Blank fire

Inaugurations and keynote addresses can be a way of settling scores, senior corporate lawyer O P Vaish told an audience at a conference on the new companies Bill at which he was doing both. He recalled an incident when he as an organiser settled scores with a minister. The minister was fine with inaugurating the event but not very comfortable about making a speech. Vaish had assured him that there would be a prepared speech, he just had to read it. Recalling the incident, Vaish said, “The first two pages of the speech talked about the environment, how it was in bad shape and so on. At the end of the second page, there was a line saying ‘I want to highlight six points that we need to do to make this better’. When the minister turned the page, it was blank. The minister looked at me. ‘You are on your own, sir,’ I told him. Now, you guys have put me in a similar situation,” the octogenarian told his laughing audience.