Author: Jayashree
Srivatsan
Author Introduction:
I am Jayashree Srivatsan a.k.a jaishvats and I blog at http://jaishwrites.blogspot.
I am an Indian currently residing in Singapore
Story:
“Ma, I‘ve had a really long day.
Don’t get started with eating my head about this whole marriage business,
please!” Meghna almost barked on the phone.
“I don’t care what that
astrologer says” she continued. “Have to go now. Will call you tomorrow okay.
Love you.”
She hung up and looked at the
clock on the wall. It was 9.50 pm .
The grumbling in her stomach reminded her that she had not had anything since her
evening coffee. In another ten minutes, she had to join a teleconference with
her team to review the slides for the presentation scheduled for the next day.
She quickly stuffed the chapathis on the table into her mouth
simultaneously opening the ppt file on her laptop and logged into the call.
As she was getting connected,
Meghna got reminded of her mock presentations at IIM Ahmedabad ten years
earlier. “What an amateur set of presentations we used to come up with!” she
mused and smiled to herself.
The call started and Meghna
assumed a strictly business-like demeanour. She had put in more than fourteen
hours since morning. Yet, her concentration and attention to detail were
impeccable. This kind of diligence in her work combined with her die-hard passion
towards her career had catapulted her to her current position as Vice
President, HR at F&T Pte Ltd, an FMCG company and she directly reported to
the CEO.
The call lasted for an hour and
Meghna’s eyes were a little droopy by then. She stood up, stretched her limbs
and got a glass of cranberry juice from the refrigerator. She sat on her bed,
and lowered the AC temperature with the remote. She placed her pc on her lap
and turned on her bedside lamp after switching off all other lights.
It was time to become Eleanor!
Eleanor in the ‘Alliances of the
Medieval Era’!
As always, Meghna first hit the
home page to check the High Score List. An avatar in a glittering orange
costume holding a long sword and a shield was on top, the name Strider blinking
rapidly next to it. A grin twitched across her lips as she entered the zone.
She had started playing the MMORPG around a year ago. Initially she brushed it
aside as kiddish non-sense. Without her realizing it, an addiction slowly set
in, that confused her but became a part of her routine. Every move she made,
every victory that came her way in the game gave her a tremendous sense of
achievement, a feeling of being on top of the world. Every dragon she faced,
every opponent she fought, seemed to send adrenaline pumping and rushing
through every cell in her body. This excitement kept her hooked and brought her
back to it again and again.
Meghna considered herself to be
the most intelligent and undefeatable of all the players in the whole world who
played the game.
Only Strider was an exception.
He was the leader of the Invincibles clan and Eleanor led a faction that
was a part of it. Strider was different from the rest. A perfect combination of
brains and brawn, he had a reckless dare-devil attitude that amazed Meghna. In
short, she was a huge fan of his. If not for him, she would have been
pushed to the rock bottom in the battle against the Army of the Three Headed
Serpents.
After around an hour of playing,
Meghna went to bed. She woke up blushing in the morning. It was the same dream;
again. A dream, that was recurring quite frequently now.
Meghna visualized it again as she
stood in her balcony, slowly sipping her steaming coffee. Eleanor was in a
wooded area. Tall trees loomed all around her, stretching their arms to the skies,
sunlight sneaking its way in through holes amidst their leaves. She was
standing leaning against one of them, Strider towering over her. He had her
face cupped in his hands and was coming towards her. Slowly yet steadily. She
could feel the heat of his breath and his lips had almost touched hers when the
stupid alarm had started to ring.
“Wonder who that Strider really
is!” she mused. “He is a genius. This sort of thinking cannot come from any
ordinary guy. He cannot be a scientist or a geek. This is more of an organized
thought process. He ought to be in a really senior position and most likely in
a corporate set up. A VP? CEO?! Hmm” she sighed. “Dilip could get some training
from him.” She chuckled as she thought of Dilip, F&T’s Chief of
Business Strategy.
By 8.30 a.m. she was in the office premises in a crisply ironed beige
suit that gave her a beautiful yet formidable appearance. “Good Morning,
Meghna” a tall bespectacled man greeted her as she walked in.
“Hey Arup.” She muttered quickly,
half absorbed in the papers she was carrying and entered her cabin.
Arup belonged to the IT team at
F&T. An anti-virus software had to be installed in all the desktops and he
was fully immersed in that task.
“Would you like some tea sir?”
Gautham, the office boy peered over the cubicle and asked.
“No Gautham, thanks” Arup replied
with a smile. As Gautham turned back, Arup stared after him reminiscing about
the events in his life in the past decade.
The day his father breathed his
last, the day he had quit from college in his first year and the petty jobs he
took up initially to support his mother and two younger brothers flashed like a
fast forwarded movie in his mind. He had joined F&T as an office boy and
had been serving tea to the staff like Gautham.
Arup had nurtured a deep quest
for learning new things that never subsided. He had pledged to complete his
degree when he could and he kept the self-made promise. He completed his BSc
(Maths) in correspondence. Distance learning was a little easy on his pocket
too and he could take the exams at the rate he was comfortable with. Few
diplomas in computer applications followed and soon he was promoted to a
suitable position in the IT department.
“Arup, Can you come to my desk
for a sec?” Meghna’s voice pulled him back to the present and he followed her.
She was having trouble installing Staff-Net, their company’s new internal HR
management software. Within fifteen minutes he had it up and running on her
machine.
After Arup left, Meghna started
going through the ppt for the presentation again. The company was coming up
with a new initiative of providing a one year sabbatical for selected personnel
and sponsoring a management course for them in affiliation with some of the
leading universities in the country.
“How many would actually
qualify?” she wondered. She thought for a while and decided to suggest to the
CEO that the contenders would only be those in current managerial positions
awaiting their promotions to the next levels.
She continued working on the
slides till she decided to take a break for a quick lunch. She was in for a
shock when she returned to her work. She entered her login id and password and
some weird unfathomable error messages began to crop up on her screen. Repeated
attempts were of no avail.
Her meeting with the CEO and
other stakeholders at F&T was only an hour away. She had not shared the latest
ppt with anyone else and her machine had the only copy.
She quickly called up her
secretary and asked her to find someone from the IT department. Meghna was
pretty tensed up and did not have the patience to wait. The IT department was
in the floor immediately below hers. She grabbed her laptop and headed towards
the elevators.
At the IT section, Rajesh, one of
the team leads, quickly got working on her laptop and told her that he would
send it to her as soon as it was resolved.
“I need it very urgently, Rajesh.
Please do something, I shall wait here” she rapidly uttered.
Standing next to Rajesh as he
tried to figure out the problem, Meghna casually glanced around.
She started looking at her own
machine again when a jolt struck her like a lightning. She hurriedly looked
again at the monitor in a corner cubicle.
There was no mistake. She did not
need to be very close in order to recognize the Alliances of the
Medieval Era screen. It was implanted in her being like a DNA helix. She moved
towards it slowly, with an effervescent curiosity bubbling inside.
“Hi Strider” occupied the right
corner of the screen. Meghna excitedly clutched the handle of the chair in
front as a multitude of emotions engulfed her. It was like she had unearthed
some hidden treasure. A wave of delight filled her entire being and for a
minute she forgot all about her current laptop crisis.
“Hey Rajesh, who sits here?” she
asked the team lead trying to sound casual.
Rajesh looked up for a second and
replied “Oh, there! Arup. Why?”
“Nothing” Meghna replied.
Her laptop was restored in no
time and she was soon back at her seat.
“Arup? ARUP? Strider? I can’t
believe it.” she thought. “All this while what was I thinking of him? Another
name in the long list of ‘those-who-just-do-their-
She opened the excel file
containing the list of her recommendations for the new initiative. She added a
new row and entered “Arup Khanna, IT Dept.”.
Mmm! Very well-written again! This episode is going to be a headache to judge!
ReplyDeleteAgain, to stretch for criticism, I can only say that the opening of a story sets the tone - you start with her mom seeking her to wed and, probably, that creates the expectation of 'finding her mate' sort of story. (Gosh! I really have to think and find something to correct, don't I?)
And the usual part of English glitches - the only thing is that you say "Few computer diplomas..." At school, I was taught that when you say "Few ...." it means none and, so, you should say "A few..."
Oh yeah right. I remember I was taught that at school too. Thanks for pointing it out Suresh.
DeleteI think the feedback is more or less the same what I have given to Nabanitha. Story flowed smoothly, language was nice and it was well written. But one of the purposes of this exercise was to see how one can generate interest through the sheer power of narrative. Having read a paragraph, why would a reader want to go to the next one? Either because he is feeling empathy with the character and starts living through the character. Or the events have interested him and he is curious what is going to happen next. Or the story is a discovery for him where he is discovering a new place, new concepts, a different time, a different standard of living etc. Or it is making him laugh. That is what I call the X-factor. You have to an extend tried to make reader relate to Megha which was good. But you could have worked more on this. I counted your number of words. It is 1600 whereas limit is 2500. So you still had lot of words to work with.
ReplyDeleteIf I may just add to TF's point - in the context of the same story, could you have made Arup want to go on that training and request Megha for it and be turned down? Could that training have given a boost to his earnings that may have been needed for his family? Maybe doing that would have added more emotion to the same tale.
DeleteI did think about the word count TF but decided to leave it as is.Will keep your feedback in mind the next time. And Suresh, I did think on those lines but decided against it. I thought that the IT technician may talk to his immediate superior and not to the VP directly! :)
DeleteActually, I think the plot not being my own does make a difference too. I have never played any MMORPG and have almost no idea about it!
Quite right! It is not necessary that Arup makes the request directly or that it be turned down directly, Jaish! Just that the request is made and turned down and that it means a lot to him to get it :)
DeleteI quite like the stories evolved around dark horses. I enjoyed this one, keep writing. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Saru
DeleteThat was a good narrative! One thing that bothered me, though, why was Arup reminiscing about his past first thing in the morning?
ReplyDeleteloved reading this Jaish.. I wish when the lights went off I could turn into someone else toooo ..
ReplyDeleteso did Arup get the job
Bikram's
Thank you Bikram. We can assume he did :)
DeleteWhat I liked was the sensuous scene that you took offline. I had a similar scene, but it was in game. I took it out thinking that in game such interactions weren't possible (actually they are, but that's another story) so that is a bit of ingenuity you have applied there.
ReplyDeleteVery few typos, pretty good command over the language and a coherent narrative. There isn't much to negatively critique here. I have read your blog and some other posts and all of that is good.
Good to see you here.
Thanks a ton for taking the time to read and for the feedback Sandy.
DeleteUps
ReplyDeleteYou see to have a good command on the language. Nicely written.
Downs
1. the stupid alarm had started to ring - The word stupid seems to be over-used by girls/ladies. I think that the word 'stupid' should not be used here. Write the facts and let the reader draw the humor out of it.
2. quit from college - I don't think 'from' is needed here. 'Quit' can well be used as an transitive verb.
3. had been serving tea to the staff like Gautham - This sentense gives a sense that Arup served tea to people like Gautham (who was an office boy), which further means that Arup served tea to the office boys! If I were to write this sentence, I would write it as 'had been searving tea to the staff as Gautham did.
4. in correspondence - through correspondence.
And one more thing - An IT guy is very unlikely to leave his computer screen open and not be at his desk in order for someone to notice a game playing on his screen. That too, a guy like Arup who was much more organized than anyone else.
Thanks for the detailed analysis Diwakar. It definitely helps :)
DeleteAs for the IT guy leaving his screen open, I did think about what you mentioned but I decided to go with a 'We all make mistakes' assumption :D
DeleteOK Here I go. Smooth flow, has me moving down the page to the end as normally as I would read a story, not forcing myself to! I like how you've started out with the mother-daughter conversation and the dream scene you've described. Overall, neat piece of fiction! Its funny how a lot of us female don't have much gaming experience and I guess that shows in our posts, we use dragons and stuff in medieval war games :) But I guess, the story still works just fine!
ReplyDeleteFrom a critic's point of review: I only have a couple of things that I noticed. You could have shown Meghna to be a little more conceited and arrogant, a little bitchy probably. The negative shades of her character looking down on her subordinates dont come out too much.
Also, for her to simply add his name to the recommendation file was a little too much to digest (only my personal opinion). I would think that she might do a rethink on her decision to talk to the CEO about only sending managerial candidates but directly recommending him based on her new knowledge that he's Strider, well guess that might happen in the read world too! Overall good show Jaish!