CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE AMERICAN MNC

Life at this American MNC was not all that bad considering the fact that it had been a vacation spot for me for the past year. The meeting with my new manager Vishnu had obviously not inspired me to a level where I would quickly change my mindset and work really hard to win the employee of the year award. I did not care much. I continued to enjoy my vacation at the American MNC. My colleagues at the office were not great either. Boredom at the workplace is directly proportional to hunting for opportunities to have sex with your colleagues; this statement proved to be right in the American MNC. In spite of zilch productivity in terms of innovation and creativity, there was more than enough gossip and rumours which kept all my colleagues going for a long time now. Vishnu, my project manager had also made his contribution to the rumours floating around about him accomplishing intimate relationships with two out of the sixteen unmarried girls in the project. Vishnu was already married as far as I knew. I guess this was what he called being “RESOURCEFUL and PRODUCTIVE”.

[Meeting Room]

I entered the meeting room to find Vishnu seated at one end of the conference table. My sixteen mermaids-cum-colleagues were also seated around the table. Amidst all of them was a beautiful girl clad in a salwar kameez standing next to Vishnu. I still could not see her fully as she was setting up her laptop. I went a little closer and sat next to Vishnu. The perfume from her engulfed my senses. I found the scent very familiar. She was carved to perfection by god I felt, after witnessing her entire back profile. She had the best waistline I had ever seen in my life, and trust me, I have seen many, and nothing could beat this one. I was waiting to see her face. I wanted her to turn around.

‘Hi Team; let me introduce you to our new tech lead, Miss Naina Iyer,’ Vishnu said and shook her hand. She turned around.

‘One more girl in the team,’ Vishnu said looking at me, and the whole team giggled. I did not know from Vishnu’s expression whether he regretted it being a girl or whether he was cherishing it. I am sure he was cherishing it after I heard his dark secrets from one of my colleagues.

‘Naina, you can go ahead and introduce yourself to the entire team,’ Vishnu announced. My new tech lead had still not looked at me.

‘Hi, I am Naina. I am a Bangalorean by birth. I have finished my Masters in Project Management from University of California a month back. I have been appointed as the Tech Lead of your project,’ she declared followed by applause from the team.

Everyone started walking out of the meeting room once this short introduction of our new tech lead came to an end. I was just about to step out of the meeting room when I heard Vishnu call me.

‘Armaan, please wait.’

I turned around. My eyes met Naina’s. She looked shocked. I had already been in shock since the past five minutes. All I wanted was a quick cup of coffee to believe what I had just witnessed, but my stupid manager had to call me back when I was trying to rush out of the meeting room double quick.

‘Naina, please meet Armaan,’ Vishnu said while Naina stared at me blankly.

‘Hi, Armaan.’ She was barely audible.

‘Armaan, what are you dreaming about?’ Vishnu said while I was still trying to recover from the shock.

‘Naina, Armaan will help you out with all the things you need over the next three days till you feel comfortable with the processes being followed in the project,’ Vishnu said confidently, looking at Naina. She did not seem convinced though.

‘Armaan, take care of Naina and make sure she is extremely comfortable with the team members and the processes in the project by next week,’ Vishnu said with a smile on his face and left the meeting room.

It was Naina Iyer standing three meters away from me. She looked beautiful. She smelled incredible. I wanted to hold her and kiss her right away. Yeah French is what I was thinking about too. Her lips shone from a distance. She pulled her hair back. Phew! She looked beautiful in the white salwar. Her round earrings made her look adorable.

Her bangles made a tingling sound whenever she tried to set her hair right.

‘Hi, I hope you are doing fine Armaan,’ she said putting her hand forward to shake mine.

I had no idea what to say. I started acting quite dumb in front of Naina. I did not put my hand forward even though she was eagerly waiting for my handshake.

‘Before you say anything stupid, let us just put the past behind us and be professional here at work, Armaan,’ she said pulling her hand back and giving me that serious professional look.

‘Sure,’ I said and tried to look elsewhere.

‘I shall message you on IM if I need your help, Armaan; you can leave now,’ she said and sat back with her laptop in the meeting room. I ran out immediately. My entire college life flashed in front of me at once. Each and every scene clear and fresh like it had happened just then. Naina, my ex-girlfriend, had come into my miserable work life not as my team member but as my Tech Lead. This was something that I had never expected in my life. Who expects such shit! No! Varun or Ashwin never knew about my relationship. I had managed to keep it a secret throughout college. No one in college knew about my relationship with Naina. I had kept it as secretive as the ‘Holy grail’. I felt guilty especially when Ashwin and Varun were completely honest about their lives but I never had the courage to declare the relationship between Naina and me in front of the whole college or in front of Varun and Ashwin. I somehow felt that love was a feeling which was highly personal and the essence of it is lost once the world starts playing a part in it. I certainly believed that love had to be defined by the two people who felt it rather than the people who were, are or will be connected to it in various forms. Naina pursued her Bachelors in Computer Science engineering from the Silicon Valley of Engineering - the same college that Varun, Ashwin and I graduated from as Mechanical Engineers. It was in the mid-sixth semester that I had met Naina and the love story began. It grew manifold before Naina asked me what she meant to me. The only answer I could give was - “A person I love dearly”. Then came another ton of questions. “What is the future of our relationship?” “Are you ready to leave India and go abroad to pursue further education along with me?” “What do you want to do in life?” “What are your goals in life?” “How are you going to take care of me?”

“Do you want to pursue writing for films?” “I don’t think that will work; what will you tell my parents when you come down to ask them for my hand?” Yes! I stopped her right there. I had not thought of all these questions leave alone the answers. I did not want to leave India to pursue another degree in life which would end up having no significance in my life just like my mechanical engineering. Back then, I was dealing with two of my best friends. Varun: A failed love story and addiction to drugs. Ashwin: Drop out from college and addiction to drugs. I was sure I did not have another goal in life but to safeguard my friends which ultimately I failed at. I had a dream of writing for films but she thought it was a stupid idea. Marriage! I was not even close to thinking about it. All I could tell Naina at that point was that I was not the right person for her and the best thing for her to do was to go abroad and pursue her further education. She broke down. She cursed me for letting go of her. I had to hear a lot of things which made me think that I was a sort of person who was happy with a mediocre life and did not have realistic dreams. I was aimless and had no sort of goals in life. The only foolish dream I had in life was to script write for movies which I ultimately let go of and ended up at this American MNC. Naina broke up with me on the pretext of: “You are not the right person for me” and moved to California to pursue her masters in Computer Science. Finally she chose to come back to Bangalore to order me around as my Tech Lead. I loved her still but I had no idea how she felt. I could never move on after having fallen in love with her. Though she had her own definition of life, success and goals, which differed from mine in every possible way, there could be no one who would have loved me so deeply and madly.

My IM suddenly flashed: ARMAAN CAN YOU COME TO MY CABIN!

I ran to her cabin with all the thoughts that had built up over the past one hour. I entered her cabin and again, it was the same old beautiful face which struck me like a ray of sunlight.

‘What are you staring at?’ she barked at me.

‘Nothing; you called me…’ I said straightening myself.

‘Yes Armaan, I wanted you to explain to me about some processes regarding the project,’ she said and pointed towards her laptop. The next one hour I sat beside my ex-girlfriend-cum-Tech Lead and tried helping her to understand the processes in the project better so that she could screw me over the coming days for not following the same processes correctly. I could not resist her beautiful perfume as long as I sat beside her.

‘So, here is where the whole analytics functionality is embedded…’ Before I could finish the sentence, she exploded.

‘What is your problem? You have ruined my life, you bastard. I hate you. I am still in love with you. What have you done to me? It has been one and a half years that I left you and went, and I have still not forgotten you. I came back to India because I could not stay in that shitty country anymore because I did not have peace back there. I finally decide to come to Bangalore and look who I find, the person who made my life hell by falling in love with me and then deserting me because he did not have the balls to deal with an adult relationship. I hate you,’ she said and started weeping. I had no idea what to say to her. I did not know whether to console her or protect myself from getting slapped because I surely had a feeling that this conversation was going to end with violence recalling my past experiences with Naina Iyer.

‘So this is where the analytics goes in,’ I said trying to avoid the entire conversation and repeating myself on the project processes which, in normal circumstances, I was least bothered about.

‘Stop it you bastard,’ she rose like a dragon and started weeping even harder. At this point, I understood that silence would be a better option to tackle this situation. She suddenly wiped her tears. She looked extremely beautiful even though her eye liner was completely smudged. Naina drew her silky hair back and clipped it very cutely; then she leaned towards me. I knew she was about to slap me when her soft pair of lips met mine. I kissed her for the next twenty minutes continuously. I recalled all the memories of college. I somehow felt relieved. I could not believe it. I was kissing my Tech Lead at the American MNC in her cabin. She suddenly pushed me back and hit me very subtly and shouted, ‘I hate you’, and started kissing me again and hugged me tight.

‘I love you,’ she said and looked into my eyes when I was still trying to understand how one single day could change everything. Who says Rome was not built in a day? At this rate, we could build USA in a day. I had no freaking idea what was going on. The whole day seemed to be a dream to me.

‘Say something, you asshole,’ she groaned and hugged me tighter.

‘Naina, someone will see us,’ I said trying to push her away.

‘I don’t care even if I get fired now,’ she said and continued hugging me.

‘Okay, I am serious; if Vishnu sees us like this, he wouldn’t blame you; he would just charge me with a sexual harassment case,’ I said and giggled.

‘Don’t worry, I will handle him; I am the Tech Lead of this project,’ she said and continued hugging me. I admired her confidence. She released me with great difficulty when she received a phone call from Vishnu asking her to report to him in his cabin. I did not know what the kiss meant but it felt nice. Did this mean that we were still in love?

Days passed and Naina started getting close to me. It was weird because no one in the project knew that Naina and I had known each other since college. I found it really tough to hide this from Vishnu especially when he had his x-ray vision on me. Naina was my Tech Lead at the end of the day and if anyone knew that we were in love with each other, it would surely piss off a lot of people. We somehow managed to hide this reality from the entire team. After Naina had joined the American MNC, I had forgotten everything and was turning out to be even more useless. I would be in Naina’s cabin the entire day acting like I was researching on the next mass destruction weapon. The research involved flirting and catching up with Naina on what we had missed out since the past one and a half years. I slowly started forgetting that I hated the American MNC because of Naina’s sweet presence. I started falling in love with her deeply when…