Sorting Out Sid

by Lal, Yashodra

  Sid slammed his way into the conference room and took one of the seats. Akash would naturally expect to sit at the head of the table although he would come in and make a bad joke about why it had been left empty for him when these young guys from Sid’s team were the bosses!

  Sid tapped his fingers on the table for a while in a pensive mood. Finally, the door swung open and Ravi ushered in the agency team along with a couple of other brand managers. The first person to enter was Murali, the head of the agency. He burst in with his usual boisterous confidence and flourishing moustache, booming, ‘How are you, Sid?’ and extended his hand.

  ‘Fine, FINE,’ said Sid in a loud and deep voice that came pretty close to matching Murali’s in terms of pitch, allowing his hand to be pumped in Murali’s death grip. They had never really liked each other. Sid thought Murali was a condescending gasbag, and he had always felt Murali resented dealing with a client so much younger than himself. They stood there smiling affably at one another. ‘Take a seat, Murali, so good to see you. Coffee?’

  ‘Sure, would love one,’ said Murali, and plonked himself heavily on one of the chairs as the rest of his team piled in. Sid greeted each one and noted with a heavy heart that it was a crowd today – about ten people? His heart sank. This was bad news; he knew this only happened when there was a particularly horrendous script idea, and thus the need for reinforcements. Right now in the room, Sid noted, were people from the servicing team, the copy team, the creative head, the account director and one small fellow whom Sid hadn’t seen before, and vaguely suspected to be the office tea boy. Still, one would hear them out – one hardly had a choice.

  Once everyone had settled down and the pleasantries about the weather were out of the way, Sid cleared his throat and said, ‘So, can we start?’

  Murali opened his mouth to speak, but Ravi piped in, ‘Sid, Akash said he would join us, should we wait for him?’ Sid gave Ravi a withering look which had absolutely no impact on the young man. He was about to say that there was no need to wait, and that Akash would pick up the threads, when the door opened and Akash came in, bustling with self-importance. Murali stood up to greet Akash as did the rest of the agency. Sid cringed inwardly. Whenever Murali and Akash met, the conversation between them was always extended and jovial, with entirely senseless rambling. It was to be no different this time. After ten minutes more of poor jokes, meaningless reminiscing and comments about the weather, a lull in the conversation indicated it was finally time to start the script presentation. Sid looked at his watch – 11.30 a.m., already! And not one useful task had yet been accomplished all morning.

  Murali put on his serious business face and turned to Akash. ‘Akash, we have something brilliant for you today, you’re going to love it. It’s brilliant, boss! When you hear it, you’re going to say, “brilliant!”.’ Akash nodded as if under a spell, but Murali continued with a warning in his tone, ‘But, you have to be able to see it, you have to be able to visualize … and if you can’t visualize it…’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘… you won’t be able to appreciate it.’

  Akash nodded sagely and Sid cleared his throat, irritated that Murali seemed to be addressing only Akash. Murali continued, ‘Rimi came up with this script, so, I’d like her to present. Go ahead, Rimi.’

  Sid noted that Akash had assumed his listening stance – he leaned back on his chair with a serious expression and covered his eyes with his hand. Rimi looked confused but Murali indicated that she should go ahead.

  Rimi was a thin, pale young girl with long, flowing, black hair who had always given Sid the impression of being an anorexic ghost who smoked too much. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and started narrating the script in a low monotone that she presumably thought was very captivating and sexy.

  ‘The story opens with the camera panning out over a modern-looking room. There is a row of four beds, each of which has one person fast asleep under the covers. We cannot see who they are until suddenly there is a ray of sunshine that beams through the window over each of the beds in quick succession. As this happens, the people on the bed throw off their bed covers in perfect synchronization. As they emerge, we see that they are four very beautiful, young girls. They stretch in synchronization and step out of their beds in synchronization. In perfect synchronization they get ready quickly and have their breakfast. They step out of the house in synchronized steps. We then see that they have reached another building. At this building, they step inside and go into a changing room where there are four empty booths waiting for them. In perfect synchronization, they step into the changing booths and when they step out we see they are in swimming suits. In the climax of the film, all four dive in perfect synchronization into a swimming pool and it is revealed to us that they are in fact – synchronized swimmers!’

  There were a few long moments of silence – of anticipation on the agency’s side, horror on Sid’s part. Akash was nodding slowly, his hand still covering his eyes.

  As per protocol, Akash, as the most senior person, was supposed to speak first. Everyone waited … and waited. Finally, Akash uncovered his eyes and spoke, but only to sidestep smoothly by saying, ‘I’m still absorbing it. Sid, you want to react first?’

  This was exactly what Sid had been hoping for. Biting back sarcasm, he asked politely, ‘This is supposed to be an ad for our lead toilet cleaner, Kollinex. I must have missed the part where that came in?’

  Rimi fumbled with her script, the very picture of ghostly, pale confusion, but Murali stepped in, booming, ‘Well, obviously Rimi didn’t spell it out, Sid, but the very idea here is to bring a certain glamour to the category. These girls are well rested and fresh in the morning. “Fresh in the morning”. The morning routine consists of bathroom visits – it’s about the concept. Here we are trying to give you a feel of the whole story without the boring product windows and brand specifics.’ He paused for impact, and to give Sid a look that magnificently combined superiority with reproach. ‘But of course, you have to be able to visualize it.’

  Work Sid prided himself on being a cool character whose feathers rarely got ruffled. Right now, however, he felt the blood rushing to his ears. He was on the verge of telling Murali to visualize exactly where he could stuff his lousy script, when Akash finally cleared his throat and looked up at the several tense faces around the room.

  He exclaimed, ‘I can see it! I can visualize!’

  As Sid looked on in dumbstruck horror, unable to believe his ears, Akash continued, ‘Apart from the minor point that Sid has mentioned, I think this is indeed brilliant!’ The agency faces lit up with happy, relieved smiles as he continued, ‘It is attention grabbing! It has glamour! It has a story! Brilliant! Let’s create the storyboard and put it into research quickly!’

  He got up to shake Murali’s hand. The meeting was concluded amidst happy laughter and jubilation all around. Sid sat glued to his chair, numb with shock. His team looked confused and disappointed, with one notable exception – young, enthusiastic Ravi who continued to take what appeared to be copious notes, pausing every now and then to shoot gleeful looks around the room.

  The agency left shortly thereafter. Sid presumed they planned to take the rest of the day off getting drunk. He bade them farewell, his fake work-smile pasted on his face. The room emptied and Sid was the last to leave. He sighed as he went back to his desk with heavy steps, and a thought entered his mind – would it be premature to resign before finding alternative employment?

  He quashed the thought almost immediately. This was only a minor setback. In the overall scheme of things, his career was progressing well here. And besides, the script would never go through to become a film. It could never hope to clear any consumer research. Thankfully, there were enough checks in the company’s systems to avoid such mistakes. Of course, he thought a tad bitterly that the system had clearly and utterly failed when Akash managed to sidle in – secret sports quota or no secret sports quota.

  Back at his desk, Sid found himself staring at his
laptop blankly. It was already well past noon and he was yet to even begin putting together some sort of a priority list of tasks for the day. This had hardly ever happened to him before. He sighed – the unpleasant situation at home was probably weighing him down.

  His cell phone rang – it was from his home landline number. Ah yes, Mandira was working from home today. He had just been thinking about her. What timing! Maybe this was a sign that it was time to finally make up, maybe they would be able to sort things out and then everything would get back to normal. He picked up and said in a warm, friendly tone, ‘Hellooo…’ Maybe his day was finally about to turn around.

  ‘You fucking asshole!’ Mandira’s screech reverberated in his ears so loudly that he instinctively ducked, and then looked around to see if anyone else had heard.

  Then again, maybe his day wouldn’t be turning around just yet.

  8

  Sid and Brownie

  Sid lay sprawled on his favourite beanbag, legs spread out wide, clutching a bottle of Kingfisher. The beer was ice cold – he could feel it through his shirt against his belly. He had four more bottles on the floor, within arm’s reach of him. He did not intend to get up from his beanbag, not even for a smoke. He knew the beer would warm up as the evening progressed and so he had set the air conditioner at 17 degrees. Of course, at 17 degrees he would want to pee more than usual. But he had emptied his bladder just before settling down and that would help take care of the urge for a while. Sometimes you just had to prepare yourself and hope for the best.

  He took another sip of beer, savouring it as it ran down his throat, sloshing about a bit before settling down in his empty stomach. No dinner tonight. Dinner arguments had been the worst of late. But tonight Mandira was out for an office party and he was home alone with no need for the formality of dinner. Home alone! Just the way he liked it. He lovingly patted his beanbag, which he fondly called Brownie when no one else was around.

  Mandira never seemed to understand why Sid valued his time alone so much. Being alone meant no pressure to perform or pretend, no need to be funny and entertain the crowd. He had never been able to explain it to her properly. He knew his natural tendency to perform was the reason she noticed him in college, choosing to go out with him even though she was a much-in-demand senior. But then, after their marriage, even when it was just the two of them, she seemed to expect that he would continue to be the official entertainer. She didn’t understand who this quiet person was – the one who just wanted to spend hours reading or listening to music or watching TV. She had been dismayed, and even considered it some kind of personal rejection.

  ‘Why is it that you have a hundred stories to tell other people, but you can’t even tell me about your day at work?’ had been her pet peeve.

  He had attempted to tell her that this quiet side of him was also a part of who he was, especially when people weren’t around. But she continued to take it as a sign of his diminishing interest in her. For a while he tried hard to be attentive and amusing while she was around, but it had been a constant strain. It made him crankier than usual, eventually leading to the same thing he had been trying to avoid – squabbling.

  He took another sip, this time glugging it down long and slow. Constant strain was perhaps marginally better than explosive attacks like the one that had happened today.

  Mandira was hysterical when she had called him at the office. For some strange reason she had been going through his personal laptop at home when she discovered his private collection of porn – one that Sid had carefully built over the last few years. His collection was impressive and extensive, in both volume and variety. The discovery enraged her although Sid didn’t quite understand why. A man had needs, and she sure as hell hadn’t been fulfilling them for a long time now. In fact, of late, she had even taken to sleeping in the guestroom – ostensibly, his reading light disturbed her. Sid, however, was certain that he heard her talking on the phone late into the night. So it was, apparently, only a means to avoid him. What was a guy to do? Porn was only a little, innocent voyeurism. It helped in getting him some sort of … well, release. She was the one who said he bottled things up too much and that wasn’t healthy. Talk about double standards, he thought moodily.

  She had screamed at him on the phone for his perverted nature, how it now made a lot of sense that he no longer expressed any interest in any physical contact with her. And how sneaky it was of him to hide this sick side from her. It had all been a bit too much for him and he tried to argue with her, in a low whispered tone, mindful of the many people around in the office. ‘Me not expressing interest … And you’re calling me sneaky? What were you doing going through my personal stuff, anyway? It clearly shows that you don’t trust me.’

  Mandira had stopped fuming and hyperventilating to give Sid a short bark of a laugh and said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, Siddharth. Do you really think that’s the main issue at hand?’ Sid hesitated for a moment and she continued, ‘And anyway – you’ve shown you aren’t worthy of trust!’

  Frustrated, Sid whispered that he couldn’t talk at the moment and suggested that they discuss it when he got home. Her voice changed abruptly, and became all cold. She informed him that she was leaving for an office party and would get back late. She added somewhat unnecessarily, in his opinion, that he could entertain himself with his Cowgirl-in-High-Heeled-Boots fantasies. Before he could say another word in protest, she slammed the phone down.

  ‘Okay, fine, so we’ll talk at home then, honey, see you,’ Sid said in a loud and cheerful tone for the benefit of his colleagues who were pretending not to listen. Sid looked around discreetly – he had a lot of experience with reading ears, and he knew immediately all their attention had been focussed on him. He was also aware of his own ears giving him away as they flushed bright red despite his attempt to cover up by shuffling through papers and pursing his lips into a tuneless whistle. A thought sprung into his mind that he might soon get a cabin of his own now that he was slated to become a vice president. It would be useful on days like this.

  ‘Arrey … Khatam?’ Sid looked with surprise and confusion at his empty beer bottle. That was quick. He had intended to savour his first bottle, savour the feeling of an evening alone at home and the ability to do exactly what he wanted. Chalo, no matter, he still had a few bottles to go. He leaned over and stretched out to grab another bottle, singing out an impromptu and cheerful ditty.

  ‘Come here, my dear, you are so near…

  Please have no fear, I love my beer…’

  He ransacked his brain to come up with a last line that would do justice to the poet in him. But he could only manage a lame ‘And my name is … Sid’. He cackled at his own silliness. He had been going for the style of Urdu poets, like Ghalib. The last line of a couplet usually had the writer’s name inserted into it, as a sort of signature. It didn’t always work, he decided. Those Urdu poet guys weren’t practical, he concluded. No wonder most of them were dead. Still, they had churned out some pretty riveting stuff. Sid liked Urdu couplets and felt the urge to recite one, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember a single one at the moment.

  He used his handy-dandy Swiss pocket-knife-cum-bottle-opener-cum-keychain to pop the cap off the second beer bottle and took another long, cold swig. He let out a loud ‘aaaah…’ as he leaned back and closed his eyes. He tended to get vocal when he got high irrespective of whether he had an audience or not. He just felt the need to speak, and it was nice to be able to speak without being judged.

  He felt a fart coming, but held it in. He wasn’t going to fart on his favourite beanbag. It wouldn’t be fair to her. He patted her lovingly. It felt natural to converse with her at the moment. ‘Eh, Brownie? What has it been, fifteen years? We’ve been through too much for me to fart on you, right?’ Fifteen years with Mandira too, but wouldn’t mind farting on her right now, he thought, and immediately regretted it. That was low, below the belt, you might say. He giggled.

  He shifted around a bit, snugg
ling deeper into Brownie. She was undoubtedly his favourite piece of furniture. She was one of the first purchases Mandira and he had made together. Well, he had made the purchase; Mandira had protested vociferously that a dirty brown beanbag wouldn’t go with anything else that she had in mind for the house. Sid let Mandira have her way on most counts, but on this one, he had put his foot down and insisted that he was buying the beanbag; he needed one to relax on, and besides, he insisted, it wasn’t dirty brown, it was chocolatey, really. Finally, she yielded, though grudgingly, and they had carted Brownie home. However, he had since caught her many times giving Brownie glares that alternated between merely disdainful to positively malevolent. Sid defiantly resisted all her attempts – and there had been quite a few over the years – to get rid of Brownie. During every furniture rearrangement, Mandira tried to convince Sid that Brownie was now too old and tatty in contrast to the rest of the furniture in the living room. To this, Sid would always say that Brownie was getting more and more comfortable with the passing years. In fact, Sid once claimed that when he died, he wanted to be buried with Brownie.

  ‘You’re not Christian, Sid – you will be cremated and not buried.’

  ‘Whatever. I want Brownie with me.’

  Brownie was a silent witness to their relationship. Sid remembered Mandira sulking the very evening they brought Brownie home. After a prolonged argument they had finally made up, and of course, being the early days they had even indulged in some make-up sex on the living-room floor.

  Sid sighed when he remembered the chemistry that Mandira and he shared at the beginning of their marriage. Life had been so different when they were in their twenties. Of course, they had had their problems even then because Mandira was the jealous, possessive sort. It had been cute at the beginning, but the cuteness faded as he was forced to cut off ties with almost all his female friends. Aditi was the only one who remained, and he knew Mandira still resented it. Over time, he tried to make more time for their marriage by cutting out other things from his life, all the things he had so enjoyed in his carefree, college days. His interest in photography, dramatics, sports was all gone, and with that went the friends he had made.