‘Is Hari in?’ Might as well clear the confusion then and there.
‘No. He has left. He has a flight to catch. Going to Chennai. Will be back in Mumbai tomorrow evening and in office the day after.’
‘Okay, thanks,’ and he made his way out. He glanced at Chander’s room to see if he was there, but he too had left.
He went down to the Mezz floor where Chanda was waiting. Seeing him, she too packed up and they left.
‘Coffee?’ asked Amit as they crossed Prabhadevi on their way to Bandra. Chanda nodded.
Amit parked his car in the side lane, bang opposite Siddhi Vinayak Temple and they stepped into the Café Coffee Day outlet for some caffeine and a quick bite.
As they entered the coffee shop, Amit turned, looked behind at the massive temple and bowed his head; his hand rose to his heart and he stood still for a while, as if thanking God for all that he had done for him till date. That done, he walked to the table which Chanda had occupied and made himself comfortable on the quasi steel, quasi plastic chair. Chanda had ordered a cappuccino for herself and a macchiato for him.
‘Praying to God?’
‘Thanking him for having given me the job of chauffeuring you to and from home,’ he smiled.
They started talking about work and the life in office, people, about Hari, Manish, Chander and Gowri. Amit had heard about all of them but had met them for the first time today.
‘So when are you moving into your cabin?’ It was special for them because in NYB, he always had a largish cubicle but never a cabin to himself. The pride in his voice when he had told her about the cabin, earlier in the day while having lunch was enormous. She was giving him an ego boost by asking him about his new cabin.
‘There seems to be a small issue. Will iron it out tomorrow.’
‘What?’
‘Somebody else has moved into that cabin.’
‘How? Why? There is nobody else of your seniority.’
‘Sangeeta has moved in.’
‘What?’ Chanda was surprised. ‘That bitch. But why? Didn’t you tell her that it was committed to you?’
‘No point speaking to her. I will speak to Gowri and fix it. Gowri asked her to move in. He obviously did not know that I have been asked to move in. Tomorrow morning, I will tell him and he will get it vacated.’
‘That bitch. She always creates problems for everyone.’ Chanda hated her.
‘But why blame her? Gowri told her today to move and she moved. What could be her . . .’
‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute.’ Chanda didn’t wait for him to complete and interjected abruptly. ‘You said Gowri told her today to take that cabin. How do you know?’
‘Oh, I overheard Manish speaking to her. She mentioned to him that Gowri told her at around 4 p.m. this evening.’
‘What? Are you sure?’
‘That’s what she said baba. Gowri wouldn’t have known. I will tell him tomorrow and it will be sorted.’
‘Bullshit!’ She was screaming now. The whole coffee shop, though scarcely populated was looking in their direction. She could see through this.
‘Bullshit!’ this time the volume was lower. ‘Gowri knew about it!’
‘How could he Chanda? Hari told me in the morning and then he left for Chennai.’
‘Because I told him, Amit! I told him! After lunch when I had come up to discuss tomorrow’s presentation, he was commenting about you and I casually mentioned to him that now I will have to serve two masters on the corporate floor. One you, who will be in the cabin to the left of Manish Kakkar and one him in the cabin to the right of Kakkar. He laughed when I said this and even asked if you had been told about the move into the cabin. That bastard! I wish I could . . . I could . . .’ She couldn’t complete the sentence She was too furious and excited.
The sequence of events now panned out in front of Amit – very clearly, and unambiguously. Chanda had mentioned to Gowri about Amit moving into the room on the corporate floor. Gowri was not too happy about it. He looked down upon people seconded from NYB. After Hari had left, he had called Sangeeta and asked her to move into the cabin. This would ensure that Amit does not get a cabin and would have to wait till Chander moves. Post that, Amit would get Chander’s room. Till then he would only have to face embarrassment. What a master schemer! He had worked out a brilliant plan to humiliate Amit and establish his supremacy in the organisation. It was very easy for anyone to be flustered when faced with such a situation particularly in a new organisation.
Had Hari questioned him, he would have feigned ignorance on the proposed plan of Amit moving in and that would lend credibility to his plan of asking Sangeeta to move into that vacant cabin. Chanda wouldn’t ask him and Amit was too new to get into a direct conflict. He wanted to prove to Amit that he was the boss. And had in effect managed to make that statement. Gowri wanted Amit to know that NFS was his space and anyone from outside was not welcome.
Amit was shaken by this episode. Not because he valued the cabin too much, but it was not only about the cabin. It was the manner in which it was done that irritated him. He had dealt with many complex situations in the bank in his earlier roles, probably even more complex customer issues, but this was different. He had never encountered this sort of petty politics ever in his life. Anyone else in his situation would have made a different call. He did not follow the norm. That was his style in the past and here too he decided that he would follow his instinct.
Back home it was a difficult night for both of them. Chanda was even more agitated because she was the one responsible for the chaos. Had she not mentioned to Gowri, he would not even have known. She had to now start exercising discretion.
2003
NFS – The second day
Mumbai
Amit walked in confidently on the second day. Hari was not expected to be in office. There was an arrogant swagger in his walk as he raced up to the second floor. By now the security guard knew him and did not stop him, as he had done on the first day.
Gowri was in his room, checking his email. Suzanna was in her small cubicle trying to act busy. Amit walked up and stood next to her for a couple of minutes. From the corner of his eyes, he could see that Gowri was looking at him, pretending though that he was busy.
‘Suzanna, can you please help me with a cup of coffee?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘And please tell the pantry boy not to add any sugar. Sir does not like coffee with sugar. Right Amit?’ It was Manish, who had walked in behind Amit. ‘Second day in wonderland!’ he chimed in and followed it with a song as he walked into his own cabin.
Amit turned and walked towards the cabin on Manish’s left, the cabin that was to be his. It was open. He walked in and settled down on the other side of the table – the side where visitors would have normally sat down.
Gowri walked towards Suzanna and murmured something into her ear. Even if it was related to work, it didn’t matter. Manish, being the exuberant of the senior management team, walked out of the room into the open area, and looked around. Seeing Amit, he walked towards him again, ‘Arre . . . you are sitting here?’
By then Gowri had also come out of his room. A cup of tea in his hand, he walked towards the two of them. ‘Kya haal hai Amit?’ and seeing him formally attired, commented ‘Arre, no one wears a tie here. All this happens only in your bank . . . at NYB.’
Gowri conveniently stayed clear of discussing the cabin issue with Amit and began gossipping about other mundane stuff. The gossip went on for a few minutes when it veered towards the loan policies of NFS. Amit asked Gowri if he had the document which outlined the loan and credit policies of NFS.
Before Gowri could answer, Manish chipped in, ‘Of course we have. Do you want me to send it to you?’
‘My email ID is not set up yet. Can you please send it to Suzanna? I will ask her to print it out for me.’ He then looked at Gowri and as an afterthought added, ‘With your permission.’ Gowri nodded in response.
Before Gowr
i could answer, Manish again butted in, ‘Ya, ya. No problem. Anyway she acts busy. She doesn’t have a full day’s job. But you know what? I don’t need to send it to her. She should have it. A few days ago she had circulated those policies to the branch network. Let me ask her to print them out.’
‘Ae, Suzanna,’ he called out. ‘Remember, you sent out the latest C2P2 last week?’ Amit was part of the same group and hence he knew that C2P2 was an acronym for Consumer Credit Process and Policy, the inhouse loans bible. Suzanna nodded.
‘Will you please print them out for Amit? Also, printout the covering email which I had sent. That’s important too.’ Suzanna made a face, but she didn’t have an excuse for not doing what was asked of her.
For the next twenty minutes, a frowning Suzanna printed reams of paper for Amit. Over two hundred at last count, including the covering mails, which Manish had forwarded to her and she had sent to the entire branch network, at Gowri’s behest.
When Amit saw them, he was amused. Below every email, was a signature, an addition which gets attached to an email, every time you send one, provided it is programmed into your email settings. Below every email which she had printed out for him was a signature:
Regards,
Suzanna
Secretary
NYB Financial Services
Mumbai
Phone Number…….
Mobile……
Normally you would find seniors in an organisation attaching their signatures to email IDs. It was not common, and was actually unheard of, for secretaries to add their signature to emails. But NFS was a different animal. A different kind of organisation and the team in which she worked was of a different make.
This entire episode screwed up Suzanna’s morning. She was so pissed with this that she walked up to Gowri’s room after all this and was closeted with him for over thirty minutes. Their discussion, one could make out, was animated and furiously gesticulative. Though there was no reason for Suzanna to be upset, there was nothing inhumanly wrong in Amit and Manish asking her to printout those manuals.
Half an hour later, she walked out of Gowri’s room and went straight to the wash room. She emerged after about ten minutes, looking calm and composed. It was actually Amit’s turn to play mind games now.
He walked up to her. ‘Chander mentioned to me that you have the entire branch list with telephone and address details of the branches. Can you please printout a copy for me? Chander wants it too. Please send the list to him as well.’
This time Suzanna didn’t smile. She just nodded her head. Within five minutes she was at Amit’s desk and handed over the printout to him.
‘Thanks Suzanna.’
‘Sangeeta was mentioning to me that she will be sitting in this room.’
‘Oh yes. Where is she?’
‘She is in Pune. Travelling.’
‘Oh, okay. I just decided to share it with her. You think she will have a problem? She can sit in the proper side. Till I find some space I will occupy the other side, or the side which is less desired. What do you say?’
‘You will have to ask her,’ she said curtly and walked away.
‘I guess everyone in this place has an attitude,’ said Amit to himself as she moved away from him. Amit looked at the paper she had brought for him. It was the printout of the mail she had just sent Chander. It had the list of branches of NFS – all of them, with their addresses and phone numbers. As his eyes trailed the top of the mail and went down the first page, it stopped on something very interesting. It said:
Chander
Fyi
Regards
And then the signature. He stopped. A victorious I-know-what-that-means sort of smile slowly crawled across his face. This time the signature was different from the ones he had seen in her mails in the morning. It now read:
Regards,
Suzanna
Secretary to Gowri Shankar
Head – Branch Network
NYB Financial Services.
The difference was the third line – ‘Secretary to Gowri Shankar’. Aah! Now it’s working. He now knew the reason for the thirty-minute discussion in the morning. He knew the reason for the anxiety, for the chaos. It was him. Hadn’t he managed to get under the skin of Gowri and Suzanna? His eyes were glowing with wolfish mischief now. Gowri had asked Suzanna to change her signature to reflect his name. This was just to send out a signal to everyone that she was only his secretary. Till now no one had even remotely questioned his authority. For that matter, even Amit hadn’t. But he was the guy from the bank. He had to be shown his place. He had to be told through surrogates that Suzanna was not his secretary. Ha ha! Gowri Shankar had been roughed up. Wow! And how easy it was. He hadn’t even done anything yet, and had managed to ruffle feathers.
And then he remembered Aditya’s statement a few years back. ‘Listen Amit,’ he had said, ‘in life, you should never ever take stress upon yourself. And if you see it coming, ensure that you stress out others. Your stress will automatically disappear.’ How true! Yesterday the sly Gowri was scheming, on the very first day in office, to put him through discomfort. Today he had easily turned the table on him. All he did was go and occupy Sangeeta’s room when she was not there and ask his secretary repeatedly for help. It was easy.
The remaining part of the day passed peacefully without much of excitement. Chander was very helpful. From his perspective, he was on his way out. The sooner he got Amit to speed up things, the sooner the organisation would relieve him. Manish was not at all affected by his arrival. By nature, he was a cool guy. Gowri was an outlier. He was the one who had an issue with Amit. Though on the face of it, he was sweet to Amit, the latter was under no pretensions. He knew that the façade would crumble one day. And if Gowri had his way, that day would be far closer than his comfort.
2003
The Location Visits
Kolkata, Raipur
The takeover from Chander lasted for about a week. By the end of the first week, Amit got a hang of the dynamics of the business and became quite self-sufficient. Sitting in his room on the claustrophobic powerhouse called Head Office, he had learnt whatever he could. It is normally said that leadership is all about managing people. As one goes up the ranks in any organisation, success is defined more by the way you manage your teams, your people’s expectations, the way you motivate them into delivering what you expect, and how you stand by your people and lead from the front. These are things which make you stand out, rather than subject matter expertise. The latter was not too much of an issue though. Amit had handled mortgages in his earlier roles at NYB. It was not rocket science either. Amit though was a great believer of the former. Something he had learnt from Aditya and practised to the core. He wanted to implement the same values and philosophies in NFS as well.
‘Where’s Amit? Hasn’t he come to work?’ Gowri queried Chanda one morning, when he found Amit missing in action. ‘Hope all is well?’
‘Oh ya. He’s travelling.’
‘What? On vacation? Without you? Ha ha!’
‘No, no! No holiday! Would I be here if he was on a holiday? He has gone to Kolkata for a business review. Chander had set it up.’
‘Arre, he didn’t tell me. I could have requested him to do something for me in Kolkata.’ These things made Gowri very insecure and despite best attempts at concealing, it showed.
‘You can call him. He is carrying his mobile.’
‘No it’s okay.’ And the discussion ended as abruptly as it had begun.
A few moments later, after Chanda had left, Gowri was at Suzanna’s side. ‘Can you get me Amit on his mobile?’ and he walked back into his room.
‘Hi darling!’ Seeing a call from office, Amit instinctively assumed it was Chanda. He knew that Chander was on leave that day and it was too early for anyone to call him from office.
‘Amit. Suzanna here.’
A brief moment of embarrassed silence later, Amit found his voice to say, ‘Oh hi. I thought it was Chanda.’
/>
‘Gowri would like to speak with you. Transferring the call.’ As usual her voice was icy cold.
‘Hi Amit! Kidhar hai? Where are you?’
‘I’m in Kolkata. Came to meet the team.’
‘Kya hua? Any stress? Koi problem?’
‘No. Just getting to know my team better. If I have to take charge from Chander, I need to take over the team as well. Process and policy can be anyway learned in due course. What do you say?’
‘Oh ho! Bata diya hota. You should have told me.’
‘Why?’ he said brusquely and then after a pause added ‘did you have some work here? Tell me. I’m sure I’ll get some free time. I can manage if you want me to do something for you.’
‘No, its okay. You come back. We will chat. When are you back?’
‘In office the day after. Tomorrow, I am going to Raipur. Will reach Mumbai late tomorrow night.’
The conversation ended there. But Gowri was very bitter after it. He did not like the way the conversation went. He was definitely not used to this. How could someone question the authority of THE king? Nobody visited the branches without a prior discussion with him. Even Chander had followed that rigour. If he knew about and tacitly approved any location visits, before they were to happen, he could stage manage them to ensure that he is in complete control of what goes on during those site visits. His rulebook also assumed that nobody can have the guts to do things without his nod of approval and Amit had just managed to successfully get his goat!
All the product managers informed him before they travelled to any other location. Amit was setting a trend which he didn’t like. The self-appointed dictator decided that this had to be fixed before the other product managers also start doing their own thing.
That night, when Amit called up Chanda, he was not surprised at what he heard. ‘Gowri was furiously jumping up and down the floor throughout the day. He seemed like a maniac let loose! Something was definitely wrong. I couldn’t figure out what the reason was, but he was quite worked up.’ Amit kind of knew what had influenced his behaviour and felt gleefully manipulative.
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