Epilogue: Goodbye, 'Lost Days of Glory'!

Arindam Moulick

Epilogue

The last vestiges of my memory bank are being cleansed and put out to dry in ballpoint pen ink (rather in pixels, whatever) on my online journal: “PEBBLES ON THE BEACH”.

I feel as though an awesome avalanche of unforgiving remembrances is falling off my mind’s psyche and it looks like I am getting all set to spread my wings and fly away; free at last from the shackles of writing about the internal recriminations and those well-beloved glories and trounces that have once been an inseparable part of my professional life at Satyam.

Believe me, I have had not so an easy time writing these chapter-wise presentations of stories relying solely on my share of much-loved memories/recollections, treasured as they ever were. It’s been, to my pleasant surprise, an arduous task dealing with the details of an extraordinary era that had gone a long time ago. Despite everything, however, I still cherish that bygone era so much… and perhaps that’s why it gave me the required wherewithal to recount a generous tale about my days in Satyam that will most likely see... 49+ stories in all. Maybe 50 at the last count. Okay, 50 stories!

Nothing but the Memories

Writing each one of the stories that you’ll find in the chapter-wise presentation of LOST DAYS OF GLORY has for me been no less than an ambition: an aspiration that for 2 long years since July 2013 has provided me a chance to relive an unforgettable era that was etched deeply in my mind’s psyche. 

I wrote the story as though I have been ‘possessed’ (to use the term mildly) by my past; no, not really. But there was no shying away from the (fictional) memoir when I knew I have my blog that could be just the right medium for the task of writing (grunting or ranting or whatever) it down and be able to share the best parts and the worst parts of my professional life in Satyam with the world. I admit, reading these chapters will sometimes make you feel a little tedious but they have not been written with the intention to advertise/ publicize some kind of unreadable tosh/guff material for the readers of my blog. Each chapter has been composed solely with the intention to share my memories, proffer a deep sense of nostalgia for the readers, and feel happy. That is all there is to it.

Some folks who I had been professionally associated with working at Satyam may not entirely concur with me on the story in LOST DAYS OF GLORY, but of course, they are entitled to their own opinion about our wonderful Satyam years. I think it doesn’t matter whether or not opinions about it truly count here but I am sure we’d mutually agree on the fact that we’d lived a wonderful life working there. Nostalgia counts, and so there’s a deep sense of Nostalgia that pervades throughout the long memoir. That is what matters, ultimately.

Without sounding oversensitive, I’d say LOST DAYS OF GLORY has given me an outlet to pour all out and in the bargain feel lighter at heart. I think I have been successful in that endeavour. I feel that there’d been too many emotions involved here and I wanted to find a way to make something out of them and feel happy in the process of sharing them with the readers of my blog Pebbles on the Beach. So I chose to write about my days in Satyam. I sincerely hope my ranting (if any) is excused because it was just a part of the whole package – as in blogging material – of writing this story in the first place.

The Sense of an Ending

In the beginning, I thought some 10 longish chapters would be sufficient to tell what I needed to tell. However, as I went on with the task of writing them down I realized that I had become a little nostalgic and had plenty of stories to write; 10 would barely scratch the surface, and each one of them had been written with lots of love and care that it is still leaving me smarting with the desire to write more. But then, I know one has to stop being too personal about one’s beloved memories and keep on hammering pointlessly; so I pulled over my train of thoughts at 49 glorious chapters and would go no further. This is it. This is where I want to end this seemingly emotional journey that I started two years ago in the year 2013. 

Like all good things must come to an end, this too shall come to its logical conclusion. Well, logical or not I am not entirely sure, but certainly, there’s a sense of an ending.

Reliving that exalted company of lost friends and acquaintances and experiences that taught us lovely things in the pixilated pages of my blog has been totally worth my time and energy. Admittedly, it was inordinately necessary for me to feel lighter at heart by embarking on this writing journey of over 2 years.

The fictional memoir of my wonderful days spent at Satyam “LOST DAYS OF GLORY” which began 2 years prior in July 2013 is going to be curtains in the year 2015! God bless us all.

(Do I hear a huge collective murmur of relief?! Let it go, folks, let it go).

By Arindam Moulick

(My fictional memoir “Lost Days of Glory,” including this Epilogue was written between May 2013 and December 2015).

- This article has also been published on the EzineArticles.com website under the heading "Epilogue: Lost Days of Glory." Click here to read the article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Epilogue:-Lost-Days-of-Glory&id=9238010

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.

CHAPTER 48 - Final Notes

The End of Satyam

The misfortune brought upon Satyam, a proud home-grown IT company, our bread-giver, our provider for so many years, was sad enough to cause a lot of heartburn (and heartbreak) for all of us folks who have worked for it during the golden years of its IT supremacy.

As far as Arinvan and his colleagues Sexy Devee, Manpreet, Suraj, Shiv Charan Joey, and Dilnawaz were concerned, a sad occurrence like that can only but break their hearts into pieces that can never be tended to how much ever one may try. Heartbreaks are like that they cannot be amended once broken.

Though some of us have already moved out long before Satyam saw its cataclysmic fall from grace and its managers shamed with not even a chance at some kind of redemption, the mere fact that such a ghastly thing could occur to such a behemoth of an IT company was really hard to believe. Could such an event affect us all had we been still there working with Satyam? Most certainly it’d have. No doubt about that. But I absolutely shudder to think what would've happened had we still been working there.

It was not about job losses per se, it was about the loss of an iconic emblem and its prime business assurance factor that this part of the world of IT industry was so damn proud of, and now all of that has been lost forever. All name, fame, and goodwill...gone...with the wind. But then, one would have to find a new job elsewhere eventually even if the company one has worked for is gone for a toss. Should Satyam matter to us anymore? Why should there be any sense of attachment to it when we know we have to move on someday or have already left the company? But I do believe that as far as Satyam was concerned, it mattered a great deal for every one of us as to why it floundered the way it did.

Nobody prefers facing “The Kick-Ass Drive” that comes in the event of such a huge business bungling by the guys at the so-called Pyramidal top! Maybe just by moving on to some other company would have been like coming to terms with Satyam’s disgraceful debacle or so it seemed to us. But it was hard for us to make up our minds when you know that you have become so rooted to the place and its aura, or as we keep saying: so much attached were we that thinking to go look for some other company had made us guilty conscious. But thankfully, all that sort of tapered mindset changed eventually.

Arinvan and others faced no such forceful “drive” to quit Satyam. Luckily, a few of his team members had already left the beleaguered company by the time when the catastrophe had struck. They saved their fortunate souls from the impending mess that was on the way. Much later, we had moved out in the early 2000s. Never mind luckily.

Looks like the greater part of our individual personal histories that were made and nurtured while working at Satyam – that is, much before the sad devastation of its hard-won laurels, glories, and its prodigious reputation of which we have all partaken to our heart’s content and when we were all working with Satyam as happy associates have been irretrievably lost in the labyrinths of the last century of the last millennium. I think ever since the start of the new millennium, everything for Satyam had been going downhill and this was a bad omen of sorts (for the company) that nobody knew about, not even its own IT czar who became the No. 1 culprit in India’s biggest corporate fraud. And the rest is pathetic history!

Memories are all we have now, and they will stay the way they had always been with us – truly unforgettable, lest we forget those wonderful days we have spent working at Satyam. We know Satyam is lost forever thanks to its owner’s insatiable GREED and primeval LUST for land (not to undermine the nefarious acts of his greedy individuals who called themselves as IT leaders doing a great job!), money, status, and power. But our memories of working there will never be forgotten. It’s been way more than a decade now since some of us have left that company and carried on with our lives in the best ways we could muster. In fact, we already had gone far into the Future before Satyam’s fall from grace had occurred. Well, an organization is lost, not lives! Yes, I know. But still…

The Scandal

Satyam was a Nasdaq-listed IT company based out of the City of Pearls. The company owner began from a very humble beginning or so the story goes. He belonged to a conservative family of farmers who tended to their traditional agricultural business, irrigation mills, and the like. After returning from America with a degree in computers, he began sensing a business opportunity in ‘computers’ in India, particularly in Hyderabad where he thought – pretty correctly – that computer education is fast catching up and a whole new generation of educated youth is going to make a career in computers, mainly computer software.

Back in 2008/9, the owner – no less being an IT czar now – made a shocking confession by admitting in writing, to the authorities, that he faked profits, bungled company accounts books to the tune of more than $1 billion dollars. He falsified company accounts to the tune of 50 billion Indian rupees, over not 1 or 2 years but many years, maybe he “started getting ideas” to do something like this from the year 2000/2001.

The Indian arm of the global giant Something Fishy-Pryce H20House Coffers, the once-venerable accounts audit company was found hand-in-glove with Satyam. God only knows what they are capable of! Something Fishy-Pryce H20House Coffers was fined $6 million dollars for not “following auditing standards” and the “code of conduct” while engaged in its duties auditing the accounts of Satyam. The kartha-dhartas of both Satyam and Something Fishy-Pryce… were booked under the Indian Penal Code for cheating, criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, and forgery. The rest, as they say, is history, criminal history – the one that is deeply muddled and unearthly dirty; let us not go there.

Memory’s Gold

What would happen if we all had still been there? Paired up and trooped into The Beauty Spot on the 5th-floor Tesser Towers and settled down there to work? What about GG Howdy, our manager? Will you want to have him back again as our manager? Let me ask you: after all you have read through this fictional memoir, will you change anything if you had given a chance?

It was a topic that did come up for a chat for the first time in our lives when we were no longer working at Satyam. But we could think about it no more than asking ourselves such a meaningless question, for we were not a part of Satyam anymore. That was the first and last time we ever conversed on such a melancholy topic. And then we totally forgot about the event and don’t even bother now any more than we did previously. I guess things such as Satyam’s downfall need to have to be forgotten. The era that was once so grand and beautiful has passed and we all moved on with our individual lives. One may make a passing mention of it here and there, but that’s just about it and nothing more than that. It doesn’t matter any more than how one looks at the cult of Satyam because its supreme legacy that we have been very proud of feeling has been left behind and now it lies in tatters, which will disappear slowly and gone forever. We consigned our beautiful Satyam memories to hungry, unforgettable flames of the beloved Past because the Present doesn’t seem nice enough a sanctuary for it to linger on. 

Past is the better place for Satyam’s legacy to live on. Being memorable in that way would be a better proposition for its ultimate redemption it is seeking. And yes, for the right reasons only; not for the quagmire of wrong reasons that it is now known for, unfortunately.

Past recurs; keeps coming back now and then in passing references to its unforgettable memory of the days it never forgets and then, afterward, maybe there will be nothing more left to talk about with anyone anymore.

Memories are like diamonds…they are forever. They will never be forgotten. They will live on because the heart remembers everything.

A Heart That Remembers Everything

At the end of the day, we had other beginnings to undertake and other long-pending dreams to realize. Life goes on, inevitably. Let’s just say that our old Satyam associated with that bad event was cut off and forgotten, left to rot that it withered away and died. We will stop thinking about the one ghastly crime Satyam committed and that will be all it will take to carry us forward in our own individual lives. The whole chest full of unforgettable memories though will continue to remain with us in our unrequited hearts – a heart that remembers everything and never forgets its deepest darkest secrets.

And all the sweet memories of our workspace, The Beauty Spot, on the 5th-floor Tesser Towers on Raj Bhavan Road will always remain special in our hearts. Speaking of Arinvan, memories of Satyam will forever tug at his heartstrings; for him, it still feels best times together, forever. *

(To be concluded)

By Arindam Moulick

PS: * I simply am not able to let go of the feelings I suffer from dwelling too much on the past – perhaps, it’s not a good thing to do anymore. But I am sure it has its own merits and this is one such... writing a fictional memoir: Lost Days of Glory, and getting a chance to cast a whole lot off my back, finally. Thank you, Life.

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 - 7

Here is a candid selection of the status messages I posted on a social media website between the months of September and November 2015:

I. On reading 'A Life Long Ago' by Sunanda Sikdar and 'Tagore, The World Voyager' Translated by Sugata Bose:

The weekend that had passed by has been particularly productively used. If time is of the essence in the hustling clamour of the world, then I could have some time off for reading two wonderful books. ‘A Life Long Ago’ by Sunanda Sikdar and ‘Tagore, The World Voyager’ (Translated by Sugata Bose).

‘A Life Long Ago’ is a deeply-felt memoir of the author’s childhood years lived in the 1950s & 60s before Bengal’s partition. The book has been translated from Dayamoyeer Katha (in Bengali) to English by Anchita Ghatak. The original Bengali has been awarded the Lila Puraskar by Calcutta University in 2008 and the Ananda Puraskar in 2010. Partition and post-Partition have been a subject of personal loss and heartburn for decades and some wounds never seem to heal.

‘Tagore, The World Voyager’ is a book of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. All of these Tagore poems are appearing courtesy of a new translation by the renowned professor of history and diplomacy at Harvard University Dr. Sugata Bose.

II. Where Do I Live? - a poem I composed on a whim:

On the sunny side of the street,
By the encroached lake
Whereupon my apartment stands in the light of day,
And under the stars of each night shining down.
There, my friend is my house of over a decade;
Holding sway in the Milky Way.

- Composed on 19 Oct 2015

III. On reading 'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair' by Pablo Neruda and 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest' by Stieg Larsson:

'Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair' is a collection of amazing love poems by the widely acclaimed Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Another book I finished reading is 'The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson. 

When I read the first book in the trilogy 'The Girls with the Dragon Tattoo' I knew I was reading an incredible Crime Fiction novel. I was instantly hooked right from the first page. I read the second book and now the final book of the trilogy and it has been a roller-coaster ride with its steep climbs and falls. Reading these books often stunned me emotionally; it caused me to recoil from the graphic nature of the stories.

- 28 Oct 2015

IV. On Writing 'Lost Days of Glory' A Fictional Memoir:

Finishing my fictional memoir LOST DAYS OF GLORY next month. I wrote what I believe to be the final chapter of my memoir (which I’m now calling “CHAPTER 48 – Final Notes” Less of a mouthful and hardly attention-grabbing title. Never mind. But of course, I still have an Epilogue to publish which I am very likely to do after I am done with the final chapter.

I am not at all secure in the belief that this is over, but I think… yeah…it’s all over now!

I nailed it.

I am DONE.

- November 2015

By Arindam Moulick

Pix Courtesy: Internet

CHAPTER 47 - A Professional Hazard

The ‘Financial Couple’

TD Suraj and Sexy Devee kept their jobs nice and easy with their share of Finance profiles at Taikhana and STC branches, respectively, going good.

Their head for Finance was incorrigibly fanatical and they liked keeping it that way without causing any social problem to anyone who interacted with them. Fanatical or not…but these friendly guys were as easy-going as anyone could be, both personally and professionally.

One good thing about them was their personality trait, which was to say that they’d always loved to “be specific,” especially – GG’s left-hand man – TD Suraj who loved revelling in the specifics of things and every so often loved playing the proverbial ball right off the bat too. That part of his plain persona, not unlike Sexy Devee’s, had almost always used to come face to face with GG’s inhuman fury so great that he (Suraj that is) had stopped taking offense altogether and took it all in his stride as a professional hazard thing – or, perhaps, just to be capable enough to live another day at Satyam working as best as he could muster. Just how did he do it? Nobody knows!

(Satyam offered us a great working atmosphere and that was a clincher as far as our fledgling careers were concerned. We favoured Satyam just as it favoured us back. The feelings were undeniably mutual and we loved that.)

‘Truck Driver’ Suraj’s LOGO was POGO, and therefore he liked satiating himself in the maxim he got to invent or supposedly have learned from somewhere: Live today to fight another day! Like they show in Tom and Jerry cartoon show! GG (Tom Cat) running after Suraj (Jerry Rat) and Jerry giving it back to Tom in whatever way he can.

Eventually, Sexy Devee too, like Suraj, had become quite unmindful of our boss’s constant barrage of plaintive cries and hurting jibes. It was a dry "professional hazard thing" no less, that bore on his soul like an impossible reality, either you bear it with a sly grin and make no bones about it or you don’t, or better still get on with it as soon as you can to survive your share of the "professional hazard thing" at the workplace. Still, for a gentlemanly Devee, his profession at Satyam despite being under our boss GG Howdy’s spell of bossy extremities was one big delight of inspiration and success that he supposedly has tasted all right, likewise his partner TD Suraj.

Both these guys have been found jostling along the hard way till the very end of the days when the roaming division was being ‘taken away’ from Satyam and that’s when they wised up to ditch GG Howdy’s employment offer at an organization interestingly named as Cow-Labs his mastermind friend had founded. This ‘financial couple’ continued working at one of Satyam’s numerous finance divisions – firstly at an office nearby Marsh Mellow building – where once upon a time Neetu Scootywali had worked from and Arinvan had made the mistake of meeting her in her professional finery – and finally at STC, Badaourpalli where Devee and TD Suraj continued to work before Arinvan Maliek relocating to Taikhana office branch. Just a few months later TD Suraj was asked to relocate here with Devee left behind in STC.

Two years prior, however, the last employee to leave ‘our’ roaming division at the unforgettable Balsam-hued Tesser Towers on Raj Bhavan Road was Arinvan, before he was put on an IJP (internal job posting) and moved out to STC. Afterward, when STC couldn’t offer what he’d wanted career-wise, he couldn’t help but make strenuous appeals to be shifted to Satyam’s Taikhana center riding one last time on an IJP possibility and get enrolled in a new project assignment there. But little did he know that this too would turn out to be a damp squib.

Taikhana Center: A Damp Squib

Nonetheless, moving to Taikhana (rhymes with the word Paikhana, can’t help to be openly specific about it here!) branch was a BIG mistake; some ghastly misstep of his Fate combined with an inadvertent oversight had brought him up face-to-face with some of the world’s devil-in-the-sheep’s-clothing badasses that were roosting in Taikhana unabated, with no one to put them in their place by letting them know that they are not as worthy as they think they are. Nobody to tell all these unlettered folks that they are mere employees paid to work in a team and so get on with your job guys. One naturally expects one’s manager to bring these unwanted things (and beings) into a sort of resolution but the man came across as a person whose credibility was questionable to carry out a task such as this. So bash on, regardless of whatever happens!

And then there were a few managers who were needlessly edgy about things even as their general conduct at the workplace was found to be far from sympathetically cordial. This was my sole assessment during my time there and I don’t think it is incorrect in any way because I have experienced it firsthand and I know bringing this up as a tale, stale that it sounds now wouldn’t really help anybody or anything but maybe, just for the sake of posterity, I should as well 'pay it forward' this way? These guys were kind of caving in on their own heaps of mental anorexia thanks due to a sense of constant fear and anxiety that never seemed to have abated with them, and mind you it was also not due to some pell-mell work schedules that they thought they could showily brag about all the time while at work; it was most certainly about a constant cacophony of misgivings that brooked no mental peace for them while they were at work. It is, as though, their own ludicrous idiosyncrasies had cast a pall of irreversible gloom on their minds, permanently so. Not that we young guns were wise enough to crack this or surmise to our hearts’ content whatever we felt like about them, but the reality was stark naked in front of us to look and be ill at ease with the uncharitable goings-on. This kind of candid portrayal of our managerial people was pretty natural to come forth like the way it did within our minds’ psyche. But all this is true to the best of our knowledge and our sense of innocent humility and judgment. Amen to that.

Nothing wrong in wanting to “lead from the front” but that’s one ugly guff not worth my time to explore here on these pages, and besides I have several other good things to tend to.

The only thing that kept Arinvan Maliek from completely losing his sanity over his horrible encounters/experiences there, including working among some of the worthless negative cheats in the decrepit cacophonous refuge of a place called Taikhana, was getting the office work done and getting back home and reading Charles Dickens’ seminal novel The Pickwick Papers and Stephen King & Peter Straub’s scary Black House and his short-lived friendship with a certain spend-thrift going by the name of a romantic called Chand.

A Werewolf in Taikhana

Work was happening somehow, but unfortunately not without the unwelcome challenge of keeping the off-putting bunch of individuals at bay. They were the most wretched lots I have encountered in a glamorous company like Satyam. It riled me to think how did these oddballs/fellows have found their way to Satyam? They don’t really deserve to be here. It was kind of odd, very odd.

The decrepit Taikhana was literally teeming with savage wolves and vicious dudes such as a Bat-eared, embryo-sized, permanently stunted queer little nut-case going by the cattle-class wonky name of Langur “bloody” Doggy. The word "bloody" was his favourite expression and he meant it with tooth and nail. This guy – hardly more than 5 feet or even 5 inches (who cares!) from the ground up – had a … err… Werewolfish trait (plus a nasty grin) of committing acts full of mala fide intentions behind your back in connivance with our common P.O.Y. (Person Over You), a Supervisor that is. Unfortunately, the Supervisor we worked under was a retired Services personality type docile to the core, and this chinky-squinty-eyed The Werewolf of Taikhana Langur Doggy had shrewdly (akin to a Mole) turned himself into his go-to protégé of sorts.

(Docile Supervisor? Yeah, that’s on account of freely partaking Services-supplied subsidized beverages from his well-kept always-at-hand regular canteen and becoming a pusillanimous thing – a queer and docile sort of creature that snoozes most part of the day!).

The Docile Supervisor remained largely aloof and sheepish to this slimy squinty-eyed pissed-off lobster’s (Langur Doggy) ratty back-biting machismo. Instead of beating him black and blue to scare the bloody witches out of this fed-on-cunning Langur, the Docile Supervisor preferred to remain in glorious psychosomatic peace and submissive to the menacing reality of the team-destroying evil spirits his so-called protégé brought at our workplace, every day. What ignoble creatures were these P.O.Y. and his sprung-into-boss’-good-books lap-dog going by the crabby name of Langur Doggy, not to forget that his every spoken utterance from his mouth (with no lips, hardly any!) had the muggy word “bloody” bludgeoned into it.

But sadly nothing of the sort you’d automatically expect had happened. Egged on by the Supervisor, the Bat-eared Langoor (Langur!) went on his intimidating missions like a headless chicken on a run, with the proxy Supervisor manning the necessary controls or whatever was left of it in tow! As a result of that horror unfolding, a permanent sort of ill-feeling had begun spreading its slimy tentacles within the collective psyche of the team members sounding the death knell for the business unit we worked for. These two small-minded Geckos were known as the unholy proponents of doom. Absolutely 'bloody' disgusting!

All this nonsense surely has added up to the bad times that had brought the downfall of one of the IT company giants Satyam Computers.

Among the Vicious Lots

No doubt, there were other callous brutes such as an ugly, low-class quarrelsome Vixen who loved to sermonize herself mouthing rowdy cuss words like a**h**e, et al, throwing all docile womanly traits to the winds. Some nameless uncivilized donkeys were there in full attendance; freeloading scandalous badasses with seriously ghettoized decaying mentalities that smack of meanness the moment they open their mealy mouths to talk; constant back-biting and vicious attitude akin to a troop of rabid rampaging monkeys – altogether a spiteful faction of individuals with an insatiable appetite for committing mean acts (jabbing among one another is their favourite pastime) permanently high up on their radar. And this entire circus-like jamboree was headed by one humourless, seriously dark, staid-looking, Services alcohol-funded Head/Supervisor (of our department) whose actual head was supposed to have lost its grip on gravity mainly because it was miles high above the terra firma!

Chand Reading Rand

Before our friendship could develop, Chand took a leap forward, needed to, for a well-deserving new job, and went off to a hoi polloi place called Bangalore to live a life filled with genuine free-thinking good-humoured friends, serious professionals, and meaningful companionships that count. At the end of his association with Satyam, he turned a great deal thoughtful than I ever knew he was. He went and bought two books by Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged to mark his much-needed departure from Satyam’s Taikhana branch.

On the last day of his stay at a rented 2nd-floor apartment at Asha Officers’ Colony when he took out these fat books from his blue suitcase to show me, I remember kidding him: “Chand reading Rand!” setting off his gentle gurgle of quiet laughter.

It seems that friendships made in Taikhana don’t last longer than they should. Whatever little friendship we had was like a “Limited Edition” variant that had outlasted its value prematurely. Ours was, still is, perhaps will be, and forever, living proof of that sorry statement about the kind of friendship we had. Saaks yaar! What a pity.

(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.

CHAPTER 46 - The End of the Golden Era

Leaving Tesser Towers

If truth be told, Arinvan felt unable to leave his cubicle, The Beauty Spot, at Tesser Towers office, let alone leaving Satyam altogether post the taking away of roaming division. Leaving Satyam’s Tesser Towers was unthinkable to the extent that he felt he was deeply rooted in the cubicle he shared with his colleagues. It was like the end of everything beautiful that he had come to know and love in his professional life at The Beauty Spot that he couldn’t stop thinking about, being unabashedly nostalgic and all, and move on to some other unknown vistas for work.

Quitting (I didn’t feel right to use this word, but then one doesn’t ‘leave’ office – as they say: one quits) the beloved place was like putting an end to his professional life – an act to him was sacrilegious to even think about it, let alone actually doing it.

Arinvan loved working at Satyam and especially The Beauty Spot on the 5^th floor was his high-brow think-tank – the daily job routine he had there was nothing but a treat; his share of daily tasks and responsibilities were so much fun negotiating; its good-humoured, fun-loving colleagues; and just about anything seemed to flow smoothly. So letting go of the cherished The Beauty Spot, where he worked, day in and day out and considered it to be a privilege to be there in the midst of new things and people, was nothing but infernally heartbreaking for him to deal with in the final days of his life at Satyam.

Satyam’s roaming division was no less than an addiction to Arinvan’s sense of professionalism as it has always brought the best out of him. And what a pleasure it has been for him as well as for others to work and prosper there – albeit all under the hideous reign of the General Zod GG Howdy.

How Not to Quit Your Job

Life was pretty magical despite the fact that we were going through the abject misery of dealing with a horrible boss. We simply blamed our sorry Fate/Kismet (whatever you call it) and moved on without much gumption. How? We just don’t know. I guess we somehow learned to shut out the fascist General Zod GG Howdy, an unfeeling bad-tempered reporting manager by keeping up the good work while also managing to deal with the fascist monster as best as we could. If that was the only way we could handle such a horrible man, we never knew; except that we just did it the way it felt right.

Keeping him out of the periphery of our sanity and understanding became our preferred pastime at work. While he wrangled on in his own uncouth way, we kept our cool and gradually found ourselves totally unwilling to mind his contretemps that we absolutely felt repulsed by.

He wouldn’t allow us to disagree with him anyway, so why bother exerting ourselves too much to make a point or two in the Monday morning meetings we loathed so much. We shared ideas no doubt; made points that were worth making (but hardly ever have they been taken in true spirit). And if that is the way it has always been in his fascist regime for all we know, then so be it. We couldn’t care less. No hard feelings on that score, not yet. Boss is always right when the going gets tough and the tough never gets going! I’ll say it my way.

Of course, “bad” is a relative term to use. What do you do if someone in the rank of your reporting manager gets nonsensically brutal at the workplace and seems hell-bent on something or the other non-issues hitting the fan? Do you ‘manage’ it or ‘whine’ or ‘complain’ about it? Or get the hell out of the place, problem solved? In a critical situation like this, which one will you have chosen to get away from your ruthless boss?

Allow me to offer you the following – We ‘basically managed.’ Just how did we ‘basically manage’? Well, although Arinvan Maliek, (that’s me the storyteller), nearly came to calling it quits, he didn’t. He didn’t have to. Quitting was no solution because the so-called ‘bad people’ could be everywhere, so to speak. Again, people may look ‘bad’ to me but, in the same vein, may not be as ‘bad’ to others, and therefore dealing with them should become a forceful tendency for matured professionals who look for work/challenges at the office and not taking it all personally whenever something turns out of the blue that is not to your liking. Maybe, things rear up not because you were to be blamed for it but – let’s say – because of others? No, I think not. I reckon the mantras of maintaining unwavering professionalism and decorum in the workplace include these and more: Let it go; Be easygoing; Deal with it if you can; Display competence; Demonstrate the core values of professionalism; Listening carefully; Being positive; Just keep up the good work, no matter what.

A Company of Heroes

Manpreet Singh too had felt like quitting many times, and so did all others. But thankfully, the unfamiliar feeling of quitting came and went its way without mortally affecting us.

I think we came a long way knowing that QUITTING THE JOB due to one person was no answer to the question of dealing with a bad boss. It was a lame thing to do. Then what was it that we figured was an answer to that question? Well, we did our best not to come to a sorry state of quitting the job and do something that imperils our career plans; that would be of little use. It wouldn’t help our sense of professionalism and work experience. Bosses, especially like the one we had, are often insecure; yet we felt that the one we have will eventually come to realize your true worth/value and not want to lose you.

For us folks at the workplace, it was like a Thinking Cap we had adorned our pretty heads with that did the trick of continually persevering at the workplace and be just enough inspired to come to the office and work freely. Like a true-blue band of Heroes (and heroines), we kept our cool and took it all in our stride, and worked for our careers to prosper. Come all ye!

(Perhaps, you may even want him to be put in rehab as a last-ditch effort! A quick-fix intervention like that could bring the best behaviour out of him and get him trained to be a better person…and then, voila! he transforms into a better boss and a better human being. No such luck indeed).

It’s just that you don’t lose your sanity or sink to the boss’s level. Therefore, quitting the job by writing a glorious resignation letter was hardly a solution to take recourse in. Otherwise, if you want to see your boss winning in his battle/tug-of-war of meanness and nastiness with you then go ahead quit and have yourself officially known as Quitter! But not us. Because it was his battle, not ours and so we refused to come to daggers drawn with him. We just ensured that we did the best at the job – the best and nothing but the best. Maybe, we worked for the company per se, not for him. That’s like maintaining tact and caution at the workplace and keeping a cool head on our shoulders often always spells no trouble? Chilled out! Aren’t we?

Fortunately, by the time when the roaming division operations was completely shut down, Arinvan's colleagues (he did not know were far more change-savvy than he had ever acknowledged they were) were no longer there to catch a glimpse of him shedding self-gratifying tears day after day in an empty furlong cubicle in the East Flank and sitting tight for an IJP to take place so that he too can be spared from the dismal state of affairs he was suddenly finding himself churned in for no fault of his. Change-savvy? Got to learn that!

His colleagues left one by one because they had to; only he couldn’t make up his mind to leave Satyam and look for other options. A belated internal job posting (IJP) came to his rescue but that story should at best be left out than talked about here, for one is not in the sneering mood of some tacky confessional fiction and that is so beside the point, if you ask me, I am trying to knock together here.

So this is how it turns out when you feel rooted in the job you do daily and love coming back to day after day, year after year. To be sure, the problem with us so-called Nice Guys is that you begin to love your job so very much that you want it to reciprocate in kind. One may luxuriate in that one-off special feeling whatsoever and end up spending days, months, and even years working for the company you like...oh…LOVE, actually. Isn’t that something special? Tell me it is.

If LOVE is rather a strange word to use in the context of one’s profession/ job one keeps then I think we, particularly me, should grow up at once and wise up a little more on that subject while we are at it. A job doesn’t require LOVE. (Does it?). It requires dedication, commitment, and maybe even passion – but not LOVE. LOVE doesn’t happen with a job. LOVE exists elsewhere in other people's hearts, not at a job place certainly. JOB is no LOVE and vice versa. JOB is a JOB. JOB is equal to colleagues and bosses and work, while LOVE equals family, friends, and girlfriend(?) – the way it has always been: the stuff of one’s profession one may have until one is aged between 58 and 60 years.

Yet, during those early days of my vague inexperience, it felt OK thinking that looking for a job elsewhere would tantamount to settling for something less than your worth. I confess I didn’t think through properly enough when I found myself musing about this – I don’t think I will ever find a job I can love that very much again. That sounds true even today. I know old habits die hard, and I still feel none the wiser sometimes when I think back to fragments of those younger days, those wonderful pure moments of joy and longing at Satyam. The point is I can’t say I’ve had enough of those days. Oh if I could only turn back time.

All in all, Fate has inevitably proved that no one can deny his sorrow and suffering. But there’s no denying the fact that Arinvan was too young to handle such emotional pretexts on account of which he shed a copious amount of tears of loss and longing in equal measure.

The End of the Golden Era

Satyam was a great company to work in and that’s one of the reasons it was really difficult to consider leaving/quitting Satyam he had come to revere very much. All he wanted to do was keep working there till his last breath was out and that’s another reason (of belonging to Satyam) why the moment of letting-go came not well until after two hopeless years when he had to finally wake up from his invented dream and make up his mind for the second but last time to resign from Satyam’s most wretched office building: the ever so revolting ghost house Taikhana office branch, before shifting from the beautiful resort-like campus of Satyam Technology Center (STC) located at Badaourpalli.

The end of the golden era…it was what I felt then. The loss of roaming division was like the loss of El Dorado, the legendary mythic city of gold. Never mind the legitimate monetary benefits or perks that came along with it but the glory itself was too great to lose.

Leaving his beloved place of work at Tesser Towers on Raj Bhavan Road was the toughest part he had ever faced in his professional life. Once upon a time, it seemed it was unimaginable for him to let go of the place of work he loved so much and loved coming back to day after day. Roaming division was like a well-earned pheromonal profession not just for Arinvan but practically for everybody else who has been associated with it. It was a people magnet that everybody felt drawn to it in mind body and spirit. Satyam at Tesser Towers was nothing short of an amazing place for people and their talents to flower. Arinvan loved his daily commute to Raj Bhavan Road for work. It was not just another job, it was Life. Heart-breaking though now it is for him to realize that things have come to such a pass that he will, after all, have to leave the place and go away.

Perhaps, all those days will be forgotten sooner or later and there’ll be no one left from among us erstwhile friends to come back to our share of the glorious era to relive those precious moments again. No way it’s possible I know, for no one can go back in time and start living those moments all over again; it’s improbable.

Time is irreversible, irreparable. That’s what it is: one relentless forward march, it ever was and it ever will be. There’s no looking back. No chance. Time wins, always.

(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.

CHAPTER 45 - Life Isn’t All Haa Haa Hee Hee

The likelihood of losing roaming division (of Satyam) to a newly incorporated ‘outside’ company far outweighed the sagacity of our well-set professional goals and career objectives for the sake of a cushy software engineering career in Information Technology. We were beyond help like…sitting ducks. Our chief GG Howdy had seen to it that the end justifies the means, and how! Read on…

Arinvan, Manpreet, Devee, Suraj, Joey, and the Smiling Buddha Dilnawaz Khan instinctually knew that things like these would inevitably take a thorough beating, which has come home to roost and cause riotous problems to all of us. The first casualty would be to down the shutters of roaming division and with that will come to the doing-away of the young guns who proudly manned it daily and did awesome work that has been well rewarded and appreciated – with fine compliments from the clients thrown in. And now, ladies and gentlemen, their wellspring of livelihood was hanging in the balance. So life isn’t all haa haa hee hee! Is it?

Killing the Golden Goose

Needless to say, nobody, just nobody, not even our manager GG Howdy, our culturally-confused, mentally-chaotic, anal-retentive supervisor, had found it necessary to take us on board when this seemingly self-seeking manipulative decision was being taken or mulled over. Of course, we wouldn’t have agreed to such hara-kiri! No point in doing something that takes your job away, right? And no prizes for guessing that the powers-that-be would not try to break open their newly-coffined Golden Goose to seek the mirage of some quick jewels and stuff! Did he ever have the moral capacity to think this through like a true-blue professional busybody? No, he never had. How would he? In the case of a person like GG’s rank and file, he was merely an adjunct to the whole business grab that happened; he doesn’t qualify his mind to get morality kicked in! He had zero moral standing when the matter comes to keeping his job/profession intact and in his words “coming out unscathed.”

He made sure, either by hook or by crook, that he always won by sidelining other peoples’ contributions. Standing atop other peoples’ graves and pulling off some kind of macabre cosmic dance on them was one of his sadistic predilections not many people, except us of course, knew; literally speaking that is.

Why would GG take us into confidence about such an important development/issue that concerns all of us? Why would he bother to do that? Wouldn’t it be OK for him to say: JUST TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT? Yeah, for his kind of ilk that would be just the right thing to do. Else, consider this for a second: Boss as a father figure? Goodness Gracious! Get outta here! Not in this age, not in this era populated with managers who have unrealistic expectations unable to keep a reality check on their greed quotient but are notorious enough to keep pushing their unheard-of company bottom-lines. The golden era of proprietors making profits but sympathetically had long gone. Welcome to the new low in professional life!

That’s precisely what happened: GG – bossy as he always was and one is compelled to believe that he is completely devoid of homespun virtues – never bothered with us as far as this “new development” was concerned. He was cool and casual about it as if no one from Satyam can dare break his determined effort to lay forth his claim for roaming division and extract his pound of flesh. For all his sadistic mannerisms, he never saw it fit to get each contributing member on board with his plan; our beloved roaming division was all set to be ‘taken away’ to a new company outside of Satyam Computers and we were not made as worthy stakeholders of that business resolution/restructuring. Needless to say, all this wrangling about their ‘you-take-yours-I-take-mine’ ownership issues had left a very bad taste in our mouths.

Elvis Has Left the Building!

GG couldn’t care less to get us in the know. He left it to the ignominy of the good offices of other people to do the dirty work for him. He must have thought to himself: Who do they think they are? Just some bunch of hired Satyam employees. So stay in your skins! ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING! GG moved on with a new spring in his step and never looked back since, but just careful enough to throw one last furtive glance as if saying: Now you folks manage the show or whatever is left of it! I just don’t care anymore. Hee-Yah!

From that moment on, things at Tesser Towers began to take a chimerical shape that never abated until Arinvan Maliek had to make up his mind to leave Satyam…forever. But even then he couldn’t bring himself to any sort of personal resolution to put in his papers and leave the place for good, not until after 2 years of vulnerable time in Satyam.

When the new Millennium heralded itself with the first IT problem of the century called “Y2K bug problem,” Revanthi Rakani, Raufia Begum, Neetu Scootywali, and her secret admirer Dopeynath Pundy have all shifted from Tesser Towers to different locations. Turns out, the “Y2K bug problem” was no problem at all, and Satyam Computers was in the forefront of that warfare to squash the bug and it did, gloriously.

In 2001, Manpreet Singh and Gutkha Raju had already put in the papers with Dilnawaz Khan and Shiv Charan Joey reluctantly following up the act. ‘Truck Driver’ Suraj and Sexy Devee moved away to Satyam’s most iconic technology campus STC after weighing all the best options that they could take up there. That leaves Arinvan Maliek; he was the last man standing.

Not long after though, within a couple of months or so, Arinvan Maliek decided that he cannot continue to persevere working on the 5th-floor office of the Tesser Towers and keep mourning his loss of colleagues and the great job profile he had enjoyed up till now. Life is……how would you finish that sentence?

That was perhaps the first time he seriously considered quitting Satyam Computers for good; earlier it was during 1999 not long after Savitha Tandavi’s ‘Big Hand’ exit that he was almost on the verge of giving up on his bad manager the General Zod GG Howdy’s insufferably ridiculous behaviour poisoned with daily barbs of inexcusable antics and his bringing upon us one bloodless coup after another. But, as it turned out, it was hardly possible for him to come face to face with that wretched question of all: Should I quit my job?

Now when the time came to quit (or leave), he thought he will really have to uproot himself from the place of the now-defunct roaming division and look for a new place of work, new office, and a new project that will match up to his career expectations. And then one fine day STC came up for consideration and soon after he found himself packing up things to get there.

(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.

CHAPTER 44 - First Signs of the Satyam Apocalypse - II

In 1999, after Savitha’s ‘Big Hand’ departure from the scene, the Goblin GG Howdy quit shaving his scraggly face loaded with a reddish-tinged beard and drank lesser and lesser espresso coffee that he had from the Nescafe coffee dispenser parked in the green-marbled hallway. Why did he quit shaving? That is the question.

Well, apparently, GG was dejected due to his perceived wronged fate that he thought has befallen him or some such whim that came about in the wake of Savitha’s escaping so quickly. Who knows, he may have plainly misjudged his cruel knack for oppressiveness index thanks to Savitha Tandavi’s determined exodus from Satyam. Frankly, he wanted all of us at roaming division nicely churned in the latent risk of constant career insecurity and confusion. And to a major extent, sadly, he was brazenly successful in all his ways.

Naturally, we folks found ourselves – all throughout the year when Savitha made her escape – pondering over this somewhat dismal turn of things with GG Howdy and his ways of crude conduct. He looked as if he was dejected for life. Thanks or no thanks to Savitha’s AWOL, GG still got no better than he always was in his whimsical, Godless best. Was it something to do with Savitha’s permanent exit from Satyam? Was it Balzie Gigamorthy’s sending out feelers to leave roaming division for good? Or was it about Revanthi Rakani’s and Raufia Begum’s preference for other vistas/projects? No, it wasn’t so. We were sure GG had other manipulative ideas, and it was nothing to do with Savitha’s departure more than two years ago. It was, in fact, the unmistakable whiff of cash and guaranteed newfound administrative power that was killing him so well!

A Cash-Sniffing Appropriation

It was fairly distressing – or is it? – for GG Howdy to swallow the fact that the entire roaming division was ready to be moved out of Satyam Computers to one of the new companies incorporated elsewhere. GG showed as if he was fairly upset about the new development that is taking place, but in reality, he never was. We saw clean through his fake/fabricated sentiment he had proffered, then, to mean well amongst us folks as if he had nothing to do with it…. If he thought his mocking concern worked, sorry to say it didn’t; we could read through all his connivance loud and clear.

Nope, not even that. Arinvan, Manpreet, Sexy Devee, TD Suraj have all suspected that it was part of GG’s making – a sickening fact that worked in his favour and his director friend of Cow-Labs. It was a high-stakes cash-sniffing business acquisition that happened in the wake of his friend’s hostile exit from one of Satyam’s directorship positions. Yes, that is all there ever was to it. Not a penny more not a penny less.

Good Riddance!

At the roaming division, we were really excited to hear that GG Howdy has resigned from Satyam Computers. We thought: finally, good days are here.

TD Suraj came running to us to announce it. Hearing the ‘good news’ Dilnawaz Khan smiled purposely. His “universal” toothy grin revealed all. Shiv Charan ‘Joey’ Prachad remained inert and unaffected; at first, he did not react to the alleged “good news” but we could hear him when he was angrily muttering to himself: “Good riddance! It’s about time the monster buzzed off…like forever!” But like every good piece of ‘office news,’ especially in big corporate offices like ours, sometimes has a dark side to it and it explodes like no less than a nasty surprise soon after, leaving everybody gobsmacked in the process. And oh yes, like I was saying, this ‘good news’ too had one such unpleasant miasma attached to it and as a consequence of this unwelcome scenario, we were all compelled to succumb to its detrimental aftereffects.

GG was leaving Satyam no doubt, but not without the entire business operation of roaming division with him in tow! The heartless devil made sure that he not only had left a trail of destruction in the wake of his leaving the company, but also young IT professionals like us orphaned. He didn’t care two hoots about it.

As it happened, just within a few years, our much-loved, much-visited, much-revered roaming division is going to hang its boots and no longer will be a part of one of the associative businesses of Satyam Computers’ Strategic Business Unit. It was unbearably painful for us to deal with this wicked development because we saw it as morally wrong. Satyam’s roaming division would entirely cease to exist as a revenue-earning business model and no longer be located in the gleaming offices of Satyam at Tesser Towers on Raj Bhavan Road…. with a future DISASTER written all over it!

Abomination, Subordination

Regrettably, GG wasn’t a man of easy-going nature; he was someone who’s not only hot-headed but also gives out an impression that doing things in a complex way was his innate specialty!  We believe that this disposition of his originates from his constant distrust of people that work under him. Naturally, one doesn’t expect such a man to logically think about the fact why people have perceived him to be an awful supervisor. His newfound glory of removing roaming division out of Satyam appeared, at least to us, some sort of a trump card to win a great trick or something!

Forget the board member partners-in-crime of his; they wouldn't consider to even consider leaving roaming division to Satyam’s SBU. If the roaming division has to go then it has to go to someone who brought the business in the first place. So the deal was struck and off it went the way they thought is most preferable. After all, the man who brought this business entity into Satyam’s largely software portfolio is the one who can, it seems, legitimately reclaim it, one way or the other. And how was GG Howdy placed in this business fortune-sharing frivolities? GG was a mere pawn in a high-stakes game of ‘business sharing’ wherein he advantageously got himself picked up (by the neck) from Satyam and placed (with a thud!) in the marauding Cow-Labs, with a reprimand thrown in good measure: “exert yourself here!”

Anirvan wasn’t hallucinating on the possibility of anything like this is going to happen, but of course, everybody from his group knew that no higher-up would favour what a just-another-employee needed to say in this matter of grave consequence. It seems that the employees merely as subordinates, don’t really figure in the so-called make-or-break decision-making process of the higher administration. However flawed it may seem to you - strategically or managerially or even culturally and emotionally - they have made sure to demonstrate that they don’t care the slightest bit about it. Employees are mere hires/contracts, not proprietors. Period.

Profitable business entities don’t play to the gallery of personal emotions of subordinates/employees who care. Such businesses need to be milked, cashed, and cashed very well and what have you. Just who are these small cogs (read employees) in the large wheel trying to emphasize their importance? Employees? Well, chuck them! To these business wranglers, subordinates are mere hires, a kind of biological species who will tail you everywhere and raise their hands, not legs at least, in perfect Namaste to be able to sniff out a job or two and work according to your requirements and compensations are paid accordingly! Staff members’ understanding of the organization's issues doesn’t get counted. So guys like you should better shape up or ship out! That’s how the subordinates’ ilk is known to have fraternized; don’t you know this, mate? Perhaps, a fitting response to that would be, “Smell ice, can you? Bleedin’ Christ!” Arinvan had heard that somewhere. And then disasters of Titanic proportions unveil!

A precursor to the Satyam Apocalypse!

We couldn’t believe that something like this would befall us. It was an incredible misfortune for us to put up with! The taking of roaming division was a precursor to the great Satyam disaster of 2008!

To Manpreet Singh, Arinvan Maliek, Devee ‘Sexy’ Prashad, and TD Suraj the original top-brass of the roaming division, GG’s wrong standpoint was viewed as an unpardonable exploit/adventure. But that was quickly forgotten given the fact that the roaming division was small fry and GG was a mere Consultant. After almost 3 fantastic years of toiling hard work and unrivalled revenue-earning service that had made everyone happy, we were made to go through emotional distress at the taking away of roaming division, and all this for absolutely no fault of ours. We remained mute spectators, blind to the goings-on. On top of that, the managers-that-be (including GG) – may God don’t bless those cutthroat unemotional souls – never gave a decent enough thought to consult us or consider our views or wave a quiet goodbye at the very least.

GG Howdy never cared. We knew he never will. Neither did his director friend in cahoots with the obnoxious idea of scurrying away with the roaming division. The gang moved in for the kill and then moved out quickly to the cash-enriched Cow-Labs before delivering a death blow. That was not the sort of supposed professionalism Satyam was known by. Surely then this has got to be the First Signs of the Satyam Apocalypse that was to come a little more than 7 years later. Who knew the organization itself will eventually have become something like asatyam? Darn it! This is not done!

This was a flat-out betrayal of trust; professional hara-kiri; awful business perfidy on a gigantic scale that had the capacity to wipe out humanity!

END OF PART II OF "CHAPTER 44 - First Signs of the Satyam Apocalypse - II".

(To be continued...)

By Arindam Moulick

Click here to read 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.