Afterward, all throughout the month of August, Arinvan, Manpreet, and Savitha often found themselves huddled together in a group creativity technique called brainstorming sessions with Revanthi and Raufia, not to forget The Sensible-One Balzie Gigamorthy taking part in it.
On the multiple roles, one gets to do in the fabled department of roaming division, it came to everybody’s liking that we are a team of like-minded professionals assembled to act in the best interest of the goals and objectives of our division. Not a thing was found out of place, literally speaking. We were even collectively labelled as ‘billable resource’ of our own amply productive, money-making department. Roughly of the same age, we were not afraid to take chances and not willing to back down from anything, anything at all, we kept contributing. Everybody looked promising enough to deal with the rigors of GG-Howdy-harassed life in the fantastic, unforgettable roaming division.
Mind Here, Heart Elsewhere:
Most times – Arinvan mostly observed to himself – Savitha used to be companionable and tolerant if and only if the opposite person happens to be a like-minded individual or has some kind of shared college or school history to relate to; otherwise, she liked to remain aloof from anything that remotely suggested: “extra baggage” and must be kept at bay. She, as Arinvan saw it, was sociable no doubt, but she preferred not to mingle pointlessly with every Tom, Dick, or Harry or any Riya, Priya, or Shriya. Easygoingness was clearly not one of her character traits, fortunately, or unfortunately. She had got to learn a lot. Corporate life demanded flexibility and she was gradually seeking it in her own sweet way. At other times, she was found straightforwardly ‘serious’ and being self-effusive as most young girls of her age, one assumes, definitely are was not something she really cared to believe in. She seemed to be putting up with some kind of stress-related ‘concern’ or ‘issue’ that refused to budge from her preoccupied mind. She was a classic case of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”
Arinvan found nothing wrong with what her personality was made of because it was not of his business or botheration to get worried about. To each his/her own, he thought. God made all kinds; so who is he to judge her through the lens of his own set of preconceived notions? At one angle, Savitha was not to be blamed for rearing dreams to go to America. That was pretty natural. To be sure it was her prerogative. Perhaps, her friends and relatives have found a footing there and so wanted Savitha too to take the plunge and make a go at it! She must have said to herself: “Why the hell not?” and took the proverbial ‘leap-of-mankind’ step forward to go to that distant land. The well-known adage ‘I am going to America, baby!’ became a part of wider cultural folklore that, according to me it smacks of an unmistakable holier-than-thou attitude – a national epidemic suffering from a kind of ‘Because-I-am-worth-it-Loser!’ syndrome. Even to the extent that some of these people don’t mind extending their middle finger at the folks who come to drop them off at the airport!!! The kind of allure that such foreign-going people fall prey to often end up expecting too much from their own dreams of making it to the US, or any country for that matter. They easily forget their family and friends back home. In this particular scenario, often their counter-arguments would be that they wanted, by hook or by crook, to yank themselves away from the so-called “tight situation” they were finding themselves into all the time in their home country and therefore were forced to putting together their plans to be able to “push off to America” for good.
If you happen to be a hard-working, coding master kind of software engineer then you are required to dump your ‘Indian way of life’ and for God’s sake! go away to America and seek your redemption! Therefore, “Going to America!" became the ultimate maxim to live by before you are actually even going that is. In terms of either showing off to your neighbours or whoever cared to know about you or garbing your secret longing to make good with the likes of making your career and earning handsome phoren money, were all eventually part of its, shall we say, side-effects? Never mind positive or negative effects – no one gives a rat’s ass to get concerned with any effects in the first place. All those who couldn’t go or disinclined to go are surreptitiously branded in one umbrella term such as: “LOSERS!”, “BIG LOSERS!” The tragic-comic story is quite similar everywhere. So to speak, in the post-liberalized global economy of our country, one will most definitely find almost in every home worth its salt one or more ‘American’ flatterer, a kowtower, a yes-man, an apple-polisher, an unqualified stooge, a self-gratifying name-dropper!
That was not entirely Savitha’s way of dreaming and longing about her future in the US – her right of way to the kingdom of the good life and phoren money. No, it was not. Savitha Tandavi had a fair bent of mind that might have unduly concentrated upon one thing and only one thing ever since she had come of age and was enough qualified to be seeking a US visa. Perhaps, she didn’t realize and she never will, and now it surely stands as a different story altogether, that making friends or being friends or the plain life as she knew it here, sadly, became none of her concern anymore. Post Satyam she had had invariably lost that part of History that will never come by; day after day, year after year, the plentiful beauty of one’s life was lost to the wilderness of Time, forever.
Monsoon rains; soaking wet skin; hot summer breeze; coconut water; sweat doused with inexpensive deodorant; bittersweet longing for anything that comes in between Hope and Misery; arranged marriages; relatives schooling into your house unannounced; eavesdropping and nosy neighbours; idling vehicles; pot-holed, crater-holed roads and gullies; smelly housing colonies and apartment buildings; visiting temples on Tuesdays and Saturdays; heart-tugging love affairs; ‘water’ problem; ‘current’ problem…and more.
…all that comes with leading an ordinary life that her country, her own motherland, could unconditionally provide her have been trashed. She permanently nipped such despicable Indian way of looking at things in the bud; knowingly or unknowingly, she scooped herself up with a new, as she thought, the way of life she had always wanted to possess. India: 0, America: 1 (to the power of infinity!). Therefore, America, here she comes.
For Savitha at least, it was an opportune time when many starry-eyed individuals like her made off with their hands-on computer experience and degree certificates to Visa and Passport offices to lay valid claims for a first US visitation, and then, of course, “settle down” there. H-1B was, and still is, the most prevalent non-immigrant Visa that one went after. The H-1B Visa permit is well-known among software professionals. Those who couldn’t go to the US just stayed back at home and “licked their wounds” and got themselves an unwilling chance at correcting their sense of right and wrong, and even tried to cease their personal incapacity to rearing clear conscience in their bemoaning hearts.
We Never Went To Denmark:
Unfortunately, Manpreet and Arinvan went nowhere; thanks to GG’s brand of dirty office politics and his idiosyncratic grudge against them; not even when there was a decent chance for them both to go to Copenhagen, Denmark on a TAP3 training assignment. Oh Yikes! It was grudge all right; now if it was not grudging what was it then? It sure was a grudge on the part of GG’s far-less-than-polite character! Previously, Manpreet and I were actually very excited when it was announced by who-else GG that the TAP3 training would take place in Denmark. That certainly meant this: an opportunity to meet our constant friends and consultants from Dann Natte Ms. Susanna Garlow and Spice-Girls’ Emma Bunton-lookalike Ms. Rossenberg. Now TAP3 training was got to have done ASAP. Since Manpreet and I were the primary stakeholders with regard to something as important as TAP3, we were naturally so expectant of our boss GG that he would make sure we went to Denmark and got trained in it. We were really looking forward to it. It would have been truly a ‘feather in the cap’ moment for us to have a chance to interact with the benevolent Susanna and twinkly-eyed fun-loving Ms. Rossenberg. But it was not to be so. Denmark remained an unfulfilled dream. GG, the Saddam Hussein of Satyam, for whom straitjacketing people’s aspirations was an everyday affair, preferred to arrange Renzo Anny Munny and the docile Guyana Pracash as candidates for the TAP3 training and they can in turn train Manpreet and Arinvan after their return from their trip to Denmark!
Renzo Anny Munny, a decent and likable friend, and the normally reticent Guyana Pracash had worked with us at the division. Renzo and Guyana were brought in later to handle managed services that primarily included client training, audits, and consultancy. Whereas our duties comprised real-time daily operational intelligence, including information analytics, client-specific financial reporting limited to roaming data, forecasting, dashboards, operating on the state-of-the-art data-specific synchronized web portal of Dann Natte’s and the works.
Therefore, the logic behind our little expectation to visit Denmark was: if we – Manpreet Singh and Arinvan Maliek – were supposed to make sure that clients implement the new TAP3 file formats at their end then why not get us trained on it first-hand? Agreed that Renzo and Guyana were equally responsible to keep abreast of TAP3 technology then what was so wrong with us not being taken up for the training? To be fair, why not send us both including Renzo and Guyana as a team to Denmark? Why the hell not?
No wonder, GG’s irrational bias and personal vendetta against Arinvan and Manpreet was writ large over his overall judgment on certain things that were rife with unconcealed animosity in the department. I wonder what Savitha Tandavi would have done about this Denmark fiasco. Understandably, she wouldn’t bother herself beyond what was required to do anything about it. Such was her resolve against the forever-irate GG’s care-no-hoots trouble-making tendencies; but at the same time, her feminine and fragile (by no means a derisory term) self did get tormented by such mindless atrocities we all put up with. No doubt she had saved herself from this nasty belittling because Denmark would have been surely denied to her too. It never bothers bossy abusers such as GG even if the reality speaks for itself loud and clear: that Arinvan and Manpreet on the one hand and Renzo and Guyana on the other were, after all, going to be the ultimate users of the TAP3 technology so why not train them all? Bias! What else? Bias! Bias! Plain-ass Bias!
Ms. Susanna’s and Ms. Rossenberg’s excellent awareness, especially on the state-of-the-art synchronized web portal exclusively developed by Dann Natte, compounded with their overall know-how would have been a great asset for Arinvan Maliek and Manpreet Singh to get effectively schooled on. We in all fairness looked forward to it. We sincerely hoped that may be the day is not far when we will be gratified with the joy of visiting them in Denmark; at least for once to meet them in person and regale ourselves with the bonhomie that was sure to ensue thereafter would just be too great an experience for us both. Sadly, that part of history was never made, it never happened. Thanks to GG the hatchet-job monger, it went kaput. Call it Fate; call it a victim of GG’s dirty rotten office politics, a chance to live our dream was nipped in the bud! Of course, we had a chance to make history, but unfortunately, and deeply so, we weren’t allowed to.
A self-introspection: What wrong did Savitha Tandavi commit when she was an aspirant blindly wanting to make it to the US? Needless to mention, Savitha’s hopes too would have been dashed asunder by GG the evil Rakshasha had she stayed with us. Good on her that she lobbed a cracker of an ‘I quit!’ bomb on GG’s neurotic face and walked off. He was deservingly gob-smacked! Bless you, Savitha! You slinked away! You did a great job! You should have seen GG’s face after you left your job. He sulked and huffed and puffed and harrumphed after your exit from the scene. (Obviously, he took the pending revenge on us poor souls and settled all kinds of scores, forever after!). So, therefore, if Manpreet and Arinvan had fervently desired to go to Denmark then Savitha too had aspired to go to America. What’s the difference between the two? Nothing you know that anything should weigh heavily on her or anyone’s conscience. As a matter of fact, Savitha’s single-minded devotion to the potential possibility of getting an H-1B Visa (even an offshoot of that thing was no problem procuring; so where is the problem in making a little hay when the sun shines high in the sky?) had held her in complete awe and her likely escape to that distant land. Sooner or later, she “pushed off to the US”, giving GG Howdy a ‘big hand’!
(To be continued...)
By Arindam Moulick
Disclaimer:
The views expressed here are written in jest! I don’t subscribe to any obscene, unlawful, defamatory, libellous, hateful, or otherwise objectionable writing; and therefore, the article is written just for arts’ sake - L'art pour l'art (French, translated as "art for art's sake"). Here’s hoping that it conforms to some kind of literary merit as I originally had intended it to when I started out writing it.
This short story is a work of fiction. All incidences and characters portrayed in the story are fictional and entirely imaginary. Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. No similarity to any person either living or dead is intended or should be inferred.