by Divya Anand
Sometimes, I wanted to create a roommate agreement a la Sheldon and include a clause to ban ‘I told you so’.
28
Beware of the Slithering Snake in the Grass
I felt like I was walking on air on Monday. I bounced into work as though I was walking on clouds, but made sure to look like it was just a regular day. Abhimanyu and I didn’t want people at work to know we were dating, and I had already told Upasana and Shirin that.
‘All set?’ Shirin said as she brought over a Starbucks cup with ‘SITARA’ written on it. I wondered if it was a sign that everything else would go right today too. I smiled. I had really missed my friends, and I was glad for these moments. I would never again take any of them for granted.
‘I think so,’ I replied.
I took a sip of the coffee; it had been so long since the Starbucks had mint syrup, so I’d been having to make do with caramel macchiatos. Shirin had somehow managed to find our original drink this morning. It was truly shaping up to be a good day.
‘Well, Ash looks to be in a good mood, so you’re probably ready for your promotion,’ she joked.
‘I’m not bothered about the promotion,’ I replied.
‘I never thought this day would come,’ she said, making a mischievous face. ‘I did, however, overhear Ash saying he’s going to send out promotion updates next week, so you’re almost there.’
‘I won’t lie, getting promoted would be fantastic,’ I admitted. ‘But I no longer think it is the be-all and end-all. In fact, it’s the relationships I’ve discovered and re-discovered along the way that matter.’
She rolled her eyes at my sentimental statement, but it didn’t stop her from reaching over and giving me a quick hug. We went back to sipping our coffees in companionable silence. We had ten minutes before the final presentation to Ash, and I started going over my slides one last time to make sure I was prepared.
My presentation went by as though I was operating on autopilot. As I showed Ash we would definitely be able to get to 1 million customers with this project, it felt like I had achieved the unachievable. One month ago, Harsh had thrown a near-impossible challenge at me. Despite all odds, I had pulled it all off, and I was already proud of myself for coming this far. I stopped talking, took a deep breath and looked at Ash.
For a few minutes, he didn’t say anything. Then he leaned forward and looked each person in the eye. There was a mix of expressions—they were impressed with my presentation, excited that the bigger project would be coming our way, but also nervous about what Ash would say. As Ash met someone’s eyes, the person sat up straighter and leaned forward. I took a deep breath and tried to curb the impulse to chew on my cuticle.
‘Amazing work,’ he drawled and . . .
. . . and smiled.
I let out a whoosh of relief. People relaxed and began smiling. Ash calling any project ‘amazing’ was high praise.
‘The investors will lap this up,’ he continued. ‘I can assure you that every single person in this room can expect a bonus.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. This was better than anything I could’ve dreamed of. Shirin mouthed ‘congratulations’ when I looked at her. If Ash was promising bonuses, it meant he was convinced we would get a fresh round of funding.
‘Sitara and Abhimanyu, you have steered this project exceptionally,’ Ash announced as he picked up a slice of the banana cake and regally swept out of the room.
The room erupted into a round of cheers.
‘You did it, you did it, you did it,’ Shirin said excitedly, sounding a little like Professor Doolittle congratulating Henry Higgins.
‘Thank you all for all the work you’ve put in,’ I said, still a little dazed.
Abhimanyu, Basit, Abhijit, Shirin, Heena and Sridhar were all excitedly discussing the meeting and how we’d all got to that point.
There were whoops and cheers and ‘remember when . . . ’ I could barely process what was going on.
I pinched myself hard to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. It hurt. We had really, really done it. I shut my laptop and looked up, and my eyes met Abhimanyu’s. I smiled and he grinned back.
Abhimanyu. The most important thing I’d gained out of everything this past month and a half. I felt an incredible pull towards him but controlled myself because we were still in office.
‘Congrats, Sitara,’ Dhruv piped in from my side. ‘Great work on the project.’ His expression and tone suggested he definitely did not think that the work was great, or even good. He sounded extremely jealous.Before I could reply, he walked over to Harsh who was yet to say anything, and who was busy staring at Abhimanyu as if a single look could make him split into smithereens.
But at that moment, everything was too perfect for me to care.
PING!
I ignored the sound of the app notification, thinking I had disconnected my phone from the projector when I turned off the Do Not Disturb setting on the phone.
‘Sitara, your phone is still projecting,’ Abhimanyu said, coming up to my side. He spoke in a low tone that only I could hear.
My head snapped up.
I looked at the projector and my heart stopped.
Shit, shit, shit.
My phone, still connected to the projector, was now broadcasting a notification from the AstroZone app.
Today’s Aries Horoscope: A project initiated today will have long-term success.
I looked to my side to see Abhimanyu looking quizzically at me. So far, he didn’t seem to suspect anything. I quickly walked over to pull the phone off the projector, but I was so nervous that I accidentally clicked on the notification. It helpfully opened up the calendar within the app, which made it very clear just whose horoscope I’d been tracking.
Up there on the big screen were my calendar notes. Every last incriminating one of them. ‘Catch A after the workshop,’ ‘D-Day’, ‘Schedule a one on one on THURSDAY’, ‘Best Day for A’. It was like looking at the calendar of a deranged serial killer. Or maybe a hopeless stalker.
Before I could say or do anything, Abhimanyu swiftly disconnected the phone from the projector and was now glaring at it.
I began chewing on my cuticles, and this time, I did draw blood but I didn’t care. My heart was hammering so hard, I thought it would fall out of my chest. I didn’t know what to do. Abhimanyu would think I was a manipulative bitch who was using the horoscope to get him to do what I wanted. Which was true at one point, but wasn’t any more. A wave of emotions rushed over me—worry, fear, guilt. I looked up at him trying to figure out what I could possibly say to make things better.
‘OK, the thing is . . . ’ I began but when he looked directly at me, I kept opening and shutting my mouth, doing a terrific impression of a guppy as I tried to think of what I could say. By now, everyone in the room had figured out that something was going on between the two of us. They had all gathered in a corner and were watching us. Nobody was saying a word.
I continued to gape at Abhimanyu for a while, my mouth opening and shutting noiselessly.
‘You seem to have chalked out my entire horoscope. Was this your sick way of getting me to fall in love with you?’ he choked out. He was still speaking very softly, and I could see that everyone else was straining to hear better.
I closed my eyes, wishing we could have this conversation in private and not become the centre of office gossip. But it was too late for that now.
‘I can’t believe you claimed you couldn’t trust me because I saw the signs that we were meant to be in my horoscope. Was that a giant act so I’d never find out?’ he asked, sounding angrier with every word that came out of his mouth.
‘No!’ I burst out.
Now everyone was looking at us even more intently. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Shirin trying to shepherd people out of the room. But obviously, no one in their right mind would miss the biggest office drama of the decade when they had stumbled upon ringside seats! They weren’t even pretending to be busy with their own conversations, that’s how s
hameless they were about their eavesdropping.
My brain finally fired up and I began defending myself.
‘It wasn’t about getting you to like me. I was trying to get you to approve my project so I could get my promotion. At first. And then I got carried away. But I swear, I’ve stopped doing it . . . ’
There was an audible gasp from the peanut gallery. I ignored them all.
‘So, what is this exactly?’ Abhimanyu said, coldly, pointing at the two of us. ‘Is this even real?’
‘Yes,’ I insisted, wondering how I could possibly explain that I genuinely liked him and this had nothing to do with the promotion in a way that didn’t make me look like a complete dick. I couldn’t stand the look of hurt on his face. ‘I admit, this entire thing started because of the promotion, but I fell in love with you. I don’t care about the promotion any more . . . ’
He didn’t look convinced. His face was a mixture of disgust, disappointment and anger. I had never seen him this angry before. Not even when I had called him a dick in front of the entire pub.
My heart sank.
‘I cannot believe this, Sitara. This whole thing was nothing but your path to a promotion!’
I felt like the world had stopped. My heart was seizing up in my chest. And still, I couldn’t get the words out easily. I stepped closer to him but he moved back.
‘No,’ I said, grabbing his hands, desperately trying to make him understand. ‘I stopped doing it a while ago, I just forgot to delete the app. You’re more important than that promotion.’
He paused for a minute, and stared deep into my eyes. I searched for the right words, the words that would somehow convince him to smile, to forgive me, to stay. A notification pinged on my phone.
We both looked down at the screen to see that Harsh had invited me to a meeting the next day to discuss ‘my new role’.
It looked like I’d got the promotion. But I no longer cared.
‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,’ I said.
But it didn’t seem to matter. He tossed the phone at me as though it was a hot brick scalding his palms.
‘To think all the horoscopes in the world couldn’t alert me to the fact that I was falling for a fraud. Again,’ he said.
With that, he stormed out of the room.
Slowly, the rest of the team shuffled out, ready to spread the latest gossip to the rest of the office. Shirin came over to me and hugged me as I struggled not to burst into tears.
What had started as the best day of my life had just ended as the absolute worst.
Upasana and Shirin took me to the Starbucks so I could calm down. I had just spent an hour locked in the ladies’ room at work, crying. Abhimanyu had disappeared into his office. Dhruv had gleefully gone around relaying the events of the day to everyone on the floor, after which I had attracted a lot of stares. People were torn between wanting to forgive me because of the generous bonuses Ash had promised and hating my guts because they all knew that something had been brewing between me and Abhimanyu, and that I had fucked it up. Thankfully, they didn’t know the details, because our hushed conversation had been almost inaudible, but that didn’t stop them from coming up with conspiracy theories. After my crying jag in the bathroom, I had been walking around pretending I didn’t care to avoid feeding the gossip frenzy. That’s when Upasana and Shirin cornered me.
The first twenty minutes at the Starbucks were spent finally admitting what I’d been up to. Surprisingly, they weren’t mad at me. They were glad they could finally understand what had been behind my crazy behaviour, and were really upset that Abhimanyu and I had had such a public fight.
‘By the way, Dhruv’s campaign tanked,’ Upasana announced, once we were done discussing my life.
‘Is this your way of cheering me up? Didn’t he say something about how it’s doing amazingly well in the last team meeting?’ I said. I took a bite of the cream-filled cronut, hoping that the sugar rush would improve my mood a little.
‘Nope. You know that make-up artiste he had partnered with as the main influencer? He got caught in a row of molestation charges. There’s no way we can be associated with that artiste any more. I heard the investors gave Ash an earful for ever partnering with him in the first place.’
‘He should’ve tagged on to your campaign when he could,’ Shirin said, taking a bite of her ham and egg croissant.
‘As if,’ Upasana dismissed her, and pushed her bangs away from her face. ‘He told everyone you were playing power games when you moved up the meetings. That’s why they were mad at you . . . ’
‘And he told Aakash you moved Binoy to your project to make sure his would get stuck . . . ’ Shirin added.
‘He tried to make sure that Everest was permanently booked so you couldn’t get the room . . . ’
‘He told Ranjani you said she’s the dumbest admin you’ve ever met . . . ’
Suddenly, I was beginning to understand why so many people had stopped speaking to me. After today’s fireworks, I didn’t see them forgiving me. So far, only Upasana and Shirin had forgiven me and unconditionally at that. But I couldn’t care about what the others thought when Abhimanyu was angry with me. He was the only one whose opinion mattered.
‘Dhruv is so toxic,’ Shirin said. I nodded. All the sugar that I’d consumed couldn’t mask the bitter taste in my mouth that came from hearing about his disgusting exploits.
‘To be fair, he wouldn’t have got away with it if you hadn’t been so aggressive,’ Upasana said.
‘Fine! Yes, I was an ass,’ I admitted. ‘But that promotion was important to me!’
‘Be careful,’ Upasana said. ‘Dhruv was already mad at you, and with his campaign tanking he’s going to be even more angry. I wouldn’t expect him to take this defeat lying low.’
‘Well, today’s meeting would’ve provided him with a ton of ammunition,’ I said glumly. I knew I should care about this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to even think about work politics when my heart was breaking.
‘You cannot afford to underestimate Dhruv,’ Upasana said. ‘He has all kinds of tricks up his sleeve.’ She was right. Dhruv was a formidable opponent even while he was playing fair, and when it came to playing dirty politics he was a master.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Even if Dhruv got the entire office to hate me, it still wouldn’t matter if only I could somehow convince Abhimanyu that I hadn’t meant to be such a manipulative bitch.
I stared glumly into my coffee wishing I could somehow figure out how to get Abhimanyu to forgive me.
29
Mercury in Retrograde Causes Confusion
Ever since Abhimanyu stormed out of the meeting room, I had been staring at my phone as though sheer willpower would convince him to reply to my texts, call me back or speak to me. I did everything I could think of to get in touch, to apologize, to make this nightmare go away. I called and called but he didn’t answer. Eventually, after what may have been my hundredth call, my number was blocked. Every WhatsApp message I sent remained unread. I even tried to contact him through Facebook messenger, which was when I realized he had unfriended me. He had even removed me from LinkedIn. It was fairly clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me.
It had barely been twenty-four hours since the entire blow up and I couldn’t think of anything else other than what I could’ve done differently as guilt gnawed at my insides. What if I had told him about what I’d been doing when he first told me he liked me? What if I had deleted the app when Kavya reminded me? What if I had never used the app in the first place? The what ifs were endless and I wasn’t coming up with any good answers to any of the scenarios. Each and every what if seemed to lead back to the same heartbreaking conclusion—Abhimanyu would hate me forever. Kavya tried to cheer me up by keeping me stocked with tissues, my favourite books, and fed me my own weight in chocolate but nothing helped.
I considered taking another sick day because I was too upset to be productive, but I knew it was
pointless. I couldn’t be sick forever. Besides, I also had the meeting with Harsh for the ‘new role’, a thought that no longer gave me any joy. I walked into work that day looking and feeling like a complete mess. My curls were all over the place and I had no make-up on, because when I attempted to put eyeliner and kajal, the tears smudged it, giving me raccoon eyes. The end result was that I looked unwell and had dark circles, which were partly due to sleeplessness and partly due to the smudged make-up that I hadn’t been able to completely get rid of. My sole objective of coming to work was to apologize to Abhimanyu, but he wasn’t there. I was sitting at my desk, staring blankly out of the window when Harsh called me into his office for the meeting that I had almost forgotten about.
‘Congratulations, Sitara,’ he said, handing me my promotion letter. I stared at it dully. After all the time, effort and energy I had put into becoming a senior manager, finally seeing the words in black and white did nothing for me. But I had to appear professional, so I began skimming through it.
‘Thanks, Harsh,’ I said.
‘Any questions on the compensation or the designation?’
I was about to say no, but then I spotted something.Something that wasn’t quite right.
The designation was right, ‘senior manager’, and the compensation was also in line with the title, but it said that my reporting manager would be . . . Anirban.
Anirban?
That made no sense. Anirban’s team of product managers worked on building tools that Glam used for managing sellers. It was a backend role with very little visibility. It was not the type of role I had ever aspired to, given I had been working on something that was consumer facing.
‘There’s a typo, Harsh,’ I said. ‘It says Anirban is the reporting manager.’
He picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. ‘No, that’s not a typo. We took this performance evaluation cycle as an opportunity to restructure the team. And given the concerns with how you handled things, I thought it best to move you off my team.’