Description

About the Book

A fascinating account of that period of transition between the 1930s and 1970s in India when big business, much of it at the time in the hands of the British, was undergoing change. Told through brief biographies rich in anecdote and the management experiences of over 50 persons who worked in such business houses and plantations, Office Chai, Planter’s Brew takes the reader through a period when the foundations were laid for today’s giant businesses and the management practices in them.
It is a book as much for the general reader seeking a peep into the lives and times of British and Indians who once worked closely together and made the best of it despite their differences, as it is a book for businessmen, managers, students of business and management, and business associations and educational institutions. Compiled by a veteran journalist and a long-time freelance writer, Office Chai, Planter’s Brew is an easy-to-read narrative that’s both human stories as well learning experiences in environments ranging from Calcutta and Assam to Cochin and the Nilgiris, from Madras to the mofussil.

About the Author

S Muthiah, educated in Ceylon, India and the U.S., has been a journalist for over 60 years, is a prolific writer of non-fiction and a chronicler of the European era in South India, with a focus on Madras.
Author of around 40 books, he has, besides his stories of Madras, written the histories of institutions like Parry’s, Simpson’s, Spencer’s, the United Planters’ Association of Southern India, and the Madras Club as well as social histories of ‘communities’ like the Indo-Lankans, the Chettiars, the Anglo-Indians, and, now, the executives in British businesses in India between the 1930s and 1970s. His biographies include books on industrialists A M M Arunachalam of the Murugappa Group and M.Ct. Chidambaram Chettyar, and a military legend, Lt. Gen. Inder Singh Gill.
Ranjitha Ashok is a freelance writer of long standing, she was for many years a humour columnist with Madras Musings. A collection of her columns together with the cartoons by Biswajit Balasubramaniam that accompanied them was published as Chennai-Latté, A Madras Brew. She is also the author of A World of Difference - Madhuram Narayanan Centre for Exceptional Children.