“…And one day while standing behind the tree, looking inside to get a glimpse, a hand touched my shoulder, pale, thin, wrinkled. It was an old woman, not that old, a woman in her early fifties.”
Life seemed like a long long dream and I had finally arrived at the end, I was ready to be woken up, to a beautiful reality, one without pain, without suffering.
She said, “I see you here often waiting for someone, who are you child?”
#
“Shouldn’t we take him to the Hospital?”
The woman took away the piece of cloth from his forehead, and rinsed it, she spoke to the young girl then, “He’s getting better, the doctor said he would be fine, it’s just fever.”
“Burning fever, mother, it is worrisome” Her mother took out the cross from her neck and touched it on my heart. “He should be fine”
The girl, Sonia, took a deep breath, her eyes looked like fading stars, she got up but he held her by her wrist as she turned, “Why are you still angry with me? How long will I have to suffer for one mistake?”
Beginning of the end
The weekend was long and it took me an extra day to fully recover, I was back in office on Tuesday wishing things had not fallen out of place. I was little bit early in the office than usual; there were hardly any people around. I took my chances and the first thing I did was to visit my manager’s cubicle, this was the final step of the plan of which Dinesh was to be the victim. I did just as I had in mind and went away, I came back to the canteen and had my breakfast in peace. Little did I know at that time with one simple act I had set in motion an irreversible cycle that would blew everyone with it.
I waited in canteen till it was the regular office time and people had started flocking in, it was important as I didn’t want them to have even an iota of suspicion that it was me who was behind it.
And then came down the hammer, I saw Dinesh being called out for a one on one. It was the manager actually who came to Dinesh when he was talking to us. He was taking the status of the last task that was assigned to us, he stared at me confused. Probably because he didn’t expect to be grilled by me, and then awarded an lucrative job offer; everything happened too fast, and too good to be believable. Somehow, I got the following that he didn’t trust me, so he decided to dole out some punishment to me.
“From tomorrow onwards you will be on night shift I”
“What? Night shift?” We don’t have any night shifts here.
“Yes, right but since we are on tight budget and our project do have resources to spare, so we have decided to take on some extra work from the other project.”
I knew it was personal, and it was pointless to protest. I just had to wait it out.
“Your job will be to monitor the nightly jobs of the bank, remember this is high priority project, one slip and you would be gone” It was an open threat.
I smiled and replied, “I know my responsibilities well”
“Good, I will put the request to generate the ids for you, till then you can use mine.”
“Fine” I nodded.
“Jain” he turned and continued, “now since he would be coming in the night shift I would expect you to take some extra burden too, you will share half the –“Right at the moment, the manager barged in, he definitely didn’t look very happy. I knew my arrow had struck the bull’s-eye.
“Dinesh, I want to talk to you now”
“Just a minute, I will assign task to Jain and come to your desk”
“No, you have to come with me right away” The manager replied.
Dinesh looked even more surprised, Jain was taken aback as well. What was going on? Dinesh followed the manager to a meeting room, as Jain and I watched them. Jain asked, “What’s going on in there?”
“How would I know?” It was wise to pretend to be an ignorant one.
Afterwards, Dinesh came to my desk. He was red with anger, “Your night shift starts from today” “and Jain you would do only your tasks, he will have to manage on his own”
#
In my excitement of what possibly happened between the manager and Dinesh, I called up Bhargavi. We met for the lunch at usual food court three. She was bored and wanted to know the reason for my excitement.
I told her I was going to in night shifts from now. “What’s so exciting about it?” She replied. Then I told her whole story beginning from how I happened to grill Dinesh in an interview. “That’s way too much of co-incidence” She complained.
“Why did you select him?” She asked.
“Didn’t you get it?” I asked, “that gave me power over him”
She looked puzzled.
“Now, he has got a job offer, something only him and I know” “And guess what, today morning I have shared this little knowledge with our manager” “I had the photocopy of his offer, I put it on the manager’s desk” She gave me an instant evil look.
“So what?” She said, “He is going to leave the job anyway”
“No, he wanted to negotiate with the manager, job offer was the bargaining chip which is now in the open” She was listening to me and nodded, and I got this feeling that she was not really convinced. The bond is definitely weakened between the manager and Dinesh, but that’s about it. What else do I benefit from it? Little did I realize the biggest consequence which was going to make a difference was actually my night shift. I remembered what Bhargavi asked me originally when I told her about the night shift:
”What’s so exciting about it?” The neurons in my head fired, my eyes twinkled, yes, I had not lost the plot, the ball had just started rolling.
The first thing I did when I got back to my desk was to call Negi, Negi was the senior architect in Ignorant technologies, my interview partner. He was in a meeting he said and was about to put down his cell. I told him I would be quick and just needed a minute. “What is it?” He said.
“I wanted to apologize for what happened the other day, you were probably right we shouldn’t have hired that guy”
“The guy from your company?”
“Yes, Dinesh” I whispered.
“I will talk to Deepak, but I don’t think he can do anything about it” “We have already given him an offer letter” He paused, “On your insistence”
“I apologize for that again” I said, “But can’t we do anything about him, I realize that he not really a suitable candidate”
“How does it matter? We hire hundreds of people! ” He exclaimed.
“Yes, that’s true, the only thing is he a very senior person and would reflect bad on your judgment when he underperforms. But if that’s okay with you” I knew I had him.
Negi fell silent for a moment or two and then spoke, “alright, I will see to it personally”
I was not really expecting him to call back within ten minutes.
“Deepak said he can’t take back the offer, but he would revise it” “The perks would go, and the salary would be as low as he has in his current job. He wouldn’t think to join in such low increment.”
I was not really satisfied what I really wanted him to do was to take back the offer, but alas that didn’t happen. I had to take what I got.
Things were going so fast that Dinesh came to me in less than hour of my call with Negi. He wanted to talk. We went to the conference room, he shut the door with force evidently he was losing it. “What the hell do you want?” He shouted, I bet even people outside the room heard it.
“First you went to the manager behind my back, and now I got this email that Ignorant are revising my offer”
I smiled. Things were going as per my liking. “I want you to put me back in the day shift” I said.
“Is this all what you want?” He said.
“Yeah” I said.
“Okay, then you will stay in the night shift even after I leave the job. I will make sure of that” he fumed.
I smiled again; I knew I had him right in the trap.
#
Night shift was as boring as it could be
, there was no soul to talk to, and there was no coffee either. I watched the daily jobs start and finish on a lifeless black screen on Unix. Bored, I decided I would play around, I realized with Dinesh’s id I had the access to tons of server, the reporting server too. What daily jobs did was to update the database with the day’s data, what compliance jobs did was verified the data for its integrity and what the reporting jobs did was to generate the reports on that verified data. A simple Unix command told me which reports were accessed the most, and in that instant I knew what I had to do.
#
It took about a week to take affect what I had started. I was sitting on desk when I noticed people on the floor were heading toward somewhere, I whispered to Jain, “What’s going on?” He shrugged his shoulder in response; he had no clue as well. But only a moment later he turned toward me and said, “Check your email” “There’s a mail from Vishwas” I opened my mailbox at-once, what was going on I wondered. So, there was an email that said to gather in the nearest conference room, at once! The senior manager had called up an urgent meeting.
The conference room was big, but even bigger was the number of the people in the room, we could barely fit in. Vishwas took the center stage and began to speak:
“There’s been a gross misconduct in the office, a person clearly violated their privileges and subverted the system that we have so meticulously prepared and put on” I could barely understand what he was saying and I bet none in the crowd could neither.
“What the person in question called a mistake, led to half a million dollar of loss to our client” His words sent a shock wave through the crowd, who was that guy. People were quick to come to their conclusions, many started forming their conspiracy theories, people looked to their left and to their right trying to figure out who was missing. Finally, I understood what was going on, the juggernaut has rolled on and my pray has been rolled over.
Vishwas continued, “The work we do might sometime seem un-important or monotonous to you, but its impact for our client is extreme. What we do should be done meticulously and paramount degree of carefulness” “One mistake can cause millions of damage to our client, and an un-repairable breakage of trust between the company and client.”
“In this case a wrongly generated report, where the data it represented was entirely compromised has resulted in bad decision” “Can you understand, the top executes utilizes this data to support their decision making? Can you understand what impact a wrong data can make?” “Wrong analysis, wrongful decision making, and the loss of opportunity, and a loss of money”
I had finished scanning the place by now, and I knew very well who was missing. Crowd started thinning out as Vishwas was done. I too was on my to the exit, when Vishwas called for me.
“I“ He said. I turned and walked toward him.
“Can we meet? I want to talk to you? ” He said.
I knew, I may have won the battle but the war was still far from over.
The last supper
I encountered Mrs. Gaekwad on the steps, she was wearing a lovely dark green sari with a white border, visibly very happy, all shining in fact. I asked her what the matter was, if she had found a son-in-law, “Shut up” She replied. She hurried down and then stopped, turned back and said, come to the dinner tonight.
I heard Sonia shouting, so I rang the bell twice, she came running to the door, huffing a little, I sensed something, there’s definitely a prince charming. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on?” She opened the door. She had that expression on her face,
“What?” I noticed she was on the phone with someone. “
Where’s he?” I demanded. “Hiding in the closet?” I followed her to the kitchen, where I would have gone anyway, blame it on the sweet scent flowing through the kitchen. She was stirring carrot halwa, I could see a few red stains on her white blouse which probably were stains of carrot that somehow fired back at her – bad cooking, huh. After about ten minutes she put down her phone on the dining table, and wiped her hand against her long purple skirt. I was sitting on the bamboo couch that was supposedly imported from the east, “no time to talk” she said. “Have to do lot of work, party’s tonight”
“What party?” I asked, why I was not told about this. I wondered if it was some surprise party for me. I dismissed the notion immediately, for what reason I deserved such merit-ous treatment?
And the answer not surprisingly was - None!
“It’s important” “I wanted to tell you about Bhargavi”
“Oh, for god sake, not today, don’t bore me; I have tons of work to finish” Her brutal honesty killed me.
“Okay then I will not tell you that I am meeting her for dinner tonight”
She turned her attention toward me and spoke, “no you are not”
“No?”
“No, since you are coming here to the party tonight”
“Listen Sonia, about that” I was about to began but then stopped, what was I doing, this was my party. “Yeah, she can wait” I said.
Most of the afternoon I spent reworking my book, it was too much work, too much of dirty work, the good part of writing the book was already over and now I had to edit, adapt it to the demands of many. It shouldn’t hurt religious or societal sentiments, it should not shake popular believes, it shouldn’t contain profanity or intolerant act of violence, and this and that, a long list really. Where was the artistic freedom, blame it on the few who had misused it in the past and made it all impossible for everyone else to work. I had no intention to get a media backlash or stone to be pelted at my apartment or worse my effigy to be burnt at the city squares.
07:30 PM – Mrs. Gaekwad was in full panic mode, she’s usually a calm lady but for the first time I was seeing this nervous side of hers. “One final thing, one final thing” She shouted, Sonia and I both ran upto her. She looked at the pot, and the dark sooth like stuff, which was supposed to be sweet and delicious carrot halwa.
“Don’t worry” I said assuring-ly. “I will take care of it in a minute” I ran back to my apartment, yelling, “Where’s my damn key, where’s my damn key!” Sonia barged in, as if god’s messenger, and said handing over the key,
“It was on the dining table”
“Thank you, thank you” I said and took the flight down the stairs. I knew very well where I could find what I was looking for, I had the destination in mind, ‘Delhi Kitchen’. Today being Thursday it was not much crowded, although there were bunch of people sitting outside in the lawn but inside it was almost empty. With hurried step, I entered. Having place my order quickly I looked around, and then I something, someone rather, and which further made me realize, I had completely forgotten something, or rather someone, or rather something with someone.
“Hey Bhargavi” I said, she was standing near the end of counter pressurizing the guy with funny white hat for her order. I grabbed her by her shoulder, I could tell her first instinct was to place a one tight slap.
“What are you doing here?” We asked each other almost at the same time.
“You are not coming to dinner are you?” She said slowly, and doubtfully.
I nodded and asked back, “You are not cooking are you?” We looked at each other with guilt and contempt for a minute. And then we laughed, laughed and laughed.
“You should have said, we could have gone out to eat” I added.
“What do you mean Mr.? I can cook very well.”
“How about you cook and I eat?” She mocked.
“Believe me you wouldn’t want that, not in a million years.” I admitted.
So, all was well and good. I thought I should French kiss her and it’d be a perfect beginning to a relationship. I thought I should take her into my arms and tell her that we have it to be an awesome couple. But I stopped myself short, I didn’t want my emotions to be better of myself. I wanted to leave this on time, and see where the wave took us.
#
09:30 PM - I was watching television so as to say, I hardly knew wha
t was playing on the TV, perhaps a lion running after a baby deer, or a saas plotting against a bahu, or an adult comedy show on prime time; it hardly mattered. I was startled by a heavy knock on my door, it was Sonia on the door – and she looked, well, bit worried. She held me by my arm and virtually dragged me out of my apartment, what did she want? I hate surprises.
There inside their house, was a low humming noise – people whispering to people - an uneasy chill ran through me, a strange kind of smell burned straight into my nostrils - like scent of thousand flowers fused into something rare, something that blossomed once in a lifetime, the air had a scare - something wasn’t right in the wine drinking society.
I saw men and women standing in their swanky suites, elegant traditionals, crisp kanjivaram saris, it was new to me. I was hell nervous, for I didn’t know what I was doing there, and what was about to come.
I was standing by Sonia who had loosened the grip on my arm, I followed her gaze across the room it stood on a girl sitting with a glass of cola in her hand and watching silently as a man talked to her waving his head time and again.
Who was she? And why did I get the feeling that I had met this girl before?
Oh my god! How can I forget that face, how can I forget that innocence. It was her, yes it was her, I had no doubt in mind. I was about to see something coming. She was the same friend that I saw Sonia once with, same friend whose presence made Mrs. Gaekwad uneasy.
Sonia, who was now looking like a piece of red hot Sun began “I thank you all to come here today, and mother and I we are so happy to see everyone under one roof”
“Mother!” She said “I don’t think I would get a better time than now, and I want to tell you and your friends something.” She walked toward the girl as she spoke.
Zero Defect: An autobiography of a software engineer Page 21