CHAPTER 9 - An ‘Induction Party’ at the Secunderabad Club

Arindam Moulick

Ms. Tania Bhatroy, the Lady of the Hills or the Queen of the Hills (as she had once told me in jest!), was the chief compère of the induction party that was arranged at the ‘membership-debarred’ Secunderabad Club a few days after we joined Satyam. Tanya was one among many, fresh out of college, HR ladies from the company branch office located at the Tessar Towers where Arinvan Maliek, Savitha Tandavi, and Manpreet Singh worked. The party was presided over by a gracious, forward-looking, acutely patient, and highly capable, Mrs. Sheila Rheddi, the then Senior Manager of the branch’s HR dept. and every new inductee: about 10 to 15 associates were invited for the fine ceremony. For reasons Mr. Maliek, Arinvan that is, could not make head or tails of it, Mr. Singh, Manpreet that is, decided to be conspicuous with his absence. Maybe he had other more urgent and pressing matters to attend to rather than be seen at a banal induction ceremony, which, according to him, was supposedly arranged for uninitiated free-loaders with clichéd dreams in their untutored eyes; never mind Arinvan’s own share of ‘pressing matters’ and our colleague Miss Tandavi’s, Savitha that is, polite and cautious reflections on the occasion of an induction ceremony.

Despite the fact that one could get typified with a mee-tooism feeling; you know, a person who does something merely because someone else has done it, Arinvan went to his office’s induction party at the Club in high spirits. (Strange, ‘party’ and ‘spirits’ are so inter-related!). Arinvan’s Army upbringing had won him over to make a classy, well-dressed attendance there, for he had a foretaste of fine things than most others including… ahem ahem… Manpreet! Manpreet simply chose to miss the whole affair. Savitha’s appearance at the party came off well enough for her to look chic and neat, and she seemed to smile more often than she was habitually accustomed to. Her sleeveless reindeer-brown top and deep black as eel Salwar were looking elegant on her. Her sinewy frame made all that so apparent.

Tanya’s hosting the party made all the difference. I had to praise Tanya in as many words as could be possible and so I made sure I did. By the looks of it, it appeared that she thought it all out; she planned well, even talked it through with the in-house club chefs and managers, and chose a variety that included Continental, Chinese, and the usual fare of Indian cuisines. Even the drinks – cocktails, mocktails, chilled fruit punches and all – the gangly waiters from the Secunderabad Club House served were brilliant additions to the evergreen platters everybody enjoyed and reveled in and talked about. Her well-honed event-planning skills and party-planning machismo were in full display. Tania Bhatroy, her short-cropped hair with wispy layers and flirty, side-swept bangs accentuating her clear white roundish face, was undoubtedly multi-talented.

(I wish I had remembered precisely what fizzy mocktail was I being privileged with at the party; was it, Sparkling Cranberry Punch or Shirley Temple or Mango Julius, because never have I had tasted anything like it anywhere ever again!)

I found out that we were partying on the first-floor terrace of the club’s main building and just down below in one of the many stately, well-adorned rooms back in the early 1980s a part of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory directed film ‘Heat and Dust’ had been shot there. Although, I had no inclination ever to have a membership with the so-called ‘Stiff-Upper-Lip Club’, it never figured in my scheme of things. Club or no Club, I had my own lifestyle to follow! The whole Club sits unmindfully on a block of prime real estate but a part of it can surely be given away to the municipal guys for road widening. In fact, would you believe the road which winds its way by the western side of the Secunderabad Club’s age-old corrugated compound wall is a National Highway? Of course, getting a membership here is like ‘setting off a cat among the pigeons’! All the sacred touch-me-not Club pigeons flutter away; not keen to accord an elegant cat (membership seeker) with a membership! Silly!

Ms. Sheila Rheddi, one of the eminent Satyamites, was proudly impressed with one of her HR talents in the form of Tania Bhatroy, who deservingly basked in the limelight of appreciation and gratitude. No doubt, that evening Ms. Rheddi was found to be so full of pride and joy.

As the evening wore on, Arinvan, Tanya, Savitha, and an HR official seated themselves at a bedecked round table and began regaling themselves with mutual likes and dislikes, together with talks of movies, music, books, and college days of the 1990s. Tanya, originally hailing from the Himalayan hill stations of Kalimpong, spoke very well and had a touch of class and chic urbanity in her appearance. (I remember wondering, safely inaudibly! What were the people from Kalimpong called? Was it Kalimpongis, Kalimpongians, Kalimpongites or was it simply Kalimpongs!? Never mind the name, but it was fun.) On account of her parents’ Army background, she spent her childhood days growing up in the 1980s/90s Delhi and other cantonment areas across India. I believe the city of New Delhi where she had lived for prolonged periods of time had made her the kind of woman she was known to be at Satyam: a woman of substance and a clear conscience But of course, she stayed in many other places as well. Her natural brilliance at making conversations, her good-looking persona oodles forth like a dash of a rainbow you wouldn’t miss noticing on her polished city-bred persona. Her round dark eyes speak louder than she does. Whenever I had an article or two to contribute to the Intranet website of Satyam, I knew whom to get in touch with Tania Bhatroy.

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

- A slightly edited version of this article has also been published on EzineArticles.com. Click on the below link to read the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?An-Induction-Party-at-the-Secunderabad-Club&id=9030097

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.