Oberoi founder started Monday, 09.13.2010, (GMT+5.5) New Delhi: Ral Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi, the founder chairman of Oberoi Hotels and Resorts, India's second-largest hotel company, with 35 luxury hotels in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Egypt, Australia and Hungary, started his career as a clerk with a salary of Rs 50 per month in 1922 at Hotel Cecil in Shimla. Oberoi, 2 college dropout, came to Shimla from the small town of Bhaun in Pakistan to seek employment and stayed in a one-room tenement, ten feet by nine feet, in the hotel premises. This has been revealed in a coffee table book ‘Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hal( Every House Says Something) published by the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Department. Tourism Department Director Dr Arun Sharma has prepared the book after ten months of research. “The book was released by state Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal in Shimla recently, a HP government press statement said here today. Oberoi August 15, 1898-May 3, 2002) became a jack of all trades-Manager, clerk and storekeeper and pleased superiors with hard work and integrity. As a result, when British manager of the hotel, Earnest Clarke and his wife Gertrude, decided to go to London on a six- month vacation, Oberoi was given the charge. Within six months, the hotel occupancy doubled to 80 per cent and profit shot up dramatically. Oberoi and his wife, Issar Devi, went to buy the vegetables and meat themselves-knocking a solid 50 per cent off the normal bill for expenses, the book says. According to the book, in one of his last recorded reminiscences, Oberoi said," Soon after T joined the Cecil, there was a change of Management. Mr Clarke succeeded Mr Grove as manager, For the first time, a small piece of luck came my way. My knowledge of stenography helped me take over the post of cashier and stenographer to Mr Clarke and thus began my grounding on how hotels run. I worked and maintained an interest in my Job. Tt was while I was working in this capacity that Pandit Motilal Nehru came to stay in the Cecil, which was his usual place of residence when he came to Shimla. Panditji had an important report which needed to be typed speedity and with care. I sat up the whole night to complete the report and when I delivered it to him the next morning, he took out a hundred rupee note and handed it to me with a word of thanks. I was an emotional person and had received litte kindness in my short life. This gesture of Panditji brought tears in my eyes and I quickly left the room. One hundred rupees, which the wealthy throw away, was for me a fortune and made a big difference in my salary. I was able to buy a wristwatch for my wife, clothes for our baby and much needed raincoat for myself.” The book says that Clarke offered the Cecil to Oberoi for Rs 25,000, Oberol asked him for some time to arrange the money and put down whatever he would by mortgaging his limited assets and his wife's Jewellery. ‘Oberoi paid the entire money in a five-year period.