There was just one man sitting in the conference room. Well,
calling him a man is a bit of a stretch, considering he still didn’t know how
to tie a Windsor knot and he still didn’t know the concept of matching his
shirt to his trousers and his belt to his shoes. His boss also referred to him
as a kid he had taken under his wing, to be transformed from a boy to a man by
putting him through the wringer of corporate rigor. So, yes, it would be best
if we referred to him as the kid.
He had come into the conference room early so that the a/c
vent above would dry out his fresh shirt drenched in sweat by the oppressive Bombay heat outside. The
meeting was supposed to start in 30 minutes and it didn’t hurt to have a good
seat at the far end of the room where the bigger bosses wouldn’t spot you and
you won’t be expected to run out for errands for other senior people.
The bigger bosses were out on the balcony, smoking. They
were dishing out the same cynical gallows humour that corporate honchos across
all the balconies in all the corporate offices must be dishing out at that very
moment. The background score to this current conversation was the background
score of the Lower Parel of the new millennium
– the constant hum of machines stationed at half-made buildings that go on and
on because the machines, unlike the labour, don’t have shifts and unions. Then
the biggest boss looked into his Citizen and decided it was time to walk back
to his cabin and wait till the conference room is full enough for him to make his
entry.
Back inside the conference room, the kid looked on as 3 IT
guys were earning their day’s salary by switching on the laptop, plugging in
the projector wire and spotting and pressing that red button on the remote
which had ‘on’ written on it. The others had now started coming in slowly. Grim
faces talking about grim things, carrying dull office stationery and grey
laptops.
The kid was asked to shift his seat a number of times, and
inevitably, he had been shifted next to the entrance. Now there were more
people than chairs in the room so people were stepping out to get chairs from
wherever they could because the peon was taking his own sweet time to turn up.
There were about 25 people sitting in a conference room meant for 10. It’s Bombay , after all.
As the biggest boss called the meeting to order with a few
polite words that meant nothing, the kid wheeled his seat for the nth time to
make way for another senior guy who had come in late and who was both quick and
insincere with his apology. Now it dawned on this senior guy that,
surprisingly, no one had kept a seat for him. He tried to make eye contact with
the kid who stubbornly avoided looking up, feigning to concentrate on a blank
excel sheet instead. The senior guy waited for a bit to make contact so that he
could ask the kid to get the fuck up and get another seat for himself, but the
kid held on long enough for the senior guy to give in and get himself a chair.
The meeting was now well and truly in motion. The biggest
boss was speaking passionately, every now and then taking a peek in his ipad to
check if he had left out anything he had to say. While the kid was feasting his
eyes on the overly made up, buxom senior lady, there was a knock on the door
and the peon came in with trays of coffee, tea and the real chief guest of the
meeting – biscuits.
It’s a tough job to feign interest. Its tougher when
something else is tantalizingly drawing your attention. You need every sinew in
your body to obey you and not turn towards it involuntarily. There they were in
all their brown finery – three plates of biscuits arranged in concentric
circles of goodness. The buxom hottie with the fake straight hair went for the
Mcvities Digestives in a single, coordinated, gracious movement of limbs that
had everybody transfixed on her ample rear for a moment. Now one of the
sub-ordinates was talking and observing everybody attacking his favorite Oreo
cookies. He couldn’t go for them till the time the boss was done with him but
his gaze couldn’t help but follow his enemies from their seats to the plate and
back. The kid was closer to the table so all the seniors seating around him
goaded him to pass them this biscuit and the other. The two best friends wanted
him to grab 4 Good Days for them to go with their teas. The Pure Magics were
being gobbled up by the senior guys – you see, the biscuits had their own
hierarchies. On the outer-most circle were the Parle-Gs. Their turn came when
all the inner circles had been consumed.
The biggest boss was now talking about the current recession
in the industry and how everybody needed to put in their 200% because he had
asked for 150% 6 months ago and that hadn’t proved enough. Everybody nodded
their agreement in unison.
On a day that begins with cramming into a small room with people
you come to hate and ends with standing in line to get a cab, which delivers
you a kilometer from the railway station - and then cramming into a small
compartment with people you come to hate - the free biscuits are your little
redemption. The wife and kids will eat away at the salary, the boss will make
you pay several times over for all the words of praise you ever manage to
elicit from him and government will take away what remains for people who were
too lazy to work.
But the biscuits will be yours. They will yield willingly to
the force of your teeth. The first crisp bite will be followed by many more, as
it mixes with your saliva. The cream will swirl on your tongue, tickling you
playfully. Finally the biscuit and the cream and the saliva will mesh into an inseparable
slush and frolic down your willing throat. That biscuit is your victory and
yours alone.
Somewhere, an HR manager is approving the list of biscuits
to be purchased for the next month. The HR manager knows the role these
biscuits play in your life. But you had put in just 150% in your last 6 months
when a ‘self-starter’ would have heard his boss’s demand for 150% and put in
200% out of his own volition. So the HR manager reduces the Oreo quantity to
half and doubles the order for Parle G.
That’s why we need HR in our offices.
That, and to wish us on Diwali and Holi with Google images.
