I remember I was at home when the phone rang. It was Keki Dadiseth, Hindustan Lever’s chairman. He didn’t waste a lot of time, got straight to the point and said he wanted to buy us out. “Agree and all your future generations will be taken care of. If you decide not to, you will be left with nothing,” he said in that clipped accent of his. When I said I wasn’t interested, it was clear it wasn’t the answer he was expecting.