Sorting Out Sid (4 page)

He enjoyed a long, luxurious twenty-minute shower
–
something he couldn’t really do when Mandira was around because she always got hyper about his getting late or wasting water, or something or the other. He quite liked this apartment
–
they had moved in only last year, but it did feel like home. It was home, actually
–
as in owned and not rented. Of course, he thought, scrubbing himself absently with her loofah, the EMI was huge, leaving about four rupees at the end of each month in his bank account. But it felt nice to finally be a property-owner. Of course, it hadn’t felt so nice when last month, during a fight, Mandira had used the unappealing phrase ‘Get your lousy ass out of my house’. He didn’t know what hurt more; her impolite reference to his posterior, which he was actually a little vain about, or the fact that she had referred to his, okay,
their
house as her own.

He realized he was brooding on past matters, which wasn’t his style. He also realized that it was rather unmanly to be using his wife’s Dove Shower Gel and loofah, and instead started vigorously rubbing himself all over with a bar of the manly Cinthol. He washed, turned off the shower, and faced his reflection in the mirror.

Not bad, he told himself as always, flexing his arms in a loose imitation of a bodybuilder. He never actually worked out and so he wasn’t too muscular, but he had been a very active sportsman in college
–
football, volleyball, the works. So, he still had the lean frame that he knew some people found attractive. He did sometimes feel he wouldn’t mind trading in the ‘boyish good looks’ for something more in the ‘ruggedly handsome’ category. Still, he was lucky he had the high metabolism or whatever it was that helped him maintain the looks despite his sedentary corporate lifestyle.

He recalled how good-looking a couple Mandira and he made on campus, making waves also because of the fact that he was her junior. They had just looked right together. That’s what everyone had always said. Well, he thought, they still looked good together even though she often made sarcastic remarks about how their marriage had clearly aged her more than him. Once, he had told her that maybe if she smiled more often she wouldn’t look her age. This thoughtful and friendly piece of advice merely resulted in him having his head bitten off. Anyway, he didn’t see the problem
–
he thought she should be glad her husband still looked as good in his late thirties as he had in college. Instead, she seemed almost mad about it, getting riled if someone else remarked on how he still looked so young. Whatever, he thought, giving his left arm a final flex. She was just jealous because he had clearly still got it.

Sid suddenly remembered that it was his day to shave
–
he didn’t get much growth and so shaved every other day. He paused while lathering and examined his face. Should he perhaps try to grow a French beard? He thought it would look cool and also make him appear a little older. Now that he was thirty-six, he thought, he really should try and look
closer to his age. He was also trying to establish himself as a leader in the workplace and a French beard would lend him some gravitas, the way his glasses did. And maybe, he thought a little spitefully, Mandira would be happy if he started to look at least as old as
she
did.

Now that was a mean thought, he chastised himself as he got dressed for work. It was while he was buttoning his shirt that the thought hit him. Of course
–
she was angry because she was getting old and she wanted to have a kid before she turned forty. They had argued about it about three months ago, with his saying that he wasn’t sure they were ready yet.

He rewound quickly through the last few months and realized he had hit the nail on the head! She had become especially cold after that particular argument. Well, he thought, if she hadn’t made such an issue of it, things might have just happened spontaneously. And maybe it wouldn’t have been that bad
–
after all, he was great with kids. All his friends’ brats called him ‘Sid Uncle’. But since she had ranted and raved and made things worse, he stayed firm with his ‘not-ready-for-a-child-yet’ stance.

No wonder then that she had withdrawn completely, refusing to have any physical contact with him. How like a woman to use sex as a weapon
–
or rather, the lack thereof. Typical and frustrating.

While a part of him could kind of see Mandira’s point of view, another part felt like replacing her Colgate toothpaste tube with a tube of Odomos and hiding somewhere nearby with a camera.

Lovely, this whole marriage deal was, he thought, as he stared at himself unseeingly in the mirror.

Just lovely.

4

Sid@Work

S
id felt like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Bloody Delhi roads, bloody Delhi traffic, bloody no-good Delhi Traffic Police. If it weren’t for the fact that he was an under-confident driver and not as well-built as most of those bloody-aggro-Punju-gym-obsessed Delhites, he would have demonstrated the road rage he felt. Instead, as usual, he let everyone cut in front of him, grit his teeth and smiled as motorcyclists bumped against his side mirror and cursed only silently when that Lady Driver suddenly swerved towards him, causing him to nearly ram into the truck on his left. Slow and steady wins the race, slow and steady wins the race, he repeated to himself, trying to stay calm.

An hour on the road already, and he was still only about halfway to his office. But still
–
slow and steady. Turning onto a relatively quiet road and progressing at a decent pace, he started to feel a little better, at one with his trusted WagonR. He took in a deep breath and exhaled with an Ommmmm … I’m so Zen right now, I should get a Maruti, he thought to himself and chuckled a bit at his own joke, filing it away for future use. And then the unthinkable happened.

As Sid casually glanced out of his car window, he noticed that he was being overtaken again, this time by a man riding a bicycle. The worst part was that the man looked at least sixty-five, and a poor and undernourished sixty-five at that. Normally, Sid would have felt only a vague sense of sympathy for such a fellow, but now an icy-cold rage gripped his heart. He muttered the worst Hindi swear words he knew, and gave the man a withering look. The fellow had been riding along blissfully and neither heard the curses nor saw the look. He was only surprised when the WagonR, which had thus far been crawling along, suddenly revved up and shot off like a bullet from a gun, leaving him in a cloud of dust. Spoilt, upper-class, young brat, he thought. ‘Gadhe ki aulad.’ He spat philosophically on the road and continued cycling.

And so it was that Sid reached his office in Noida in a fouler mood than usual. But of course, he didn’t plan to show it. It was time to switch on ‘Work Sid’.

Work Sid was a savvy corporate character. He used phrases like ‘value addition’ and ‘passing the buck’ as well as ‘let’s just take a call’. He still told jokes, but they were the clever, corporate ones. Sid was the life of office parties, but while the ‘Casual-Party Sid’ didn’t like to share centre stage, ‘Work-Sid-At-An-Office-Party’ always made it a point to laugh at other people’s jokes, particularly those of the bosses, regardless of how bland they were. Basically, Work Sid was a bit of a prick, and Sid knew it.

It had worked well for him, and at a young age Sid had clambered ahead over the shoulders of most of his colleagues and stood fairly high on the corporate ladder. Over the last two years he had been heading the marketing department for Kollin’s, the multinational best-selling range of toilet bowl
cleaners. It wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded. In fact, he was often repelled by some of the gorier requirements of his job. Of course, he always played it up in conversations with everybody as a great opportunity to learn about a new and important category, and to play a role in eradicating ‘poor-bathroom-hygiene-related’ diseases in the country. It was actually about as far from all the creative careers that he had dreamed of as a starry-eyed youth, but at thirty-six he had sort of accepted that this was how his life was going to be.

Work Sid was always supremely cheerful. Sid found that no matter how lousy things were in his personal life, it really helped to put on a fake smile and pretend that everything was fine. ‘Fine, FINE,’ he would say in a booming voice whenever anyone asked him how he was. For variety, it was sometimes ‘Good, GOOD’. He would have the opportunity to say it again now. His boss Akash was approaching him, wiping his hands on his trousers.

Akash had just emerged from the loo, and Sid hoped that he had washed his hands well, because Sid knew that it being a Monday, Akash would shake his hand. Akash considered it a highly motivational boss-like act
–
to welcome each member of the team back into the office on Monday with a formal handshake, as if it was the first time they were meeting. Sid hated Akash from the bottom of his heart. If there was anything he hated even more, it was this hand-shaking, particularly after loo visits.

For some reason, Sid had been given the desk right next to the men’s room. This particular floor, which had the bulk of middle-to-senior management, was rather shabby and poorly planned. You would think they would have tried to make the office surroundings sexy, to make up for the toilet-focussed work content. But quite the contrary. And Sid’s desk, if anyone
asked for his opinion, was the least desirable location in the office. He would often be distracted by the sight of a male colleague rushing towards him at top speed only to find that he was really just running past him to the loo. After a while the colleague would emerge looking relieved and with the air of someone truly carefree and unburdened. He would then invariably loiter over to Sid’s desk and waste time by asking intelligent questions
–
‘Aur? Kya ho raha hai?’ Sid had taken to keeping a hand sanitizer and a big box of tissues placed prominently on his desk.

Today, however, Akash seemed a little distracted and didn’t reach out for Sid’s hand. He just said, in an absent-minded manner, ‘Hi, Sid, how was your weekend?’

Sid replied, ‘Fine, FINE, boss,’ with a lot of fake enthusiasm, gearing up to narrate various made-up funny incidents that had happened over the weekend. But Akash seemed to have some other agenda on his mind because he cut in almost immediately with a ‘Good, good,’ and hurried on to say, ‘So, listen, Sid, I kind of forgot to tell you last week
–
tomorrow is Tuesday.’

Sid waited politely. He wasn’t sure if it was meant to be a joke or whether his thick-headed boss was just being his thick-headed self. After a while it became clear that the boss wasn’t planning to clarify any further. Instead, he was looking at Sid expectantly.

Sid cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, boss? Tomorrow is Tuesday … wouldn’t dream of contradicting you, of course … but, anything special about this Tuesday?’

‘Well, of course,’ Akash said, not registering the barb in Sid’s statement. ‘Tuesday is the day I have the LT meeting, you know…’

Sid did know that. Akash very proudly went in for the Leadership Team meeting every Tuesday morning. He was extremely kicked to be a part of the most senior team in the organization, although how he had got there despite years of non-performance was anyone’s guess. This was about the only thing that Sid hoped to actually learn from Akash someday.

‘Yes, boss … and?’

‘You see, this time, basically, it’s like this,’ Akash hesitated, ‘Rakesh wants to see our annual plan and strategy for next year. So I need you to help me polish up the presentation.’

Sid snorted inwardly at Akash’s casual use of ‘Rakesh’ for the group CEO. Probably never called him anything but ‘Boss’ or ‘Sir’ or maybe even ‘Your Highness’ to his face. Anyway, this didn’t sound too bad. Polish up the… Wait a minute!

‘Boss,’ Sid cried, ‘how can we put together the annual plan and strategy in one day? We are supposed to do it over the next six weeks and…’

‘I know, I know,’ Akash said hastily. ‘But when Rakesh mentioned how we should fast-track the process this year, I thought it would be a great chance to showcase how proactive and organized we are, and so I volunteered to be the first to present. But don’t worry, it’s just an approach presentation.’

Sid swallowed his protests and managed to say, ‘Okay, boss. Sure. Can you just send me the slides? I’ll jazz them up and have them ready by the evening.’

‘Oh!’ said Akash. ‘See, the thing is, I haven’t actually made the slides. But I do have the broad framework in place
–
you’ll just need to fill in the gaps and things will be fine.’

‘A broad framework, boss?’ Sid now had a bad feeling about this.

‘Oh, it’s nothing very complicated
–
it’s just some strategic top-line thoughts.’

‘Oh I see
–
strategic top-line thoughts.’ Sid stared at his boss for a moment and then said, ‘Okay, boss, why don’t you just email those to me at least…’

‘Email them to you?’ Akash interrupted. ‘At the moment they’re just some high-level growth ideas in my head, but wait! Why don’t I just quickly jot them down as bullet points for you? That’ll get you going quickly. No time wasting for us, eh? Got a pen?’