Lost in Pattaya (6 page)

At work, I was met by questions and doubts,
which Georgy welcomed me with.

“Where the fuck have you been, I have been
looking for you,” he displayed the false passion that a lot of us office
workers practice to exhibit; after all, we are supposed to look busy and
charged up by our work. There was a clear notching up of his tone as well, meant
to cement the elevation of authority that he had been thrust with from our HQ.

“It’s just a bloody audit, don’t get so
worked up; a few hours is not going to impact anything,” that is what I wanted
to say, but instead I simply said “Give me a few minutes. I will be with you
after I check my mail.”

It was true. I had a mail from the HQ,
telling me that Georgy would manage the day-to-day operations of the Asia office,
at least for now, which meant that I, in some sense, was answerable to Georgy.

In about half an hour, we cornered the
meeting room. There was a discomfort in each other’s presence, a discomfort
that had not been there on the previous week. I tried to remain calm and
measured, at least by my language of body over the next hour, leading up to my
exit from the corporate world.

“Listen, I am sorry, I know you are going
through a lot, I know this is not a good time for you, but we have to keep the
business moving,” he too spoke calmly, without the panicked demeanour he had
greeted me earlier with.

“No, not at all, despite what has happened,
we have to deliver our work effectively, which is why I went and met Ortega
before filing my recommendations. I want to ensure I don’t fall behind any
deliverables,” I looked at him, wanting to discuss work rather than the
futility of search that Li Ya had assumed by now.

The same search, with which he had actually
helped earlier, now became a topic that I did not want to touch. It was like
arriving uninvited for dinner where you were to be discussed, in your absence.

“You know we have to clear the audit,
right, don’t you?” he asked.

It was not us; it was them, the greedy
honchos of BMI, who needed to clear the audit.

“Maybe, but only after we have made the
point, that in this case needed making. BMI recognised revenues early, without
firm contracts, and this compromised its future financial integrity. You have
to agree, that is what this case is all about?” I, too, stated what I was
moving towards, my defeat in this recalcitrant stand I had assumed. My
obstinacy had to do with the fact that I had found something ‘principled’ to
support and put my weight behind, during a phase when I was consumed by the
‘compromises’ that had built around me, by my excessive and wrong ways. The
pain at the base of my neck gnawed at my entire head before it spread its cold
steel like grip over my temples, reaching the sockets around my eyes, which
began throbbing with each word and movement I executed.

“But, if we fail the audit, they will have
to take huge one off losses as they write down the previous period’s revenues
in a single stroke. The stock will take a beating, and many families will lose
out, it will be a societal loss. We have to think about the larger picture.

Remember, our contract with them, it too is
coming for renewal soon, and it is the biggest account that we have in the
region. We have to consider all this before we make our recommendations,” he
remained calm, rebuilding for us the logic that I knew well.

It was
my
family that stood
destroyed; he should
not
have mentioned that bit, about families, about
societal
fucking loss when he tried to coax me into signing the audit off. My suppressed
anger was becoming harder to control, only making my resolve firmer.

“Georgy, these guys have done wrong, and
they will get away with it if we let them. They will find ways to dilute these
losses, slowly, over the coming Quarters. It is our job to stop them, it is our
job to blow the whistle, we are the fucking auditors,” I said, knowing well
that we too, were reduced to be business-like in the business of auditing
others, mostly powerless when it came to setting the world right.

The pain in my neck and my shoulder’s agony
intensified. I wanted to leave the meeting room, having stated what I wanted
to, but, I could not, given that we were meeting on an issue that would decide
the course of my remainder life. I suppressed the sensation of retching; the
act of which I believed would relieve me of the aches the moment the foul
imaginary green liquid exited my stomach, gushing acidic over my tongue before
it was released in a fountain of vomit into the toilet bowl I wanted to rush
towards. I simply swallowed, holding myself together, hoping to mask what was
breaking inside me, my self-confidence. I admit I was devoid of any confidence
that these staged meetings of the corporate world demand. Irrespective of what
the situation is, one is expected to reflect solidity in all day-to-day
dealings. Here I was, physically in pain and mentally wrecked by the events
around me, pretty much ready to give up and accept whatever fate would throw at
me next.

You will see I took to running on faith,
sprinting with what I had – hoping the future would brighten.

“How does it matter to us? Let them run
their business and we will run ours. Let us all move ahead, why should we make
retrograde moves? I do agree, we will tell them about our findings and then let
them manage the situation internally the way they deem fit. You know they will
find a scapegoat and sack him or her. I am sure their accountants and lawyers
will find ways of cleaning the mess up, however, if we don’t pass the audit,
there will be a public cleaning up that will impact a lot of people, including
shareholders and vendors, like us,” he spoke evenly, calm and logical; a sound
resonant logic that I would have upheld till as recently as a few days back.
But now, I rejected it. Right there, sitting opposite Georgy, that recently broken,
shattered part of me turned bitter, wanting to curdle and congeal things and
people around me, like a ribbon of culture in a vessel of warm milk, unleashing
a streak of vendetta towards those who still had complete, intact, unbroken,
seemingly happy urban lives.

Why? It was because a part of me that
confronted my own loss prevented me from accepting this convivial logic of
abetting crimes before muting into a mutually beneficial existence. An
existence filled with happy families that turn away from the crimes of
compromised decision making that its bread winners fool that other world with,
the world of the lost and the broken, one I had become a part of.

Georgy’s phone buzzed silently, its screen
glowing with the Facebook profile picture of Fang Wei, which had been changed a
few months back, me being the conspicuous exclusion from it. In a measured
move, he turned the phone over and into silence, gently putting it face down on
the table between us. I am not sure if he saw I had noticed her appear on his
phone. I am not even sure if it was her, yet it was deeply wrenching for me to
witness my wife calling common friends, while choosing to stay cut-off from me.
Behind my back, they would discuss each pertinent thread of detail, vilifying
the core of this plot, me and my string of follies.

“Georgy, we have known each other for
years, I can’t do this mate, I can’t be the one who passes this audit,” I said,
again with forced calmness.

A calm, if it caps a volcano, is an
internal eruption one should mange well, venting slowly, till no pressure remains.

“You should think about this carefully, I
don’t think you understand the fall-out of your decision. Yes, we go back a
long time, and that is the reason why I think you should give it one long-hard
thought before you let me know how you want to move forward. Let us talk about
it tomorrow. I will hold people off till then; don’t worry about the deadlines
etc. at least not for a day. But, tomorrow let me know your final decision,” he
delivered his caveat with grace. To his credit, he remained business like right
till the end.

To him, I would have appeared slumped and
lowered, which I was, given how I felt - very close to giving up.

“Sure, I will see you tomorrow,” I got up
and left, not just the meeting room but the office itself, knowing that my
decision on this matter was far greater than the sitting at my desk, attending
to mundane office matters that an afternoon demands.

A hangover, I was certain, could not last
till this late in the afternoon. For I knew I had not had that much whisky on
the previous evening. I went straight to Dr. Tho, my physician, a specialist of
sports-medicine whom I had been seeing for years of niggles, picked in the
squash room now and then.

Neck pain, I believe, was right up his
alley.

“Doctor, it is my neck,” I burst into his
office, aware that he would do a quick consultation before sending me away for
a few scans, mostly x-rays, asking me to return in about thirty minutes with
the films, looking at which he would declare my prognosis.

After I suffered the humiliation of being
stripped, I was asked to first stand and then lie down in still-awkward
positions. The staff at the department of radiology was not rude; they were
simply clinical, offering neither sympathy nor tenderness, wanting to work
through patients without the build-up of a queue, working robotically till the
shift changed. I was sent back to Dr. Tho’s clinic, where I awaited news. I was
certain it would be the onset of spondylitis, or some such inflammation or
internal disfigurement needing prolonged treatment. Or, worse still, a cancer,
which had finally reached and invaded a sensitive portion of my body like the
nerves in my spine or the base of my brain, the medulla oblongata. A flash
recollection of anatomical nomenclature left me pondering the consequences of
diminished body function caused by paralysis.

“Your neck and your shoulders seem fine,”
Dr. Tho said, still looking at the film illuminated from the light coming
through his viewing lamp, counting the bones of my upper vertebra with the
rubber tip of his pencil, which he drummed the dull glowing celluloid with. He
actually whispered “One, two, three…,” trailing off at four.

“There is no structural problem that I see,
it could be just muscular. I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said, switching off
the viewing lamp.

“Can I play squash?” I asked, a bit
surprised that he had found nothing. Maybe more revealing scans were required,
ones that look deeper, which he would recommend after the pain refused to abate
over the coming weeks, or, worse still, after the pain morphed into more
serious symptoms, stemming from the damage to cranial anatomy.

“Yes, of course, you can play squash, as
much as you like. In fact I think it will do your condition a world of good,”
he said, smiling. I had stuck with him for seven years for precisely this one
reason; his smiles made my pains better and his demeanour of supreme confidence
made me feel well.

“Why so?” I asked.

“Look, there is nothing wrong with you. You
may have been stressed these last few days. Squash will pump adrenalin into
your system, which will help ease you out. Try to relax and get some rest, you
will be OK,” he spoke, compassionately.

It is certain if I had not broken down in
front of Ortega, I would have in front of Dr. Tho. Acts of compassion, even in
small measures, and that too from mere acquaintances, held the trigger which
could send my built-up grief into a flood of tears.

“I am going to prescribe some pills for
you. Have them an hour before you go to bed, and make sure you don’t drive
after you have had them,” he said, writing in scribbles, before I left his
clinic with the medication. He had also thrown in some rubs and such; useless I
knew, simply meant for me feel adequately rewarded for my visit.

He was right. At the squash club I emptied
with the hitting what the high-strung nature of the day’s events had left my
body and mind in. The pain did not disappear, but the cold steel all over my
shoulders warmed dramatically. I did not join the guys at the bar, knowing I should
not mix the sedatives I intended taking later, with alcohol. Relieved of the
pain, I postponed in my thoughts the decision due to Georgy on the following
day.

At home, I called the Police in Pattaya,
knowing well, if they had found her, they would have called. I could not get
through to them for hours, which forced me to use an intermediary, SriJaya, who
went across to the station and physically handed the phone to the Thai officer.

“Sir, we are no longer working on that
case, it has been transferred to the missing persons file and it is now handled
by the central team,” he said.

“But, how do I get any updates?” I asked.

“They would have given the contact details,
database id’s etc. to the person who filed the report, your wife I believe,” he
said.

“Can you please share the same with me as
well?”

I asked, growing anxious, knowing that I
was being insulated from Li Ya, even though she was still out there, somewhere.

“I don’t have all those details myself; you
will just have to get it from your wife,” he said, trailing away as he handed
the phone back to SriJaya.

“Sir, when are you coming back to Pattaya?
I have something for you,” SriJaya, seemed eager and friendly. I simply mumbled
goodbyes, one part of me wishing I was with him now.