Office Love Story – A Colleague, a Friend, a Soulmate
Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com
Shekhar Rao was a single, middle-aged, mid-level executive in the Bangalore office of a multi-national company.
Sunita Gupta was a single, middle-aged, mid-level executive in the Delhi office of the same multi-national company.
Every morning they dragged themselves out of bed, somehow managed to find the motivation to push themselves into the company bus, exchanged pleasantries which they never meant with their co-workers, locked themselves in their cubicles for the better part of the day, sipped badly made canteen coffee, and logged in to their desktop computers for mind numbing number crunching work that made minutes look like hours, and hours look like days. They would watch with frustration at the clock tick slowly to closing time and finally made their way back home to nagging relatives and badly written paperback novels.
It was during one of those dreary days that the managers of the Delhi and Bangalore branches along with the managers of other branches all over India announced to their respective teams that a management conference was being held in Nagpur, and they needed candidates to attend that conference. The theme of the conference was not a particularly interesting one, and nobody in any office felt like attending. The announcement prompted intense bickering and politics in all the branches with the losers being booked on the flights to Nagpur. Shekhar and Sunita were the unfortunate victims of the intrigues in Bangalore and Delhi and thus found themselves travelling to the Orange City.
At the conference they were seated next to each other, with both of them desperately fighting sleep and apathy as speaker after speaker droned on endlessly on inconsequential matters. As the third speaker got off the stage, and the fourth one came on to take his place, Shekhar made a sarcastic joke under his breath. Sunita heard the joke and burst out laughing, rather too loudly. Everybody turned and looked at her, stunned. Sunita stopped laughing and her face turned red with embarrassment. She realized that Shekhar was also looking at her, confusion writ all over his face. Sunita hurriedly apologized and made a haphazard excuse about receiving a funny text message. Her fellow attendees gave her a few sullen stares and then went back to being bored.
But Sunita went back to quietly chuckling under her breath at the joke, and Shekhar went back to feeling proud that he had made a joke, and somebody had actually laughed at it.
During lunch Sunita came up to Shekhar and said
“I am sorry”
“For what?” asked Shekhar
“For laughing so loudly and embarrassing us both like that”
“Oh, please don’t apologize. I am flattered that someone laughed at my joke. Honestly, I think the proceedings needed a joke. This conference is such a bore.”
“Really, you feel that way too. I thought that I was the only one who was bored”
“Are you kidding? I am sure most of the attendees cannot wait for these three days to get over. By the way, how did you get dragged into this conference”
“Office politics”
“Yeah, same here”
And so Shekhar and Sunita began talking.
Their lunch time conversation began with what they were doing at their individual branches and the nature of their work, and it continued on to the machinations of colleagues and the idiosyncrasies of bad bosses during the tea time break. Their conversations continued on to more personal matters during lunch and tea on day two, and during lunch and tea on day three. They also found themselves spending time with each other during the farewell party.
They were both surprised at how easily the words flowed and how the conversations continued with no gaps and few pauses. Silences were not uncomfortable; only a time used for contemplating the next topic. Sunita never had to explain her views more than once; Shekhar immediately understood and agreed with most of them. Shekhar made more jokes that Sunita found funny, and told more stories that she found fascinating.
The conference over, they took the flights back to Delhi and Bangalore wondering if they will ever meet another person that they clicked with so instantly, if somebody will ever agree with their views again or laugh at their jokes and listen to their stories.
When they returned to their respective branches Sunita and Shekhar settled into the monotony and drudgery of their day to day life.
Till one day during closing time at the Delhi office Sunita had to send an urgent mail. The office bus was about to leave and Sunita barely had time to draft the mail, type the name of the sender, and hit the send button. Once she typed in the name Shekhar, Outlook gave a list of options of persons she could send the mail to, and in her rush rather than sending the mail to Shekhar Rana in the Singapore office, she hit enter at Shekhar Rao’s name. She logged off quickly and rushed to catch the bus and did not realize her mistake till the following morning.
Shekhar was working late in Bangalore and was surprised to see the mail from Sunita. But he quickly realized that the official mail was for another Shekhar. He replied back on the mail suggesting that she had sent it to the wrong person. But he could not resist the temptation to chat with her again. So he finished his reply by asking her an innocuous question.
“By the way, how is the weather in Delhi?”
The next day Sunita’s face was not only flush with embarrassment at having sent the mail to the wrong person, but it also cringed with fright at the right receiver not having gotten the mail. Fortunately, she managed to dispatch the mail to Shekhar Rana before he noticed, and no damage was done. Once the hectic events of the morning were over, Sunita read the mail from Shekhar Rao, again. How is the weather? What an innocuous question. That was so typically Shekhar, she thought.
The prospect of talking to her Nagpur conference companion excited her and she responded with a few questions about Bangalore in a return mail, which also included a quote of thanks for having pointed out her mistake rather than just ignoring it like most of her colleagues would have done. Shekhar responded to the mail saying that it was his honest duty, but this time he sent the message through the Lync Office Communicator. And soon jokes followed jokes, questions followed answers and answers followed questions, views followed opinions, and quips followed one liners. Sunita and Shekhar stopped looking at the clock waiting for the minute hand to tick quickly and instead started thinking about interesting things to write in the chat. The time moved quickly and they did not realize when the day had begun and when it ended.
He didn’t know exactly when it happened, but one day when Shekhar was taking the office bus, he found himself smiling and he wondered why. Was it because his work had gotten interesting? No, it was still mind numbing as usual. Were his colleagues behaving better with him? No, they had actually gotten worse. Was his boss favoring him now? No, in fact it was quite the opposite. It was Sunita, wasn’t it. That’s right, deep down he knew the reason for his smile. He was remembering the chat he had had with Sunita the day before and that memory alone made him happy.
A day came when Sunita got into a particularly bad fight with a colleague, which upset her very badly. Her colleague had made a work related mistake and she was blame shifting it on Sunita. Sunita needed a friend to talk to and so she picked up the phone and called Shekhar. The call lasted nearly thirty minutes but at the end of it Sunita felt a lot better and got the courage to get through her day. That day she realized that Shekhar was more than just a colleague or a work friend. She had found someone pretty special.
Annual appraisals were always a painful time for Shekhar and Sunita. Sycophancy and nepotism ruled in their offices, and despite working hard at their jobs the two of them always got low ratings. Their straight forward natures did not work in a world where buttering up bosses and backbiting about colleagues counted more than performances.
Normally Shekhar accepted his ratings with a wry smile, took his appraisal letter and went back to his desk and his work. He never even complained to his boss or try to seek a redressal. But this year Shekhar had had enough, and decided it was time to quit and seek greener pastures. Besides, he had another idea in mind and a part of him wanted to convert that idea into action.
The boring management conference in Nagpur was being held again this year, and this time Shekhar volunteered to go before internal office intrigues could send him there. On Shekhar’s convincing Sunita also volunteered to come to Nagpur. And so they met again in the Orange City seated side by side as one speaker after another bored the audience in monotone voices.
But Shekhar and Sunita were not bored. In fact their minds were not even focused on what the speakers were talking about. They were thinking about something else entirely different, and they couldn’t wait for the day to get over.
On the evening of the first day Shekhar took Sunita out to dinner.
There was so much that he wanted to tell her, about how she had changed his life, about how she had given him a happiness that he never thought he could have. About how in a world where despair is all too easy to find she was the hope that kept him going. About how in a world where enemies are all too easy to make, she was the best friend that anyone could ever hope to get. A year back he had come to Nagpur an angry and depressed man and left as someone with renewed hope in life and friendship. The last year had been the most memorable of his life and there was just one reason for that. Sunita.
There was so much that she in turn wanted to tell him. About how reading his chat messages everyday was a blessing that kept her from breaking down. About the time she had called him up on the phone on the verge of tears, and he had responded with nothing but kindness and love, and she could never be grateful enough for that. The people of the world were fools if they could not understand his wisdom or appreciate his kindness. But she understood it, and she appreciated it, and she felt herself to be the luckiest woman in the world for seeing it.
They made nervous small talk for a while. Inconsequential questions asked for which answers were not really sought. Is it really cold in Delhi? I heard that Bangalore traffic is chaotic? Did you finish that project you were working on?
Before the real words came tumbling out one after the other. The words that they really meant to speak. Not in a structured way, but in a random chaotic manner. A garble of feelings and emotions held back for a long time that were just itching to get out. But it was ok, because these were feelings of the heart, the deepest most intense feelings that they would ever feel, and these would be the most important words that they would ever say, and it did not matter in what order they came, or whether they came quickly or slowly, just as long as they came. Then finally when all the feelings were revealed and all the emotions were shared, there was only one obvious and final thing to do.
In a voice choked with emotion Shekhar said,
“Sunita, will you marry me”
And crying tears of joy Sunita replied.
“Of course”
The next day again they were again seated side by side in the conference. All around them fellow attendees were sighing and yawning in apathy. But Shekhar and Sunita were wide awake and giggling to themselves. They had excited smiles on their faces. After years of loneliness in a world filled with cruelty, they had finally found love and companionship; they had found a soul mate.
On day three of the conference while the other attendees were busy at the farewell party, Shekhar and Sunita were calling up their family to tell them the good news.
A month later Shekhar quit his job in Bangalore and took up a new job in Delhi. A month after that he and Sunita got married.
Shekhar and Sunita no longer had to talk secretly over Office Communicators and make jokes at management conferences.
They could do so face to face in the privacy of their new home.
–END–
