Will She Be Mine (12 page)

“What was he talking to Thyagarajan about?” I asked slowly.

“First a small background- Thyagarajan and Dwapayanan both hail from the same village.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked with one of my friends who works in the aeronautical agency,” he replied. “Both Thyagarajan and Dwapayanan belong to the same village and grew up together. In the south, these things matter a lot, you know.”

My heart kept sinking as he went on.

“Dwapayanan first confirmed if Thyagarajan was heading your interview panel. Then he told him you looked bright on the surface and mostly had witty replies too, but shirked your responsibilities when it came to getting the actual job done. And that you squabbled over each of your performance ratings. In short, he said you were a nuisance.”

“How could he say that? It’s a lie!”

“That’s not all. He said that as a result there were often missed schedules, escalations and loss, besides the accompanying embarrassment when he met his senior management.”

“How mean of him.”

“There’s more,” Shenoy said with relish. “He said he regretted the day he had hired you and would be happy if someone else took you off his hands. But he didn't wish ill for Thyagarajan since their friendship went back a long way and told him to reject you, saying he’d planned something else to take care of you.”

That did it. Was this my reward for working diligently for two years at this place? It meant that when my boss inquired over lunch who’d headed the interview panel at the aeronautical agency, he’d simply been double checking to make sure he didn’t have to speak to anyone else there to reject me. Otherwise, he already knew who headed the panel and had left no stone unturned to sabotage my interview.

Seeing such a display of crab mentality of pulling the other person down, I was fairly confident I’d never prosper in these jobs, and wondered about the people father had mentioned in his jobs, who bought several houses and cars with salaries and perks that lagged the private sector by a vast margin. What was their actual source of income? Whatever it was, I wasn’t equipped to solve the nation’s problems. I had to worry about my own present job and get away from it fast.

I narrated the interview incident to my father that night. He said to be patient and wait for the result. It was possible Shenoy was jealous since I was in the boss's good books and wanted to throw a wrench into our relationship by spreading false tales. I agreed to wait and watch before jumping to a conclusion.

After hanging up, I called up Shalini’s number. Her father answered the phone.

“How’re you, Rajat?” he said in a pleased tone. “Your medicine seems to be working fine this time, son.”

“I thought it was the PMO doctor’s medicine?”

“Who told you that? How can his medicine work? He never prescribed any. He just asked us to maintain a chart of Ragini’s fever for a month before reviewing the case for further course of action. We started your medicine before that.”

I remembered his wife’s claim to the contrary earlier in the day, but kept quiet, wondering why that woman was so mean towards me. She could have easily acknowledged my contribution instead of lying about someone else’s medicine doing the job. After all, I was helping her daughter, so she should have expressed gratitude.

“What did he wish to observe further for a month, uncle?” I asked. “Wasn’t your observation, all those blood tests, X-rays, MRIs and Ragini’s suffering of over six months, sufficient for him to diagnose the disease and prescribe medicines?”

“You’re absolutely right, Rajat. Sometimes I wonder how these doctors earn their degrees, and from where. Anyway,” he said, brushing aside the topic. “Do you think the fever will subside entirely this time? It’s declining at a slower rate compared to last time.”

“It’s better that way, uncle. Sudden changes are not good. What goes away slowly won’t come back fast either,” I said, trying to sound scientific as if discussing the laws of motion in physics. He didn’t know how to respond to my logic and kept silent. “Don’t worry, Uncle, she should recover this time. Is Shalini around?”

“She’s on tour, son. I’ll tell her you called when she returns.”

“When would she return?” I asked. So, her mother had lied that she was away in office- unless she had meant that her daughter was away in office in another city.

“That’s always difficult to guess. Often she herself doesn’t know.”

I’d already heard that before.

Returning home dejected, I mulled over my situation in the office. Father had said to be patient and wait for my interview’s result. It was indeed possible Shenoy was simply jealous since I was in the boss's good books. But after a few weeks I got a rejection slip from the aeronautical agency.

Shenoy had been right. I decided at that time I’d never apply to a government job again. Otherwise my unscrupulous boss would always know where I was applying and try sabotaging my endeavor repeatedly. I considered the private sector instead. Maybe it would be better. The good thing about applying to jobs in the private sector was that I no longer needed to route my application through my boss. He’d never know where I applied. And what he didn't know, he couldn't sabotage.

So I started applying to jobs in the private sector with gusto. This was the way to beat him at his own game.

I felt bruised with my recent experiences in office, realizing how it felt to be stabbed in the back, when the boss you assumed good and helpful sabotaged your chances behind your back. However, the bad experience snapped me out of my complacency. In the first place I’d never wanted to work in a low salaried job anyway. But my father had insisted that joining a government organization was good for career security so I’d joined and Dwapayanan had succeeded in chaining me to my role by heaping generous praises which I lapped up naively. Since I had no other offers in hand at that time, or any other work experience, the job hadn’t been a bad deal to start my sagging career. But no more.

It was time to part ways. I didn't want to inform father of my intention to apply to jobs in the private sector. I finally decided it wouldn't matter to Shalini whether I remained plain and simple Rajat Kumar or became Dr. Rajat Kumar. If my MSIT qualification had failed to impress her, so would the prefix of a pompous Dr. added to my name after toiling through four to six years of hard academic labor to earn a degree in PhD. By that time there was also the risk of seeing her walk into someone else’s arms, which I simply couldn’t afford. The big question on my mind still remained the same- did she care about me?

Nursing my wounds of an unsuccessful love life, and the agony of being scathed in professional life in my very first job, I started applying to job vacancies in the private sector with mixed thoughts, and eventually landed my next job at an American office in Bangalore, Eleny, which was the offshore unit of a company manufacturing computers and operating system related software tools. With over sixty thousand employees worldwide it was enormous compared to my last organization which had had staff strength of just over five thousand.

The person who interviewed me was my first boss in the private sector, called Ramesh. The interview was interesting and typical of many such interviews taking place in the information technology industry. The first change I noted was there were usually only one or two interviewers at every stage of the interview process in the private IT sector, unlike the gang of nomads milling around in government interview boards.

However, interviews in a growing number of these private IT offices seldom judged a candidate's competency. Some of these encounters were more of a tussle the interviewer waged with his own self to prove himself more capable than the candidate he was interviewing. Such hiring managers took the liberty to frame questions based on browsing the net or gleaning jargon from overhearing others, but had no way of judging if the candidate's response was correct. Many such managers happened to be leaders in the industry.

“You graduated quite a few years back,” Ramesh pointed out as my decisive interview began. “Any particular reason why you didn't take up a job immediately after graduation? I notice from your resume you joined your first job only two years back, at the government imaging department- after three years of graduation.”

He had done the arithmetic well. I wanted to congratulate him on his mathematical ability, but focused on the question.

“There were personal reasons,” I replied, trying to calculate his level of curiosity. The question sounded more like an icebreaker. I’d come across similar innocuous queries in a couple of my other interviews too in the private companies so far. "You might have noticed I did get a coveted marketing job at the campus right after graduation. Also, as you rightly said, I'm presently working at a prestigious government agency for about two years."

In other words I’m not jobless. He nodded idly, easily diverted by my claims. He muttered the name of the company that had offered me the marketing job at graduation and searched my resume for the name. The guy must be daft. There was just one job on my resume so far, the one at the government imaging center. One didn't list offers in resumes, only showed tenures at the workplaces one had actually worked in.

His eyes were big and glistened with curiosity but I could detect little by way of understanding in them. It didn't occur to him to ask why I didn’t join the marketing job I got at graduation or persist with my job at the government agency beyond a brief span of two years. Maybe he was simply not interested. His next question sounded equally aimless.

"Are you the only son?"

At first I felt lost. The question came out of the blue while I was engrossed in thinking how stupid he was. His query came a little early for an interview that had still not tested the candidate’s experience against the basic technical requirements specified in the job description.

"I've a brother, and also a sister. Both married," I replied, trying to figure out the relevance, or direction, of his questions.

I would have liked to go on and rant about Shalini as well. Only she wasn’t a member of my family yet. From the present appearance of things, it was extremely difficult to predict when she’d become one, though I hoped she’d think of me more favorably if I succeeded in treating her sister well. I hoped there wouldn’t be another relapse of the stupid fever like the last time, undoing all my efforts.

"What does your brother do?"

Crap! What had my brother's job to do with my prospective job?

"He works for a book publisher."

"Oh," Ramesh said disdainfully with a touch of superior air as if to say 'poor guy mustn't be earning much'. "And your father- is he working too?"

Had we gathered to discuss my family tree? This guy needed to meet my family members one by one and check out their credentials for himself, about what each did, if he was so interested. He appeared more curious about their activities than in my abilities for performing the role we’d gathered to discuss. He seemed intent on whiling away time.

"Yes," I nodded, not deeming it necessary to get into further details. "Do you have further questions?" I asked, clearing my throat, daring him to continue with his aimless quest. It didn't seem the guy had the guts to take affront.

My question hung like a challenge in the silent room for an instant. Had I gone too far with my bravado? The question I’d asked usually fell in the domain of interviewers to ask the candidate towards the end of the interview after they were done.

"Oh, yes, yes," he nodded vigorously. I was right. He showed no sense of affront. "Do you know the C language?" It seemed he’d suddenly remembered the technical requirements of the role for which I was being interviewed.

"Yes, I've done programming in it,” I replied casually.

That wasn’t entirely true. I’d read a few programs written in books and also typed out a few sitting in front of a shared computer terminal at the course I’d enrolled in Delhi prior to shifting to Bangalore. That was the extent of my knowledge in C. At my government job, I had mostly used FORTRAN for programming, but felt confident of grappling with any task thrown my way, in any programming language. The confidence was important. Looking at Ramesh's face, it only multiplied. I had picked up FORTRAN on the job and would do it again with C if the need arose. First I had to get the job.

"Good," he said in an undecided tone. After a few more 'yes', 'no' type of innocuous questions, he embarked upon telling me a little about the company hiring me. He spoke with an air as if his father had set up the company and bequeathed it to him on a silver platter. As an afterthought I decided even the most doting of fathers wouldn’t make such a mistake.

“Do you have a passport?” he asked at length, towards the end of the discussion.

I shook my head. “I never went for one as I didn't want to go abroad for higher studies. That was the primary reason my friends at college got their passports made.”

“Well, in this office, we frequently travel to the US on work, on business visa mostly. I'd advise you to get your passport ready at the earliest.”

The outcome of the 'interview'? He hired me! I couldn't fathom the merit of his questions or how he divined my capabilities or lack of them from the number of kids my brother had, or how old my father was and whether I knew C. He didn't challenge my knowledge of C at any time and took for granted whatever I claimed. Why did he hire me? There was no connection between his questions in the interview, the job description and my programming abilities.

I’d pegged him slightly wrong. Had it been his father's company he might have worried a little about its losses and scrutinized candidates more closely. The scene was infinitely better. He had no worries. His work experience boasted of big brands like Eleny. The demand for resources was overpowering in the burgeoning IT industry in the country. He could simply walk into another job at will if things went bad for him at his present job.

Anyway, I was happy with the offered salary. It was three times what I got at the imaging center. In retrospect, I felt I’d been a beggar so far and felt bad for the rest of my friends who were still stuck in the rot in my previous organization.