In GG Howdy’s Monday morning meetings, it was Savitha Tandavi’s candid tears that used to have a field day in breaking out all by themselves as if on automatic reflex and a useless rebuke or two reserved for us all. You think GG cared about that? Never! He absolutely never bothered to introspect on that account even as Savitha opened up the floodgates of her tear ducts in every Monday morning meeting. Tears were merely small change, for GG liked to draw blood!
Straight as a spine Savitha’s composure going kaput became a familiar sight that definitely made Arinvan and Mandeep including Balzie a tad uncomfortable all throughout the meeting. It felt really bad. But there was no way we could be of any help to Savitha. Of course, it felt totally ruthless of the monster GG inflicting his misplaced tantrums on not only poor Savitha but on all of us. For Savitha – the one who almost resembled the early 1990’s Hollywood starlet Uma Thurman – GG’s tantrums surely must have been horrific to deal with in the first place. She might be a great friend, a great daughter, a great dreamer, but all that evident goodness of Savitha Tandavi as a person, sadly, do not get transported well enough to the dog-eat-dog corridors of GG’s unfriendly ‘Sultanate’. It was one of the inhuman aspects of the corporate world that we all had to unquestioningly tolerate.
In one meeting when Savitha’s eyes were screaming hot with tears that came as an aftermath of GG’s usual nit-picky attitude towards her routine job executions, Arinvan and Manpreet stood up from their seats and sat around her and Arinvan tried to console her by holding her hand in his. After a moment or two, she abruptly pulled away withdrawing her hand – in the manner of perhaps meaning to self-rectify the problem of her eyes watering a little too much these days! – from his hold and remained seated there as if rooted to the spot totally transfixed by the undue attention she was receiving from us all and wanting to shed even more tears, if possible!
Balzie cracked a few quick jokes for her, post every meeting, before she even gave a sign to come back on track and go back to work. In a case like this, when a female employee cries her eyes out thanks to GG’s shoot-your-mouth-off scoldings and slapdash lectures in the meetings, it was Balzie whose great skill at spicing things up a bit comes to the rescue. He does his best to see that everything gets back in order: so no more crying, no more shedding of tears and all.
Arinvan and Mandeep too took a lot of unnecessary criticism and went through hostile reactions that ran amok from the foul-mouthed ape-like Godzilla GG as did Dilnawaz, Jagan Raju, and Shiv who too braved, like ragged dolls, the hydra-headed fire from the resident Dragon-Monster of Satyam. When things don’t go according to GG’s preference, he viciously threatens people. We were always given to believe that he possibly derived some kind of wicked pleasure in doing so. Jagan Raju had one day secretly made known his opinion on GG’s behavior to Arinvan by commenting: “Pagal hai woh…jaane do”.
Arinvan was not surprised about his (Jagan’s) comment, never mind the comment itself appeared to be a little inadequate and incomplete on the overall facade of GG’s raging character. Everybody knew about GG’s way of behaving in close encounters, lest anybody made any attempt to speak up, raising one's voice, on such an impossible malady. To see us in constant discomfiture was GG’s mode of saying: Who is the boss here! It was his line of attack. So deal with it for all he cares! Without a shred of doubt, Mr. GG Howdy came across as a bizarre human being that we all had the misfortune to have him as the boss!
Arinvan was not surprised about his (Jagan’s) comment, never mind the comment itself appeared to be a little inadequate and incomplete on the overall facade of GG’s raging character. Everybody knew about GG’s way of behaving in close encounters, lest anybody made any attempt to speak up, raising one's voice, on such an impossible malady. To see us in constant discomfiture was GG’s mode of saying: Who is the boss here! It was his line of attack. So deal with it for all he cares! Without a shred of doubt, Mr. GG Howdy came across as a bizarre human being that we all had the misfortune to have him as the boss!
Arinvan’s GG-handling skills were precisely like showing a red rag to the gladiatorial bull. Gudumba Gongura Howdy (GG) always went for it and gored him in the process. The never-ending horror story was something that had the infamy of making anybody blatantly angry and mighty cross with this rogue, a mulligatawny fanatic. GG is only to be seen to be believed: going ballistic all the time! He was just a blink away to even manhandle us! Getting gored by the ‘Bull’ on a daily basis was obviously a major problem to deal with! TD Suraj, GG’s right-hand prognosticator, and Devee ‘Sexy’ Prashad, GG’s financial settlement expert, knew that from close quarters! Their office cubicles were bang outside GG’s glass-fronted, Venetian-blinded cabin! GG was GG; there was no way he could change his behaviour or even his pathetic attitude towards everything he wanted to be done at his office. He has always been a belligerent character; it was hopeless to even expect a bit of graciousness from him. GG and Graciousness? It’s like what Lions and Hyenas are in reality: Eternal Enemies!
No doubt, Mr. Howdy took up the cudgels of establishing the division within Satyam Computers Ltd. (formerly Satyam Enterprises Ltd.) along with one of the high-flying board of directors of Satyam. Satyam, booming with IT success in India, which was engaged in the export of software products and applications to the USA, Canada, Sweden, Germany, etc., etc. not only made great sense but a well-nigh tempting one that needs to be thoroughly milked. That was a great business determination that both of them exploited to the hilt, but soon when things started to look brilliant and promising (and about the same time Satyam’s slow decay into infamy began to literally shake things up like an earthquake), they both relinquished their jobs in a jiffy and the entire revenue bringer in the form of Satyam roaming division which had, we thought, indispensable business dealings with the clearinghouse in Denmark and a financial settlement company in London (not to forget with roaming companies all across India such as INDSC, INDCC, INDJH, INDBT, and INDBM), shifted to an independent newly-founded so-called “IT incubation” company that the same ‘one of the board of directors’ has started with his hard-earned IT revenue profits, fell flat on its face! After a good 3 and 1/2 years of a thriving business that we enjoyed from close quarters by being a part of the parent company: the harmless, ever-so-dependable, revenue earner was felled in one fell swoop.
Satyam’s roaming division business was taken away to the newly-formed company elsewhere.
(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.