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.