After the board of directors of the Kokan Mercantile Co-operative Bank finished their meeting, on Saturday, there was one more item on the agenda that detained them: the felicitation of an employee who was retiring that day. Not any senior executive but one who had started off at the bank as a security guard and was retiring as a peon. Adding to the uniqueness of this felicitation was the fact that of the 37 years that this employee had worked at the bank, 31 had been spent challenging the State.

When such employees retire, most managements heave a sigh of relief. But no one in the Kokan Mercantile Bank is relieved that Farooq Mapkar is retiring. Indeed, they can’t visualise a workplace without him. “Ideal employee”, “more than perfect”, are descriptions used frequently by his seniors for him.