Now That You're Rich: Let's fall in Love!

by Datta, Durjoy

  ‘They have, this time. If only you would know something more than office gossip,’ Avantika said and smiled at the girls. ‘So, you need help?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ they echoed.

  The guys reached us by then.

  ‘Hmmm, but we are leaving for Pondicherry for the weekend. Just try doing it over the weekend by yourself and we will clear out your doubts on Monday, alright?’

  ‘But ma’am, we have to submit it on Monday,’ Abhijeet said.

  ‘I wish I could have helped you but I really have to leave. Deb sir will help you out, okay? He is not as stupid as he looks.’

  ‘What, okay? I can’t do this assignment, Avantika! Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘I have to shop, Deb. There won’t be any time tomorrow.’

  ‘So? I am not missing the match for an assignment.’

  ‘It is just a match,’ Avantika argued.

  ‘It is the Delhi Daredevils vs Chennai Superkings.’

  ‘Big deal. We are leaving tomorrow and I really have to shop, Deb. Stop acting like a kid and help them.’

  ‘You stop acting like a kid. I am not missing the match. End of story.’

  The four of them stood there watching us fight for another few minutes before Avantika said, ‘Okay … I will take the girls along. You take the guys and we will help them out. We can do that, right?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine.’

  We stomped off and went our own ways. Abhijeet and Saurav followed me outside the building, and we headed to the biggest screen in the whole of Hyderabad.

  ‘Sir … this question … of the analysis …’

  ‘Abhijeet … which department?’

  ‘Sir … Energy.’

  ‘Who else is in Energy?’

  ‘Shruti.’

  ‘Same assignment?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Copy it.’

  ‘What?’ Abhijeet asked as if it was a sin to do so.

  ‘And I do it from Garima?’ Saurav asked, already slamming his laptop down.

  ‘Just change the language. Make sure you do. You wouldn’t want to get into trouble with Sumita,’ I warned them.

  ‘Argh!’ we all shouted in unison as Delhi Daredevils lost another wicket.

  ‘Terrible match. Rohit Kanojia should have hit that …’

  ‘And if only Mathew had not wasted those balls,’ Saurav added. The post-innings discussion was on.

  ‘Do you guys want to drink something?’ I asked.

  ‘I can,’ Saurav said.

  ‘Abhijeet?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmmm. Okay.’

  ‘Good for me! I anyway don’t want to reach home before Avantika does.’

  ‘Why?’ they asked.

  ‘She would make me help her in the packing and stuff and that’s the last thing I want to do today, especially after this terrible match.’

  ‘You live … together?’ Abhijeet asked, a little scandalized.

  ‘Half her wardrobe is at my apartment, so, yes, kind of.’

  ‘That is so cool,’ Saurav said.

  ‘You bet it is,’ I said as we clinked our glasses. ‘So? What else about you two? Do you have girlfriends?’

  ‘No,’ they echoed.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Waiting for the right girl,’ Abhijeet said.

  ‘I like the girl from Presidency. The brown-haired one?’

  ‘The one who wears black bras under white shirts?’ I asked.

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘No. But it isn’t that I am blind,’ I answered. ‘I keep my eyes open and no one can miss a girl like that.’

  ‘I tried asking her out. But she has a boyfriend, or so she says.’

  ‘Okay. And Abhijeet, what are you looking for in your right girl?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He likes Garima,’ Saurav butted in.

  ‘You do? The girl with frizzy hair and brown eyes? Or the one with the chocolate-brown complexion?’

  ‘Yes, the one with frizzy hair and brown hair. But I don’t really like like her.’

  ‘He thinks she is scary,’ Saurav added.

  ‘What? I thought she was pretty awesome-looking,’ I said from what I remembered of Garima.

  ‘I don’t think she is scary. Just that she is too, you know, into herself … and she snaps back.’

  ‘That way.’

  Saurav added, ‘In office she is okay, but otherwise, she is all loose jeans, black nails, smoking and drinking, being depressed sort of a deal. He kind of gets intimidated by her. So do I.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Avantika was the same. She was an addict. But that was before I met her. I was petrified before meeting her, you know. Quite like you. Maybe more. I goofed up the first meeting, in possibly the worst manner. But things happened and here we are now.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ Abhijeet said.

  ‘Why do you want to know? I thought you didn’t like Garima,’ Saurav butted in.

  ‘Nothing, really. In her case, all the things that she did were to hide herself from everybody, to run away. She is a very soft person otherwise. Luckily for me, I just found the soft person in her. Maybe it is different for Garima. Maybe not.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Abhijeet said, almost to himself.

  We talked for a little while, had a glass of lime juice and headed home. Avantika still hadn’t reached home and I feared the time I would have to help her pack.

  ‘So, how does it look?’ Avantika asked the two girls after she slipped into a miniskirt that was barely there. How could that possibly not look good!

  ‘Very nice,’ they echoed.

  ‘Okay. So, we are done now? Garima, can you please check the list?’

  ‘We are done.’

  ‘Good. Let me change. Till then, see if you have any more questions to ask,’ she disappeared in the changing room, came out struggling with all the clothes she had tried on, and asked them if they had any more questions. No, they said.

  ‘Coffee?’ she asked them.

  ‘Sure,’ they echoed.

  They found cosy lounge chairs at the Café Coffee Day nearby and ordered their coffee. It was not so much the coffee, as the chairs and the muted yellow lights that got people to come there.

  ‘Will you girls have anything else?’ she asked.

  ‘Can we smoke in here?’ Garima asked.

  ‘I am afraid not, Garima. You know what, Garima? You remind me of myself when I was your age. Younger, maybe.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I used to smoke a lot and I used to smoke everything I could get my hands on. I have three tattoos from that time. They were really crazy times and I experimented with everything you can experiment with, you know.’

  ‘I am not really getting you,’ Garima said, irritated, thinking this would be another one telling her to stop smoking and get her life back on track.

  ‘Why do you smoke?’

  ‘I just like it. There isn’t any specific reason.’

  ‘There always is a reason. I smoked because it got me closer to my ex-boyfriend and away from my parents. He smoked because he thought it was cool. Later, he became an addict and so did I.’

  ‘My smoking is not a problem.’

  ‘She thinks, that way she will not have to talk to people since she’d be busy smoking. So, she is probably running away from people, too,’ Shruti added.

  ‘See? There is always a reason.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Garima looked away.

  ‘Garima, I don’t know you. Maybe I am all wrong. Have you heard of Spirit of Living?’

  ‘Huh? The bearded guy who talks in a soft tone and talks about breathing and stuff?’

  ‘Yes. I know you will be cynical but just go to the convention once. Maybe it will help. I am not saying you need any. But it might just make your life a little easier. Shruti, you should go too.’

  ‘Okay, ma’am,’ Shruti nodded like a schoolgirl.

  ‘Just try it. There is nothing worse th
an running away from your fears. It leads to a road that never ends. Just try it.’

  ‘I will see. Can we go now? I really need to smoke.’ She got up and left the cafe to smoke outside. Shruti and Avantika looked at each other, blank-faced and concerned about Garima.

  10

  Shruti had promised to send everything beyond ten thousand rupees home. When she told them about the internship programme, her dad shouted at her for being a selfish liar and wanted to see the circular, and immediately added that she would type out a fake circular.

  She disconnected the phone in anger. Her mom called after that and told her how she would be responsible for her father’s death, for the sorrow she caused him. She mailed them her internship letter the next day and cried a little.

  But things were a little different now. Her mother wasn’t in front of her, crying and reminding her of how much they had endured for her well-being, and crying and cursing on the phone wasn’t effective enough. She had found a new lease of life, and for the first time, she had friends she could go out shopping and drinking with. She could finally be a normal young person with freedom to experience the little joys of life. Shruti reached office at nine sharp. It was their first day in their respective departments. She left with Abhijeet for the Energy department and started looking for me. They went to my desk, pulled up chairs, sat there and waited for me.

  ‘I am sorry, man,’ I said loudly and immediately apologized to people around me as I panted. It was strange that on a floor where a hundred people were working, you could still hear an ant scream. ‘I had a TT match which I lost, but I would have won it if I didn’t have a sore ankle. Damn it.’

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ they both said. I just looked at Shruti and cut out the tall, handsome guy from my retina frame. She smelled good and looked fantabulous. She still looked real and vulnerable, unlike the other women in Silverman Finance who were all vultures with wrinkled skin and piercing eyes.

  ‘Okay then, let us see. What seat have you been allotted?’ I unlocked my computer.

  Their seats were the fifth and the ninth seats from my cubicle. I gave them their passwords to the computers and directed them to their places.

  ‘Sameer, your manager and the person both of you will report to, is still not here. When he comes, I will introduce you to him. Maybe then you can start working on something important and productive.’

  Abhijeet and Shruti reached their seats and logged in. They received two mails from me as soon as they checked their inbox.

  The first one said ‘Best of luck’.

  The second one had two attachments.

  Pinball.exe.

  Virtualtennis.exe

  Work hard.

  When Sameer didn’t turn up in the next hour or so, the three of us went down to the TT room, the place I spend most of my time when I am not at my cubicle, pouring over comparative analysis and trying unsuccessfully to make sense out of it.

  Meanwhile, Avantika had already assigned the other two some work to keep them busy. It wasn’t anything important, but it was something that would help them in the days to come. They had to find some financial data and organize them in a usable way from data sources. The data sources was predominantly Google.

  Saurav was a little pissed off with the work assigned and asked Garima to help him out. She snubbed him, but seeing him struggle with sleep in his eyes, she helped him out.

  They were halfway through what Avantika had assigned them when Abhijeet and Shruti asked them to join us in the TT room.

  ‘I knew you would be here,’ Avantika said as she stood at the door of the TT room.

  ‘So?’

  ‘What so? Your manager is here. And he is looking for you. And you two,’ she said and looked at Shruti and Abhijeet, ‘Rush to your floor. Saurav and Garima, that is for you, too. And Deb, I need to talk to you.’

  Avantika waited for them to leave and then looked at me, visibly pissed.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘What happened? Deb? What are these two doing since morning?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘They just joined today. We can give them some time to relax,’ I said.

  ‘They can’t afford to relax. They are constantly under review. Moreover, they are not you and you need to understand that, Deb.’

  ‘What do you mean they are not me?’

  ‘This job is important to them. You know the backgrounds of these two, Shruti and Abhijeet. It would have been okay had it been Garima or Saurav, but don’t misguide the other two. This job is their big opportunity.’

  ‘I am not. What …’

  ‘Yes, you are. You didn’t even help out with their assignments. What the hell was that? You made them copy it? What were you thinking? You know how Sumita is, right?’

  ‘You are just getting worked up for no reason.’

  ‘Don’t act dumb, Deb. You know why I don’t want you to screw things up. You know what Sumita wants from you. She made you a mentor because she wants you out of here. You are an eyesore to her and she wants you to screw up. You slip and you are out of here. What on earth will I do here then? And you will take those two down with you. If not for me, at least take it seriously for them.’

  She was almost in tears. It wasn’t the first time she had asked me to put my act together and act responsible. Seeing me leave the company would not be the prettiest sight for her. For me, either.

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘Where were you?’ Sameer asked scornfully.

  ‘Downstairs.’

  ‘Who won?’ he winked.

  Sameer was twenty-eight and an MBA from IIFT Kolkata. He wasn’t very brilliant but was extremely hardworking and terribly efficient. Ever since I had helped win over his wife of two years, we had been sort of friends. His wife and I were good friends. She often saw who was behind the cute surprises that Sameer occasionally sprang up. In lieu of that, I was spared some office work and shown leniency during reviews.

  Abhijeet and Shruti were assigned work and they got busy. While the others worked, Abhijeet was a little distracted. He couldn’t stop thinking about Garima’s eyes and the story they didn’t tell anyone. He called up Saurav to ask whether he should call up Garima. Saurav, quite obviously, said yes. He fiddled and came back and forth on whether he should call her, but finally mustered up the courage.

  ‘Hi, Garima,’ Abhijeet said on the intercom.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Nice. Too much work?’

  ‘Not really.’ She kept answering nonchalantly and it made him dizzy and doubt whether he should have called her in the first place.

  ‘What else?’

  ‘I am sitting in my cubicle working. Nothing else, Abhijeet.’

  ‘Okay. Carry on. Sorry for disturbing.’

  ‘Bye.’ She kept down the phone. Avantika, who was sitting right in the next cubicle, looked at her.

  ‘What?’ Garima said with her eyes and got back to her computer screen.

  Avantika and Garima worked quietly for the next hour or so and it wasn’t until Avantika spotted her coming out from the smoking room that Avantika decided to talk to her.

  ‘Any problems, Garima?’ she asked.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ she said as they both headed towards the lift. No words were exchanged for the next few minutes.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Yes, Garima?’

  ‘What do those conventions do?’

  ‘Do you want to grab a coffee?’ Avantika asked her and they headed for the cafeteria.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘Call me Avantika. I feel like an old hag otherwise. How old am I anyway? Okay, let’s not go there.’

  ‘Avantika, I don’t know why I am telling you this, but there is no one else I can probably talk to.’

  Garima went on to tell Avantika about Karan and an incident that she had kept to herself all these years.

  Garima wa
s abused as child, by her own uncle and the memory of that hot day in May, six years ago, gripped her and she recounted the incident to a shocked Avantika.

  ‘I still remember every moment of it. He came to my room … drunk … I can still feel his rough hands on me till this day. He grabbed me from behind, my own uncle. I could just scream in silence. I wanted to die, I swear to God I wanted to die, I so wanted to die. He kept violating me. Me? Why me? I had grown up in front of him. Why would he do that to me? I punched him in the face and ran! After that day, I lay in the shower for hours every day and hoped the tears and the water would wash it away. It never happened and I spent the next few years trying to smile through all the pain, fake my happiness through the days. Finally, it was Karan who came to my rescue and things started to look up. I gave that relationship everything I possibly could, but then when that ended, everything ended for me. Since then, I have been running, from people, from relationships. I don’t want to be alone, but I am too afraid …’ Tears came streaking down. Avantika hugged her and patted her.

  ‘Before Deb came along, my previous boyfriend asked me to please a friend of his. Forced, I think, is the right word, not asked, and this happened in front of the whole section,’ Avantika said.

  ‘Then what happened? What did you do?’

  ‘I ran and I became you. But surprisingly, I didn’t leave my boyfriend. I was too weak and kept enduring the dysfunctional relationship.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I just stopped one day. The conventions helped, but it is you who has to fight. I fought. And things have never been better. I have Deb now. I can’t say he is the best guy in the world, but he is the best for me. He truly loves me. And I love him. I never would have got him had I not trusted him, had I not allowed myself to give in to the temptation to be loved and cared for again. Had I not taken the chance! You are a nice girl, Garima, I know that. You have been through a lot, I know that, too. Somewhere down the line, good things will happen to you. But that is only if you let them happen. You have to let go of the past. There is a whole lifetime to live. Don’t lose out on that. Life has been unfair to us and that is why we have all the more reason to make the rest of our lives wonderful.’

  Garima just stood there, crying, chipping at her nails and Avantika ran her fingers on her face. ‘It will be alright,’ she said. ‘Let me see that smile first.’