An Ideal Wife (2 page)

‘What happened?’ Fatty asked sternly.

‘Nothing sir,’ faked Jimmy.

‘Where is your partner in crime?’ asked Fatty, realising Sameer’s absence from the scene.

‘Sir, he is…he is…’ Jimmy stuttered.

‘What? I am asking where he is.’ Fatty sounded impatient.

‘Sir, you know very well, once that Kumbhakarna is in bed, it’s not easy to wake him up. I have tried to contact him many times and left a million messages on his answering machine.’

Jimmy shifted the blame in true corporate style.

‘We are going to lose it! This is the biggest advertising contract in the history of our agency and if he doesn’t turn up on time we will just lose it. Unbelievable! Only he knows how to handle this cranky client, you all are good for nothing,’ Fatty lamented.

Jimmy had no answer so he just kept looking at Fatty, replicating the helplessness of his boss.

The worry in Fatty’s eyes deepened as he looked at his watch again.

‘Oh god, dikha koi chamatkar aur uss bhulakkad client ko aaj kee meeting hee bhulva de,’
he murmured.

‘What sir?’

‘Which fool brought forward such an important meeting knowing well enough we had a late night party?’

Jimmy looked to the floor thinking,
‘Lagta hai kal kee utari nahin saale kee.’

Jimmy’s silence infuriated Fatty.

‘Why aren’t you answering me?’ he shouted.

Jimmy kept looking down, thinking,
‘Moron, do you really want to know?’

Fatty was about to charge at Jimmy like a bull when he suddenly realised something…
‘Oh shit, it was me who had brought the meeting forward,’
he spoke to himself.

He immediately turned his eyes away from Jimmy and slowly started to leave the cabin. Jimmy heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Finally,
utar hee gayi saari.
’

Suddenly Fatty turned back as he neared the door.

‘You do know, right?’ he said rather ominously.

‘Now what?’
Jimmy was wary of the malice in his voice.

‘We also have a demotion policy in the company.’

With that he walked out of the cabin, leaving Jimmy in a state of shock.

‘So now it’s my turn to be the
bali ka bakra
for Fatty’s sins!

Not having any other choice, Jimmy dialled Sameer’s number again but the story was no different this time. He banged the phone so hard that it brought his colleagues rushing to the cabin. Thankfully, no one asked what had transpired between him and the boss.

After an hour or so, Sameer woke up with the biggest yawn of his life. He smiled at some cheesy ad on TV, another of his agency’s accounts. Ah well, TV on again; what the…. He switched off the TV with the remote lying next to him on the bed and jumped out to rush towards the bathroom.

After taking a good leak and completing the benefits of his deep slumber with this cherry on the cake, Sameer came out to the balcony of his apartment in his Jockey to pick up the newspaper. The newspaper had the same shit about the current Prime Minister’s inability to control corruption, debate on economic slide by some so-called prominent economist, and police promises to solve the nth murder case in Mumbai city.

‘Not sure why I bother to even pick up the newspaper,
’ was his first reaction after reading the news.
‘I won’t even know the difference if they just change the date without changing anything else,’
Sameer continued the tirade in his head.

Fed up with the great start to his morning, he went to the kitchen to prepare himself a pick-me-up coffee. For him, nothing worked better than a coffee in the morning especially after a great night of drinking and dancing. After a couple of minutes, he ambled to the living room with a coffee mug in his right hand. He pressed the voicemail button on his telephone before sitting on the couch.

‘You have five new messages,’ a sweet female voice from the machine apprised him.

‘Five, not bad Sameer, you can still sleep,’ Sameer patted himself.

‘Sameer, the client meeting has been brought forward to 9am instead of 11am, please reach office ASAP,’
Jimmy’s worried voice left him baffled.

‘Damn! This Fatty never learns,’
he murmured.

Right then his wall clock struck half past eight,
‘Oh shit,’
he murmured again and jumped from the couch, not caring about spilling coffee all over the floor, and rushed towards the bathroom.

After taking a quick dump he landed himself in the shower. He had never disposed of Mother Nature’s early morning calls and the process of his vanity with as much haste in his entire life; not even during his school days. Oh how we miss those glorious golden days of absolute bliss!

As he snatched his iPad and car keys off the kitchen counter, he received a call from Jimmy on his cellphone.

‘Jimmy, please handle the meeting for the first half hour; I’m on my way,’ he shouted without hearing a word from Jimmy and disconnected the phone.

After a couple of minutes his BMW 3 series convertible was zooming past the traffic. Though illegal, he was multi-tasking (putting his MBA to great use) going over the client presentation on his iPad while driving.

His eye and hand coordination was superbly navigating through traffic and the presentation. He could easily win a race, if there were one, of navigating through Mumbai traffic at this hour while working on a presentation simultaneously! Maybe he could suggest this to the Apple guys; they could use it as a marketing gimmick and then pay him tons of money.

As he turned left on the New Link Road towards Andheri after going past Amitabh Bachchan’s famous bungalow,
Jalsa,
he got another call from Jimmy.

‘The client is already here! Where the hell are you!?’ Jimmy’s frantic voice said it all.

‘Mara kyun ja raha hai.
Reaching in 20!’

‘Please hurry,’ Jimmy replied but Sameer didn’t care to listen and cut the phone to concentrate on the road and the presentation.

As he stopped at a Juhu Circle traffic signal (yes, he did obey traffic laws sometimes) he noticed an elderly woman unable to cross the road because of the heavy traffic. Her face told the story of her frantic struggle, which none of the drivers of incoming traffic understood.

He was so lost looking at her that he didn’t even realise that his signal had turned green. The great Mumbai (rather Indian) honking brought him back to reality and he sped past the signal just in the nick of time, forcing the traffic stuck behind him to jump the signal. Sameer heard some of the choicest cuss words hurled at him as the drivers sped by. ‘You son-of-……peeeeeeeeen’, ‘Bloody scoun….ppeeeeeeee’ and so on. He laughed to himself as the car horns literally peed out their music.

Jimmy’s frantic voice played in his head loud and clear, but even so, he stopped his car right next to the elderly lady. He jumped out of his convertible without even opening the door, scaring the dentures out of the elderly lady. He grabbed her hand to guide her to the other side of the road. She just followed him like an obedient child, though still in a state of shock.

After crossing the road she blessed him with all her heart but he was too lost in his thoughts to respond and ran towards his car. And just then Jimmy began to ring.

‘Where have you reached?’

‘Just reaching, was helping someone cross the road,’ he replied casually while running across the road.

‘What? Will you just absolutely never change, you holier-than-thou do-gooder?! Are you effing insane? This could be the biggest contract in the history of this office and you are helping people cross the road? Cross your own bloody road man!’ Jimmy’s outburst was like that of a nagging harridan of a housewife. Sameer could just picture him frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog. What fun, the guy was turning into Fatty!

‘Nothing’s bigger than helping the elderly, my man,’ he got back in mock solemnity, even though his emotion was genuine.

‘What?’

‘Don’t waste my time, reaching in 5,’ Sameer replied as he neared his car.

He jumped to his seat and sped on full-throttle. His sharp cuts through the traffic would have made former F1 Champion Michael Schumacher ashamed of his driving skills. Without wasting much time his hands once again started working on the presentation on the iPad.

Slide after slide kept rolling as Sameer made the presentation to the international client in the biggest conference room of his office at Andheri West (a western suburb of Mumbai). Though it was the biggest yet the conference room was packed to the hilt. The nervousness of landing a contract with their biggest ever client was evident on everyone’s face.

True to his habit of scanning occupants of the conference room while making a presentation, Sameer turned his head to look at everyone and smiled to see Fatty chewing off his nails.

In between he also glanced through to gauge the client’s reaction to his advertising plan for the famous instant noodles ‘Shaggy Noodles’.

‘Teenage boys will most certainly grin upon hearing the name,’
he chuckled thinking about it.
‘I would love to meet the geniuses, who came up with this brilliant name,’
Sameer smiled.

‘Impressive! Impressive!’ The client shouted excitedly as soon as Sameer finished the presentation.

Everyone from the agency beamed. Sameer knew the presentation would go well but the client’s response surpassed his own expectations.

No points for guessing that Fatty had an ear-to-ear smile on his face contemplating the top line growth for the company along with the profits he was going to get in this quarter.

‘I am glad we listened to you and gave your agency a chance to ideate for this campaign,’ the client said to Sameer. Sameer’s boss was still not sure what had happened and he just kept smiling like a buffoon.

‘We would like you to design the entire final campaign without making any changes to your current presentation,’ the client addressed Sameer’s boss

‘Sure, sure,’ Fatty nodded his head like an obedient dog.

‘But,’ the client paused for a second.

Fatty’s heart sank hearing the ‘But’, and funnily his big butt seemed to sag too. The entire team also froze.

The client continued, ‘It’s a ? 200 crore campaign so we want Sameer to only focus on our campaign during this time.’

This was like music to Fatty’s ears. ‘Your wish is my command, consider it done,’ he replied with a flourish.

Sameer looked at his boss with surprise, as he had to deliver two more presentations to other clients in a couple of days. But Fatty only winked at him, signaling to him to hold his peace.

The client shook hands with the entire team and left the conference room along with Fatty. Everyone came in a huddle to congratulate Sameer.

‘When should we come to your office?’ Fatty enquired of the client as they moved closer to the office main door.

‘For what?’ The client replied, looking confused.

‘Oh god, yahan bhulvane kee nahin rakkhi,’
Fatty murmured.

The client just kept staring at Fatty.

‘For signing the contract, sir,’ Fatty clarified while keeping his fingers crossed.

The client looked around and saw Sameer’s smiling face through the glass door of conference room.

‘4pm tomorrow, and please bring Sameer along. I would like to introduce him to my team,’ the client requested; rather instructed.

‘Sure, sir,’ Fatty replied, struggling to suppress his happiness.

After dropping the client to the door, Fatty walked back to the conference room.

‘Sameer, dil toh kar raha tha apne hathon se tumhara gala daba dun,’
Fatty announced as he entered the room.

Sameer gave him his trademark
‘What the fuck?’look.

‘But with the same very hands, I congratulate you on this huge success.’

‘Thanks sir,
lekin maine agle do din mein jo do murge faasne they unka kya?’
he enquired even though he knew the answer.

‘Don’t worry about them; I think Jimmy can handle them, right Jimmy?’ Boss said, pointing at Jimmy.

‘Piece of cake sir, piece of cake,’ Jimmy assured.

Sameer wondered if he was the same Jimmy who’d left numerous frantic messages on his voicemail in the morning.

‘Sameer, here is a surprise for you,’ Fatty continued.

Everyone paused, their ears and eyes glued to the boss.

‘I hereby promote you to the position of Creative Head of this agency.’

Sameer was flabbergasted, staring speechless at his boss.

‘Aren’t you happy?’ Fatty asked, puzzled.

‘No, sir.’

‘What?’ Fatty almost fainted with shock.

‘No, sir, I mean, yes sir, thank you, sir,’ Sameer was still a stuttering fool.

Everyone broke into loud applause, congratulating Sameer on yet another accomplishment.

‘But sir, everyone here has worked passionately for this project,’ Sameer said, fulfilling his team-member obligations.

‘Don’t worry, the entire team will get 50% bonus in this quarter,’ Fatty said excitedly without wasting a second.

This announcement brought huge smiles on everyone’s face and they all screamed in unison ‘Sameer, Party……Party……Party’