CHAPTER 13 - Gladiators and Mini-Celebrities

Gladiators and Mini-Celebrities 

It was Balzie Gigamorthy’s job to provide purpose and direction to the team, besides enabling us to have ideas and develop effective teamwork and whenever required consult him by all means, whereas giving clear guidance and consulting has been a part of Revanthi’s and Raufia’s daily accountability index. Perhaps, we could figure out all of those requirements ourselves, but we were grateful that we were only expected to ‘take care’ of the operations part without having to worry about any of the management tosh that came our way. 

Contrary to GG’s, Balzie’s way of doing things was mellower and persuasive and had an efficacy of instant likeability to it, which we all readily agreed upon and favoured greatly.

GG, A Sharp-Tongued Slanderer

GG’s was at best an insolent and cheeky type of personality, bloated with inconsiderate human tosh of hyperactive, dictatorial, scummy proclivities. His wheeling-dealings bordered on the unmannerly handling of all issues: always resulting in a rude ‘in-your-face’ bang to an unsuspecting one who had had the misfortune to come in contact with this grisly retard.

His rapaciousness takes on a gruesome ‘twist-in-the-tail’ (literally!) line of argument with anyone who’d care to converse with him. His way or the highway. Take it or leave it. That’s the way he was. Not being open to suggestions was one of his serious managerial drawbacks. We were not up to challenging him; you better dare not. Even if we caught him on the wrong foot about anything, we simply ignored it, because his decisions were full and final; or else you are at risk to face an E.L.E., you know Extinction Level Event, of what we call as “separation”, “pink slip”, etc. – all of these only amounts to committing professional suicide and our young selves avoided dealing with anything that could be brought on us such a conundrum. No hara-kiri, no kir kiri.

GG was of an extremely bossy mindset that hardly ever gave any signs of letting go. His writ was final. In spite of what we really felt about this Godzilla called Chichcha, there were, well, some traits of his that somehow found our careful appreciation.

After all, a man can only be a mere human being in an office setting, but cannot be a complete manifestation of Satan, can he? At the end of the day, The Shaitan, Chichcha (alias GG) did have a positive aspect or two about him that we most certainly were able to make out and felt able to appreciate. But the truth of the fact is: he always played his cards well even as he hardly ever tried to be a ‘normal’ person. Apart from being a mortal 5’ 10’’ of human flesh, he was also a diabolical monster who fumed, fretted, and devoured. We never cared to know about his personal life or his wife for that matter; never did. Wife? Because he liked saying "Keep me posted" all the time. I wonder he says the same thing to his wife every day when he goes to the office. When his wife says "Bye, honey". He possibly replies "Yeah, keep me posted!" 

And now, may I present you four behavioural traits of his: 

(Remember to see the exclamation mark at the end of every sentence).

• GG is good when he is in good mood, otherwise, God help us all!
• GG is good when he is appreciated and lauded for his efforts; again not too much or too often because that will turn on the barrel of incendiaries upon the hapless individual who dared to go a little too farther on his/her mission!
• GG is good when he wants to be good, you cannot possibly predict when it can come about. It depends!
• GG is good when you are in the right place and at the right time. It’s your fate; you cannot pick or choose!

Such was this eccentric manager of ours seated on the 5th floor’s west wing hall at the Tesser Towers. Yes, GG was not a nice man to know but he certainly meant business and had an unflinching desire to reach out to the clients and help the roaming division to make money. Without a doubt, he excelled at his profession and we kept up the speed throughout by putting our little division on the high pedestal of grand expectations. But that in no way makes him a real Gladiator. Never. Real Gladiators were we. We the nuts-and-bolts, cogs-and-wheels; we were the guys churning our dearly-beloved division into an all-around business success.

While Savitha Tandavi was a fervent believer of Balzie’s own ‘prescription drugs’ as in: ‘decision making’, ‘do your own thing’ and ‘choices’ – she’s always eating out of his hand, Arinvan and Manpreet believed in taking the cudgels in their own hands like self-assured Gladiators and go about it and make mistakes and learn from them. To be fair, there were hardly any mistakes committed by us; in fact, there were, of course, certain delays happening but often they were not of our making. Basically, clients were involved and a host of them: a slight poke there and a prod there would definitely solve all our problems and theirs as well, but most importantly we had to be painstaking with our gentle client-centric mechanisms that we as problem-solvers liked to believe in. Guess boys will be boys!

Oftentimes, there were mistakes, never glaring but otherwise, but all were rectifiable ones. Arinvan loved his job and so did Manpreet. Savitha too liked her job but understandably from a reliable distance because her dusky eyes had a flickering glint that we never missed catching a glimpse of ‘America’ was writ large over her overall outward appearance. In a way, that omnipresent dream of hers saved her from GG’s daily bickering and maniacal handling that not only her we all too had to suffer and bear it with a false grin on our scared faces. Even she herself was incapable to refuse a ticket to the ‘star-spangled banner’ from singing its sweet cuckoo dreams into her wily ears! Manpreet and Arinvan both knew that Savitha cannot possibly take it anymore and that she desperately wanted herself out of this daily conundrum. We thought: Good on her that she could prepare herself ready to go, release herself from GG’s mistreating clutches and get out to America.

Afterwards, for all the job responsibilities we were handling on a daily basis, no wonder we were like mini-celebrities! We were all Bosses no doubt, but GG was only just the decision-maker!!! Do you see the irony here?

Savitha knew how to be no less than a ‘celebrity’ on every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, especially when she wore a passionate pair of blue jeans and a chic T-Shirt that almost always proclaimed something useful and incredibly attractive – messages on her T-shirt were sometimes hard-hitting, sometimes funnier than GG would benefit from, sometimes even saucier enough to make Balzie blush deeply. 

Savitha’s collection of great T-shirts was sure bought from somewhere: special stores or something? We never could figure out where and she never said. But mind you, they were great personality enhancers and she knew how to make use of them to her advantage. 

On the day when Balzie, Arinvan, Revanthi, Raufia, Manpreet, and the swaggering hulk GG arrived in the main conference room for a 5-minute tête-à-tête, Savitha sported a black T-Shirt which screamed daring words in solid blood-red ink for GG to get the message:

"Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates

do not talk with their boss

the same way they talk with colleagues.”

Balzie was most certainly squirming in his seat when he managed to get the import of the meaning. Perhaps, he couldn’t really expect the mild-mannered Savitha to be so bold and daring after all those miserable days of grisly tears squirting down her cheeks to the chin.

Manpreet and Arinvan had no way of knowing if GG even noticed that slogan (but he may have done secretly who knows) what Savitha dared to 'speak out' through the medium of her instinctive fashion sense. We were none the wiser about the whole situation. If she thought she was in a no-holds-barred position that day to pounce on GG’s all-pervasive MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig) attitude, then she was definitely correct in doing so. Savitha Tandavi was spot on!

(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.