Behind every successful man, there's a woman. Is that true in your case?'' This question was posed to every award winner at the Asia Pacific HR Conference. A check list of the witty answers? Ganesh Natrajan, managing director, Aptech Ltd: ``It's my wife. But she is not behind me. She is way ahead of me.'' While Marico Industries chief human resources officer, Rakesh Pandey, quipped: ``You should ask my wife.'' Much to the amusement of Pandey, pat came the reply from Rekha Pandey: ``He is being his usual self--passing the buck.'' Trust eve to have the last word.

Bully for you:

There were many moments of truth and confessions too. When HLL's Prem Kamath was asked why he was always trying to run away--as he tried to escape the grilling session of master of ceremonies, Raju Bhatia, after collecting his award--Kamath replied: ``I lost my way to HR from marketing, so I always try to run away.'' When asked to comment on his unwittingly witty responses to persistent questions, avisibly tired Kamath retorted back ``This is getting to be worse than the Rajat Sharma show.''

Left speechless:

Bhatia managed to ruffle more than one winner though. When asked to spell out his vision--one of the barrage of questions shot at KK Nohria, who was presented the Life Achievement Award--an irate KK Nohria told Bhatia: ``I thought you would call me to give a speech, and then I would spell out my vision.'' Bhatia, however, did not get the message and carried on blithely.

Managing IT:

To the question ``Had it not been IT, what would you be doing?'' Ganesh Natrajan retorted: ``Back to where I started, with Mr Nohria's Crompton Greaves.'' Nohria, who was sitting in the audience, was immediately asked to comment on whether Natrajan could join Cromptom Greaves, to which he replied, ``Aptech is on a bigger growth path.'' Aptech has achieved its vision of touching the Rs 2,000-crore market cap before the next millennium.

Falling into line:

``I'm not an HR person. I havebeen a line manager, a marketing manager, and everything, but HR,'' said Volvo India, MD, Ravi Uppal before giving his keynote presentation at the seminar. He confessed that as a fresh management graduate, all he thought about HR was that it only added overheads and no value. ``But now I champion the cause of HR--which is the focal point of any business organisation.'' That's more like it.