magic mantra. "I'm so secure in myself, I don't have to be American to play in the corporate life."
A staunch vegetarian, Nooyi has never tasted meat or drunk alcohol. She says, "Now when we go out, even my chairman will tell everybody to make sure there's vegetarian food for Indra." A Hindu brahmin, Nooyi has always seen the world through the prism of her mother's faith and beliefs, and calls her the guiding light in her life. The family are Aiyar Saivites but also devotees of the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram in Tamil Nadu. Her mother-in-law is equally religious, with an affinity for Guruvayur, the Krishna temple in Kerala, and the Subramanyam Temple near Mangalore.
Says Nooyi, "Our family is so deeply religious, that whenever anything goes wrong they will pray and pledge a visit to the temple. So whenever we go to India, we spend all our time in temples, executing all the promises my mother and my mother-in-law made for the various illnesses or problems in the house!"
Nooyi recalls that while growing up in Chennai, which has temples on almost every street corner, prayer and ritual were the markers which gave meaning to life: "Our house had a very large temple room, and my mother used to pray three or four hours every morning. So the house was a deeply religious house, and every occasion of life and death was observed with great care and exacting standards."
Nooyi's husband, Raj, a partner in a management-consulting firm, travels five days a week, so she is fortunate to have her married brother and sister living in New York. The three of them literally fight to have their mother stay with them. She believes three generations living under one roof is wonderful, the way it was meant to be. "Now my mother lives with me, and my kids see her praying, so they too sit down and pray with her. Two days ago when my little daughter was feeling sick, she went and lay on my mother's lap. She chanted hymns and caressed her; after a while my daughter said she felt much better."
During the day, Nooyi is often exposed to the pressure cooker world of international business, but when she enters her home, it is like entering a sanctuary of calm. She says Carnatic music plays in their home 18 hours a day, and the feeling is much like being in a temple. Does she think her religious convictions help her to do a better job in the corporate world? "I don't know about a better job, but it certainly makes me calm," she says. "There are times when the stress is so incredible between office and home, trying to be a wife, mother, daughter-in-law and corporate executive. Then you close your eyes and think about a temple like Tirupati, and suddenly you feel 'Hey--I can take on the world.' Hinduism floats around you, and makes you feel somehow invincible."
Is it tough being a mother and a corporate executive? Nooyi admits that it is a very difficult task: "You can walk away from the fact that you're a corporate executive, but you can't walk away from the fact that you are a mom. In terms of being a mother and a corporate executive, the role of mom comes first." What sees her through tough times? "My family and my belief in God. If all else fails, I call my mother in India when she's there--and wake her up in the middle of the night--and she listens to me. And she probably promises God a visit to Tirupati!"
Pepsi details: It's the world's number two soft-drink maker, after Coca-Cola. But beverages make up just one-half of sales for the diversified food and drink company. The other half comes from Frito-Lay, the world's leader in snack chips. PepsiCo's 1997 sales reached US$21 billion. Its employees number 142,000, while Coca-Cola has a mere 29,500. PepsiCo is listed No. 31 in the Fortune 500 most wealthy companies in the US.
Rajeev,
Really !
You need to spend more time with North Indians than that Sashi Tharoor.
Rajeev,
FYI... last month Nooyi became a director of New York federal reserve bank...
which is one of the another worst organization in US or in the world...
as she is selecting only these types of organizations for her career,
may be something wrong somewhere...
DarkStorm
Can you post something when Nooyi sounded like a Mohammedan or provide me with a link. I would really appreciate it.
I was just wondering as to how its really a co-incidence that Nooyi becomes CEO of Pepsi while the cola controversy is raging in India.
Also, as always how her Christian education, the fact being that she went to X-tian college in Chennai, keeps coming up...as if educating thru Xtian schools is the ONLY way one can achieve any mark in life.
BTW, she must be or is US citizen, so no prize guessing where her priorities lie and Pepsi is just another junk-food company, how does it matter to India or in fact Indians whether a person of Indian descent becomes its leader...
Moreover, right now the media is going gaga over her, but she could well keep Carly Fiorina's example in mind...as to how if you don't perform or meet the media's over-hyped expectations, it will decimate you in no time...basically you are as good as your well-done last job.
Also, I would luv to hear as to what she might have to say about the cola-giants rampant use of water resources in India, that has consequently resulted in water-table going down in many regions...I guess we should all just convert our lifestyles to accomodate these MNC's junk-food products and as a matter of fact stop drinking water...substituting it with these colas.
relax, guys. if i wanted to attack hindis, i wouldn't do it through snide remarks, i'd plunge in feet-first. fools rushing in where angels fear to tread and all that good stuff.
no, i genuinely am under the impression that hindis are prone to uttering 'inshallah' at the drop of a hat. this comes from reading, for instance, the likes of 'a suitable boy'. where it is clear that the gangetic-plain native is influenced by mohammedan ideas.
southerners on the other hand are much more afflicted by christist mythology and symbols. we might be prone to say 'crucify' someone, or talk about 'original sin' or other christist metaphors.
if i am mistaken about the hindi propensity to use mohammedan metaphors, i stand corrected. but i have always wondered why in gujarat there is the 'allah bund' which was thrown up by an earthquake. why isn't it 'eswar bund' for instance?
this is just like 'rama's bridge' is being called 'adam's bridge' by white guys and we have accepted the christist mythology.
DarkStorm said>>>>>> Siva, isnt this article good enough ?
Where is it? I don’t see any article here.
DarkStorm said>>>>>> Mira nair is southIndian BTW, she said that in an interview. LIke Arundhati Roy is. And shobha warrier is. And karunanidhi is.
Isn’t that bitch Arundhati Roy is from Waste Bengal? Besides this lunatic bitch claims that she is a “mobile republic.” What a stupid juvenile mind she has?
I have read some of the items Shobha Warrier wrote and I did not see anything psedosecular in it. May be she did write some crap which I haven’t read.
There is no such thing as a mohammedan. Please don your research before commenting. I believe you meant muslim.
if there's no such thing as a mohammedan, then obviously you're not one. then what is your problem?
by the way, there's no such thing as a kafir, but mohammedans keep referring to some mythical creatures known as kafirs. i don't think they have done their research. i believe the right term is 'human being'.
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