On the other hand, Raufia and Revanthi’s coaching skills were well-defined and to-the-point, therefore, no question of any exigencies popping up; all this effectively supplied with big Danish manuals and reading material that could fill up the back of a small pickup truck! Arinvan and Manpreet loved reading those manuals off and on. We took these kinds of stuff as a helping cue and pulled up an ace after an ace each time and every time from under our collective sleeves of teamwork. I know: maybe it’s a little too much to voice one’s appreciation in such obviously glossy words, but trust me things at the roaming division always had a touch of magical charm to it and we never missed enriching ourselves with it.
Everything was so hip and happening! Yes, we did just fine and we couldn’t afford to get wrong anywhere; nobody could afford to and everybody knew that for a reason why – beware the resident evil Lord Voldemort working on the other side of the building! West wing to be precise! Afterward, just when everything was going well we hear that Revs and Rafs will move on to other vistas: that would necessarily mean that they will have to leave us and go away! Their support in terms of technical skills was invaluable for Arinvan, Manpreet, and Savitha, who ultimately took over the daily operations.
Part of the reason that Manpreet did just fine at his job was that the kind of due diligence he practiced first-hand (when he spent his initial years at his family business heirloom, which was good enough for him to feel proud about, if I may say so), was nothing out of ordinary, but he just delivered what was expected out of him.
Arinvan, apart from being unconcerned with GG’s usual bad temper and his ever-present irritability brought a lot of communicative proficiency to the teamwork which in turn kept up the tempo of the good facts- and figures-based work a step ahead.
Savitha was a rank newcomer but she was never laidback when it came to her secret desire of making it to the US of A, and that among other things helped us at the roaming division a whole lot. She worked satisfactorily well. Functional handling of company applications/affairs needed a fair amount of experience and skills-set – so she made it up by learning it as fast as she could. Besides, she slogged, whimpered, lost patience (with GG mostly) but got the hell through. Her ability to communicate with the ‘upper management’, namely Gudumba Gongura Howdy (GG) the Sharko, or Balzie Gigamorthy, was something she worked on relentlessly but she (including Arinvan and Manpreet) never got around it till the fag end of her short career stint with Satyam. And just before “pushing off to America” she managed to put GG under a huge stress-related spell of nightly insomnia. That was a fantabulous contribution Savitha had made towards demolishing GG’s super-jumbo ego that decrees: ‘nothing’ can get away from him. No doubt about that! Give the cold hardhearted Sharko what he needs and everything is averted – at least for the time being!
Savitha Tandavi managed to gag this pain-in-the-wrong-place Saddam Hussein! GG sure have mulled over this unwarranted development many times over before Savitha pulled a fast one on him and left her job before he even had any chance to ‘bluster’ something. GG had fluffy eyes all through the year 1999 and his head seemed to have got filled with cotton! Savitha’s departure made ghastly sense for GG because he believed that he had an ever-posturing resource at his beck and call. But he was wrong!
Savitha was smart enough not to get caged in by GG’s offering of a pathetic career (presumably) and professional sustenance. Perhaps, she was carefully instinctual about GG’s career-giving proposition, which might have seemed highly insidious and intimidating to her, and as a result, she decided to call it quits and never looked back since. GG harrumphed for some time but eventually hired two new bali-ka-bakhras namely: the peace-loving smiling Buddha type Dilnawaz Khan and the spritely Shiv Charan 'Joey' Prashad – all this after Savitha was long gone from the hell-hole of the great roaming division.
A Boss from Hell!
The case in point is: whoever could ‘manage’ our Chichcha (GG who else?) successfully? Was it Balzie Gigamorthy? Or was it the CEO of Satyam himself? Was it Merion Roz Reyo, the Menaka Gandhi look-alike? Maybe to some extent Balzie was capable to plunk GG in his place, but one day when something went wrong over, I am sure, an illogical, freak non-issue that could have been best avoided not discussing it at all in the first place or just have the patience for someone would surely take care of it or even just let go of the matter altogether, misunderstandings and cold war crept in thick and fast between them, and before you know it GG who was online with Balzie over the telephone and Balzie exploding and smashing the receiver down over the countertop of TD Suraj’s cubicle cracking it into two halves with flints flying in several directions.
Merion Roz Reyo, a well-dressed, well-turned-out front-office tearjerker, knew this incident first-hand, for her desk was in the vicinity of where the incident supposed to have taken place. In fact, once when Merion and I were making a conversation about the topic of GG’s outburst at Balzie over the phone, I noticed that she didn’t let slip anything critical of her supposedly favourite boss GG! (And of course, Merion Roz Riyo was GG's favourite pupil!) That was understandable of her, to say the least; she was a dignified lady: The one who wouldn’t bother bantering about anything that could straightaway mean ineffectual and useless. The point of fact was: nobody else from the whole of Satyam was given to worry about Balzie’s or even GG’s position in the larger scheme of things; least of all Merion because her job was to care about the effective disbursal of daily duties that the front-office entails and not about GG’s annoying exigencies in his roaming division fiefdom. In contrast, at least all of us from the roaming division had a greater stake in what GG and Balzie, as able managers, were up and about with themselves because everything that had anything remotely to do with our beloved division would affect us all, in one way or the other.
Thankfully, all the misunderstandings between the top managers had gradually died down and everybody went their business.
Because Merion got Lion’s share of chocolates and exotic candies whenever GG went out of town to London or Denmark or any other European country where he thought he could buy some chocolates for his favourite front-desk executive, it shouldn’t necessarily mean that Merion would indulge herself in some kind of behind-the-boss’s-back travesty! The feeling was always mutual, I guess. One doesn’t expect such a thing from a professional like Merion; she was a quickie-smart girl, always on the poise to do the right thing. GG for her was a keep-out-of-the-way boss. Indeed, not even Merion could placate this self-confessed cruelty-personified boss with her ever-ready pleasant smile; it definitely proves that GG was way out of anybody’s business!
Not that Merion Roz Reyo, a sensible lady herself, was ever bothered or concerned about Mr. GG Howdy and his vicious tantrums; she never was, and frankly why should she be? She was not directly reporting to him. So that makes her let it pass. Her job was to do general administration at the front–office desk and since GG was not her Chief then why should she even think about bothering herself with GG’s nonsense? Good thinking on her part though, if you ask me: To have smartly avoided one of the most insufferable bosses that ever walked on the face of the Earth!
Man vs. Predator
Unfortunately, enough ‘bad blood’ had spawned between these two people (GG and Balzie) over a period of time, and Balzie, the ever so sensible one, began losing his cool over trivial matters that GG obstinately brought about day in and day out and began festering him unnecessarily. If GG mused that he could clip Balzie’s wings by threatening him over the phone like the way he did that day when he was pell-mell in his Machiavellian mission to scoot the profit-making ‘roaming division’ business away from Satyam, then I think he succeeded only to the extent of asking Balzie to put in the papers and leave, but GG could not devastate Balzie’s clear conscience and his legendary willpower to survive. Sure they can take your job away but not your power to get another one elsewhere with your self-respect and self-esteem intact. That was the moral of the story from the GG-Balzie spat.
Balzie was no trouble-monger like GG happened to be sometimes. It wouldn’t be wrong on our part to conclude that GG almost always pulverized our young guiltless minds into meek submission wherein his will formed the unwritten word to be followed to the T. Balzie, as a first-point-of-contact manager, had continued to determinedly believed in himself and his sense of worth as a clear-headed professional; he was a no-go territory for the crooked Gaddafi-type GG Howdy and his machinations to blunder in. After all, Balzie was a talented manager, respectful of even GG; he very well knew what he was doing and how he was managing all affairs concerning the roaming division. Our division was clocking fantastic records; the results were over the place to see. So what kind of bloody itch does GG have that he wants it scratched so badly? Common sense suggests that one doesn’t disturb the long-established structure of command even if you are a Chief. If your subordinate has it all that you need from him then why the heck do you have to tinker with that structure? In this case, the Chief’s (GG that is) mendicant attitude did not portend well for his subordinate to suck up to him all the time; it doesn’t look good at all, does it? Before anything bad could happen against the capable talent of Balzie Gigamorthy, the nut-case GG cranked permanently out of the company, and Balzie had to shift out to Satyam’s IT technology-incubation hub called Satyam Technology Center on a proud pre-sales assignment.
After that pointless discord, Balzie’s incredible association with us at the roaming division was slowly being wrapped up, and in the same way, albeit a little differently though, our days too were numbered when the Satyam’s roaming division was finally taken away by GG to his CEO friend. We knew that after all the CEO and perhaps GG to some extent were primarily responsible to bring the business to Satyam stables and now they were taking it elsewhere.
The Age of Wrath
Arinvan and Manpreet had often fumbled in dealing with this humoungous verbal-abuser called GG Howdy. Savitha was practically a sitting duck! Her frequent breakdowns in the ‘who-let-the-dogs-out’ meetings were the cases in point here. That was understandable because nobody in his right frame of mind tried to be companionable with GG. GG wouldn’t take a ‘No’ for any amount of reasoning that you might have, howsoever valid and justifiable that might be. Balzie knew this to the hilt on account of his visibly uneasy association with him right from the start, but he preferred kind personal discretion and professional diplomacy than actually get around something that we all collectively agreed upon, even Revanthi and Raufia, doesn’t augur well for anyone’s surviving sanity to stay sane. At best, one should only do what he prefers to get done and forget about it totally thereafter.
At every level, GG Howdy, as a boss, was a historic blunder for the roaming department he was heading. He bludgeoned, whacked, and plundered on every good fibre of sanity and decorum that you might have been left with from attending his useless meetings after useless meetings. Well, if you think meetings were supposed to be cool affairs in terms of exchange of ideas, gaining insights and perspective, and stuff like that, you are at the wrong place, buddy. Our kind of meetings was simply unpersuasive and a veritable nuisance. You may lose your cool in the face of GG’s relentless adversity towards you, but not before losing your job! He was beyond redemption. His thought processes were weapons of mass destruction; sharp-edged to the point of inflicting wounds upon wounds on you. It will pulverize you into submission. You will be rendered totally incapacitated on account of his insane arrogance and superiority complex and the peculiar feeling that always lurks inside you like: ‘I am a dispensable employee of the company and I cannot possibly go against the boss because the boss is always right!’ Pathetic it may sound but GG bashed on regardless of any danger of untoward moral consequence or mental breakdown in the person he is speaking with.
The glorious era of roaming division that wholly belonged to the following people –
had come to an emotional end of the Love Affair of so many amazing people who worked with Satyam Computers’ roaming division; the beautiful people who have helped roaming division grow and contributed to its shining glory.
(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.