B M Khaitan, 1927-2019, former Chairman of Williamson Magor.

The first thing that I felt on setting foot in 4 Mangoe Lane in Calcutta in 2012 where Williamson Magor has its premises is the enormous respect in which its Chairman, Mr. Brij Mohan Khaitan, was held.  You could feel this respect from the security guards at the gate all the way through to the receptionist, lift operator and his secretary and on into Mr. Khaitan’s office where we met. Immediately on meeting Mr Khaitan I was struck by the peace that seems to emanate from him.  I guess I should not have been surprised as it is not uncommon to find this peace in elderly people who have accepted their lot in life, whether it has been full of success, failure or a mixed bag.  And, boy oh boy, what a wonderfully interesting and satisfying life I learnt he has led.Williamson Magor (www.wmtea.com) is one of the world’s largest tea producers with plantations and operations in India (Assam and West Bengal) as well as Vietnam and Uganda. I should also add this is my third podcast episode where I have used Speechify (https://speechify.com/) to turn my written word into speech using AI with an Australian voice.  Apologies for any imperfections but certainly my experience so far is that AI can read far better than me.Please note that these interviews took place some time ago - over 25 years ago in the case of the South East Asian life story book and around 10 to 15 years ago in the case of the two Indian life story books.  However, their stories are correct to the time of the interviews and the objective is to demonstrate the entrepreneurial skills they exhibited at the time of the interviews in building their businesses.