Indian Corporate Etiquette is now available at Bangalore Book festival in the book stall of Pothi.com

It can also be purchased from ebay.in

Third from right @ banglore-book-festival

I do not wish to take any credit for this story. It’s a folklore, narrated to me by a wise man. Only the conclusions are mine.

It happened once that a King was told by his astrologer to divide his belongings between his two sons in a certain proportion. This will, the astrologer said, ensure recovery from the problems that the kingdom was facing. The king decided to conform.

However he got stuck while dividing his elephants. The ratio of division was:
Give 50% to elder son
Give 2/3 of remaining to younger son.
And after this, the King needed at least one for himself and one for the Queen, too.

The problem was that the King had 17 elephants and there was no way he could give 50% to his elder son. The king resorted to calling upon the help of his wise man (aka Birbal, tenaliraman, etc). Faced by the problem, the wise man said:
“Out of respect for you my lord, let me gift you one elephant.” And he proceeded to merge his own elephant into the herd thus making a total of eighteen elephants.

He now proceeded to divide them thus:
50% to elder son: 9 given to elder son
2/3 of remianing to younger son: The younger son was given 6 out of remaining 9
This left three elephants, out of which the wise man gave one to the King and Queen each. Thus left was the eighteenth elephant.
“And now my lord” said the wise man, “I see that since everyone’s requirement has been taken care of, I would humbly like to take back this eighteenth elephant for it is of no further use to you.”

Thus the eighteenth elephant was duly returned to its owner.

I feel that God is this eighteenth elephant. I you think it exists, it can help you solve some problems. If you don’t, well you can still solve your problems albeit with a little difficulty and some help. It anyway is a notional concept.