CHAPTER 36 - Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan!

New Friends, New Life

Dilnawaz Khan was a smiling Buddha of few words compared to Shiv Charan ‘Joey’ Prachad who easily got bored and exhausted with GG’s freak-show (of operations handling). Our little Joey, Shiv Charan that is, was a bundle of nerves - a man of mood swings and a rebel of torrid aggression. Yes, aggression. One is not talking about him being ‘aggressive’ and all.

Aggression is the word that best describes his inner angst. It suffices to say that most of his rebellious nature was more or less acquired at Satyam and this sort of thing has come over him on account of our boss’s perpetual narcissistic approach to all things that were actually meant to be nice and smooth but never were. ‘Aggression’ was GG’s own prerogative but 'our' Joey was smarter still to pay him back in his own coin; in fact, a little of ‘Aggression’ had rubbed on him too. He never liked GG for that same reason. Nobody did. Neither did Merion Roz Reyo, GG’s favourite pupil.

In cases like these, the feelings always end up being mutual. That is, both hate each other the same way as the other, without anyone openly acknowledging it. Good on Shiv Charan, for he had endured, like all of us, the tyrannical dynasty that solely was of GG’s creation.

Aggression may be is an internal thing for Shiv Charan Joey to worry about and which is at once descriptive of his loony funkiness for smoking heaps of cigarettes, but in so far as he began, just as everybody did, to dislike GG, his 'aggression' had quietly manifested into something which must have really been a cheeky outward mask - a cover, a veil, he so liked to put on to tackle the might of GG.

Manpreet and Arinvan thought they knew about Shiv’s ‘mask’ thing and damn right they did: the invisible outward mask that puts on his person had clearly become quite a necessity for him to be able to deal with the excessive gall of GG’s miserable temerity. Most often than not he was found successful in warding off what we call GG’s wrath because he knew how to keep his metaphorical tail firmly tugged in between his trembling legs and shut the fuck up. That was a prolific art form - a strategy for coping with a bad boss - he almost always found himself ferreting about at our roaming division, and he excelled at it for sure. Most times, he would just do the work and push-off, without having to ruffle our boss’s feathers lest he might be unable to tackle him head-on.

Unfortunately, Arinvan Maliek couldn’t have such masks/covers for himself and his ‘tail’ was discarded a long time ago and so it doesn’t exist anymore for anyone to tug at it or make merry at his expense. Neither did Manpreet Singh whose intricate maroon-coloured pugree was meant to be wrapped immovably around his head as a defender from all shades of GG-triggered malice. That leaves the Smiling Buddha of the roaming division Dilnawaz Khan, whose serene ear-to-ear toothy smile (a veritable pooreh daanth ki dukaan!) was simply a potent softener of hardcore hearts. To tell you the truth, GG’s heart never melted for anyone who had the misfortune to report to him, and for that matter, Dilnawaz’s smile never worked to keep his scathing insults at bay! It for sure looked duplicitous to GG who couldn’t care less of any smiling Buddhas of the world. Merion Roz Reyo was a different ballgame. Since she was not reporting to GG Howdy she automatically becomes his favourite sweetie.

Shiv Charan’s spunky, child-like composure and his cache of girlfriends has the revealing meaning of the words Rebel Child born out of his own genetic wedlock of X-rated Y chromosome in his genes; the one that is not intended to be directed towards any individual, but definitely getting back at GG’s gooey mentality and his, generally, awful moodiness that he so ‘affectionately’ showered on each one of us long-suffering souls!

(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 35 - Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire!

New hires Dilnawaz Khan and Shiv Charan ‘Joey’ Prachad weren’t in yet. What do you do when your division is short-staffed and under-resourced? You do just nothing about it excepting suggest your boss get new people. You do the extant ‘laundry work’ all by yourself, never mind even if that puts a Donkey to shame!

During those wonderful days, our workstation looked like an overworked place, a bombed-out barn, a far-flung outpost of sweat and hard work contributing in two early-morning and one graveyard shifts that we so enjoyed managing to attend. But the dreary feeling of being ‘milked thoroughly’ had remained till the interviews were finally conducted and the new hires came in. 

Was working every day on three ‘mental-inside’ computers for two IT professionals an archetypal nature of IT employment? Damn, right you are! Talk about “challenges” or our boss GG’s filthy autocratic enterprise, here we are! Let it all out, folks!

We Loved Our Job Very Much

We really loved the job schedule, but what irked us (to a certain extent) was the fact that only two of us Arinvan and Manpreet were managing everything that could possibly be managed for the Daily Operations to run in full steam before the-powers-that-be were even thinking to employ new resources which would bring, we were sure of this, much-needed relief for us both slogging hard at work. There was Balzie Gigamorthy at the other end of the West Flank hall we thought will look into our plight, and fortunately, he did understand that our beloved division was short of at least two new procures.

Arinvan and Manpreet tackled the job responsibilities the way it was meant to be tackled, meaning we were not only hard-pressed for the time but unbearably so with an Albatross like GG hanging around our necks. Until the time the new hires came in, the daily rigours of life (inclusive of our boss’s confrontational ways of handling things) handcuffed us to the abject surrender of the resident evil – a person whom we secretly addressed as “CHICHCHA”.

“CHICHCHA” was Manpreet’s 'original idea' to name a nasty supervisor/boss of whose torments we had suffered each passing day. It was his invention. This new nickname had created quite a ripple amongst us folks including Merion Roz Reyo who gave out squeals of sultry laughter whenever she heard any of us referring to GG as CHICHCHA! Before long everyone started calling GG Howdy as Chichcha (or Chicha) on the sly. Obviously, GG never in his lifetime at Satyam could come to know of it. Maybe he knew about his new nickname but couldn't be bothered about it at all. He never does about such things anyway. He was a man of no apparent sense of humour and that was a hard reality. In any case, it was a decent nickname for a terrible person like him, albeit highly comical. In the local vernacular slang, it means: 'Old Uncle'.

Needless to say, Manpreet’s name-tag stuck on GG Howdy like a blood-sucking leech and we never let go of the fun we derived at the expense of such name-tagging business. Devee got tagged with ‘Sexy,’ TD Suraj with ‘Truck Driver,’ Shiv Charan with ‘Joey,’ etc.

One fine day Shiv Charan Joey was overcome with fits of giggles when he had to inform Manpreet that GG wanted to see him in his cabin. Shiv, well-versed in the local dialect, told Manpreet this: "Chichcha bulare aapku" and laughed for a change. The name Chichcha was the culprit here for his laughter to ensue and he could not stop from amusing himself when he had to pronounce the strange-sounding word in his mouth opening and releasing it as if spitting out a hairy Tarantula no less!

Last heard, Manpreet stood from his squeaking chair put an unhappy smile on his round face, and barged ahead to see the devil-in-waiting. Back at the workstation, Shiv and Arinvan looked at each other thinking what hell will break loose now! But if everything did go well then Manpreet’s skin would be spared or else…he will get thoroughly caned! Either way, it is like being out of the frying pan and going straight into the fire!

As for Manpreet, poor baby, he knew something was up or maybe not who knows what GG could come up with in broad daylight! He anyway had to go meet Gudumba Gongura Howdy in his Lion’s Den and perhaps live to tell a painful tale afterward!

Coping with a Bad Boss

For every one of us, GG was merely a ‘repeat offender’ who was perpetually enlisted in the dirty drains of our daily verbal loathing: on the face of our hardships with our gut-wrenching boss, this was the bare minimum we could do to vent our justified infuriation with him.

We thought the Psychopath would pounce on us with loads of work left, right, and center. He usually has his way so you can expect the worst kind that ever existed. Balzie was merely an onlooker to the rage of this crafty old muckraker, the Saddam Hussein of Satyam. What’s more, just to make sure that he massacred our self-esteem and confidence, he’d start making fresh rounds of false allegations again while not forgetting to impel poor Balzie Gigamorthy to make amends with us or supervise our nonexistent ‘deficiencies’. Poor Balzie, his everyday obligations also happen to include cooling our frazzled nerves with “cool cool chill chill” compromise formula. Call it professional ragging; well, none knew better than GG that!

Balzie Gigamorthy was a manager with a knowing mind and who believed in brain-storming sessions; a patient listener and a rectifier of problems. Exactly opposite to what GG cunningly prefers him to be. Not only did Balzie know every tit-bit of the entire daily operations we were all involved in and loving it, but also, he preferred doing things in a congenial way, without ever missing out pontificating on the barrage of suggestions/ reporting metrics we gave him every day. As far as customer issues were concerned, he believed more in our knowledge-handling skills than he did in GG’s burning diatribes. That was a saviour really.

Most times, we had to literally put Balzie as our one-point-of-contact in front of GG so that we could save ourselves from the Malicious Monster’s unnecessary belligerence that we so loved to despise. Most of the Monday morning meetings were a sham. Mr. GG Howdy’s attitude towards us, especially during the course of the meetings, was highly objectionable. Though his ways of thinking or how he planned to handle things were agreeable enough, they were almost always sadistic and violent in content. Balzie knew this well enough from his experience with him and he rather preferred not to speak about it much lest it might snowball into some kind of demoralizing thing for us all to cope with unnecessarily.

Manpreet, Arinvan, Savitha, Sexy Devee, Truck Driver Suraj, and later Dilnawaz, Shiv Charan, and the gutkha-king J. Raju joined Satyam Computers as new executives, have always despised GG Howdy’s forceful bearing upon us. It was demoralizing anyway. 

(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.