“I’m An Extremist”: A Day In The Life Of A Startup Bad Cop
By: Abhineeta Raghunath
Tags: Life Lessons, Startup, Culture

“Er, Shastry ji?” I ask “Are you sure you want to call yourself that?”



The closer we get to Dussera, the more Ravan-like Shastry ji looks. That moustache has never been more conspicuous on anyone else. His left hand clenches and a tattoo of a scorpion dances on the skin, “I’m an extremist,” he says again, this time even more reassuringly “Because you’ll find that I’m always right.”



True- several eavesdroppers around the office involuntarily nod their heads- Shastry ji is always right. Not politically, nor morally, but by an overuse of common-sense. Shastry ji is not only the most perceptive individual in our office ecosystem, he also does that thankless job of enforcing the light of logic into our lives.



Ask anybody what they know about Shastry ji, and you’ll hear only one thing. In the unforgettable words of one of our employees Sabista Khan, “Shastry ji is very strict,” and her good friend Akansha Khandelwal adds “And he’s also strict.” As you can very well guess, he doesn’t have many friends at work.



“Look madam,” he says “I can give you a list of people who have a problem with me. Why don’t you go and ask them what kind of a person I am?”



Now, I know for a fact that several people in the office have always had a bone to pick with him. People have fought with him on their first meeting, and some people just can’t handle him. And here’s why- Shastry ji is always right. His objective view and foresight makes him an asset to the company, and he ensures that he’s always the bad guy who puts the best practices in place, even though people around might not like it. He’ll force feed you the medicine you need, if it’s the last thing he ever does.

“Madam,” he says again “When I wake up in the morning and think of all the dirty work I do, I don’t feel like doing it. But when I get started, I think- if I can finish this much, then I can finish everything”. Saying so, he opens an Excel sheet. The number of rows and columns in front of me gives me type-blindness. I blink fast about two dozen times before my eyes can properly adjust to the screen. I see some phrases that make my dimaag ki batti light up. There’s a whole list of things fixed- operational, logistical, legal, you name it.

“How long have you been working here?” I ask again. The answer is 7 months. This man basically sanitized the foundation for 486 employees in 21 offices and 3 business centres in 7 months. If someone put that in my job description, I’d go blind with panic. No wonder people talk about him like he’s some kind of headmaster.



But obviously, he hasn’t done the world’s best job in covering up his good side. Ask the CEO- Jas Gulati’s eyes crinkle and his face lights up in a semi-goofy smile “Shastry is a sweetheart, man!” he says.



Supriya Sharma, his protégé (who also got off on the wrong foot with him, to begin with), attests to the finesse of his guidance. Supriya and her mentor Shastry ji, share a relationship based on trust, a passion for the work they do, and their shared love for serving society.



“Wait, what?” I ask, “Shastry ji is big on philanthropy?”. Never have I met anyone with so many teddy-bears hiding in their closet. Proving Mr. Gulati right, Sweetheart Shastry ji is indeed the kind of man he doesn’t show himself to be- when the day is done and nobody is looking at him, Shastry ji thinks about the various ways to put an end to women and child trafficking. “Are you doing anything about it?” I ask, to which he says “I don’t want to do it before I can do it right.”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s say I save a child today- do I have the resources to protect them for the foreseeable future? Or do I know someone I can absolutely trust to care for them? Not yet. So I’m working on it.”

Shastry ji seems very conflicted when he talks about problems that are not work-related. And this is something that I’m unable to translate into my notes. I put my notepad away and I mull over my conversation with him for a while. As I walk around in the office, I spot Arpan Ramtek, who happens to be #2 on Shastry ji’s “People Who Want To Fight With Me” list. Now I feel like I have a bone to pick with him.

“Hey Arpan?” I interrupt him while he’s working “What do you think of Shastry ji?”

Arpan looks caught out- like he is supposed to look for a politically correct answer. But then he admits “I used to have lots of problems with him. Not anymore, though.”

“What changed?” I ask. “I realized he was right,” Arpan says “Our perceptions aligned. When we were a startup, we did things differently. Sometimes, we did things even if we didn’t know how it would play out in the long run. When Shastry ji came in, we switched gears. He came in to help us consolidate the way we did things, and that meant I had to change a lot of things. But now, I’ve come to trust him because I know he always calculates the risks for us.”

What Arpan said reiterated Shastry ji’s inclination to think ahead. If holding himself back from saving trafficked children right now makes him a thoughtful and good-hearted man, exercising control and precaution in business can NOT make him a bad person. People may not want to hear what Shastry ji has to say because they are hard pills to swallow, but there is nobody else a startup like NowFloats can count on to tell them right from wrong. For a company that defines itself by the passion that it has, Shastry ji’s pragmatism is like a parent’s advice to a teenager- nobody’s going to listen to him unless he exercises force.

I look at Arpan and say “Fight it out with him anyway,” and there was only one way to do it. Shastry ji and Arpan found a very NowFloats-like solution to resolve their differences. They had it out in an arm-wrestling match. “Go easy on me,” Shastry ji says “I have two children at home!”, and as the expressions of fun, delight, and victory change on their faces, one thing is very clear- You can’t beat Shastry ji at anything!