Books! Books! And More Books!

Books blog: Of Books and Reading

I invite you to have a look at some of the books (not all of them are listed here) I've read this year (2014) and I strongly recommend them for reading. Following is my personal take on each one of them:

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill:

I looked up Google and found this title as one of the Top Ten Horror Books ever published. That's it I had to read the book! There were many other good ones on the list, and "Heart-Shaped Box" (by Joe Hill) was one of them. I am glad I picked "Heart-Shaped Box" this time and it didn't disappoint. A first few pages into the book and you will deal with the kind of unspeakable Horror! that you might not have read before. Amazing stuff!

I like the way the book has been written. I strongly recommend it. 

I am a die-hard fan of Stephen King’s horror genre and I love his works. Joe Hill, his son; will he be able to do the magic for me? YES! After all, like father, like son. Joe Hill promises everything and he did a wonderful job. He scared me shut! "Heart-Shaped Box" deserves high praise. It is indeed a good yarn and I am giving it a 4- star rating because next time when there’s a new book from Joe I would give it not 5, but 6 stars! Thank you, Mr. Hill, for the “Heart-Shaped Box”.

[A slightly different version of the above book review is published in a previous blog by the name Collected Status Messages - 3. You may choose to click here to follow the link:

http://arindammoulick.blogspot.in/2014/12/collected-status-messages-3.html]

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill:

NOS4A2 is American author Joe Hill's spine-tingling story of supernatural suspense. His hugely popular works like Heart-Shaped Box and Horns sold millions of copies worldwide. 

On a personal note: Since I am a lover of Horror Fiction, I searched on Google for a list of the most famous Horror books ever written. There were many titles of greatest horror books included in the lists, but there were two books such as "NOS4A2" and "Heart-Shaped Box" by Joe Hill that were listed repeatedly in them. The book is gorgeously produced and the imported hard-bound edition of "NOS4A2" (see the cover of the book shown alongside) is to die for. It took me 20 scary, horror-filled days to complete reading it. 

Beware! Some spoilers ahead: "NOS4A2" is the number plate of the Roll Royce Wraith car and Charlie Manx is the owner. He loves to take it for a ride around looking for children to come along with him to a place of amusement called “Christmasland.” Manx has the ability to slip out of the everyday world and vanish into the hidden supernatural world of his creation. "NOS4A2" deserves 6 stars out of 5!

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri:

Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest book “The Lowland” is one of the finest books I have read this year. I picked up “The Lowland” because it was by Jhumpa Lahiri, a novelist whose work I have admired and enjoyed in the past. “Interpreter of Maladies” is one such. I have been to Tollygunj in Kolkata but never had visited the place she writes about in her evocative book, including the Tolly Club and the Technician’s Studio which I have heard about so many times. Tollygunge is sort of the epicenter of the novel. I long to go there now and look for myself.

Jhumpa Lahiri carries a heart of silence, and stillness in her stories, her interpretations of the 1950s and 1960s Calcutta are so evocative that it makes me feel like going to ‘the lowland’ and having a look. There are so many other things that evoke a deep sense of nostalgia for a life gone by in the quiet slinking away of Calcutta’s once-great economics and commerce. A marshy stretch of land abutting the house and the two ponds where two brothers grow up to become two entirely different individuals is the wonderful opening of this novel. I strongly recommend it.

You are Neera by Sunil Gangopadhyay

Sunil Gangopadhyay's novels have a niche following not only in his home state Bengal but all over the country. He is one of the stalwarts of Bengali literature and has written over 200 books. "You are Neera" is a book of love poems and is one of his most famous collections of love poems in this series. I understand there are several poetry collections with the theme of Neera.

Sunil Gangopadhyay, like so many other contemporary authors, especially poets from Bengal, has always been steeped deep in the cultural consciousness of the modern and post-modern Bengali society and its stellar literature. Satyajit Ray made two films based on his works, Pratidwandi (The Adversary) and Aranyer Din Ratri (Days and Night in the Forest). Many of his popular works have been translated into English such as "Those Days," "First Light," "The Lonely Monarch," "Ranu and Bhanu," "The Wonderland and Other Stories".

Sample a lovely poem from the book:

"Each day for us was a day of changing birth

Do you remember, when you, like cave-woman suddenly wounding adolescence,

Had tenderly embraced, very early at dawn, the soft, red winter sun

From the kadamba tree on Hari Ghosh Street, at the time, small shards of diamond were slowly falling…”

13 Steps to Bloody Good luck by Ashwin Sanghi:

This is an interesting book. It says the journey of life is not exactly easy. How do you attract luck? If you do not have any answer, then you should be reading this book…like…. NOW! I really liked reading this book about how to attract not just Dame Luck but “Bloody Good Luck”!

The author deals with the profound ideation of luck that luck is always not about your Fate or Destiny (that plays a role in your life), it is more about how you manage your life and what options/alternatives you choose from: Is it through so-called ‘hard work’ and ‘talent’ that counts? Yes, it does though. In any case, some people do not get lucky in spite of all that hard work and talent they have or invest in. This book is packed with highly interesting anecdotes and personal experiences that make it all the more pleasurable to read it. Must say it is a welcome new addition to my reading list this year. Worth reading.

Half Girlfriend by Chetan Bhagat:

KA-BOOM! Who suggested this gory title? KA-BOOM! The suggestion of something like ‘Half-Girlfriend’ (of a person) is such a ridiculous thought process on the part of the author of the book! KA-BOOM! Let me be specific here: according to me, (without the risk of sounding needlessly opinionated here) to be the very idea of something like ‘half girlfriend’ sounds like an illiterate viewpoint. KA-BOOM! You either have a (full) girlfriend or you don’t have one at all. KA-BOOM!

(I’d say the words (the book title, precisely) ‘half girlfriend’ comes across as an illiterate make-believe viewpoint that smacks of full-blown absurdity – a bloodless coup d'état (KA-BOOM!) that sounds like a bugle of committing an unliterary-like butchery on the collective head of its unknown hapless readers for buying the book! KA-BOOM! Needless to say, this writer got infected with nothing but a certain kind of microbial bally-hoo that had, God only knows, upended the apple cart of decorum on reading this pointless book!) Can a girl or a boy be half a girlfriend or half a boyfriend? I don’t think so. KA-BOOM!

Man and His Mind by Swami Nihsreyasananda:

Swami Nihsreyasananda, an eminent monk of the Ramakrishna Order, presents his depth of scholarly thinking in this volume. The book is a collection of editorial articles he wrote many years ago and regularly published in the monthly magazine Prabuddha Bharata. This compendium of scholarly essays reflects upon man’s struggles with his own mind and how if the mind is not disciplined and controlled, it causes numerous problems. And yes, not just for the individuals themselves but also for society in general. The eminent monk illustrates (with helpful quotations from Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Sarada Devi, and the scriptures) the ways and means to keep one’s mind under control. This book was gifted to me. I strongly recommend it.

Personal by Lee Child:

I have been reading Lee Child books for a few years now and I have never been disappointed. 

That's one of the specialties of Lee Child novels. 

I liked a whole lot of them and every time it was a new experience to reading this famous author. 

Personal is not a great addition as far as his genre of crime fiction is concerned but certainly a good one.

His books are on my reading list every year. His compelling thrillers are really great.

By Arindam Moulick

- Dec 2014

Pix courtesy: Internet

CHAPTER 28 - A Life to Die For - II

Life in the Cubicles

Revs and Rafs were deputed to a new project and they were to move away from the roaming division. But it was a saving grace (we were a little perturbed about it because they were leaving us to the daily dreadful drudgery of GG-controlled daily tasks) to know that they were to remain within the 5th-floor precinct in the East Flank of the building where our spacious cabin/cubicle was located, and not to move away to any other locations of Satyam’s numerous offices within or outside of the city. That bit was good news because interacting with them came as a welcoming respite at times when we felt we needed fair-minded individuals like them – former colleagues now though – to be there for us when we needed them – to just be there for reasons motivational. Balzie Gigamorthy was in any way present to take everyone forward.

Revanthi and Raufia were undoubtedly two conservatively beautiful souls. (Sometimes we used to call them by the nicknames I and Manpreet had given them: Hi Revs and Hello Rafs). Yes, GG was totally a different matter; handicapped as ever he was in matters of one’s personal charm, goodness, and cordiality! Guess they don’t make fine bosses/supervisors anymore, just the ones that sound and look like GG turn up in unfailing regularity and get to be managers! Good heavens! To be perfectly honest, Mr. GG Howdy was not so much an awful boss or administrator; he was assuredly the screwy one!

Within the East Flank which predominantly comprised of a large square-shaped hall chock-a-block with endless rows of comfortable box-like cubicles for every software engineer’s soul to park in, there were glass cabins lined on the far left side and on the right side, restrooms or toilets (John – Oh what a word to describe them!) on the far right corner, and the entryway to two spare halls crammed with an array of computer terminals and other glossy electronics. The spare halls – which were roomier by any standards – were located one each on the Northside and Southside corners of the big common hall facing each other, a swiveling glass door of the East Flank enclosure leads to the famed hallway where the Nescafe coffee vending machine and a water disperser are parked. I couldn’t view this arrangement of workstations in any other way excepting that our enlarged cabin, open to the sweeping view of the main hall (East Flank), was the most attractive star of the whole firmament!

After you enter through the glass door on the left, which is beside the Nescafe machine in the corridor, our cubicle was located on the northern left side of the hall of the East Flank enclosure. It was a delight to come to the office every day… only if you can just blot out Chichcha out of the charming beauty of our roaming division.

Balzie Gigamorthy sat at a premium distance away from our cubicle. His cubicle on the 5th floor’s East flank resembled a veritable Scotland Yard department! Ballpoint Pens and freshly-cut pencils – all nestled inside a flashy yellow Archies mug, double-earpiece Headphones (probably to use it when making international calls which he did once or twice a day), two landline phones with numerous press buttons flashing tiny red, yellow and green dots on them, and other electronic paraphernalia such as a scientific calculator, an investigative number cruncher, photo albums placed at strategic corners of his cubicle, snaps of various sizes and endless yellow post-it’s scrawled with countless shapeless scribbling pinned to the message board, and of course his stately IBM computer which had post-it’s on the top, on the side, and at the base! A yellow garland of post-its! Much credit ought to be given to this man of peaceful nature and mindset that he wisely preferred a healthy distance away from GG – who occupied one of the West Flank cabins – and us at the roaming division, both a safe kilometer away!

The letter ‘V’ portrays our individual seating positions. At the base of the inverted V sat Balzie (at his Scotland Yard of a desk!) and on one end of the tip of V sat Arinvan Maliek, Manpreet Singh, and Savitha Tandavi (roaming division specialists) while on the other tip sat GG (our boss with perennial schizophrenia!), including Sexy Devee and TD Suraj (financial settlement wizards!). One couldn’t help but be mindfully aware of the fact that the letter ‘V’ was actually lucky for all of us. ‘V’ signified Victory. (Yup, it’s also a sign for Villain, which was, who else, GG of course!).

For me, the entire length and breadth of the 5th-floor precinct (of the balsam-brown building of Tesser Towers) including the pastel-toned corridor, sand-papered lobby, Nescafe coffee dispenser parked on a pedestal in the passageway, the smallish meeting rooms on the left side of the corridor, and beyond to the West Flank housing Mrs. Sheila Rheddi’s cabin filled almost wall-to-wall with exclusive HR accouterments, followed by cabins after cabins occupied by the peripatetic Top Guns of Satyam, the grandly designed Conference Room, Tania Bhatroy’s, Pavan’s, Neetu Scootywali’s perfumed cubicles on the right, and Sexy Devee and TD Suraj’s bare cubicles in the middle of the huge hall, down to even the bulbous-nosed, human-hawk GG’s uninspiring boxy slot – formed my globe of life, my colleagues, my career, my professional world for nearly three great eventful years at the Tesser Towers. I couldn’t have asked for more.

Many a time when Arinvan Maliek was at the helm of managing daily operations, Manpreet Singh came in on a general stretch and took to preparing complex data-based marketing reports and sent them all out to the clients by E.O.D. (End of Day).

By the time when we began this new value-addition of sending out marketing reports to the clients based on raw and unprocessed data (relocated from TD Suraj’s clunky computer with cc copies to Sexy Devee and probably bcc copies to Gudumba Gongura Howdy, the Croc) procured from CybreNett, London and Dann Natte, Denmark became prevalent, Savitha Tandavi was long gone. She would never know how much fun it had been for the person coming in on a general shift to generate the client-specific marketing reports and send them out via emails! How sad!

END OF PART 2 of 'CHAPTER 28 - A Life to Die For - II'.

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Click here for PART I of the story.

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.

Collected Status Messages - 3

Here is a selection of the status messages I posted on my social media sites during October/November/December 2014 months:

(Note: The messages are not in any chronological order.)

1. On reading 'Telling Tales - Selected Writings' by Amit Chaudhuri:

I have just finished reading "Telling Tales - Selected Writings." I loved it. I now look forward to reading his other book "Clearing A space".

It is a book of fine essays written by Amit Chaudhuri, the author who wrote books such as A Strange and Sublime Address, Real Time, and Calcutta, Two Years in the City. 

Telling Tales consolidates his critical writings that have been published in various publications/journals around the world.

The above write-up had been posted on the flipkart.com website from where the book was originally bought. Web Link: http://www.flipkart.com/telling-tales-selected-writing-1993-2013-english/p/itmdpfa5bdyadw7g?pid=9780670087389

2. On reading 'Personal' by Lee Child:

Lee Child’s crime thrillers are one of the fastest-selling books in the world. Millions of copies of 'Personal' have already been sold. 

I have picked it up for its beautiful cover and binding and of course the beauty of fast-paced racy action thriller and stuff had kept me hooked till the end. 

I’ve just finished reading ‘Personal’ (Lee Child’s latest book) and is now resting in the crime thrillers section in my bookcase.

3. On Diwali day:

First off, I attacked a group of huge rotund pedas and quickly gobbled them up...just yumm, couldn't control it! After which, I lighted some diyas and bright red, yellow, green, and pink candles too were lighted up, then arranged some fluffy Marigold, Chameli, and Jasmine in a large square in the hall.
After finishing up the task I stood up before I cast a look at my Better Half for approval to leave and go attend to my other non-existent errands around the apartment. Changing my plans, I went straight up to the kitchen quietly looking to pick up some more pedas while I could. Holy Moly! Pedas were not there anymore! What to do now? Feeling slightly unlucky, I dashed to the puja room to find more rang-birangi diyas. Diyas were there but my beloved pedas too were.... there! YEEEESSS!

Thank Goodness! I popped one first and then another and quietly came away without anyone coming to know of it. Yippeeee! Success at last! Wish you all a very Happy Diwali!

4. On reading 'Heart-Shaped Box' by Joe Hill:

I have just finished reading Stephen King’s son Joe Hill’s horror novel ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ (Gollancz). 

I had looked it up on the Web and found one among the Top 20 Horror fiction titles ever published was Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box. 

That’s it; I had to order the book online. If you think horror movies are terrifying, then pursue reading this book you’d know; especially the first few pages! Utterly scary! 

Like father, like son, Joe Hill is one of the finest writers I have discovered recently.

A slightly different, albeit a longer version of the above write-up had been posted on the Amazon website from where the book was originally bought:

I looked up Google and found this title one among the Top 20 Horror Books published. There were many good ones on the list, but "Heart-Shaped Box" (by Joe Hill) caught my attention. I read the blurb and felt immediately interested to read the book. I am glad I picked "Heart-Shaped Box" from the list this time and it didn't disappoint me. A first few pages into the book and you will have goosebumps all over or the hairs on the back of your neck standing up; the kind of ‘Horror!’ you would want to read! I like the way the book has been written. Great language! I strongly recommend it.

I am already a die-hard fan of Stephen King’s horror genre and I love his works. The question I was facing was will Joe Hill, his very talented son, be able to do the magic for me? YES! Like father, like son, Joe Hill promises and delivers. With this book, he did a wonderful job. "Heart-Shaped Box" deserves high praise. It is indeed a good yarn and I am giving it a 4- star rating because next time when there’s a new book from Mr. Hill I would give it not 5, but 6 stars! Thank you, Mr. Hill, for the “Heart-Shaped Box”. I am moving on to your next work "NOS4A2". I like the title already!

Weblink: http://www.amazon.in/Heart-Shaped-Box-GollanczF-Joe-Hill/dp/0575081872/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=08M0HMSE2QHN69NZDDJF

By Arindam Moulick

Click here to go to Collected Status Messages

Click here to go to Collected Status Messages - 2

Pix courtesy: Internet

CHAPTER 27 - A Life to Die For - I

By the time Savitha Tandavi had spent a year and was generally found fretful about her Grand Plan of Escape – which was, sort of, permanently logged into “I am going to America, baby!” mode – life in the roaming division began to take a different shade of character – which stood out in excelled brilliance and camaraderie. GG was at the helm of affairs and there was nothing unusual about his managerial skills because he continued to keep up his brutal tempo in full gear.

Balzie Gigamorthy wasn’t yet completely ruffled by the things GG was up to mainly his usual extreme bossism and his self-indulgent, atrocious language of the dreadful monstrosity that never mellowed even if there was Merion Roz Reyo, his favourite pupil, in hearing distance. Balzie Gigamorthy, roaming division’s point man, abhorred his way of twisted behaving but never said anything that could ruffle GG’s already insane mind. Roaming Division saw new additions in the manifestation of new personalities such as Renzo Anny Munny, Guyana Pracash, Shiv Charan ‘Joey’ Prachad, and Dilnawaz Khan and not to speak of J. Raju (alias Gutkha Raju), who believed in eating/chewing/chabaoing gutkha and wearing muscular white jazzy sports sneakers with formal trousers, a disastrous fashion statement!, to office.

On the personal front, my life was completely wrecked and I found myself clinging on to it with whatever moral strength I could foster up to live through its wreckage. Una was gone. She was no longer my girl and that was the primary reason why my life went kaput. I ended up nursing a broken heart all throughout my long and hard years at Satyam. And there was no getting away from my personal misery and how could you if your love becomes a sacrificial lamb on the altar of some people’s entrapping jealousies and masquerading mousetraps!

In Savitha’s hard hands Una became a gullible doll, completely coaxed, naïve at best, defenseless to her sermonizing plots and preachy machinations that Savitha adamantly wielded on her. Una was not able to get away from her yaar-dost friend’s scheming, conniving conspiracy theories (about the world in general), and I positively suspect she wasn’t even aware of Savitha’s heartless maneuverings; she was as though tightly fastened to Savitha’s shackles unable to even try and think by using her own indoctrinated head. All throughout those oppressive, unlivable years at Satyam, I had been contemplating nothing else except a craving for my dearly beloved Una – to see her, to talk to her, to hold her hand in mine and see her startled-deer black eyes smile at me; these became my fervent prayers and I uttered them daily to make her come back to me.

Una has gone on dealing with her life as best as she could in the malicious circle of Savitha’s domineering friendship that she never came close to realizing.

Professionally my life was doing good. Personally less said the better! That was the kind of perplexing reality I’ve had to endure during those younger years of my life at Satyam and I think I had succeeded in overcoming the hardest parts namely Chichcha, my boss/manager there; heartbreak from Una; Savitha’s hideous behavior; and even Satyam’s own parting shot of vile deception, which ultimately led me to put in my papers. And thank God I had resigned because it was impossible for me to work among the howling wolves of the Taikhana branch of Satyam. It was starting to choke my heart during the last months I’d spent at Satyam’s one and only ugly office extension at Taikhana.

Confessedly, the first three years at Satyam have been truly wonderful; but about the last two years there, there was scarcely anything of importance, apart from the usual work. Truth be told, out of the last two years of my association with Satyam, the first one to some degree was somewhat enjoyable especially because of good companionable colleagues that I have had since our unforgettable years at the great Tesser Towers, such as Deve ‘Sexy’ Prachad, Dopeynath Pundy (yes, the same Dopeynath Pundy who fell head over heels for the snooty Neetu Scootywali had joined Satyam! The guy who worked with one of my closest friends called Strong in the financial department of a large spinning mills firm in the city.) and a couple of other fair-minded friends, the second and the final year at Taikhana branch involved doing the most mundane work – and routinely encountering another unfortunate, prejudiced, arrogant, savage, antagonistic and cagey males and females – I’ve ever done. The name Taikhana, revolting as it sounds, suited very well for those disgusting souls I had the misfortune to come into contact with.

Una was no longer there in my life and with Una gone Monami too beat a hasty retreat. Better to get out of here now than when it becomes necessary to remain a mute spectator and not having the capacity to say anything ‘for’ anybody or ‘against’ anybody. Monami apparently had to just beat it. She is a fish sketcher, remember? But how could she go away without even formally announcing her going? It’s her wish and will, after all. She perhaps knew this could come. So let’s beat it before I get entangled in its fiery back-draft, she must have thought. Besides, why will Monami have any say in Arinvan’s matter when Una forms no part of the miserable scene anymore? Yeah, the one which entirely was of Una’s dear old friend Savitha’s making.

On The Same Page

Arinvan Maliek and Manpreet Singh had come to be acknowledged as the torch-bearers of their division. Balzie Gigamorthy, Chichcha’s first right-hand man, was “on the same page” with us. ‘Truck Driver’ Suraj came in later to become a ‘right-hand man’ for GG. Both I and Manpreet, with Susanna Garlowe pitching in from Denmark, were very happy with what we used to do: we used to execute, figure out, solve, sort out, complete, resolve, and made fine accomplishments of our daily duties and tasks – all by sitting, working and pontificating within the cubicle of our great roaming division. We were very proud and well-poised to achieve what we achieved, on a daily basis that is. It was so much fun.

The two most important challenges were to solve problems and keep abreast of all issues to all the team members at the roaming division, escalation of issues (if there are any), and send daily reports to all customers involved, including senior management.

Merion Roz Reyo used to pout her lips and quip “SO BUSY!” in our general direction while she passed by our cubicle.

At other times she used to say, "Hey Shakespeare! How's it going?" to Arinvan and keep an ever-ready smile on her face for him to take notice of.

That's how Merion Roz Reyo was famous for. Always up and about for some new emotionally draining urban angst that never really subsided. When perpetually bored with someone, she'd like to move on by branding the one she was going steady within such a way as to intentionally make him the one who is 'way out of her league' and so 'tata bye bye'! For her, the grass was always greener, temptingly greener, on the other side of the pasture! Poor girl!

And then one fine day Savitha Tandavi went off handing GG a rip-roaring but supposedly strongly-worded resignation letter; she hooted, whooped, and howled at the wretched goons-like mentality of a boss we all so loved to dislike. As a result, for some time, Savitha’s ‘Big Hand’ exit (as we called it) became a topic of discussion amongst us even as we knew that GG was going to go full bonkers on this issue for some time before he actually comes round and subjects himself to the task of “giving” his “precious time” in interviewing and recruiting new hires (some folks used to wrongly put it as: “new joinees”. The word ‘joinees’ doesn’t exist in the English language!) for the roaming division.

That’s when the sprightly Shiv Charan ‘Joey’ Prachad and smiling-Buddha like Dilnawaz Khan were hired by GG. But GG was not done yet with his hiring business; he went a step further and a less-than-impressive, run-off-the-mill character by the name Jagan Raju was appointed. At first, Arinvan was a little taken aback and clearly dejected over Jagan’s recruitment into the team. Reminding himself that first impressions often belie the truth, he took it into his stride without bothering to bother himself. Manpreet too felt the same way as Arinvan when it came to his point of view is kept in check about this altogether unnecessary ‘development’ in the roaming division. It was all of GG’s making, and there’s no disputing his call on this. Though it was not Jagan Raju’s fault to have been hired by GG, we simply couldn’t approve of Jagan’s coarse personal character which was evidently redolent of shrewd impropriety: gutkha-chabowing (gutkha-chewing) is one of them. His breast pocket was almost always crammed with these individual-sized carcinogenic packets. Typically, he would stink away to glory day after day of flagrant gutkha.

And above all, the fact that he was miserably inarticulate brought the whole house down sometimes. But thankfully, unlike Gutkha Raju, Shiv and Dilnawaz were found to be able-bodied well enough additions to our division.

Revanthi Rakani and Raufia Begum after spending more than a year at the roaming division had consigned each and every task to our resurgent team: then consisting of Manpreet, Savitha, and Arinvan as new members. Revs and Rafs (we were so fond of calling them by those short-sized westernized nicknames) moved on to other greener pastures within the much-vaunted rolls of Satyam’s large database of software projects.

Much later when Revanthi’s and Raufia’s have departed to some other project within the vicinity of the Tesser Towers building and Savitha Tandavi’s rushed exit from Satyam a couple of months before, GG, our own boss from hell, called me into his office and said laboriously in his deep baritone voice:

"Arinvan, I want you to take the lead. Balzie will be moving to someplace else; maybe a different project. I want you to take charge and lead from the front. We will soon have others joining us. I have given it to HR, and we will have two more to come on board. Things will have to move on, without any hiccups or problems.” GG looked a little pained and at ease in the same breath before saying, “Okay?” Pained because Balzie was leaving, at ease because he found a replacement in a perfect bakra and that was me!

I beat a hasty retreat after replying, “Yes, GG”.

Once out of his office room and in the hallway of the West Flank, where admin professional Neetu Scootywali and HR specialists Pavan Bommaraju and Tania Bhatroy, the Queen of the Kalimpong Hills, were seated and fast at work. After nodding my head to say “Hi” to them I looked away and I felt a deep sense of fearfulness, almost a presentiment, enveloping me. I walked through the green-marbled corridor where I met Merion’s gaze and her sphinxlike smile; acknowledging it by commenting "nice wardrobe!" on the saree she wore I paced up to my den feeling distressed thinking about GG’s latest doppelganger.

I was happy about doing the honours as per GG’s newfound expectation, but I was also confused to know if GG things were good enough for each one of us at the great roaming division. I mean far from feeling a mere puppet in GG’s hands, I felt completely ill at ease after I came back to my seat and stared blankly at Manpreet for him to say something.

Instead, Manpreet gave a quizzical look and said, “What?”

I said, “Nothing…GG called me to say that he wants me to take the lead.”

“What are you saying? Is this true? Hum kya mar gaye the?” said Manpreet in his typical Punjabi twang indicating that he too could have been entitled to the task.

Not to undermine Manpreet credentials to become a leader or something in that rank, I too was ill at ease with GG’s decision. Invariably, I had thought, “Why me? Why not Manpreet?”

“Nahee yaar, mujhe koi lead weed nahi karna. Tu hi samhaal”, I said dejectedly. ‘Taking lead or take charge’ was all right, but for some reason, I was not finding this thing OK. Yes, Manpreet could equally have been the person to take this up. I didn’t want to ‘take charge’ and that too under GG’s tutelage. It's dreadful, to say the least.

“Kyoon? Kya hua? Lead karo after all Chichcha said that” said he.

I didn’t answer that, instead, I said, “Do nayeh bande aane wale hain.”

“Achcha”, he said before adding funnily, “Aane do unko!”

After a moment, Manpreet said, “Aane do. We need more people. Yahan par bahoth kaam hai yaar, at least thoda toh relief milega hameh.” 

Manpreet and I had been making gradual requests to both Balzie and Mr. Howdy to get a couple of more guys hired for the roaming division because the workload had increased substantially and it was becoming almost agonizing for only two of us to handle the job.

I smiled at his joke and felt a little better. But strangely that useless ‘feeling’ never left me. We knew GG’s unpredictable mentality and his way of doing things. Maybe this very thing was the reason for the trouble I was facing, but I don’t know I was still not clear-headed about this. As far as GG was concerned, I am sure he doesn’t give a damn about anything that brings happiness to his subordinates like me and Manpreet. Well, it’s not that we want him to.

I never knew GG, for all his crankiness we always looked down upon without anything let known to him, would be so ‘generous’ to me, instead of being the same with Manpreet Singh. Why did he call me and tell me that I should “take the lead” instead of Manpreet? While I realize that it must be good for me, but somehow I was sure it’s not for nothing that GG is considering me over Manpreet, after all, Manpreet too is quite capable. I had firmly believed in the fact that for GG or anyone else, there was hardly any choice left to make when it is tantamount to both me and Manpreet being eligible “to take lead” or whatever. He wants me “to take the lead”? Now that’s one hell of a thing to have come from the mouth of this one crazy boss the world could ever have! As professional individuals do, I did what I can be expected to do; I appreciatively said yes to GG’s decree and even managed a modest smile on my face for GG to take a positive hint that I had accepted his, let’s say, challenge.

END OF PART 1 of 'CHAPTER 27 - A Life to Die For - I'.

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Click here for PART II of the story

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.