CHAPTER 5 - An Interview with the Vampire

Think of the devil and the devil is right there!

Pavan Bommaraju, the Satyam HR, introduced “GG” to me as “GG Howdy”. And I thought: Oh! So here is the…er…Frankenstein, I was so not apprehensive to meet! Better still, I scoot now and never look back! Or get the hell out!

“GG”, as they say, his name is and whatever it means; is an individual who turned out to be in effect similar to the mental picture that I have formed in my mind’s eye, equivalent to the loutish name – that of being brusque and narcissistic. As if one had to gnash one’s teeth in the act of saying “GG”!!!

GG smiled lopsidedly at Pavan and said “Thank you, Pavan. And I will take it from here”.

I wasn’t worried about anything except I felt a little scared when I looked at this grim-looking Godfather-like Marlon Brando character, apparently preparing to barge into my ordinary world unannounced! I thought: Oh my God! Is this the guy Pavan said I should ‘meet’ for the next round of technical interviews? O, Sweet Moses! Holy Jesus! Maa Durga…Kali!

Needless to say, the confident-mode I was in (and so gung-ho about up till now I was) had suddenly vanished! The interview in the company of such a repulsive-looking character would only make me look like a, well, puppy! Jimmy Chooo! God help me!

“Most welcome! GG,” said Pavan and quickly (read very very quickly) left us.

“Hi. Good morning, GG,” I nervously greeted the man who was standing near the entry door to his cabin clutching a sheaf of papers (one among them sure looked like my laser-printed résumé) in his hands that looked like as if a Goat/Sheep had picked up too many of them in its mouth and kept vigil, sternly watching even, without moving, not even a muscle! Holy shit!

He – GG that is, not the Goat/Sheep you know! – began looking fussily serious, enough to scare the delicate life out of me. I was a bit taken aback at first; his stern-looking demeanour gave the impression to me as if an unashamed argumentativeness and equally unabashed hostility are lurking inside his deep dark stare. By the looks of it, I was instantly lurching towards kind of a situation which I thought was not only stressful but also awfully upsetting. I swallowed a few knots of stress down my gut and somehow decided to take it easy and be appreciatively cool. I thought: I cannot possibly escape out of this knotty situation for at least the next 30 minutes, so it’d be better than for the time being the patient accepts the goddamn situation as kind cruelty of the surgeon’s knife! GG Howdy managed to stir conflicting signals in my young minimalist mind as though he was trying to say: ‘who is the boss?’ Naturally, he was boss, and was no doubt higher up on the food chain! Maybe I was overreacting to the situation I was in, or maybe I wasn’t; however, an imaginary bell rang in my mind and I helpingly reminded myself: “This too shall pass”. And then while I got into my groove: I rallied around him to win him over in the best way I can. That was my style to make a deal.

“Hi…Arin… your name is….Arinvan. Right. Nice name. OK. Ummm… I am GG, GG Howdy and this here is Balzie Gigamorthy. He handles roaming operations and assists me in overseeing the overall business intelligence program,” said GG Howdy using his deep baritone of a voice skillfully.

“Pleased to meet you. How are you doing?” I wished him meaning to shake hands with him but before I could extend my right hand towards him he hotheadedly turned away his ‘industrial-grade' bulk of a head and looked in the general direction of his computer and his staff Balzie who sat near it with a ‘haan-mere-baap!’ (Whatever you say, boss!) look on his face. We didn’t shake hands and I figured that GG was being narrow-minded and crude.

He gruffly turned his block of head and looked at his seated staff and quipped “Balzie if you could…just wanna say…hi to him” not without a slight hint of, I suspect, amused condescension there. I liked GG bothering to let his staff know of my presence in his room – liked only that part and nothing else, mind you.

GG’s supposed right-hand man Balzie Gigamorthy rose from his seat in front of the DELL computer he was pounding upon, typing away something so vigorously I could not figure out why such apparent haste. Not my job anyway to figure that out. None that I should be bothering myself with. But couldn’t help noticing though. Apparently, it was GG’s desktop because we were sitting in his cabin.

“Hi, Arinvan. I am Balzie,” said he, a trace of village-bred in his voice, extending his right hand, palm open nicely towards mine, for a confident hand-shake. We shook hands firmly and meaningfully. I liked Balzie better as a person. Of course, he was far better than GG!

From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of GG sinking his boulder of a personality into a puny chair and instantly put on an expression so obstinate and constipated that at once it betrays his crudeness and arrogance in full view. At this time, I couldn’t help but feel that I was being pushed off the cliff of losing my personal discretion on account of this seemingly degenerate individual sitting in front of me called ‘GG’, but a good sense of diplomacy and a will to do well in the interview had miraculously prevailed upon me. For some time, he let Balzie Gigamorthy take over and quiz me on the projects I handled at a previous company. Balzie wore oval-shaped horn-rimmed glasses that drew due attention that emphasized his tensed face with a kind of “I-am-the-more-sensible-than-him” expression. That was good enough for me, apart from his sense of dignity and well-trained professionalism that put a calming effect on my ultra-sensitive nerves!

I said, “Hi Balzie. Pleased to make your acquaintance. How’re you doing?”

Before giving me a once-over, Balzie grinned and in a decent voice said, “Very well, thank you. It’s a pleasure. Please take your seat”.

Apparently, Balzie was far more dignified and sociable than this bamboozling Bolshevik called GG Howdy. He looked tensed but was sober enough to speak with confidence. Probably, in the company of one’s boss one does feel a little perturbed, not much but little; he was doing just fine though. After finding myself a little comfortable with Balzie’s pep talk, I threw a glance at GG again; I saw impatience was writ large over his serious, bulbous face. Though he was already seated, he still looked immovable and stubborn like a crooked spotted Hyena.

I took my designated chair at the round-table. They sat in front facing me. GG on my right and Balzie on the left; I thought the arrangement was good enough for my tendon and ligament lining my neck region to have an impromptu exercise carried out while in the interview! For all the hoopla that Balzie was GG’s right-hand man went out of the window just then! GG, as if taking up the reins of this interview business, began impatiently by first asking about my “technical” experience and then my family background. While I gave him a fair account of my overall experience, Balzie sat and listened studiously and I imagined, hoped even, that the next question would come from himself and not GG. Now I really am not into examining ‘male beauty’, even tell-tale ones make no scene for me. Never have been that type, you see.  But GG’s be-gravelled, almost otherworldly toady face didn’t escape my innocent scrutiny. He was definitely scarier than a fire-spouting Goblin straight out of the Ramsay movies! (Trust me I don’t want to mention any more gorier details about GG’s appearance here because I don’t want to scare you!). I was sitting up close to him and so I instinctively noticed that his cheeks were dugouts of craters after craters after craters. Like a World War has been fought there and no one knew who had won, finally!

At first, I thought they were merely dark spots so I didn’t care much, but I was wrong. Maybe his pet dog with its coarse tongue has been licking his chubby cheeks and scorching them into fierce-looking animal-like severity! No amount of Moisturizing Lotion could fix GG’s bombed-out cheeks, or whatever was left after the War. I thought here is some kind of Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord, who has been so thoroughly constipated from extreme spells of his own bossism that he hardly could let its ugly shit out of his heavy-duty backside! No wonder, countless holes, and craters on his cheeks were meant to find a way to let his ugly shit out! One look at those grisly cheeks is enough for you to get puky. Doesn’t he look like puffed-up Om Puri? Or Sev Puri? Or Masala Puri? Or bloated Dahi Vadas? Who cares anyway?

Up next from GG’s quiver full of taunting arrows was an inquiry: “How would I approach an operation wherein it requires up-to-date software skills on programming, reporting, solving problems for customers on a daily basis?”

(“Oh! Here you go, buddy! What a great question for you to ask!” I quipped wordlessly to no one in particular).

Being true to myself, I got down to explaining in whatever way I deemed fit to both him and Balzie Gigamorthy as to what and how I’d do to “solve customer problems”. Life is about solving problems anyway!

I elaborated the following: “Difficult problems need preferential treatment and speedy remediation and that they cannot be treated on par with just any other problem that may or may not occur or recur. Indeed problems do have the habit of creeping in without warning, but there’s no getting away from solving them. Problems are potential challenges that I find useful to deal with. And challenges are for us to take head-on. I've got the necessary software skills to apply to problems and make effective resolutions”.

Both of them fixed their gaze upon me for the next couple of minutes concentrating on what I was articulating. I sensed that Balzie was looking satisfied with my impromptu replies and GG, on the other hand, was tight-lipped, not giving away any indications or signs, good or bad, for me to pick. No doubt he seemed to act a little cunningly clever on that front not wanting to give away anything to the candidate; I thought, what the heck it was his prerogative not to reveal his cards, not yet. I basically gave Balzie and GG, particularly what GG’s elephant-like ears were acquainted with hearing. I mean, in my previous 1 year of real-time experience, I came to know what managers like to hear: They want to hear positive, honest, and concise replies and certainly not beating around the bush. I sat there with my fingers firmly entwined within each other hoping against hope for things to turn in my favour.

∞

As soon as my last interview of the day was over, I walked back to the reception area and killed time for Pavan Bommaraju, the same HR guy I’d met when I came into the office, to come to see me by once again. My expectations rose to point of no return considering my good feelings about the grilling interview just concluded with the duo: GG and Balzie. I did not know whether or not it was okay to feel the way I was feeling, regardless of the fact that I had done pretty much nicely in the interview, but, to be honest, after a minute’s interlude I stopped giving it much contemplative thought while I sat there for nearly 20 minutes enjoying the air conditioning and watching guys and girls going about their business. So as far as my own expectations for a positive outcome were concerned I signed off thinking: I am quite clear-headed and upbeat on gaining new grounds of success, so why bother? For all I know, this could be the: Moment of truth. This was the first in my life and so it better be good.

Pavan came by. His radiant eyes and smile back on his face in their positive best. He appeared to be carrying more papers in his hands than before and looked mighty busy to even breathe a lungful of air for himself. Announcing that he’d get back to me by the end of the week, he smiled on dazzlingly and shook hands with me, and I thought I caught an unmistakable look that stated something like: “You did good buddy!” That was okay with me because I knew as per protocol he’d prefer communicating with NISE's human resource manager Ram Narayan Sangwani first before actually having to convey a confirmatory nod about my employment at Satyam to me. And sure enough, by sticking to protocol and without delay, Pavan had communicated the make-or-break deal to Ram Narayan at NISE within the week itself; after which, before the week turned into a weekend, Ram calls me up on Friday to scream into the receiver that I had firmly placed against my ears not wanting to miss what Ram will have to say: “You’ve been selected! You are on, Babes!” Of course, I too had screamed back in sheer delight! This was the first professional success of my life and it was good to feel such a great feeling.

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. All incidences, places, and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.