Fiction: Freshly minted MBA graduate Pawan Pande realises the corporate ladder is more of a maze

Just as Pawan Pande strode into the office, the lights flickered and failed: a power outage. Only the emergency tubelight continued casting a dismal glow over the main hall. By its faint light, he got to his cabin. In the darkness, the computer was only a hazy silhouette. The phone and the intercom looked dead. It seemed as though all of creation was lying inert.

When the electric current did not fail, this small room was his empire. In a little while, his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and he could discern the outline of the mouse, lying on the table. Pawan smiled to himself. This was a mouse in shape alone; it had none of the bounciness of the animal. Without electricity, it looked like a toy. He said, “Speak mouse, or be silent forever.”

The mouse chose silence. Suddenly, Pawan thought of his younger brother, Saghan. As children, the two of them would make midnight raids on the kitchen for biscuits. Their incursion would disturb the large rats that made a regular nocturnal invasion. The rats terrified Pawan but not Saghan. He would open the door, turn on the light and miaow. The rats would assume that a cat was on to them and flee. But then Chhotu had been born in the Year of the Cat.

Pawan was not allowed to linger among his memories. The electricity came flooding back and the lights blazed around him, blinding him for a moment. It seemed as if the office had come back to life. Datar started the hot plate and began to make coffee. Babubhai refilled the tray in the Xerox machine and Shilpa Kabra got up from her place and skipped over to Chitresh’s table. “Do you know that we’ve snaffled the Nirula’s contract?”

Sitting at his table, Pawan ground his teeth. That idiot girl was always talking to the wrong person. Did she even know that Chitresh was going to lose his job on the 24th instead? He had asked for two jumps in pay. The company was about to ask him to take a flying leap instead. It had still not said a word but Chitresh had enough savvy to know that he and the company were now at an impasse. The silence spoke louder than words: it was a stand-off. Last week, he had gone for an interview at Asian Paints. The area manager of Asian Paints had met Pawan at Nirula’s and had taunted him about people jumping ship. Pawan had given Chitresh a glowing report. He did not care that this would stand Chitresh in good stead. He just wanted him out so that the headache would end. It was then that he had found out that Nirula’s needed 20 cylinders a day. The Indian Oil Corporation had been pressing them to sign a yearly contract.

Gurjar Gas was also putting in its bid. The IOC gas rate was the lowest. Everyone expected that their agent, Shah and Shah, would pull off the contract but there was just one hurdle for them to cross. They often simply ran out of gas, a common problem with the public sector. Sometimes it was a workers’ strike, sometimes demands made by the managers. Meanwhile Gurjar Gas was proud to claim that it had only satisfied, if not positively ecstatic, customers. Pawan Pande was proud of his new city even if his new job left much to be desired. Consider this: the current had failed at 4 pm and had come back, regular as clockwork, at 4.30 pm. The entire city had been divided up into time zones and each time zone lost its electricity for half an hour. This meant that no single area bore the brunt of load-shedding. By comparison, his old city, Allahabad, had epic power outages. When the electricity failed, it could often not be restored for three days. Chhotu would say, “Bhaiya, the transformer went BOOM. I heard it.” The examination season and the wedding season coincide there. As soon as the load increased, the electricity would fail. Pawan would moan: “Ma, I have three chapters left. How am I supposed to study?” His mother would then light four candles and station them at the corners of the table and place his books in the centre. This innovative arrangement would spur him on to further efforts and he would work even harder.

Meanwhile, Chhotu would take it upon himself to make four or five trips to the electric company not because that would restore the current sooner but because he enjoyed the walk. Even as a little child, he would enjoy roaming about in the market. Examinations notwithstanding, he would make inventive excuses to get out – a new pencil to be bought, the school uniform to be ironed – and would absent himself from the house. As he trotted off, he would say, “Be right back,” but this was no indication of where he was going and when he would return. In Marathi, a departing guest would never say something like “I’m off now” or even “I’m going”; instead the guest will say, “I’ll be back.” Gujarat has an even more beautiful tradition. When a guest departs, the host says, “Aaoo jo” (Do come again).

It was true that Pawan had travelled 1800 kilometres from home but after his MBA he had to go somewhere. Naturally his parents would have preferred him to work somewhere close by, but he had said, “What kind of job will I get here? This is the city of unemployment. The maximum I can hope for is a job marketing Noorani Oil!”

His parents had realised that their ambitious son would have to move to another town. Somewhat ironically then, Pawan ended up working for the Ahmedabad version of Noorani Oil.

It was a job that Pawan had managed, just barely. At the end of the MBA, the entire campus geared up for job interviews. Pawan was sure he would be scooped up on the first day by a major or an MNC. He was prepped, he was ready and then the unexpected happened. A stray mosquito had injected him with a dose of dengue so powerful that for the next few days, he had been incapable of coherent thought. He just wanted the pain to end. It did, for Pawan was a fit young man and his natural immunity won through. But the interviews were done and the majors were gone.

A sympathetic college professor made a few calls and Bhailal turned up, delighted at snagging an MBA from IIM-A, delighted at Pawan’s bad luck that had become good luck for his company. He offered such a dazzling amount of money that Pawan had taken the offer without thinking too much, so relieved was he that he would not be the one unemployed MBA from his cohort. Bhailal had made him Assistant Manager (on probation).

Fuelled by gratitude and relief, Pawan had decided that he would make the best of a bad job. He had put his head down and gone out, looking to hook new clients. When he heard of the foreign trips and air-conditioned suites that his friends were enjoying, he felt a pang but assured himself that his experience was gold. He was in touch with the real India; he was working the salt face of commerce. But he also knew that if he were not promoted and given a decent increment, he would leave.

Excerpted with permission from Rat Race, Mamta Kalia, translated from the Hindi by Jerry Pinto, Speaking Tiger Books.