CHAPTER 19 - Our Life, Our Job

Love, Loss, Loneliness and Longing, part 3

Our Life, Our Job

1999, the year of new changes, new associates, and new harshness!

Merion Roz Reyo had a ‘shape-shifting’ individuality, but not without the inclusion of some dollops of her own idiosyncrasies that almost always got her instant disapprovals from close quarters.

“Her affections for you”, as the ever-so-gentlemanly Devee Prashad used to say so lovingly to me, "surely comes with an 'expiry date'; you better watch out, Arinvan!”

“Remember jannat ki hoors and potential apsara types and poison ivies? That is all there could ever be to it,” said Devee. “Not a penny more not a penny less!” he added forebodingly.

I knew Devee had observed well; his well-meant premonition had ultimately worked in my favour to forewarn me but, however, a slight emotional setback was in store for me. I somehow couldn’t avoid the inevitability of such a situation I found myself in. Not of my making entirely, definitely not; but Fate and ill-luck had brought me up to it.

Merion Roz Reyo, the Menaka Gandhi lookalike (a better version), was crack-pot Manpreet Singh’s most favourite cracking-up-jokes-on-the-spur-of-the-moment stimulant package! As far as I, Arinvan, was concerned, no, I wasn’t having that ‘steep mountain hills of wonder’ thing for Merion. Sadly, both Manpreet and Savitha had thought I had. Savitha was downright pithy and came to her own sweet conclusions about it. I didn’t want to bring myself up to her to get her corrected on that account. That was below me, I think. So I said to myself: I will not bother to do that. Manpreet was more strong-willed than Savitha ever could be in this matter of common interest; he was neither disbelieving nor believing entirely of the non-existent affaire de coeur between me and Merion. I had no inclination towards anybody even suggesting it; it was a plain abhorrence to me.

Savitha and Manpreet were wrong in their interpretations. They have misinterpreted the whole affaire de coeur thing they thought I, Arinvan, had with Merion. No, that was not true. Although I had no reason to blame them entirely for what they, particularly Savitha, apparently were assuming it to be, I felt as much later that I could correct their misconception, which I frankly, during those younger days, have hardly felt able to do so. I regarded it as a personal matter: one of those that come about but later disappear without a whimper. Just that, and nothing else. 

(Savitha had misconstrued it the whole time. Poor lady, she never felt able to apply some clear thought process into it before going ahead to speak ill of Arinvan to her own innocent best friend Una Artoran, with whom he had a brief and magical courtship. A friend like Savitha cannot be expected to be so childish and ravenously vindictive, but in truth, she was like that only. Arinvan had ended up feeling that Savitha had brought a world of disrepute in her supposedly best friend Una Artoran's personal life by doing what she did with Arinvan: namely, malice portending hurtful remarks, lousy grudge, jealousy, envy, and stark-naked antagonism! It's even useless to suggest that she didn't realize she was being unspeakably blood-chillingly heartless!)

I left it at that without even a formal reprimand she really so deserved from me considering the dire personal circumstances I was languishing in. After an initial playful banter, thankfully due to Manpreet's playful attitude, the stuff slowly petered out on its own. The affaire de coeur that they thought I had with Merion was not even important to be dealing with in the first place! That was, pettily, the sad part one had to persevere on account of their collective fulmination. Their thinking on this, to put it bluntly, doesn't really tantamount to anything untoward, doesn't even mean much, to get justifiably serious about, but one is led to think that there should not be any leeway given, if possible when matters of no importance take a serious turn because they invariably have the capacity to get someone hurt in the bargain. One believes that wrong impressions, if they are not corrected in time, always beget wrong impressions.

Most often than not Merion, whenever she came to talk to us (or "see" me as we figured that out later) at our shared cabin, found herself thoroughly stumped due to Manpreet’s sheer ability to crack a few jokes at the cost of her discomfiture! It was probably no fun for her, but, to her credit, she gave in to the delight of it all. That was like being a good sport!

She was a quickening maze in herself. She was always fashionably attired, and when matters to her appearance were concerned she apparently used to leave no stone unturned to turn out well and tidy. "Be at my best always," was supposedly her personal maxim. Among the several beauty regimes she takes to attending earnestly, she likes her feet dunked in warm water (with rose petals floating on the clear filtered water and enough rose-smelling perfume liquid poured in) while watching television is one such curious thing we knew of her indulging in unfailingly. Typical of her surname she is probably fixated on using Rose flowers in her weekly beauty-enhancing regimen.

It was Manpreet’s notion that Merion’s surname, though very amusing one, was prone to some silly banter! There was not a single moment that went by without Manpreet prepping up to crack a joke or two whenever Merion stopped by at our cabin to indulge, briefly, in some pep talk. Shiv Charan 'Joey' Prachad who banged away at his computer more often than expected used to quip amusingly “Oh oh! Here we go again…!” on seeing Manpreet clearing his throat to “share a word or two” with Merion Roz Reyo. “Sharing a word or two” with Merion meant cracking up some jokes on her and there was no escaping it. 

Merion almost became Manpreet’s new muse whenever he came into the mood of cracking some impulsive chutkullehs on poor Merion!

Manpreet's Natter

Merion came by and at once she was on tenterhooks, smiling at Manpreet with bated breath, perhaps expecting him to crack up anytime soon. To be fair, she came by to 'see' Arinvan but was soon caught unawares on finding that Manpreet - the jokey-despot! - is also in the office that day sitting alongside Arinvan. She gave a knowing look at Arinvan and smiled expectantly on. On seeing Merion, Arinvan reciprocated but with a good-humoured smile of his that almost always kept Merion wordlessly ‘involved’ with the idea of something still unshared and unsaid; as in an interesting ever-so-fascinating allure that arrests you totally that connotes a different kind of affection may be. That kind of thing!

Manpreet immediately burst into a broad smile of his on seeing Merion arrive and standing by the foyer. Cooking up jokes was his innate forte and his sense of humour was unmatched by lesser mortals of his constantly amazed team members. What was already cooking in his mind in the form of jokes and stuff were destined to be out sooner or later! He was a jokey despot!

Manpreet said, “Aour Merion roz ariyo?” (Are you coming daily (to office)?)

To which Merion simply smiled away and looked about her fixed to her spot where she was standing and said awkwardly. “Yes!....hahaha…Yesss!”

This time Manpreet had Merion’s peculiar surname as a joking point! Whoever knew her surname ‘Roz Reyo’ could be used in Hindi to mean ‘roz ariyo’ as in ‘coming daily?’ Whoever thought of such jokes, but Manpreet was all we had!

Our young Joey, Shiv Charan 'Joey' Prachad giggled and then suddenly couldn’t stop laughing and so did Arinvan feeling on his part a little unaccustomed to this newfound philandering posture of Manpreet’s towards a smiling Merion.

On finding himself not committing to what Devee Prachad had previously warned him about jannat ki hoor or apsara types, Arinvan remembered that well and kept his charms packed away from the world’s seeking attention.

The Delhiwala Issue

One day, Savitha, Manpreet, Arinvan, and Revanthi were discussing issues that needed immediate disbursal. Issues were always around the corner. Arinvan noticed that Revanthi was speaking rather very well that day, all extempore, about a festering issue that showed no signs of dying down. They really don’t; issues are of different make and honey. We knew they don’t just get resolved by themselves. One has to resolve them, and so Manpreet became particularly engrossed in Revanthi’s gyan session because it was going to be his call immediately afterward when he will take over the ‘daily operations’ task from Arinvan, whose scheduled time was going to be over at 3pm. Savitha was on a 9 to 6 ‘O clock scheduled time and it was generally understood that she would rather take it easy for the day and why not; after all, it’s up to Arinvan’s and Manpreet’s skills to deal with this issue. If for any reason the same issue happens to rear its head again the next day she might have the necessary wherewithal to deal with this thing; therefore, she too had to pay, in spite of her 'take-it-easy' day, careful attention to what Revanthi was talking about. Ditto for Arinvan.

The next day it was different. In fact, the previous day Revanthi’s nippy details worked rather very well on solving the problems, but as it turned out her suggestions were of a different kind not related to the particular issue we were facing for at least a couple of weeks now.

It was a 9 to 6 general stretch for Arinvan. That day he was feeling very exhausted and finding himself in a state of distress on account of the telecon he had with the scorn-filled client from Delhi, he thought he’d go take a cup of coffee from the Nescafe coffee dispenser in the corridor and have a break. In fact, the telephone call from the client was not his in the first place but he had to take it because Manpreet just handed over the receiver to him. Arinvan without realizing what he was up to took the call and said hello. Of late, the client in question seemed to have made it a point to get menacingly standoffish with us over the phone on the pretext of discussing a slight problem that could have been definitely solved by late evening. The irate client, for all the great service we offer to him every day, began to cry wolf!

Catching sight of Arinvan’s misery turns out to be a sore thumb in what he dreamed would just be a normal day, alas, free from customer troubles and all, Manpreet sitting alongside him decided to laugh it out loud and kept on smiling knowingly as if to say: “I knew it!” In all fairness, it was not even Arinvan’s call to receive in the first place since he was working on a normal 9 to 6pm stretch that day. It was Manpreet’s to receive the phone call from Delhi; perhaps he already knew that some Delhi client is going to call upon the landline anytime during the day and probably fire a salvo about some issue that was irresolvable until our Denmark partner decided to look into it! A quirk of smart stage-managing pulled off by Manpreet that day had eventually led Arinvan to take the highly offending call from Delhi. Great! Perhaps, Manpreet could have handled it more ‘effectively’ if he already knew the total situation, the ‘issue’, or at least the up-to-the-minute ‘background’ of it beforehand. But no, Manpreet was in no mood to get talking with this cantankerous client.

Handling such customers had been our specialty and we at the roaming division made sure that we took every little detail about them into proper account. All that we preferred to know is that our sense of great customer service should be an exalted one, especially when dealing with complaining types like the one from Delhi. Not a penny more not a penny less. Our boss Chichcha knew the fine art of communicating with customers and “coming out of any situation unscathed” was his specialty. We knew that very well. That’s most certainly true; one could not take that credit away from him. Anyway, not to get unduly ruffled due to some rough-and-tough client’s belligerent phone call, Arinvan took it into his stride and moved on by making sure that the issue is resolved finally. He took it up with Dann Natte again and this time the issue our Delhi client was facing was put to eternal rest once and for all.

However, in the event of that scenario unfolding, Arinvan could not really laugh it off as Manpreet wholeheartedly was able to; he wished he could, but he got a little flustered by the client’s sickeningly madcap behaviour that day. It was so uncalled for. Arinvan threw the receiver into the cradle, stood, and walked away from the war room. Well, to get a cuppa of coffee to stay calm.

In the end, the ‘Delhiwala Issue’ was met with an essential resolution we were all anxiously waiting for. The respectable Susanna Garlow, our single point of contact at Dann Natte, Denmark, who, apart from keeping a cool head on her shoulders, knew how to deal with this pestering Delhiwala issue that needed nothing but a quick dispersal. She made special arrangements and accessed great cohesive teamwork to excavate ancient data out from the labyrinth of Delhi client-specific records. We supported her from our India office to make her able to see where she can ultimately find the data she is looking for, and whether the long-pending old mobile data files pertaining to billing details were in place. Besides, running the system to find out if the missing data files that the Delhi client wanted to have been duly processed at Dann Natte or not and if they have been billed or were they simply not been processed in the first place. The entire grave-digging exercise turned out to be a long and arduous process that took up a sizeable chunk of our time and energy for almost a full week to be able to get what we, as well as the Delhi client, wanted.

That day our mutual colleague Manpreet’s smile on his round rotund face happened to get as wide as a mile that it could easily make you think of parking your vehicle on it!!!

END OF PART 3 OF 'LOVE, LOSS, LONELINESS AND LONGING, part 3'

(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.