My mother was furious when I joined A&M magazine, right after my MBA. In November 1992 my starting salary as a correspondent was Rs 2,500, less than half of what freshly minted MBAs were making then. It was measly even by the standards of those times. My mum pointed out, rightly, that in a short time I could have had a house and a car if I joined an FMCG or better still a foreign bank — a dream job in 1992. It was technically pre-liberalisation; so all the goodies of an open economy from Coca-Cola to private banks and lots of jobs hadn’t been unleashed.