Book Review - 1
A whole book. An autobiography of two hundred and
twenty-seven pages written on a hand held Blackberry phone!!! That in
itself, I believe is an achievement in an age where laptops or desktops make
life easier rather than crippling our fingers on small hand-held devices for
lengthy emails. Does John Sellens own a laptop? Last time I saw him in 2017, he
did. Oh, how he hated it. Used to be amused to find him offended with "the
stupid box". Yet, a teen-weeny palm sized Blackberry phone is what he
happily chose to write his autobiography on. I plan to reach out to Blackberry
and Guinness.
"Reels & Deals - Angling for Business", is an eye opener for me
into the person who I thought knew all about. My arrogance of that
"knowledge" has been cleanly tossed out of the proverbial
window. Reading about his life, his adventures, his experiences has just
about humbled me like nothing else before in my life of nearly five decades.
Achievements are simply best friends with John is what I realised from his
book. Having only heard tidbits in
passing about his time in Defence and the export market he tackled selling
defence products, reading about its inception and that at a very young age, is
a revelation. I like to believe am an avid reader but have never come across a
first hand description of behind the scenes mechanism of war artillery, its
handlers, problems that comes with it, diplomacy it demands, like in this book.
Shakespeare's play about the Celtic king Cymbaline may or may not be amongst
the most heard, read or seen but UK's Cymbaline radar seems to have gone
places, accompanied by John and how !!
Just days back, read a news that headlined "UK military successfully test
fires high powered laser beam". My first thought was, it would be
brilliant if UK used John Sellens presently to sell this technology to the
export market like he did the Cymbaline. He would have a ball and we would get
another book sharing his interactions with the current political powers that
be.
He not only successfully marketed EMI developments to countries most fear to
visit even now, he made life long friends out of them. Reminds me of a company
owner close to both John and I. Having signed an agreement with a friendly Iraq
to supply safety products as well as setup manufacturing facility in the
country, he refused to step into Baghdad out of sheer fear of the place and
it's people. He even got the authorities to produce visa into the country about
four times within a year. Even after that whole year of polite invitations from
the Iraqi authorities he wouldn't budge and kept coming up with new excuses.
Sadly, time passed and the agreement fell through. It was a great disadvantage
that John Sellens the driving force behind our export division had retired by
then. With him involved I know it for a fact, we would have made millions from
the exports to Iraq.
Our former employer used to introduce John as 'The man who knows everybody'. He
does know EVERYBODY. Both John and I being responsible for the export business,
he was the one who taught me about the foreign market, mainly the GCC and how
to deal with them. He shared his knowledge and experiences about not only the
respective business scenario in the various countries but also the contacts and
his reach has stunned me many a times. I find he is being humble in depicting
that part of him in the book.
John always came across as a kind, soft-spoken intellectual, discerning
personality with a sharp wit, firm in his dealings, which reflects in the book.
His autobiography also reveals an entirely different side of him. How he has
stood up to power every time he had to say "no", adventures he has
had and that too at times during war in the region, high level people he has
met in life and troubles he got himself into, are absolutely unbelievable.
Scary and hilarious at times. Flying with 2 Mig 21s as escort to do export
business. What an exciting life. To think this kind jovial man has been
into such dangerous and unkind places on the planet that we commoners conceive
as war zones, survived and lives to tell the tale.
Taken into a war zone amidst the firing, escaping it, being lined up against a
wall to be shot at, thrown death threats at, facing police raids, being
arrested, keeping his integrity while being pursued by media for information in
return for money, surviving murder attempts, going into the deep Amazon
jungles, staying in a blood spattered room, being friends with highly placed
and dangerous people, being provided with twenty four hour guards by a local
whilst he slept in a foreign country, hobnobbing with movie personalities,
flying first class on the Concorde, having clandestine meetings with security
services in his country, he might as well be describing a normal Tuesday
in the life of a super spy at MI6 instead of selling war technologies developed
by UK to almost all countries on the planet (blames to my perceptions of the
MI6 completely and totally lies at the feet of the movie makers)
However, interesting and fast paced as the book is, found it lacking that many
details could not be shared due to security reasons. Makes one feel frustrated,
wanting to know more. There is definitely material enough for a part two of the
book. However, from my experience of having John as my mentor for export
business in the Fire Protection Industry, he is one of the very few, who is
successful at bringing in great business and still have his dignity and
integrity intact after having to deal with people of unscrupulous methods and
corruption.
His take on mechanisms of doing business with a particular country, its growth
or lack of it, its people, is refreshingly candid.
We started out as colleagues and within days unknown to both of us, he
automatically turned into being my mentor and the best one at that in my twenty
eight years of corporate life. His integrity, wisdom, vision, business acumen
has taught me lifelong lessons and he continues to inspire and motivate me.
Today I am honoured that John considers me a friend and we keep in touch
regularly.
Impatient to read the next book from "Captain" John Sellens, of which
he is already into few chapters I note from his email.
Ps: I may hold it against him, that he used my favourite kind of fish the mackerel, which I savoured since child hood, as his BAIT.
An honoured mentee,
Vilsy V Alappat
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