Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Finding Closure

Our Satyam Days, part XXXIV — final chapter

Evening shifts were mandatory and lasted until 11 p.m. every weekday and on Saturday. I can still recall one especially poignant nighttime, likely back in 1999, when I worked those late hours, grappling with a baffling sense of private pre-reflective distress that I couldn't quite shake. I could not quite put my finger on what this sudden change in my mood, or the weight of an unexplainable heartache that lingered in the back of my mind, was reminding me of.

As I got up from my chair and stepped towards the enigmatic doorway leading to the boardwalk adjoining the office's central atrium, a strong desire swept through me. It was twenty past 10—less than one hour away from the end of my shift and the promise of heading home. While at my computer, I was nearing the completion of an email that meticulously detailed the various operational challenges and functional concerns we encountered throughout the day. This message was emailed to our colleagues in Denmark, seeking their support in resolving these issues. The office stood empty, with only the security janitors remaining; everyone else had already called it a day and had gone to bed.

My steps, a dance of longing, move onward arrhythmically in the hushed elegance of the grand hall on the 5th-floor office, driven by the promise of a comforting cup of coffee infused with the essence of my lost love that lingers in the heartaches of memory that did not fade with time, that you have once been mine. Perhaps it's just the ennui of the moment, given a perpetual state of gloom at the time. Or is it the gentle caress of a cherished memory of love forever woven into every atom of my being?

I pressed the yellow button on the NescafĂ© machine for another cup of coffee, hoping to find not just a boost of caffeine, late-night it was, but a few stolen moments of peace away from the spotlight of work, alone for a few minutes, perhaps to reflect on my thoughts as my shift drew to a close. In the stillness of the office, my mind wandered back to the warm nostalgia of that long-ago afternoon brunch with my beloved L. in central HYD—a treasured memory from a year earlier that replayed in my mind like a photograph suspended in time: all while the moments since that blessed afternoon unfurled until the closing credits of our fractured love story began to roll in my imagination. The soft, love-infused hues from last September drew me even closer to the comforting embrace of that solitary, precious memory of love.

+*+*+*+

I wish I could turn back time to be with you and change things so that they turn out differently. After all, there's no harm in harbouring magical illusions of this enchanting kind that, if only momentarily, lessen that long-enduring misery. That's where I am today, right at that memory crossing, living in my world of past remembrances of those sweet moments of glowing heart-throbbing intimacy I'll never forget, never let go, never move on, never be fine.

Sweetheart, I still feel deeply drawn towards you as though helpingly feeling struck by Cupid, wondering what it is that stirs this aching sense of solitude within me as the moving stillness around me brings to life your elusive, faded presence once again, to hear your voice, to adore you, to celebrate your return to the centre of my heart. I pause here for a moment, lingering in the trance of emotive, heartfelt whispers I yearn to share with you, my beloved. Later, as years passed and I grew a bit more older, this loss, this hope made my heart ache with a deep longing all over again, day after day: A painful, intertwined need that feels beautifully melancholic and introspective, and even indulgent, perhaps, of me to feel the way I am feeling—going through a Destiny-induced volition for feeling chosen to fail in love, as its absence takes over to the extent that it becomes a gilded cage, hard for it to thrive or prove one that I absolutely couldn't see my life without you. I probably should have told you a long time ago.

The old flame of love offers quiet consolation through moments of lyrical intimacy, a poetic closeness of verses deep that constantly deepens my affection for you amidst the din and clamour of a rapidly changing world. My life still feels incomplete, and I am lost and heartbroken without you to light up my world. Nothing means more to me than your success in life. Your absence, which leaves my heart dreaming for what once was back in 1998, may it not be so long that it makes me feel the ache of missing you as I do. Everything nice this life could give had ended eons ago, leaving behind a calcified emotional undercurrent of heartache, love, and lingering remorse that still loops in the quiet corners of my mind.

+*+*+*+

After completing all of the day's compulsory tasks, which included sending out the crucial operational emails regarding unprocessed files and taking proactive efforts to resolve technical issues or difficulties that kept popping up in our inbox, as well as all urgent assignments daily, I picked up a coffee from the much-loved Nescafe tea and coffee dispenser, and walked towards the long sliding aluminium windows spanning across the entire back edge of the floor length in the rear right-angled corner section of the large hall of the fifth-floor where we worked, I took a moment to roll up the Venetian blinds and, sliding one of the window panes, I gazed outside. A sudden rush of cool air swept against my face.

Sliding open the window pane, I gazed out five stories high above the far-off Tank Bund Lake, which was misting up with pouring rain, hazy in the enveloping gale-swept night-time darkness unstilled in the thrill of the dripping, dramatically wet monsoonal air, spotting a ray of glimmering moonshine under the meteorologically obscuring at least 95% of the overcast grey, fogbound skies, illuminating the thought of L.T., my lovely inamorata, in her comfy apartment in central HYD, dreaming of going abroad to study and while making plans to catch the latest movie in town, Sirf Tum or Pyar Mein Kabhi Kabhi in the following days, after having seen a year before Dil Toh Pagal Hai and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which were her (and mine too) current favourites then. Far beyond the moody grey waters of the heart-shaped lake and in the maudlin, tenderly lovely avenues that beckoned, lay the intimate eatery, A.K.'s, it was, with dim lighting where we first met a year ago. And as soon as I saw you on the day of our precious rendezvous, I made statements in my head that you were going to be mine. That day was the most special day of my life, the one I've never forgotten, untouched by the sands of time.

I arrived home at 11:45 PM after finishing my office work on the day we first met in September. Later, I still remember that beautiful night as I lay awake, lost in thoughts of your luminous eyes—deep pools where I could fall and drown—and then be rescued by your subtle, radiant smile. I know the sound of it over the phone by heart; it casts a ray of mauve sunshine across my soul, dreaming to meet you again, keeping me awake for most of the night until I finally drifted off with the Birds of Paradise a book of poems by my pillow and your smiling face hidden behind a blush as I closed my eyes. Thankfully, I had a night shift scheduled to start at 3 PM the next day, and I travelled through the city streets to reach my office, with your smiling eyes twinkling like fairy lights in my mind, a vision that still ignites my wonder. How did I fall in love with you? The gentle curve of your lips smiled with joy beneath the soft glow of the restaurant's lights, creating a moment when I felt like the world had paused, briefly stopping for you and me to meet again, sooner than soon. I felt every ounce of my recent worries melting away, granting me a radiant calm that cradled my heart like golden sunshine after rain, breaking through the clouds. In that moment, I heard my heart tenderly murmuring within me, "You are adored, you are forever mine," filling my heart with a comforting symphony of optimism and enchantment, for there you were as I beheld your lovely visage before me, blooming in the light. That is how I fell for you, fell in love with you, from the very moment I locked eyes with you.

While this much is true, I still feel the warmth of your radiant presence, even after nearly 27 years apart to this day in '25, which, as time passes, serves as a lasting testament to your beautiful memory, indelibly engraved deeply in my soul like a ballad of a lost poem, resilient against the reach of forgetfulness, untouched by the passage of time flowing towards the ocean of infinite longing until eternity sprinkles again love sweeter and purer than heaven for you and me, as we remain hand in hand in a serene and timeless world we'll create, destined to be together with every dream we'll nurture, as we traverse life's unforeseen twists and turns, embracing each moment as it comes or wherever the path takes us we remain committed to exploring the deep meaning of true love together, finding beauty in every experience along the way.

When our hearts first met that September day, words alone couldn't express how strongly we felt—our eyes locked, revealing a deep romantic chemistry that fills the air with love and a Titanic-themed melody we'll never forget. Eyes speak louder than words, and I understood then the true feelings they hold. The gentle glow of your captivating smile, as you shyly tilted your head while sharing your thoughts, teeth shining bright against your light golden skin—the colour of sunshine—was enough to melt my heart, serenaded by the beginning of our love story. Though you may be far away, my precious L., our heart's melody continues to sing that our heart will go on and on, serenading my soul with your loving memory for the rest of my life.


While I stood at the rain-splashed window of my office looking out at the distant lake, I sent you my love, hoping to say that you've been in my thoughts since that wonderful day of our first and heart-achingly last rendezvous in September '98. But I felt despairingly alone and lonely ever after when the infallibility of the clear and present reality that I've lost you struck me intensely as being a heart-breaking revelation in the play of life. It had been like that: The typical course of events at the turn of the century. In the new millennium, they defined the turn of the 20th century as long over, a thing of the past that still beleaguers my sense of place and time as I continue to long for the old ways of life of the 1990s.

Though time may pass, my heart will go on, along with the intimate memory of the wondrous moments of love we shared, which is still etched deeply into my sense of nostalgic heartbeats, resonating profoundly with the tender inner light of love blossoming within me since the day we first met and saw each other, smiling, soaking in the moment when Cupid's arrow flew across our hearts, falling in love, and sharing a soft drink at A.K.'s, our special spot, while also enjoying the irresistible aromas of authentic Chinese cuisine we both loved. I looked into your eyes, love illuminating the space between us as if destiny was unfolding. Little did I realize how quickly time passes. I still think of '98 sometimes, one of the most meaningful years of my life. Don't mind my lonely mood, dearest L. Things like loneliness tend to settle like a persistent shadow, making it hard to escape its tight grip. That's when destiny reveals itself with a heavy heart, once unseen and unrecognized, until that moment when you’re left longing for the love that once brightened your life. Now I see it's too late, past the point of no return. A missed chance at the life I could be living. My heart, along with my hopes, drifts on waves of desolation and longing, caught in this new age of economic chaos and upheaval, echoing silent memories of joyful moments long gone from our shared dreams, traversing a lonely sea of grief and longing ever since I failed you, my peach.

+*+*+*+

Momentarily, it was 11 o'clock, time to log off and shut down the computer before switching off the tired lights. These lights seem to be saying, almost entreating me for some evident reason, "Enough of your lollapalooza, now go home. See you tomorrow."

As I signed off, putting away our writing pad and pen while tossing my empty coffee cup in the trash bin, a warm thought came to mind: how truly fortunate I am! I work alongside some incredible colleagues—Renju, Mandeep, Gnana, Shiv, Devi, Suresh, and Shahnawaz, who make every day unforgettable. They had become more than just colleagues; they had truly become friends. It was a remarkably amazing feeling that I carried with me throughout my time at Satyam.

And let’s not forget the wonderful Revathy and Rafi, who were once part of our team, and introduced Kavitha, Mandeep, and me to the tools and tricks of the trade. And, of course, there's Balaji, Mr. Coolhead, our team manager and the embodiment of calmness, who buddied up with us to navigate through some of the most fun brainstorming sessions, talking casually whenever possible, guiding everyone through challenges while helping us to unlock our full potential. What could be more fortunate than this? I made my way to the exit door and turned right to the lone elevator in this section of the building.

Descending the elevator, I fretted as I surmised that getting home in this torrential downpour would be too daunting a task, given the enormously broad sky-bellies filled with tons of precipitation above. Wow! There would be no dry spot remaining on me! Holy Moly! I could be done for good! The Raj Bhavan Road was already flooding, and the wind began to howl. It was raining thunderously hard, the sky alight with lightning streaks. I hadn't picked up my rain jacket when I got to the office earlier in the day, so I figured it'd be best if I waited a little longer before the rain ceased, and I could start riding home right away. While I waited in the green-marbled atrium on the ground floor, I thought of Renju, who often stayed back till 8 in the evening to finish her ever-expanding list of technical implementations. Standing just inside the entrance foyer of the polished green-marbled atrium that TSR Towers deservedly prides itself on, I couldn't help but think how lucky she was to have left early today! Gnana had wisely left before the rain started. My shift already ended at 11:00 pm. It was half past 11, and I was getting super anxious by the minute to get home. The hail wasn't going to relent. Mandeep's shift was over by 3 pm that day; he was likely watching a nice late-night movie at home, or he might be eagerly awaiting the first usher of sleep fairies that the rainy night would soon offer to lull him to snooze. He said he slept like a baby. Fair enough, paaji. I saw my red motorbike enjoying the drench as it stood quietly under the solitary banyan tree by the office building, all alone, alert on its centre stand as if saying, "What took you so long! Now hop on, dear... Time to go home." The parking lot was vacant, except for us.

As I rode my motorbike, I began a slow hum of the popular album song: “Ab Mujhe Raat Din, Tumhara Hi Khayal Hai” and "Deewana Tera," all of which were big chart-busting romantic tracks back in the day in 1999. When I was nearly halfway home, I started to hum one of the purest songs of love and longing that came into existence: “Chandi Raatein, Ho Chandi Raatein, Sab Jag Soye, Hum Jaagen, Taaron Se Karen Baatein,” as my soul swelled with a cherished longing—lost yet enduring—that never really let go of me, crooning those greatly admired, timeless love ballads sung by god-sent, soulful voices of our era. And then: "Na Jaane Mere Dil Ko Kya Ho Gaya, Abhi Toh Yahin…," etched into my soul like a melody so gentle, dancing sweetly in the depths of my heart. Curiously, every time the melody of "Tujhe Yaad Na Meri Aayee Kisise Ab Kya Kehna" graces my ears, it fills my heart with a bittersweet ache that lingers long after the notes fade away. These and other unforgettable numbers of that era were the ideal balm for the hurting soul.

(Almost daily, Mandeep and I would talk about the latest music videos: the top-charting songs on MTV and Channel V that were a staple on the television of those days in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We loved these cult songs so much that one day he rode pillion on my motorcycle, hurrying to central HYD—far from our office on Raj Bhavan Road in the north-central part of the city—to buy the audio cassette, along with a bunch of other Hindi film cassette tapes. Including Deewana, he bought the cassettes based on his preferences, while I purchased based on mine. After finishing our asset-acquisition of Hindi movie songs audiocassettes to our heart’s delight, we returned, with Mandeep sitting plump behind me on my red Hero Honda Splendor motorbike, to our office, utilizing our lunchtime wisely as we asked our ebullient associate Shiv P., who was on a general shift that day, to manage the roaming division while we were out shopping at a wholesale audiocassette mart!

It was great fun, with the post-noon sun high above us, mellowed in its afternoon glow. Mandeep and I were riding on my Splendor motorcycle from our Satyam office on Raj Bhavan Road, gliding through the bright roads, lanes, alleys, and avenues to central Hyderabad to pick up musical merchandise: audio cassettes from a wholesale outlet that only he knew about. When we were working at Satyam, the last time we went to catch a film together after work was Gladiator at Skyline/Sterling theatre. A cinematic masterpiece, which I checked the year it came out in 2000. I vividly recall that it was a magnificent movie to see, and during the intermission, he and I savoured sips from our Pepsi bottles. A rare interlude that brightened our friendship while we were out seeing a movie.)

Even today, the enduring charm of the 1980s and 1990s Hindi melodies continues to tug at the heartstrings, captivating hearts as they did in their prime. Growing up during that period was the most exciting phase of my life, but as the years raced ahead, a wave of sadness and ennui began to overshadow everything with the dawn of the 2000s: the new millennium, the start of the 21st century. (Since that fateful dawn of the new millennium, the heavenly Gods, as it were, possibly of ‘destinal’ origins, have unleashed a hard-luck doom with relentless ferocity on me. Good tidings never came my way; it is as if the unknown Gods up there in the heavens had turned up their noses at me, scorned my existence, again and again, abandoning the mournful heartstrings woven of love my heart once sought to beat close to yours.) Therefore, it is within the hallowed realm of the 1980s and 1990s—the luminous golden years of my life—that I discovered the most profound beauty and meaning, a harmonious symphony of experiences that resonate deeply within my soul. These priceless years of my life, woven with some of the most melodious and memorable Hindi film music and ghazals, each note a tender tug at the heartstrings from the days gone by, are cherished and lovingly embraced as I wander through my memories.

[I love humming songs whenever I’m in a good mood. It’s in my genes, I believe. Film songs and Doordarshan television ad jingles always come to me — Hindi, Bengali, English, and some of the most memorable Telugu melodies, especially of the 1980s and 90s. Until the mid-2000s, Hindi films—whatever you dub them as: masala films, commercial, escapist stuff, emotional tearjerkers, or anything that has comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and emotion replete with Shakespeare blends and Dickensian social conditions—and their songs were incredibly catchy and memorable. However, in recent years, almost all films have shifted their focus to real-life events or historical themes, leaving us with songs that have lost their musicality and charm, lacking melody, becoming less tuneful, jarringly technology-infested, auto-tuned to hilarity (wow! everybody can fucking sing these days!), and all that junk pieces never as catchy as they never used to be.

It's a disenchanting trend: Netflix, YouTube, or OTT. Don’t you think? Chilling at home and watching movies or TV shows of all kinds, new, old, and in-between, on your handheld devices or laptop computer. Unable to meet friends, becoming an individualistic loner, which is making you forfeit compassion. (Smart commercial logic, for sure, but I haven't signed up for any of the Internet-connected on-demand streaming services yet. I might, but not until later. It may be my retirement benefit, if you will, considering I am so hard-pressed for time these days. Ah hah! I might choose to serenade myself with a membership on the day I step into the realm of retirement, waving farewell to my daily grind.) And I am only speaking through the lens of a bygone era, from the point of view of the old way of watching movies, any movie, be it the so-called Bollywood (Hindi), Hollywood (English), or Tollywood (Telugu). The old way of making commercial Hindi cinema, coming from what is popularly known as 'Bollywood,' with the necessary and wonderful element of the light-hearted song-and-dance routine (and yes, around the trees, on the rooftops, in the flower gardens, pastures, meadows, or the fields, grasslands, and waterfalls), has disappeared into nostalgic oblivion, and so have the single-screen theatres the city was so well-known for—its Art Deco cinema theatres. Sadly, that era is gone; slipped away from us, taking with it the unforgettable movie-watching days we cherished so much.

Amid the mournful worst-case scenarios of the world—torn asunder by the spate of wars of bruised egos, injured pride, fraught with unthinkable despair, and the inexorable yet hollow pace of change utterly unconvincing—we live in a world that reminds me of the oft-forgotten beauty of a timeless refrain: “Iss Jeevan Ki Yahi Hai Kahani, Aani Jaani Yeh Duniya Behte Dariya Ka Paani.” (This is the story of this life, this fleeting world is like flowing river water.) Therefore, here is the gift of life. How do you embrace it and shape your destiny?

Oh dear, I lament the loss of the enchanting charm of the glorious nineteen-nineties, filled with next-level amazing music, movies, TV shows, and products, a wonderful, wholesome era, a historic decade in my life, that we still hold so close to our hearts even today, is gone, now forever beyond our reach.

Standalone single-screen cinemas, which were once social hubs or sole entertainment destinations for the 1990s generation, are being demolished everywhere. It’s hard to excuse the tragic fate of the old way of life, as these things are rapidly disappearing from our theatre landscapes permanently. These cultural landmarks, with their familiar lower and upper stalls and balcony seats, are sadly being replaced by soulless commercial shopping complexes, even as so-called modern, new multiplexes, which are often prohibitively expensive, take over these old cultural hubs. That old cinematic tradition is gone.

That timeless song and dance routine, whether beneath, around or among the trees, in a forgotten fortress, elaborately designed studio sets picturing utopian vistas, palace intrigues, or a picturesque garden with myriad water fountains—and, yes, saying it frankly, under the waterfalls with both hero and heroine moving rhythmically to music while lip-synching on vividly tinselly romantic songs—has now faded into history. Similarly, think of Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar, Dil Se, Soldier, Sirf Tum, Love, First Love Letter, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Hum Aapke Hai Kaun, Mohabbatein, and many other light-hearted, enjoyable movies from that era-defining generation, as far as the typically unique Indian way of 70mm visually glitzy big-screen entertainment is concerned.

Apart from the Hindi ones, some of the memorable Telugu movies include Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari, which features one of my truly favourite vernacular songs, "Priyathama Nanu Palakarinchu Pranayamaa." Kshana Kshanam, Gang Leader (“Vaana Vaana Velluvaye”), Chanti, and two tracks from the movie Bobbili Raja, "Kanyakumari Kanapadadha Daari" and "Balapam Patti," and lest I forget mentioning two beautiful song-and-dance musical numbers: “Chiluka Kshemama” and "Chukkala Pallakilo." These remain so compelling and sweetly unforgettable. While the focus here is on 1990s music, I must also acknowledge that the Telugu musical landscape of the 1980s was, if not equally extraordinary, then even more so. Although I missed the chance to see Gharana Mogudu, the film's title was on everyone's lips in town, as my school buddy Satish, a Chiranjeevi and Krishnam Raju fan, enjoyed its magic during its opening week. He made sure to experience it during the very first week of its release. Under no circumstances was he going to miss it, absolutely not.

I love the local flavour,” Armstrong would playfully say, inviting all of us to catch a good Telugu film at a nearby cinema hall. Sunil would immediately respond with a resolute, "Yes, I'm in!" and would playfully add in Hindi, "Main bhi chaltu (I'm also going)." For Satish and me, it would be an eager "Chalo, chalenge (Let's go!).”

The last time I saw a Telugu movie was way back in 2002. The film Lahiri Lahiri Lahiri Lo, which was okay-ish to watch, proved to be a modest delight for its audience. A year before, in 2001, the film Manasantha Nuvve captured hearts. The song "Tuneega Tuneega..." and others from the movie wove a sonnet of sweet melodies, creating a symphony that stirred the heart. Satish and I both went to see these movies.

One particular song, "Nee Snehameh..." from the movie Manasantha Nuvve, is deeply heart-touching. This heartbreaking melody that fills me with a feeling of an old emotion, connecting me to an earlier version of myself, reminds me to reminisce about a time I may have left behind, yet still hold close to my heart. This song never fails to stir my soul. Each time I listen to its haunting, melancholic melody—whether it drifts softly from a distant speaker or fills a quiet moment alone—it awakens a deep-rooted, soulful feeling, perhaps evoking memories of a love long gone and the dreams that faded with it. Every time I hear it, those lost emotions resurface. Such musical tunes are exceedingly rare; they are no longer being composed today. No wonder the current music scene feels utterly dismal, devoid of the spark that once made it so dynamic. Remember the song-and-dance routine? That is what I was talking about. It’s as if the moment you anticipate a new song, it slams into a wall of disappointment. Nothing is the same as it was a decade or two ago.

Going to the movies, in whatever language, was an exciting opportunity that no one from our gang wanted to miss, as we settled into our assigned seats and remained quiet in wonder for nearly two and a half hours. The first English-language picture I remember watching is probably Conan the Barbarian. Afterwards, I saw F.I.S.T., Fist of Fury, Enter the Dragon, Rambo, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Conan the Barbarian, and so many others during my school years. It was not just about the movies; it was an essential ritual, a vital human experience that had more to do with how we grew up as intimate buddies. No matter what your age group is, we always ate onion samosas, chutney sandwiches, and a cold drink at the movies, mostly Thums Up, Citra: "Super Cooler," Limca, Gold Spot:The Zing Thing!" Popcorn could wait. All in all, a lifetime’s worth of memories!

Times have changed, and human sensibilities and sensitivities are evolving as the old give way to the new. Even for my friend Satish, who used to love watching Telugu films every other weekend, the current trend in commercial cinema—whether local or national—which is not what we would prefer to see on the big screen, strays far from the tried-and-tested romantic song-and-dance narratives, perhaps unveiling a reality we often overlook, or lingers just out of sight for all four of us friends, who knows? Whatever it might be, Satish watches them, but rarely these days. Similarly, Armstrong, who moved to Delhi a long time ago, has long since left behind this sphere of fascination, this cherished realm of our shared passion for watching Hindi, Telugu, or English movies at Sangeet, Skyline/Sterling, or Anand; Sai Kishore, Sapna, or Manju — all gone, demolished. Meanwhile, Sunil—who used to be an avid Hollywood fan (like all four of us together)—had already become a rare viewer of cinema. Sadly, Sunil died a few years ago. It seems to me that the fountain of our youthful enthusiasm has taken a different bend. Call it a bittersweet twist of fate, or a disenchanting divergence from the modern highfalutin trends of the world, things for us are no longer the same.

Every song from Telugu cinema's soundtracks from the 1990s holds the power to revive warm memories and tender moments from my college days, evoking sweet memories that create an indescribable spell of nostalgia truly worth holding onto, impossible not to cherish. That feeling of nostalgia still holds strong in my mind, as well as in the minds of my dear friends, my local pals.]

+*+*+*+

Since 2005, I have rarely watched Hindi movies as my interest in them has sharply diminished. Not because of the dazzling crop of Hindi movies that were coming out, but due to a dearth of like-minded friends to see at least a few of them, I suppose; like we used to see those movies back in the day when we were young, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and blissfully unaware of taxes! I'm not able to say exactly what it is precisely that dissuades me from catching new Hindi movies, but that was the end of it all. I guess my days of rest (and relaxation) had long ended. I also stopped buying audiocassettes or CDs around 2003 or ‘05, marking a distinct turning point in my entertainment preferences — even though I listen only to old Hindi film music (up to the year 2005) from the earlier golden periods, mostly downloaded from the Internet and streamed through the new-age wireless Bluetooth portable speaker box, the current musical garbage leaves me exasperated. I unabashedly preferred watching Hollywood movies more than I used to view Hindi or occasionally regional flicks, and that too on a friend's persuasion from near home.

As for me, however, everything has changed; the world has changed, it has taken a permanent turn, and it is not as good as it should be.

Maybe I might watch only once a year—but even that isn’t guaranteed. It has been more than twenty years since my interest in Hindi movies waned. Fanaa and Rang De Basanti were the last two noteworthy Hindi cinematic gems that I really enjoyed viewing. Even though they drew inspiration from actual events, the stories were both engaging and emotionally heart-wrenching, with each film featuring memorable musical compositions. But I still love that filmy romantic trope of "dancing around the trees" and lip-syncing a cache of catchy, hummable songs interspersed throughout the film as the story moves forward. That vivid imagery, if you like, of the song-and-dance routine stays with you forever, far surpassing the mundane, off-putting portrayals of real-life happenings or unpleasantly classified as 'realistic cinema' that dominates today's Indian "commercial escapist" movie scene. I mean, you remember each line of pre-2000 Hindi cinematic poetry for life, but it's hard to recall any good song, tune, or melody that gets auto-tuned to perfection but has no charm, no magic effect — zero delight! True, technology has made it easy for these smarty-pants novices slash amateurs to auto-tune their voices to record songs on their electronic devices, but look what happened to the entire oeuvre of film music soundtracks—they destroyed it. While times have evolved, my preferences remain the same: old school, and say what you will, soberly conservative. You can say: stuck in the nostalgic past. Maybe. But that is where I love to be. It never hurts.]

+*+*+*+

When I finally got home that stormy night, I was thoroughly soaked, drenched to the bone. My motorbike looked like it was grinning from ear to ear, clearly enjoying its refreshing rain shower. I did not lament the rainy night; it was most welcome: the more of it, the more beautiful it is. Despite my soggy condition, I sometimes hummed and sometimes sang to myself three beautiful melodies as I rode my motorbike, wearing a nice, reassuring helmet.

When it's raining, one can feel a certain bliss in being mesmerized by it. But again, not much of it is good. A little drench should be fine. When the day comes to a close, a new one is dawning on the horizon.

+*+*+*+

Missing my Satyam friends

Lately, I have been thinking of Renju and Gnana, Mandeep and Kavitha, Devi and Suresh, Revathy and Rafi, GG and Balaji, Shiv and Shahnawaz, along with many other colleagues I’ve come into connection with at the Satyam branch on Raj Bhavan Road. I'm not surprised that I still remember everything, and their memories linger on. After Satyam, where have they gone? Where did life take them? Indeed, we don't stick with one IT company forever, yes, and none of us did—until, of course, Satyam unfortunately disbanded in 2009 or thereabouts. We all moved on while seeking new opportunities that lay on the pathways of the future. Everyone knew when to leave, when it was time to say goodbye to an old chapter of life.

Renju—an excellently precise name for a girl dreaming of making it big in the then-fledgling Indian IT industry—we knew always reacted ordinarily to the extraordinary; in that way, her modesty was exemplary, and this, coupled with her humble, unassuming, simple nature, was something that you would see and that good things happen to mature people who know their way around the world. Such maturity comes with being peaceful at heart, with mindful inclinations influencing how she approaches situations and goals. At Satyam, she was a comfort to those around her, as she kept a cool head to be the voice of calm in the GG-laden Twisters that the West Wing often whirled up into our East Wing cubicle, which was an exciting wellspring of youth energy that fascinated every one of our team every moment of our life, away from the sombre-looking, sombre-sounding senior management on the other end of the office building, of which GG was one of the many senior-level consultants. Nonetheless, those were the best days of our lives, which have been indelibly etched in our memories, in our hearts, in our souls, forever.

Looking back to a time when we worked with, not for, our reporting manager, GG, I'm no longer in touch with that part of my younger moral conscience that, unlike our superior, we were youthfully considerate, questioning whether I've finally forgiven this tyrannical figure for the abominably angry reproaches or his subtly propagated, community-oriented bias that he imposed on us in our daily work lives. Time and again, the chilling void of unfriendliness used to leave us sapped of our spirits, feeling uninspired, to say the least. Kavitha shed an unknown amount of tears; her eyes welled up quickly, and tears plunged like Niagara Falls, while Mandeep and I tackled a lot of unwanted stress and anxiety, facing our own tetrapod T-Rex of Satyam. It was a bitter reminder that, although we were continuously knowledgeable, skilled, and professionally competent, he showed little to no empathy toward us. GG's indifference cut deeply, an ugly reality Mandeep would humorously call out as "thanks to his fuckaad-ka leadership."

Apart from Mandeep, I, and also Devi and Suresh have not seen or spoken to him since late 2001, which was twenty-four years ago, and neither did Kavitha M., who discontinued her Satyam career two years ago in 1999, making sure that her close pal Una Artoran, who worked in a different organization, too went off the radar entirely. Let us not forget her other delightfully weighty chum, Mom R., whose dreams of far-away abroad, of distant shores, food, and adventures—quality of life, mostly—took precedence over blossoming friendships that might or might not have been made here in the laid-back, enchanting city of HYD. To these jolly-good, fun-loving Hyderabadi Mesdemoiselles, I suspect, there couldn't be any alternative reality in this fast-changing city where they (all-girls squad) lived comfortably and worked ably, for they had different, life-changing ideas in the snug spaces—feel-good plus more creative medley than mundane, though—of their mindfully, intentionally, and consciously fertile imagination. All they needed was a change of place, time, thought, and future: a potential hawa badlee, if you like!!! And lest we forget their other friend, Padma, from the band of four female friends, with whom I shared fleeting yet meaningful conversations once or twice, who seemed like a solitary flower blooming amid a bouquet of vivacious camaraderie, brought to life by the infectious appeal of her colleagues, such as:

® The ever-spirited, on the chubbier side like the unsinkable Molly of the Titanic, bear-cuddly, pampered Khumbhakarni Mom;

® Gracefully elegant Una, whose pastel-hued dresses were the stuff of urban legends, just like the “chui-mui girl” (of the popular ’98 song), she liked calling herself with;

® And perhaps even the statuesque, dignified Kavitha, for whom a picture is worth a thousand words and who took Una firmly on her side, filling her with inflated tosh, never letting go of her if she strays from the straight and narrow as dictated by her. A true-blue Tandavi;

® That leaves Padma, one of the four-friends quatrain, whose name had possibly skipped a 'Shri' as a definitive suffix to her name. It could earn a rewarding 'Padmashri,' a nationally recognized name, all right. Perhaps, Padma is just fine, short and neat.

Oh, except once, very briefly, I bumped into GG once—just for a moment, goodness!—at Mandeep's wedding reception in the manicured green lawns of Taj Deccan in the heart of the city. Hopefully, GG is now prematurely retired, living as well as he has envisioned for himself in the Boulder Hills of Banjara. Old age and retirement eventually catch up.

+*+*+*+

I was looking forward to my slow Sunday scroll around the house, which was still two days away: of reading, lazing around, watching MTV a bit, or looking forward to conversing with my erudite, slightly elliptical, and irrepressible college-time buddies, namely, Armstrong S. (nickname: “Strong”), Sateesh K. (“Mote,” “Khumbhakaran,” ”DeMello”), and the often miserly but very wittily comical crosspatch Sunil B. ("Bhale," "Sadu," or even “Sulli Gaadu”) in the Sunday evening, who sometimes would dash over to my house for a brain-bouncing, inside jokes sharing chit-chat that sometimes dissected my cerebellum to the hilt. (Only kidding, fellas. Better to mention that I'm joking ... just in case!)

“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” — Marcel Proust

+*+*+*+

How to Find Closure

Closure, whatever that term may mean, is something I've always been unsure whether I will ever reach since I began crafting this… oh!... memoir. With countless recollections from my amazing days at Satyam, I struggle to find meaningful closure for an experience that brought us so much joy during our time there. I understand it was merely a job, something not meant to linger in your mind after a while for very long.

That is how I suppose nostalgia works — lost in imagination and possibility, deeper than anything you can fathom, and it makes us feel warm, safe, and connected to the past days that will always be present in the reckoning. You progress, experience, discover different opportunities to pursue, and carry on with your career without becoming emotionally invested in your first job because you know you will possibly take up another one soon after in some other company, in some other place.

The way it has always been in today’s IT (Information Technology) work sphere, you finish one job, pick up another soon after, and carry on with your professional life without giving a second glance at the things you have lived through. While I don't berate any of my precious Satyam friends, I guess, I couldn't bring myself to do that, because we are all in this together, in great shakes as we scrutinize more job opportunities that come our way. That's a working life we all abide by. I'm obsessed with the '70s, '80s, and '90s eras to live by. Because of the inherent romance in those eternities, which is highly distinctive to location, culture, and lived experience, these pivotal periods in history, with the warmth of the treasured past, will always hold a special place in my heart. Who doesn't like nostalgia? Everybody does in some way or another, a little less or more. I love getting stuck in a creative loop of nostalgia for an extended time, and that is precisely what I need for my life to prosper in the increasingly chaotic and conflicted world we live in. Still, some people—like myself, I believe that my dearest colleagues at Satyam were connected by a deep love for storytelling and reminiscing about lovely moments we spent together working in the roaming division, as I am doing here—aspire to write heartfelt memoirs or personal accounts centred on personal experiences that have profoundly affected them, wishing to evoke nostalgia and happiness as they, I am sure, seek a deeper meaning in their memories to guide them through life with the warmth of their treasured past. Nothing of that sort had come forward in writing, at least, as a matter of course. Maybe, somebody has to do the dirty work of writing a memoir like I am doing here, and everything will be alright. Life is for once, there's no second chance at it. This, as in here, is the last dispatch of life on Earth, until, possibly, the heavenly abodes above.

I thought to write something of a personal account, captioning every blog under the recurrent heading “Our Satyam Days,” followed by the serial number of the part that is published. I have been blogging since 2009 (writing since 1990, in bits and pieces initially, later full-fledged articles and letters to the editor-type for the local rag, D.C.) towards achieving a kind of personal milestone, as it were, all put out on my blog space called “Pebbles on the Beach,” which previously was called (quite a few years back, though) “Butterflies in my Stomach.

+*+*+*+

This is the last dispatch.

Since the day of absolution is long overdue, and it doesn't seem like the atonement will happen anytime soon, I remain uncertain about how to end this introspective memoir chronicling my time at Satyam—a phase that significantly influenced my professional path through new learnings, work ethic, and the broader spectrum of life's demands and survival as an information technology professional during the years I spent there before this once-great organization, sadly, crumbled under the weight of its unfortunate circumstances. A tragic fate that left its former, old-time employees heartbroken.

While many had turned the page long before the upheaval struck Satyam, I decided to leave in the early 2000s, understanding (reluctantly) that sometimes moving on is the best solution to stagnation in the profession. When the roaming division disbanded in 2001, Mandeep, Shiv, and Shahnawaz preferred to explore new opportunities to follow their career dreams elsewhere, while I, along with Renju, Gnana, Devi, and Suresh, chose to stay the course for a while longer. At this juncture of my life, if anyone asked me how things were going, I'd have merely responded that they were very disheartening, though one liked to be optimistic, even if it meant for the sake of it. Renouncing Satyam, along with my dear office colleagues, as I painfully realized: one that unfolded in my heart with a weight, was something I never anticipated or that, one day, would become a necessity to utilize painful situations as growth, progress, or some such BS. Yet, moving on from one job to another seemed to be well... merely a temporary reprieve, nothing quite reasonable, and no permanent redemption, therefore.

Little tidings reached us concerning Ann Mary R., or Mary Ann, who always valued connecting with us at our former Raj Bhavan Road office branch, save for the knowledge that she transitioned to another branch of Satyam's many city offices, where she worked for a year or two, maybe, before deciding to move on permanently. That was the last we ever heard of her.

It is, to say the least, quite beyond belief that a venerable institution like Satyam, a beacon in the field of IT, should be subjected to such an unfathomable tragedy. I still remember how we revelled in the plenitude of learning opportunities, despite working under the nightmarish, bombastic leadership style of our consulting supervisor—whose rumbly, menacing voice rolled through the hall as if spoken through a thunderous megaphone, suggestive of a devil on the loose. Kavitha used to experience a lush tropical rainforest of a thousand goosebumps springing to life on her arms, each tiny prickle horripilating all over, a physiological reaction to the primal instinct awakened within her, as her mind picked on the ominous shadows of encroaching peril drawing near.

Each time Mandeep saw GG sauntering towards our cubicle, he would exclaim in a mournful sing-song tone, "Arehhh! Aagayi ji aagayi pulees (police) aagayi!" (Urgh! The police have come; the police have come!) GG, of course, as is his wont, would take on his repulsed, serious-looking Colin Powell look, but also sometimes managed to sound like the cartoonish comicality of Leslie Nielsen: think of the goofy laugh-riot Naked Gun, Spy Hard, et al.—an autocratic Big Gun who loved setting us into a tizzy all day. Notwithstanding all that bossy hectoring, it remains fair to say that working at Satyam was a dream, epitomizing a quintessential career experience that served as a coming-of-age experience, if you will. Our character conditioning, while moulding our approach to the professional sphere, simultaneously deepened our understanding of who we are and what our identities entail. It bettered our earlier selves—more shy, wary, a little scared—ping-ponging between faulty ideas as we refined ourselves into responsible, competent professionals. Phew!

Everything feels different now; naturally, it's 2025, not 1998. Things have changed, times have changed, they always do. The world has shifted, as it inevitably must with time passing by at a breakneck speed. I understand nothing can deliver us anything, and no force can transport us back to the past, except when you nostalgically reminisce about it, summoning up your memories in your heart. You will know that it brings a sorrowful weight of profound longing as the days move on. And times have veered off to the raw end of the spectrum, as is their wont (when things are fine), leaving a lingering sadness in their wake. Still, take me back in time to the point when I first joined Satyam in the year 1998, if memory serves, probably in the first week of August. Even better, take me back to the '70s or the '80s, when things felt simpler and happier; perhaps, I could start over anew and come to the point at my joining Satyam and meeting my work friends. But it feels far away now, because I've (we all have) come a long way since 1998, so far out from that pivotal moment in time when we met at that exceptional organization. And it feels like a distant memory of those Satyam days that I will never let go of them unremembered, unsung. Remembering all the good times we had at Satyam might help ease your pain from the storm of the present times. Everybody has to go forward, just forward. I went too, but I believe not without looking back.

Renju moved away, as did Mandeep. While Suresh settled in a new location, Devi withdrew from the circle of friendship to a strange anonymity. Kavitha had long since gone her separate way—it had been two and a half years already (in 2000/1) since her absence became a permanent void, slowly forgetting that once, she, as an aspiring IT techie, was contributing to the roaming division’s business success and, by extension, to Satyam’s. Revathy and Rafi had left the office branch, and their absence resonated increasingly as time passed. Associating with them for those brief two or three months was not only meaningful but also an especially enriching experience for us as we were learning on the job. We are immensely grateful to fate for bringing us together with these two exceptionally skilled and intelligent individuals, who truly broadened our horizons, widening the scope of our work awareness at Satyam. Caught in the chauvinism of self-imposed deadlines, which he believes only he can handle, GG made a swift exit from the company—a woeful soul full of lululemons that his life could deliver him, and consistently out of the station until, one imagines, that much-awaited day he retires (finally!) or hangs up his Bata boots and earns himself a spot in Mr. Yamraj's good graces once more. Thenceforth, that day will be enshrined in the annals of our history, forever recognized as a national holiday! Though Balaji is no longer present in the here and now of the roaming world (up till 2001, he was), he's likely still brainstorming actionable ideas from his calm, cool-headed, pacifist perspective. Shiv never showed up again, and Shahnawaz chose never to look back.

Leaving Satyam, I felt lost in a haunting tide of memories, stirring a bittersweet ache within. I found it hard to identify the source of my sadness—or if there was truly any sadness at all. And what was I feeling sad about so much? That's the question I'd perhaps answer a little differently. Today, my heart brims with nostalgia, each thought a reminder of all the treasured moments we shared at Satyam's Raj Bhavan Road office branch, a place we loved going to work and cherished for everything it offered. The extraordinary time we spent at Satyam has sadly disappeared, now just a beautiful blur in the tapestry of our memories. It's hard to believe that 27 years—an entire quarter of a century, my goodness—have flown by, a realization that echoes through my mind constantly when I think about our Satyam days.

Life went on, as it always does, I believe, much the same for each of us—both changed and as well as familiar. I hope we find each other again at that same hour and cherished place, at that precise moment in time and space, even though it now feels like it was a lifetime ago when our history unfurled. Satyam has left a lasting imprint, and I often find myself longing for those days. None of this nostalgia, nor this memoir I share here, would come to be without all of you, my friends from Satyam, who added so much to my life in so many ways.

Dear friends, please take good care of yourselves. Until we meet again—farewell! All my love. Goodbye and god bless.

(The End)

By Arindam Moulick
July 2025,
HYD.

And Oh! Postscript: To read the first part of this series titled “Our Satyam Days,” click here -> Memory Crossing.

Font: Libre Baskerville
Word count: 8,793 — warts and all.

Monday, July 7, 2025

A True Privilege

Our Satyam Days, part XXXIII

Working at Satyam was a privilege. I still believe that the most remarkable aspect of my five-plus years at Satyam was the wonderful experience of working alongside cheerful, like-minded colleagues such as Devi, Mandeep, Suresh, Renju, Kavitha, and all the wonderfully warm, talented group of delightful people who made every day at the office genuinely special.

Kavitha, Mandeep, and I—all three of us—began our IT journey with Satyam in the Raj Bhavan Road office branch on the same day in August '98. I can still picture it in my mind's eye: We nestled into the blue swivel chairs, participating in our first-day orientation and onboarding session, helmed by Revathy, Rafi, and another colleague to facilitate a seamless transition for continued support.

While Kavitha left the group after a year-long career, Mandeep continued his journey to being a distinguished personality, clocking nearly three long years. Suresh joined a few days later, followed by Devi, who came on board a few months afterward. Both have been with the company for over five years, likely close to eight years or longer. Whereas I have spent over five years there, learning a great deal and growing professionally, as we all did simultaneously, Satyam has been the best part of my professional life; nothing has ever come close to it.

Barring one or two things, working with Satyam was a singularly fulfilling professional experience that fostered positive, if grumpy, leader(GG)-member(us) interactions, which in turn enriched our life satisfaction!

Aside from the new knowledge and learnings I've gained from this exceptional workplace, I also appreciated the whole vibe of working in a revolutionizing new-age Indian IT ecosystem of software and IT services, Satyam—which was well-positioned in the global IT market for software technology and business consulting—excelled in since the late 1980s to the mid-2000s, which was when the multinational technology colossus based out of HYD collapsed deplorably due to the 'creative-accounting' financial implosion.

Co-worker friendships were of the highest marker of my employment with Satyam, and so was the spontaneous interaction among us as we daily swished into our office on the 5th floor, East Wing sometimes, depending on the schedule, at 7am in the morning till 3pm or at 3pm in the afternoon till 11pm — swiped our office cards to enter the hall complete with a sea of high end custom-made spacious cubical office workstations and glass-fronted cabins; intercom phones rang with a gentle electronic ring; yellow Post-it notes uncurled and uncurled themselves: they were pasted on the sides of the computer screens mostly; clicking keyboards; sending out numerous emails before ensuring the intensive, data-specific information that they carry is carefully and meticulously researched and verified; filling the daily time-sheets; the printed daily schedule pinned onto the blue display board; and the tea and coffee, from the instant soluble Nescafe machine, infused into the white paper cups an emotionally brilliant hot coffee topped with a thick, luscious white frothy crema — was significantly, imaginatively, creatively perfect an office setting in earning our living.

In those days, there was no company like Satyam, and if you ask me, there was no need for any; it felt that Satyam was the one and only IT organization that needed to exist in the city — other aspiring companies if there were any, could wait or do something from the introspective corner of sidelines, maybe. Satyam felt eternal: We all loved coming to work, feeling increasingly grateful to be working as we enjoyed our five-day office week and lived a rich professional life while balancing it with a fulfilling personal life. There was ample time, particularly on weekends, to engage in retail therapy with friends at Park Lane or MG Road, an occasional Hot Dog or a Burger at Universal Bakery, pursue one's hobby of writing poetry and other leisurely pursuits, bond with long-time buddies from college days, and spend time within the comfort zone of home reading or writing: it took a month for me to finish reading Leo Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace.

Between the years 2000 and 2003, I focused on reading as many books as could be possible—despite the suffering of more than haranguing humungous ego of our boss who never gets past harsh yelling at the office—by well-known authors such as Barbara Taylor Bradford (Where You Belong), John Grisham (A Time to Kill), James Patterson (Roses Are Red; Violets Are Blue), Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember), and Stephen King (Black House), Nicholas Evans (The Smoke Jumper; The Horse Whisperer), Maeve Haran (The Farmer Wants a Wife), and literary influences in reading, such as Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet), Rabindranath Tagore (The Home and The World; The Wreck), Charkes Dickens (The Pickwick Papers) checking them off my bucket list one after the other. I actively sought out Nicholas Evans's other novels, The Loop and The Brave, but I was unable to find them locally. Luckily, I was able to dive into Evans's compelling storytelling because my brother bought the first two Nicholas Evans novels when he was in Australia.

Working at Satyam was a consistently delightful and distinctly pleasant experience. If you put our boss aside, that is. Never again did such a singular first job experience happen. Most of all, I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work alongside an exceptional team of incredible individuals who were, fortunately, my teammates—starting with Mandeep and Kavitha, then Revathy and Rafi, followed by Devi and Suresh, Renju and Gnana, Shiv and Shahnawaz, and concluding with the grumpy, habitually authoritative, GG and the friendly, harmonically elegant Balaji. Well, GG was an anomaly!

In a relatively short span, we became indispensable to our twisted reporting manager, known by the teeth-gnashing name GG, who was characterized by a notably abrasive demeanour, coupled with a rakish attitude and a tendency to exhibit intentional disrespect. Say what anyone must, we had a boss from hell who'd set the circus cat among the alley pigeons! Given his extensive IT-related experience, a rip-off kind acquired abroad mostly, and an undeniable air of old-world, old-school Info-Tech bravado as corporate sheen, a peculiar acumen of idiosyncratic professionalism that he brought to the table, we found ourselves faced with an unprecedented anomaly of the human spirit that we had to endure beyond the endurable. It was thanks to our ever-adjusting, young, economical mindset—a purity of ethical innocence—that we all survived for so long under his leadership, which was mind-bending atrocious, palliated by tech-fetish hypocrisy, and too crooked to ever fade from our collective memory.

(To suggest that GG was endearing as a reporting manager is beside the boiling point! He was never like that; he meant business and controlled everything with an iron hand, symbolizing the absence of any inkling of friendliness in his nature, even as he permitted no disagreement while demanding unquestioning conformity to his writ—his way or the highway: vetoing every input from us to smithereens. Yet he still expected these contributory inputs to reach him across the table in his cabin at every Monday morning meeting, even though he was not going to take them into account as, at one instant, he'd shout, fume, and typically spell the doom! And at another, he'd affirm, "We have come a long way." That's GG for you. A heaven-sent supervisor? Hell-sent rather: that's more like it. Take it or leave it. Put up or shut up.)

+*+*+*+

Just a thought… The notion of workplace friendship has become an oversold concept, outdated to its core. No one feels as impassioned about it anymore as we used to a long time back, unlike in the past when we attached so much importance to it that the loss of a friend left us debilitated for life, a sense of loss, grief, regret, emotional pain, and despair following a significant end of old connections. We thought deeply about the lost camaraderie and had tears in our eyes as we longed for those who had moved on.

And just what am I getting so upset about here? I know the term "friendship" is less important today and has lost its meaning, practically seen as a misnomer by those who no longer want to attach much significance to it and live with it as if everything is alright. Unfortunately, nothing is the way it used to be. Friendship is a lost cause that no one seems to prefer or favour.

Friendships can change. Old friends leave as though they are moving on to a new world where they can comprehend the truths they have lately encountered or have run out of time. Maybe that's the case, or otherwise, we don’t deserve to know why we drifted apart. We constantly feel like we're getting the short end of the stick. That's how the world operates these days: it preys on your fears because you can't help but feel like you're always falling short, constantly losing yourself in the agony of parting with friends.

Life only happens once, just once. Life is short, so make the most of it by pursuing your dreams—chase after jobs that are not available unrestricted: you have to fight tooth and nail for them, opportunities masquerading as disappointments, which fancy villa or unsustainable neighbourhood to live or die in, the ultimate leveller money: the great middle-class pittance, and, of course, which polluting vehicle to buy and show off in the society were egos clash and prejudices made. There is no point in spending time and energy on hyper-modern, hyper-technological people who no longer harbour any significance in your life than a random stranger. Or they are not important to you anymore in this aged and failed era defined by cataclysmic friendlessness that some of us are sorrowing over the death of friendship. So, don't look for friendship; it's a bother, a flat-tired teetotaller drag. Friendship gayee tel lene. Look for self-sufficient, privacy-conscious, and individualistic aloneness in a society that staunchly (and sadly) favours individualism over collectivism, where the original, nostalgic essence of friendship and intimacy are unpersuadable lost arts. Therefore, in an increasingly hectic world, socially gregarious collectivism is hardly prevailing. It's finished, rather. So don't anticipate which has become obsolete.

While that happens around the, ironically, interconnected world, let me also lead a happy, exilic existence. I'll do my work and let others remain steadfastly aloof of me. Soon, the world, I know, will figure it out for itself while I keep my abundant failures and a modicum of successes, obscured by the clouds of my distant past, away from the searchlight of well-meaning but drolly formulaic worldly concerns.

Friendship is gone for good! Here lies friendship. Long live friendship. Acknowledge the loss, let go, and move forward. Still, I can’t shake the thought that it is otherwise, but posterity will decide, I think, the true extent of what we lost after we left Satyam. Perhaps it is not as significant as I make it seem, but only time will tell. Maybe it did, but we could not accord the importance it deserved. But even time is a deceiver. Because it never looks back.


Smartphones are now our closest friends; apps are the new icons we look up to. Meanwhile, our new AI (Artificial Intelligence) overlords have already started causing job-sized damage, and the day is not far when they are going to take over humans, wholly and completely. What an appy life this is!

On a Devil’s Rollcall

Little surprise, then, that the fact that you often work in an office environment where your boss isn't supposed to like you right from the start is the most hideous fact of your new work life at the office.

One such person was our ex-boss, who bore the jarring, teeth-gnashing name GG. He never did like anyone, anyone at all, did he? Nope, I don't think so. Moreover, I can't honestly claim that he is among the people I think of when reminiscing about my wonderful days at Satyam. But yeah, since he was the bossy chief who liked bruising our naive, self-conscious, sorry-ass, uninitiated souls with his loud, stubborn, growling voice and had the insinuating aptitude for constantly nit-picking you down as you could only be surviving in his fiefdom as just one of his tick-box targets—a mere cog in the great, bustling Satyam office wheel—nothing else ever mattered to this abrasive bully. As the saying goes, “hell hath no fury …” his name, GG, appears to be malapropos at best. “You can call me GG,” GG insisted in the first meeting. Call him like that, or else, …

Hell hath no fury like a GG scorned,
Heaven hath no love like a GG mourned

Rubbish, but true.

GG would be thrilled if we held up as a pinnacle of dependability and reliability. "Came out unscathed," his frequently repeated, self-satisfied analysis, whenever he found himself in a difficult situation due to any persisting issue (usually one that we hadn't caused) but managed to get out of it, emerging unscathed. During the Monday morning meetings, he would recite the aforesaid stock phrase multiple times so everyone could hear loud and clear. That necessarily implied that without him, the whole office would come to a complete standstill, as it would seize up, falter, break apart, crumble, and shatter! Thankfully, that never happened!

Tension would quickly build if you were in the vicinity of our unapproachable boss, GG. His commanding maturity, replete with some serious anger management issues, was enough to make anyone, as a subordinate, feel small about themselves. Occasionally, the aggressive demands of his leadership would weigh heavily on us, even crush our spirits: Kavitha knew it very much, and so did we (both Mandeep and I) have equally tolerated GG's wrath. But thanks to Mandeep's (the 'man' is 'deep') sharp and witty humor back in our cubicle, Renju's soulful companionship and support, and the singularly gracious friendship of Devi and Suresh who too have sometimes encountered GG's fury, we could maintain a sense of joyous optimism regardless.

To GG, we were merely tick-box targets, for he was staggeringly dismissive of whether we were getting unnecessarily worked up over problems or concerns that could impact our young minds while facing the unflattering stresses and strains of working it all out for ourselves. Or if we were in a situation where there was hardly anything to stress about, which was, by all means, rare. We figured it out, as we learned, discussed, and supported one another on the team, how to manage stress, as we thought it was our responsibility anyway, and it was our first job. But GG's lack of avuncular concern did create undeserved mental agony towards the man we referred to, on his express insistence, as GG.

Embittered, I can drone on and on, going viral about this issue.

By Arindam Moulick

Thursday, June 19, 2025

A Precious Heartache

Our Satyam Days, part XXXII

All the years we spent working together as a team, despite GG's haranguing presence hovering like a hefty-person ghostly spectre in the aural atmosphere of our workstation, have faded into a labyrinth of memories, warts and all, that perhaps few wish to revisit as they remain unremembered in the depths of forgetfulness, edified by the thrill of constantly moving on in the name of progressing in life, with no desire to glance back at the olden world we left behind, not even once.

Those Satyam memories have lost their sway over us. At least for some of us, it did. On second thought, it did—not that it didn't. However, we departed from Satyam a long time ago, so I realize it is much too far gone in the past to even consider writing about it as a memoir on my blog, a second (and last) memoir at that. However, I could recount a few stories from our time at Satyam that truly warmed my heart, and I still live by them today.

Taking a little journey down this memory lane has been quite an experience, reminding me just how valuable our memories can be! That's why I’ve intended to confess—without making it sound too dramatic—that Satyam's memories still occupy my mind like the smell of old-world charm: a sepia-tinted photograph that evokes nostalgia and mystery of the moment it captured, the sound of the Nescafe coffee machine that lounged in the vestibular corridor between our 5th-floor East Wing and the West Wing, sunlight falling on the glass-fronted bluey windows insulating the veneer of the technological wizardry inside from the externals of the steel-grey lake and beyond — the old sweet ache of that past timeframe of our life, a lifetime ago. This blog, however, is the last but one passage about a time that is not too far off in the past, but is close to my heart.

After I complete writing this, I will lay my pen to rest, even as all those Satyam days flash before my eyes, for without us, nothing would exist. Time and tide wait for no one. Sometimes, this nostalgic dream feels too big to chase.

The real reason I wrote these chapter-by-chapter presentations is that I've been feeling a deep sense of, how shall I put it, cultural nostalgia in my heart aching for weeks, months, and years, in the form of writing that I had done for the last few months, starting from Memory Crossing, the first part (among thirty-one others) of my second Satyam memoir. Slowly taking into account narrative portrayals of everything that once existed as beautiful moments between this late present and that old past, that is how all my memories of that era are resurfacing as I write, emerging into my nostalgic consciousness from the depths of my memory.

(I haven’t forgotten; there are still many decks of stories that I haven't covered. I could write more compelling narratives to fuel at least thirty more blog pieces, but thirty is a good number: plenty of stories here, and I won't be continuing past this last and final Satyam memoir.)

Those Satyam days, for some of us friends, I think, may have been misinterpreted as 'nostalgic sentimentality,' ultimately becoming undesired antiques like some archaic software or hardware that has outlived its efficacy, and no one seems to favour them anymore. Can't blame them. After all, who likes to squander time needlessly dwelling upon bygones? Let the past remain the past, existing solely in our memories, remembered only in our thoughts.

Don't look back because you're moving forward, not backward: That might have been the general feeling among most of us friends. Some of us may not have been able to feel awe-inspiring nostalgia for our Satyam days. Considering this, Revathy and Rafi have neatly written off our brief but significant Satyam affiliation as unnecessary and redundant while appreciatively carving out their niche in different time zones of independent countries, leading a well-deserved life that is both fulfilling and joyful.

But I see nostalgia differently: through a personally profound prism that deepens its significance and cannot be overlooked.

Good old times have moved down the road of time, conveniently forgetting that the past was best, as nostalgia for them served no purpose. Too bad they are already gone. Everybody has moved on. Too bad that I have moved on… he he…, but memories remain and will remain as long as I have them, and that is for life. All that has happened since then is that a lot of water has passed under the bridge, and workplace friendships waned as time went on with its forward-marching determination… to reach where? Eternity? That’s so tame if you ask me. If nostalgic memories were roads to our past days, then they, sadly, were the roads less travelled by the unforgettable Satyam folks I have been chattering about here. I promise that this will be the last chance to convey my thoughts, which is why I am writing to evoke that memorable feeling of nostalgia for our Satyam days that refuses to die down.

(Unfortunately, Satyam was destroyed in the late 2000s, 2009 precisely. Due to deliberate financial mismanagement and corporate fraud, its owner fell bankrupt by committing the largest business scandal in India, from which neither he, his company, nor his management cohorts ever recovered. You reap what you sow, damn fools).

None of us stayed, I presume, for that long at Satyam. (When I left, Suresh, Devi, Renju, and possibly even Gnana, all of whom I've slowly lost touch with, were still working at that company, albeit in different office branches in HYD. As things stood, Mandeep bonded with GG soon after, only to secure an appointment at his newly incorporated friend's company. Shiv and Shahnawaz were among the earliest to depart. Kavitha had left long ago, long before almost all of us. A few years later, however, and before the end of 2001, we said our quiet goodbyes to the extraordinary realm of Satyam, a place we had loved and admired from the day we joined it in 1998. Those days are now a precious heartache.)

Until 2009, none of us had remained at Satyam for so long. Before Satyam became entangled in a financial scandal and ultimately ceased operations in 2009, we had already anticipated the future, drawing on our collective IT experience and the strong influence of our Satyam origins in our thoughts. By 2004/5, I believe most of us had moved on from the company to pursue other endeavours in search of more promising possibilities in the realm of information technology. Regrettably, human greed has done in the technology titan of a company like Satyam.

Satyam was an excellent workplace, and I often reminisce about the time spent there, particularly in our cosy, spacious cubicle with three workstations, three Panasonic landlines, and a built-in wardrobe with shelves stacked with blank CDRs, mobile roaming manuals, and other paraphernalia on the 5th floor of the East Wing at TSR Towers on Raj Bhavan Road.

And yet, those days will never return, and I harbour no illusions that they will. Of course, they will not. We have lost those days. Sigh.

By Arindam Moulick

Sunday, June 8, 2025

The Bittersweet Reality

Our Satyam Days, part XXXI

Long after leaving Satyam and having been in IT professionally since 1998 at that fine home-grown technology enterprise, actually a year before that, but that is another thing called professional practice, Mandeep, our fellow associate whose sense of humour could kill a cow, finally planned to switch his career track, wanting to call it quits (discontinuation, to be sure) on his IT profession altogether.

To do something like that was brave; it takes more than just guts to take such a wilful step. More than that, let's say that when it comes to altering one's career track, an astute degree of action intelligence, a sharp sense of judgment, and a deft sense of humour were never in short supply, as was supposed to have been acted upon.

While his determination to act as he did was commendable, it was not reckless. If he had found himself entangled in a situation of his own devising, it could have been. Being capable of making bold decisions when necessary was his natural forte — his inherent ability to invent compelling humour, laugh, empathize, and have an alacritous view of the world around him allowed him to make audacious choices when needed: that was his style. In the face of any indecisiveness, he somehow seemed to excel: that much one knew he was a seasoned connoisseur who knew how to steer life in an orderly fashion, of placing it on an even keel that worked wonders for him as others could observe and learn from this cultivated, comedic, be-turbaned gentleman, who proudly hailed from the boulder hills of Banjara.

Because Mandeep was the most practical man who was up and about at Satyam of those days, with a singular insight of humour that never got impacted by anything untoward that typically came in the form of verbal assaults from our boss whose teeth-gnashing name called GG was enough to make matters worse, he could do it — taking an unconventionally desperate measure of change into account to ensure his career continued to flourish after his time in Satyam — and he made those choices count. Nonetheless, if he wanted to move past the incredible Satyam years and pursue a new career path, exiting the Information Technology (IT) sector entirely was the sole realistic alternative he could realistically think of, and it was a stroke of genius that had been working in his favour ever since. That way, he excelled beyond what these mere words could convey about his professional journeys and conquests alike.

Mandeep joined a prominent real estate infra arm of the house of Satyam and quickly rose to the position of Senior Manager. Surprisingly, he became quite proficient in this non-native field. His transition from IT to non-IT allowed him to experience the merry-go-round-the-world of Property Realty, which he navigated with great aplomb before leaving the IT domain in a short time.

Good on him, though, since that bold career move, the sense of professional freedom he probably experienced, paid off for him in a way few people can venture in such a radical way. So kudos to him.

+*+*+*+

On the other hand, I planned to hit the hotspots of what lay ahead, post the Y2K brouhaha of 1999/00 and the dotcom bubble of early 2000s, in the IT arena and desired to become a Senior Consultant, first in Project Management, then MIS (Management Information System), and finally rapid and head-controlled headlong plunge into hard-core software and systems management, which was (and still is) my bread and butter, thanks to some age-old software engineering I had done from somewhere in some other era.

After that time of unexpected upheavals in Satyam, Revathy and Rafi, Renju and Gnana, Devi and Suresh — have all moved on to new creative positions in thrilling new directions, taking the separate paths they have chosen for themselves. With the sole exception of Mandeep, having launched himself cathartically into the active centre of the hurricane conventionally called the private Real Estate Infra sector, which had been amply providing excellent career opportunities since the mid-2000s, or so it genuinely seemed then. Everyone else, however, continued steadfastly with IT, including me—I couldn't just leave Satyam and go away because I didn't think of change—quite sudden and upfront as it was for me to grapple with, in the best way possible as all my colleagues could easily do so and move on to the next step in their career path.

Talking about change, nevertheless, Kavitha was an early adopter of change: a ‘frontiersperson’ if you will, a pioneer among the Satyam peers, who sought it out and used it to her advantage, capitalizing on them by shifting her direct-hit focus and resources toward the United States. Quite understandably, or as one would expect, she never looked back since then: American life devoured her wholly and completely, without a burp, and she settled in that country. (Virtually no social news about our hocking-mocking West Wing devil, Chicha's (alias GG) preferred pupil, Ann Mary R., the front office exec who married and later left Satyam to settle down and raise a family).

+*+*+*+

After getting back to HYD—which was sadly increasingly becoming traffic-dense, getting more and more congested and overcrowded to the point of madness, where the once-famous laid-back Kaiku-Nakko way of life was starting to feel hardly the same anymore—I joined a New York-based multinational IT products and software solutions company, which enjoyed significant business success till the Great Recessionary funk of 2007/8 hit the world, inflicting a heavy blow from which it never really recovered. I remember shuddering for some time before safely moving on to other greener pastures. And that was that.

Towards the end of the 2000s, many successful local IT establishments in the city doing good business began to brand themselves as "multinational" or “global” because they had several office branches in the U.S. and the European regions, though mostly U.S. ones were the brighter spots projects-wise as there were multiple projects to work on, effectively managing cross-project, intertwined dependencies. Leveraging project management software tools like SharePoint, MS Visio, etc., juggling multiple projects simultaneously became simple and less complex. If truth be told, I am already becoming too weary and tired if you ask me about this whole ‘multinational,’ ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ (AI) ‘low-code, no-code development,’ 'Machine Learning,' etc. technological new wave—these so-called ‘breakthrough technologies’ are already displacing full-time IT specialists who diligently have to master the latest and newest technology in the constantly evolving workplace—that has come upon us (like oh-no-not-again ominous storm clouds, disorders, if you like), which is kinda arduously tiring, truthfully speaking. Despite all that potentially helpful way of doing business, I played along in a status quo-ish way only to be able to earn my daily bread and butter, as I noted previously.

Changing Times. Priorities. That Is What It Was

As time passed, it seemed that everyone became less interested in our lively group of Satyam friends, and I believe I did too, in a way, because times have changed, and so have the perspectives regarding things that have become part of the past. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge.

Changing times and changing needs, perhaps, have taken over us all.

Suresh, whom Mandeep jokingly called "Truck Driver Suraj," rhyming it with one of Mithun Chakraborty's dialogues in a Hindi movie, and not that Suresh drove a truck to office, God forbid, probably felt the same way as both Mandeep and Devi, snapping us all into the ugly reality of the world once we were outside Satyam, a world, understandably, much meaner than we used to know or suspect when we began our IT careers quite a while back. Our Satyam friends were good, mature buddies, but the harsh outside world took over all our lives completely and utterly, me included.

There was no merciful escape; there never is, there never was, from the harsh realities of being ordinarily a software professional in the new millennium as we all transitioned from the dream castle of our familiar career landscapes that Satyam Computers on the Raj Bhavan Road had equipped us to the gossamer threads of the messed-up, chaotic challenges of the outside world looming with job-sized AI (Artificial Intelligence) perdition, filled with unfamiliar mentalities and even discomforting, trembling, unsettling physicality of typically bittersweet experiences that played at unexplored, uncharted workplaces of today.

While it's factual that modern workplaces cannot be 'charted' or 'explored' (the operative phrases I used in the previous line), the same way one would navigate a historical museum or a movie studio, yes, but one wishes the fundamental essence of the office environment to be rooted in the collaborative relationships and participatory cultures of productive employees coming together to foster a vibrant hub of entrepreneurial creativity and scholarly productivity rather than a static location to engage with.

At Satyam, we've garnered an array of understandings of the topics addressed herein whenever opportunities arose, positioning ourselves at the forefront of this essential conversation.

By Arindam Moulick

Sunday, June 1, 2025

A Comedic Office Moment

Our Satyam Days, part XXX

Mandeep and I sometimes affectionately called Devi "Sexy Devi." A nickname that, while playful, had nothing to do with physical attraction. Instead, it reflected the unique chemistry we shared in our relationship as warm and friendly office colleagues, which made each of us feel attractive in our own right.

Mandeep’s comedic repertoire, which anyone with a sense of humour could appreciate, constantly filled his head with new, laugh-worthy thoughts that stuck with him like a second skin! Spurred on by this humorous game, Devi took it on enthusiastically, which brought us joy and deepened the charm of our friendship. And Devi liked the nickname very much.

Devi chuckled wholeheartedly when we first called him, "Hi, Sexy Devi, how are you?" He expressed astonishment at first as if not addressed to him but, oh god, someone else, and said, "I am... what...? SEXY…? WHAT DO YOU MEAN, Mandeep?! Kindly be specific!” Devi played along, and before saying anything else, he said with a naughty twinkle in his eyes: “Really…?

Mandeep said, "Yes, man, you are TOO MUCH, Devi! I can’t get any more specific than this! You are sexier than sexy could be," without hesitation. Devi and I laughed as Mandeep's unapologetic humour shone through.

Devi laughed for a while, and since he was on a break and GG—our strong-willed human meat of a boss; incalculable rudeness was the strongest part of his personality, his effortless forte—was out of the office, he said, "Thanks for that ‘sexy’ compliment, Mandeep! Chalo, come on, let's go grab some coffee. I'll call Suresh to join us in the meeting room."

"Hunh…Haan... chalo chaltein hain re…, just give me 2 minutes. Oye!... thiss iss tooo muchhh yaarr…let me send this out," Mandeep said before finishing his task of report generation and sending a crucial operational email alerting one of our clients.

Looking at the good-natured Devi’s peart facial expression, I couldn't avoid laughing at his reaction to Mandeep’s remark about him being “Sexy.It was a laughter-house!

On another day, Devi laughed when he considered teasing Mandeep in return. He joked, "You are so sexy too, Mandeep! Look at you!" Mandeep turned to face Devi and chuckled aloud as though he had proclaimed something surprisingly perceptive that caused everyone to erupt in amusing laughter in the cubicle. "And just look at Arindam!" Devi said, his tone too concise for comedy, but he was getting at it as he stood beside the open cubicle where Mandeep and I worked, hands resting on the wooden barrier, teasing Mandeep to his heart's content. "He is so attractive, sexy even!"

On hearing something like that from Devi, I pursed up my lips and made a serious face that was about to burst into laughter!

All of us made merry even as I declared to one and all present in our spacious cabin: "But Devi, you are sexy, sexier than me!" And I meant it when I alluded it to him: "Just give me a man as "sexy" as Devi, and I shall sail my humble boat into the last sunset!” That was once my favourite dialogue; I learned it from somewhere.

Mandeep revved up his imaginary Mustang and stated, "YEAH...didn't I say that before!" Apparently, the feeling was mutual, and Devi giggled.

The funny, quirky things when we joked around with each other in person or on the intercom were the best part of our days at Satyam! Devi was very sportive about everything anyone from our team said anything about him, and conversely, everyone seemed to take a leaf out of his book to learn how to be sporty and laugh at oneself when required. Life should be on an even keel, he seemed to suggest, not on—god forbid—spiky cacti.

Just then, Renju — a very pious soul who sounded, to us all, like a Magpie singing songs of love and longing for her lovely homestead in the deep south, where palm trees, backwater lakes, and lagoons abound: God's own country — entered our cubicle to check something with us. Thank heavens she was not in the cabin when we were joking around, our little bonhomie between us gentlemen. She smiled her hazel smile: her teeth seemed to dance in the whitest splendour (as though of the enchanting backwaters of her idyllic hometown) that you don't see pretty often until you work with someone as a friendly, pleasant associate of the team, and said, "Oh…kya chal raha hai...?"

"Kuch nahin…bas…" I said before adding, "Devi, Mandeep, Suresh, and I are going to get coffee. Do you want to come along?" She declined reasonably because she needed to get to GG's cabin quickly and apprise him of a pressing problem regarding a persistent technical issue that had been bothering him like a high-strung demon-possessed alligator! He wanted to get it fixed... "first thing in the morning." She promised to join us some other time.

Then Gnana came into the cabin, moving about with enormous curiosity for something he urgently wanted access to from our cabin. He hammered on the keyboard placed at the back but couldn't locate it. He then banged up the cupboard and peered inside, speaking to himself, "Nope, sorry, I didn't get what I wanted, or I got it, but I'm not telling yet." That was a good comedy show.

I said, "Hmmm... Gnana. Anything particular you are looking for?"

"None whatsoever. See you guys later," said Gnana, breezing through the short hallway by the HP printer station towards another hall on the right.

Before we could invite him to 'coalesce' with us for coffee from the excellent Nescafe espresso coffee machine, he went off again marching like a lumberjack on a mystery mission, perhaps, to the adjoining hall where he and Renju often camped together, programming their way through the other project they worked on—apart from the primary one on which Mandeep, Shiv, Shahnawaz and I had worked under GG's tutelage—diving into the minor/major or microscopic technical deficiencies (if any found) of the code blocks, testing the software application, troubleshooting, and the good old bug fixing.

I said to Devi, "Yeah…, let's take a break, shall we?" before having finished a few marketing reports and storing them in the 'common folder,' which only our team has view (read) and modify (write) access to. (Every marketing report due that day had to be delivered to every client by EOD; otherwise, a delay of even one day would subject you to GG-specific fatalities). While we strode to the Nescafe Espresso coffee dispenser machine in the green-marbled corridor, I jokingly added, "Is Chicha joining us by any chance?"

Everyone chuckled!

By Arindam Moulick

Alternative titles considered for this blog: “The Legend of ‘Sexy’ Devi,” and “Devi: A Sexy Legend!”

Sunday, May 25, 2025

The Heart’s Gentle Surrender

Our Satyam Days, part XXIX

Together as four best buddies of each other—Una Artoran, Mom, Padma, and Kavitha—in the unforgettably extraordinary year of 1998 and after, these vivacious, talented young women were brimming with happiness and shared a deep, unmatched friendship blossomed from their everyday conversations in the office. That was during the memorable year of 1998 and beyond.

Their adventurous spirits and mutual laughter transformed ordinary experiences into treasured recollections for each of these working young women, making their lives a delightful voyage through tip-top dressing sense, catchy old Hindi film songs, and heart-warming stories of their personal experiences, have all made their iconic avenue of work the Oxford Plaza come alive, twenty-seven years ago to this day.

Here we go on Kavitha’s three closest pals, one of whom I had a little ‘continuity’ with. Ms. Una Artoran, a December-born Sagittarian with an eye-catching charisma; Ms. Fishsketcher, alias Mom, a hobbyist sketch artist who is passionate about capturing unsalvageable love stories with her free and frank fishing skills; and dear Ms. Padma, a dependable truth-seeker who enjoyed engaging in fun projects like humming Bryan Adams songs and competing fiercely in ice cream-eating contests at Softy Den— preferably with butterscotch and chocolate flavours to go with.

To elaborate more on the bittersweet reality of those rare moments of great wonder, a profoundly enchanting experience filled with sheer awe and charming delight had etched itself into my memory forever. And then there were the raw, stupefying, darker shades of someone's sulking pangs of envy and fiery jealousy that accompanied those moments

Ms. Una Artoran, a December-born Sagittarian, as well as an eye-brow arching senora, does not lament anything that she could have won for herself because her days in the HYD city were already veering into an exiling interminability and immutable passivity that she had no heart to brook, as all that she has lost is beyond any redemption since those beautiful, loving heart-beats she once experienced barely stirred any upheaval in her heart than they might have in the past when she was a financial enchantress handling cash disbursements and inflows (in the back office of the Stan-Chart Bank) because she was love-phobic right from the word go, and consequently, she hastened escape, distancing herself from her former sun-kissed life to a distant shore untouched by the sands of the past ocean of love and longing that someone endeavoured to pledge, but then the romance faded and love died soon after, and thanks to her best pal Kavitha's intrusive third-wheeling and her hustling, howling, radicalizing madness that needs no retelling here, an affair so destined, never returned that first-time tenderness of love, forever making sure it would never come back, had ended;

Ms. Fishsketcher, alias Mom, an amateur (albeit artistic) freehand sketch artist who, through her one great sketch of a fish (which has mistakenly found itself swimming the jealous waters that Kavitha would soon muddle because she can and she will because everything that followed with her irrational standpoint foraging on juvenile delinquency had destroyed with one phone call of reprimanding discouragement to her college-time buddy Una, even as Mom was passionate about bringing unsalvageable love stories to dash) as Mom (meaning Candle, Fishsketcher is my coinage), her first name which is not about being untowardly motherly, matronly or anything, penned the most flavoursome take on Una's fleeting love that passed through time and fate like a warm breeze on a cold day, but sadly that prophetically auspicious fish-sketch couldn't salvage the solitary love that she approvingly favoured for the natural coming together of two hearts as she once graced as a friendly ally of her office colleague, Una Artoran at an underground coffee shop a long time ago;

And finally, Ms. Padma, a dependable truth-seeker, enjoyed being intensely involved in her fun projects, such as melody-humming Bryan Adams songs, competing in ice cream-eating contests, her sweet tooth automatically favouring rich butter-scotch and velvety chocolatey flavours, infinitely preferable than the spartan plain vanilla flavours, etc. — was immersed in a rich, deep Jane Austen-themed friendship with her jolly office companions, namely, Una and Mom (also known as Fishsketcher) as well as Kavitha's intensifying social bonding temper notwithstanding, and their friendship bond had no comparison really, having been forged in the cheerful fires of shared experiences and mutual support at their place of work.

Their friendship is now undeservedly forgotten. That sounds... unfortunate, to say the least. Here's wishing that the eternal sunshine will eventually win back the day for them.

Kavitha worked for Satyam, while the other three members of the foursome were all employed at the same city-based banking organization. Working there was enjoyable and rewarding, but Mom, Una, and Padma had a tight schedule, with little to no leisure time throughout the day. While Una and Kavitha may still be in touch with each other, the other two finally parted ways and, over time, steadily grew apart from the original story of acclaimed friendship. The story did end there, but one wishes it hadn’t.

+*+*+*+

Back to Satyam: Our days of working together with abounding happiness were about to end. Renju and Gnana moved on; Revathy and Rafi were already far gone into a different epoch of exemplary IT experience; Mandeep went and joined GG's IT firm before heading into Real Estate Infra for good; Balaji took up a Business Analyst's role at STC; GG quit Satyam; and I shifted to STC for a year and then off I went to Vikrampuri office branch on an IJP: didn't like it much but had to. 

I unreservedly, unequivocally, absolutely hated that office branch of the company — a dreadful infestation of reprobates milling about all over the place. Such was my life, post our days of ecstasy on Raj Bhavan Road. And I wanted out as soon as I could get away from the Vikrampuri office branch, and that came painfully a year later, thankfully on a platter.

By the end of all our Satyam days, Devi, who was a fine gentleman of jovial, charming nature with a round belly and a hearty, mirthful laugh, would get on with anyone, no matter their age: I can't believe he turned up his nose at getting too acquainted with anyone beyond Suresh, his finance counterpart. Post Satyam, Mandeep and I were in contact by phone or mostly on social media. But Devi and Suresh got away as if not meant to stay in the association of brotherly friends who once worked together in a climate of joyful camaraderie and extraordinary comradeship, if you will — absenting themselves permanently, as did Revathy and Rafi, who sure had made a life-affirming impact on the team's quick learning and professionalism.

Truthfully, our family lives (and IT careers) have kept us occupied, so none of us barely had the necessary continuum of time for anything other than wishing each other happy birthday or happy new year when that time of year comes around, evanescing into a void of nothingness. Devi and Suresh have been gone for a long time, never returning to the camaraderie we had during our good old days of Satyam.

Since our memorable Satyam days, Mandeep and I could maintain the degree of communication required to stay afloat in our friendship, which sadly has dissolved into a colourless chemistry that formerly existed between us.

By Arindam Moulick