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.