Ameya sat in a state of shock on the steps of the auditorium. He did not expect this from Koli. He heard faint noises from inside the auditorium. His feet took him inside where a group of students sat huddled around a table. He thought they must be studying for the exams. One of the students as dozing off on the desk. The others were all looking very intently at the table. He turned to leave. But just then he heard a collective sucking sound, like they were all breathing in together. ‘Are they doing Yoga in this dingy place?’, he thought to himself and left.
Rishabh awoke late that day and rushed to work. He was not quite sure he would have work to do on Day One. Afterall, his boss had told him that it will take them a month to integrate his profile into the Indian company. It was the first marketing assignment. He was moving from the technical side and was quite confident that in a developing country, it would not be so difficult to start off. As he sat in his temporary cabin with an ‘incoming-only’ phone, he started flipping through his address book.
“Hello! Ameya?”
“Yes”
“Hi, Rishabh Potdar here.”
“Hey Rishabh….” Ameya was not very ready for a friendly chat considering the recent events that just transpired in the morning. “Where are you calling from?”
“Mumbai..”
“What? When did you come?”
“Morning”
“Cool, for how long?”
“Staying here man…got transferred.”
“Oh yes, I forgot…Have you gone to Pune?”
“No, not yet. Will go this weekend.”
“Oh cool, me too. Let us meet up man. For lunch? Where is your office?”
“Fort….”
“Ok, I’ll call you at 12. What is your number?”
Rishabh was happy that was sorted. He had been in the city for a few hours and his social life was already rocking-good. Ameya was happy that he had diversion during such a stressful time. His mother had told him to work with Koli…this way he was only going against her. It was obvious he could not say anything to Rajesh. He was quite unsure of where he would start if he wanted to compile a report. He would have to snoop alone and hidden if he wanted any changes to happen. Ameya waited impatiently for it to become 12.
They met at a good restaurant in VT.
“Nice place, huh?”
“Hey man…so how is work”, Rishabh asked
“We could talk about that now and spoil our mood or do it after the food.”
“Ha ha. That is funny. Like mine I guess.”
“How is your work here?”
“I do not know…it will take a month to sort things out…the profile has to be integrated with the
“Lucky guy…actually not that lucky…I had 6 months of no work and I felt so bored”
“Yeah, it is boring…but I just came here man. It is like a break…paid vacation”
“Yeah, but after learning all your theory, if you cannot implement them all, you feel stifled.”
“As for me, I have been working real hard for 2 years and I think I can take the time to understand the Indian business environment.”
“Ah…I have no environment. It was a huge mistake I made at the beginning of my career and I shall be stuck in it.”
“Wow, what happened?”
“No, it is just that, the place I am working for has no professional environment…it is an educational setup. I was given the responsibility to make it professionally managed.”
‘That is totally amazing…I would kill for such an opportunity.”
“Yeah I think I would kill too…kill the Principal.”
Ameya told him the whole situation he had landed himself in. “She does not like any change and today she told me that she didn’t care even if I squealed on her.”
Rishabh took a long sip from his lemonade.
“So, has she been in this college for long?”
“Very long.”
“So maybe she is just in a thankless job.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know I had a boss back in US and he was so mean to me all the time. He was an Indian who had been sent there when he had begun his career and had been in the company for real long.”
“Maybe he felt insecure with you? I know Koli is”
“He was mean not because he was insecure…but because he was seeing younger people with no experience coming into a flat hierarchical organization and becoming project managers– a position he had tried to get to for 7 years…when the hierarchy was not so flat….Can you imagine? And we were paid almost 60% of what he was getting. More so, there was no going above that rung in management. He had been in the same position for 10 years and after that he was outdated, not able to quit, not able to move and he had become so indispensable to the job that even though everyone called him a veteran at his specialization, he felt plain stuck….stuck in a thankless job.”
Ameya was still drinking it in.
“You know your Koli could be like that….”
“Ok, so what does one do when they have to work with them?”
“You have to make peace with her. Make her understand that YOU are not a part of her problem.”
“Oh, but that is where it is different…SHE is a part of my problem.”
“Is she?”
“Isn’t she? She is probably the first thing to be changed in the institute.”
“You may want to go beyond personal bias and see the situation for what it is.”, Rishabh said.
No comments:
Post a Comment