Sure enough, it was half hour past the two hour deadline and she still hadn't figured the head or tail of the data he'd asked her. She rushed to his cabin with an impending sense of doom to find out if he'd given up on her and left for the day. But, much to her impassioned displeasure, he was there and to make the situation worse, he was wearing glasses - precisely the rimless kind she'd thought no man except Hrithik could carry off without coming across as gay. Well, no comments on how they suited him. Or for that matter, she refused to acknowledge the other changes the end of another working had brought about. There was the five'o clock shadow that grazed his jaw and his shirt sleeves that he'd folded up, showing his forearm muscles being worked at as he lazily typed on his keyboard.
"You wear glasses?" She shot out making him turn to her while she stood at the head of the room.
"Sometimes...when my contacts start to dry my eyes out..." He responded, threading his fingers on his desk. "So..." He drawled and waited for her to begin with her reasoning why she'd been a full 35 mts delayed to show up in that room.
She must have been very afraid then to let him know that she didn't have the numbers for him to look at, but something told her that, that is precisely what he wanted to hear. So much for all the time she'd raked through a dozen PPTs' to make sense of campaigns and the marketing world.
"I'm sorry" She sounded low, her eyes skittered to the bunch of papers directly in front of her, "I honestly don't know what you wanted me to do with the numbers after I got the forecast and the actuals"
He leaned back into his chair while his eyes stayed on her. She thought she might flinch from that steady measuring gaze of his, but thankfully he leaned in again to address her at that exact moment she would have gone over the edge, "Did the forecast and actuals match?"
"No, they are quite off"
"That is because the initial forecast is just that - a forecast. Now, that the actuals are available, I wanted you to go back and build the adjusted forecast so that when you compare that with revenue, you can find the true growth..."
"Hmm...Ok...How do you build adjusted forecast?" Her eyes were wary, her body on the ready to keep any insults he was going to hurl at her from seeping in.
He turned back to his screen, his hands hovering over his keyboard and she swallowed the bile that kept rising in her throat during that long minute.
"Get your laptop..." She heard him say much to her surprise and her heart lurched into her chest. It wasn't joy at all, but for the dread that was slowly swallowing her in whole as she walked back to her desk.
After what seemed like ages on her clock - however, only two and half hours on his - he asked her if she wanted to share the chinese take out he'd ordered. Her eyes narrowed and she didn't worry about the contempt that he might notice on her face. In the time span she'd been in his office, her worst nightmares had been realized. All her initial assumptions - that he might not be the cold Mr.Fibanocci that others made him to be - were floored. The problem was that the other bosses whom she'd only heard or read about in novels cannot hold a handle to his eerie patience which was unnerving at best. He didn't hurry her when she hadn't showed him anything for almost an hour or asked him a question. And even if she did, a simple, "No...that's not how I would go about it" was all he offered, but never once giving the solution to her. It was clear now, that the whole point of the game was to test her endurance, her tolerance factor for him. It was like he expected her to come up with nothing short of a theorem or formula of her own. There were questions on her mind about going home for the night, but she didn't dare bring them up. He wasn't going to pounce on her, this she was certain of, not like the lewd opportunists did if they ever managed to corner a fellow lady employee alone; not when he was barely aware of her presence along with his desk, chair, system and books that lined against one wall.
Sitting there with him, had been a detox of sorts. All the misleading impressions he'd given her and the not so appropriate observations she'd made - even her zing - had vaporized from his rude ways of that evening. Despite the slight disdain that had taken shape, there was also an uncalled for haze in her thoughts. Was this really him? To her that question was just as stupid as it was important to know. But there was no telling how far she was willing to go to find the truth.
Another 45 mts passed by and he was done slurping the last of the liquid in the take out container. She didn't know what frustrated her more: lack of a breakthrough at whipping up a formula that measured true growth (that appeared to matter to him more than the woman sitting at his desk) or the fact that he hadn't cast so much as a glance at her the entire time he'd polished off his dinner. Just because she'd denied at first, it didn't mean he couldn't offer her some by being insistent. Argh!
At quarter to nine, she did get somewhere with her deliverable, but he couldn't have made her feel more dumb when he asked her to redo it again only from hearing the first part of her explanation. She glanced at the clock on the wall and then back at him when Meera called.
"I told you I will come home by myself" She gritted out after sinking into her seat and bent down under the desk, to keep away from his view.
"Don't worry...I will finish this work and come home safely..." She answered back without letting Meera finish demanding an explanation on what was this work that she didn't know about and was keeping her at office till 9.00 PM.
When she came up to his eye level, he asked, "You can go home if you choose to..."
And her eyes glared expectantly for him to tell that they could finish this up the next day. But no...He wouldn't offer up something along those lines even if hell was to freeze over.
"No...we are this far along...then we might as well complete it tonight" She said, sulking at the book where she'd scribbled her possible theories.
"I want you to think aloud...everything you write or calculate on the excel, I want you to say it loudly" He said without taking his eyes off his computer.
Was there another way to subject to a royal humiliation? Her eyes widened with realizing the surprise she felt from knowing there was a rebel inside her somewhere. May be it was him - he was a testy bas***d. Every nerve in her body wanted to lash out on him. She'd asked of him to show how they could partner on the deliverables he expected from her, not poach and skin her alive. But beyond all that she openly showed on her face, she continued to sit there and steeled herself for what was to follow.
After only two minutes of doing what he'd suggested, she was overwhelmed with guilt. What she'd imagined then was far worse than he was capable of, this much she was sure by then.
She'd started from the beginning and when she'd reached to explain the cost part of her formula, he'd turned and met her eyes. "Cost in marketing is a variable component unlike other divisions. It cannot be a static function. Continue..." Nothing. Not another word to pull her down on the one assumption that had kept her from finishing off the initial part of the formula. His voice hadn't been patronizing then. Or there after when he had to correct her on some of the fundamentals multiple times.
"We leave at 9.30 no matter what..." He said, distracting her from the madness of numbers she was jotting down on a paper.
"Why?" Her forehead creased and a vague worry showed up there. "Why now? I thought you wanted this to be done..." 9.30 was hardly 10 minutes away.
"Because I have cut-off limits. I strongly..." He stressed on it to draw attention and then purposefully dropped his eyes to her sheet and then raised it back to her, "believe in having an upper limit to everything that I exert on others"
Her brows shot up and it took her a moment to comprehend where he was getting with that. She visibly showed a growing awareness in her eyes, then she looked down at the numbers and then again at him. She blinked and he finally gave her that approving smile that began to ease her insides.
"Shit!"
"Exactly..." He responded in kind and his smile grew wider as he went back to browsing on his screen.
"What is the variance I should allow for?" She asked, her words running into each other from her excitement.
"Lets just say I have been waiting to tell you all evening that we always factor it between 30 - 60 %"
Of course, he'd mentioned that she treat cost as a variable function, but she'd clearly forgotten to get its limits. She keyed in the numbers into the raw equation she'd on the excel and waited for her numbers to be restated for all campaigns from the last six months.
"Is the growth percentage for Campaign 34387 in the last quarter 36 percentage?" She asked tentatively, clutching her pencil between her fingers, as if she was in prayer.
He turned his screen to her and brought up an application that looked like a raw interface to input a few parameters. "Tell me the forecast and actuals..."
She responded in kind eagerness as him and he went on to enter them as she gave the details. After filling five text boxes with numbers he pressed enter and there it was -the cherished number; 35.8% was displayed in black font on the right corner of the screen.
A second passed. Another second and she continued to blink at the tiny number that had evaded her all evening and the number stayed there, unsuspecting all that she'd endured to seduce it to come into being. Again as she took in that number, she wasn't entirely blind to the villainous strain he hand in him.
"Does this mean you made me do all that work, when you had that piece of raw software all along?" She spoke in a monotone, giving away the disappointment in her voice.
"It was for your own good" She caught his smirk, "You have learnt all possible ways of how not to measure true growth in your way... and then there was my foolproof method of measuring it...Besides this is my macro. I built it and no one has to know that now, do they?"
She didn't feel the need to check the results for the other campaigns for she already knew they were right, just as he did. It was confusing, even painful when she didn't know if she was happy or sad about having learnt it all.
"Thanks for your time..." She stood from her chair, picking up her stuff, "I appreciate it" She said with a false smile.
"Let me drop you...I have my car downstairs..."
"No...Thank you. I will take the subway or a cab..." He would have convinced her within seconds if his phone hadn't gone off that exact moment she was leaving his door. Because she was in a hurry to leave the building, she went straight to her desk to grab her bag and then left before he could find him.
Anywhere but in the same room as him, she'd told herself before exiting his room. Oh! why did she have to ask him to show her his expectations with work. There he'd given her a glimpse of all that and beyond. There was no doubt in her mind, that she was the first intern he'd coached and she hated him for that. For the new knowledge that moved as if it was a turgid dark liquid inside her.
Oh! Why did she have to ask him? Was all she could ask through the subway ride and for the rest of the night until she fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning.
All until she showed up for the first meeting of the day with the same group that had undoubtedly branded her as the new office fool after yesterday's meeting when she'd corrected him.
He wasn't there and she couldn't muster an emotional response to anything related to him anymore. But like always he showed up on time when the meeting was about to start.
"Sorry team..." He addressed them all, his voice revealing an urgency, "I have to run out with Scott for a client meeting. You will have to go ahead without me. I will catch up with Arjun later..."
"MK, then we can cancel the meeting and re-schedule it" Arjun sounded annoyed, "We need you today for our marketing audit...Josh tells me you have been the one to do it for the last four years..."
Her head shot up from her laptop and sure enough he gave her a knowing smile.
"Ah! I see...Geet here has already done it...Take her help to finish it. I'm sure she is well equipped to go over any questions you have"
"You mean Geet?" Arjun found the vote of confidence coming from Maan difficult to swallow, his face wrinkled with doubt.
"Why don't you start white boarding it Arjun...Geet won't you help?" She was already scowling at him and her nervousness knew no bounds then. She was thankful for all his trust but educating an audience on the auditing procedure was still pushing it.
"All right..." Arjun gave up the fight and with an audible sigh went to write up the details of the first campaign. And now she couldn't help but ponder why he hadn't left yet, if he really was going some place. Her nose wrinkled.
"So, if we estimate cost as it is..." Arjun said, as Maan folded his hands at the door with his gaze fixed on the board. Ah! She smiled and shook her head imperceptible to others. Ok; may be not so imperceptible to him. He'd obviously foreseen that precise instant to come by.
"Sorry..." Geet cut in, her tone confidently high as she showed off "Cost is a variable component in marketing unlike the other domains we have audited so far...and you have to account for it..."
And right then, everyone in the room were forced to look up from whatever it was they were doing. Momentous history was being created right then. How ecstatic it was to astonish the same group of people for different reasons only one day apart.
When she turned back to the door to seek his acceptance, he was gone. Lord! he was weird, but she was secretly glad for that. She wouldn't have handled it well, she recokened, and in that instance of overpowering gratitude, everything welling up in her might have broken through the stone wall she'd tried to keep up since last night. Did she get it right? This thing that hadn't existed before last night - this hand of friendship that he was extending towards her.
After a few minutes the phone in the meeting room rang and one of their team member answered it, only to find Maan join them over phone again. By the time the meeting ended, she'd arrived at the conclusion that perhaps it had only been a test to see her worthy of imparting with the knowledge he was privy to and nothing more. May be, she'd been all wrong about his exclusivity in choosing her to do so. After all, she'd stayed until god awful hours at office and endured his sparse and clipped comments.
The meeting was a huge success in terms of establishing her merit again in her team's eyes. It was still dawning on her on what this meant at office. But she didn't have a care in the world about all the attention that she would garner soon when all that remained in her mind was the next time she would talk to him in private. He deserved much better than the halfhearted "Thank you for your time, I appreciate it..."
When everyone left the room after the meeting was done and before she could cut the line, she called his name to check if he was still there.
"Yeah..." He sounded mildly agitated and hoped it hadn't been her who had caused it.
"Thank you" She said pausing a bit, before she repeated it once again, "Thank you...really it means a lot" Her voice was low, addled with a mixture of emotions.
"No problem..." She could hear him smiling and that convinced her that it was something else taking his attention, "I'm gone for the rest of the day and so I want you to get started on the Germany numbers that is due on Tuesday..."
She rolled her eyes, "Ok...I will..." But there was something else that had caught her focus. He would be gone all day?
There was a beat of awkwardness before she spoke again, "So, I will see you at the fall party this evening? Meera told me that there will be bollywood music and food too in the later part of the night..."
He didn't respond immediately and that got her anxious, "I'm usually never there...More over this client meeting is in Hartford. I'm not sure I will be back in time"
Bummer "Ok..." There couldn't be another low point in her day.
"You have a good evening and a weekend..." She thought she heard his voice grow tight with something familiar she couldn't lay a finger on.
"You too..." She hung up without lingering and covered her face in the cool of her sweaty palms. When had her plain life turned so complex? She wasn't going to debate if it was complex or complicated or Whatever! There had been so many things she'd learnt in the last 24 hours that she didn't think she could process it all anytime soon. Whatever state of being her life was in, it will have to stay put until she could come back and read things differently. As of now, she only saw things one way. And that was one hell of a way not to see them. How could it be when she always managed to see him as part of that picture?
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
Cricket
1.1k