Book review: Afterness: Home and Away by former HUL chairman Ashok S. Ganguly is a frank autobiography with a dash of humour

Ashok Ganguly served as chairman of HUL from 1980-90. (Image: Afterness cover image/Penguin)

Ashok S. Ganguly, who was the chairman of Hindustan Lever Limited from 1980 to 1990, and a member of the Unilever board from 1990 to 1997, has chronicled his professional and personal journeys in an absorbing memoir titled Afterness: Home and Away (Ebury Press, 2022). The book spans eight decades of his eventful life in India and elsewhere. For those who are curious about the title, Ganguly explains that afterness refers to “the misty musings of a lifetime, near the end of the innings, the joys and sadness, people and events, looking back, just that, only once!”

Ganguly’s recollections of his childhood in Bombay (now Mumbai) are marked by nostalgia and self-deprecatory humour. He was not particularly interested in studies but enjoyed playing cricket with his friends. He writes sheepishly about the time when he was upset with his mother “after receiving a good thrashing…for some lapse” and decided to run away from home.

He ended up whiling a few hours by the sea with fisher folk unloading fish from a boat. The boatmen invited him to take a dip in the sea with them. When his father reached the spot, he was basking in the sun after the dip and his undergarments were drying on the rocks. His father did not scold him. When they reached home, his mother welcomed him with a hug. Ganguly writes, “In retrospect, I am ashamed that I was not repentant of my behaviour, and secretly hoped Ma would be more careful in the future, scolding me or disciplining my wayward ways.”

It is refreshing to see the author – who has held board-level positions with British Airways, Wipro, Tata AIG Life Insurance Co., and Firstsource Solutions – opening up about incidents that might shock people who know him only for his expertise and have no clue about how mischievous he was as a child. On one occasion, he did not show his report card to his parents. He found the rubber block of his father’s signature facsimile, took an ink pad, and stamped the signature on his report card. He skipped classes at school, walked around the city, and smoked.

Ganguly’s father and mother grew up in Patna and Benaras (Varanasi), respectively, so he had plenty of opportunities to visit those cities during his summer holidays. However, he loved Bombay because he found it cleaner and more cosmopolitan than the other two. The book captures how the author’s affection for Bombay continued into his adult life and made him turn down lucrative opportunities to teach in the United States – after he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign – and to settle down in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Ganguly offers a lively account of his student days on the American campus. His mother had made him promise that he would not eat beef or have alcohol. He was able to honour the promise. Adjusting to the new environment took time. He failed a surprise test in the first week of his arrival. His professor broke the news that the answers were accurate but “they could have been condensed into one paragraph”. Ganguly had rambled on for four pages. Friendships forged during this period and celebrations of Indian festivals on campus kept the homesickness at bay.

The author writes, “While in America, my friends and I spent many pleasurable evenings holding the anxious hands of Caucasian girlfriends and spinning tales of future events. Amateur palm reading is mostly about good tidings, with a few downsides thrown in to seem authentic.” He also devotes several pages in this book to discussing his arranged marriage with Connie, the daughter of a family friend. Their travels throughout Europe, when he was sent there for work, brought them close to each other. They experienced the hospitality of locals, went to concerts and performances, made a lot of friends, and created memories to last them a lifetime.

Ganguly’s frankness makes this book a pleasurable read. He does not try to impress with his credentials or qualities. He tells a story that is honest and entertaining. This is, therefore, one of those rare business books that can be enjoyed even by people who are not from the industry that the author belongs to. He does write about his work in research and development with Unilever but does not get into technicalities, for he knows that being able to hold audience attention is key.

This book also reconstructs India’s post-independence history for contemporary readers who may not know what the economy looked like prior to liberalization in 1991. He recalls times when one had to wait for several years to get a phone connection even after registration, when India was faced with a shortage of food grains, and when there was a major foreign exchange crisis. He writes about meeting Indira Gandhi thanks to Pupul Jayakar and being asked by Rajiv Gandhi to join politics. Many famous people make their way into this book – Datta Samant, Mother Teresa, Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, Barack Obama, and Margaret Thatcher.

Read this book to learn about Ganguly’s hilarious experiences with job interviews, his work with the Reserve Bank of India, the not-so-subtle rivalries between the Dutch and the English who work for Unilever, and Ganguly’s candid revelations about the frustration he experienced as a nominated Rajya Sabha member. He humbly concludes, “My exposure to a wider spectrum of Indian politics reinforced my long-held belief that I was unsuited for it as a profession.”