Every Magic is an Illusion

Author: Arvind Passey

Author Intro: Arvind has been heading Corporate Communications for leading education brands before deciding to discover the writer in him. Now an enthusiastic blogger, he has also got the 'Best Reviewer of 2012' BTB Literary Award, has a weekly column in The Education Post, loves his tech involvement as the Samsung Brand Ambassador, and dreams of completing his first novel soon. His blog ( www.passey.info ) has posts that meander through travels, technology, politics, books, wit, poetry, short-stories, food-n-wine, sports, and other thoughts that may just trigger the start of yet another dream for a reader!

Story:

Everyone called her a magician. They said, ‘She has a way with words. Spoken, unspoken, and the ones that went into devising strategic content.’

She agreed.

And when they heard she agreed, they said, ‘What an arrogant bitch Singha is!’ This is how the corporate world functions. But Singha was hardly bothered about such agreements or such disagreeable conclusions. The important thing is that every word always reached her. She was once heard telling her boss, ‘I know more about what you plan to do next than even you do.’ She then laughed and the boss too joined in this unwholesome mirth.

An hour back, Singha’s boss called her up and said, ‘I’m assigning Raza to your team. He’s as good as you are with marketing insights. You must’ve heard about him?’

‘Yes, I know who Raza Sufi is. But tell me, have you heard about the new product that we are planning to launch?’

‘Yes, I have. But let’s not discuss about it on the phone.’ As soon as she disconnected the phone, there was a discreet knock on her cabin door.

‘Come in.’

He entered. ‘Good afternoon. I’m Raza.’

‘I’m expecting you. Sit down please.’ She turned her attention to the new email that had just arrived. It was her boss’s assessment of Raza.

‘You have had an interesting career graph,’ she turned to Raza after a minute of rapidly reading the email, ‘why did you want to opt out of the core research team and join marketing?’

‘It’s simple. I had promised that I will help market what I had helped develop,’ said Raza, ‘and anyway, such rotations, I’m sure, will give my research instincts a sharper edge.’ He then mumbled something.

‘What? I didn’t get you?’ She asked.

‘I just called you a magician.’

‘And a bitch too?’

Raza smiled and said, ‘No. But if being bewitching makes you a witch, I wouldn’t be surprised.’

Singha smiled and said, ‘Isn’t it too early to flirt with your team leader? Marketing isn’t about research molecules that you can pour from a pipette into a burette and wait for a reaction. It is all about understanding reactions before you pour in anything anywhere.’

‘I’m just a seeker of answers.’

‘You’re an interesting person, Raza Sufi. Do you also like sufi music?’

‘I love anything that brings me closer to answers. That is why I’m here,’ Raza wasn’t sure if this last bit would go too well with Singha, but he did say it. There was no answer from her, so he went on, ‘Everyone calls you Singha. But I’d love to call you Sigiriya. The lion’s throat!’

Singha looked at him with narrowed eyes and asked, ‘You do research well, Raza. Tell me something about the research assignment that you just left to join my marketing team.’

‘That is classified information yet. And all that anyone may want to know in the pre-launch stage is already with you, Sigiriya.’

By now Singha was sure in her heart that Raza was either totally smitten by her or was making all the right moves to be sent back to his research team. ‘One more attempt at flirting,’ thought Singha, ‘and you’re not going to remain in marketing anymore.’ And this was when she read this message on her mobile:

‘Your selection as VP-Mktg is nearly confirmed. CMD wants to discuss the final step today at a dinner interview. Come prepared. –Ambika.HR’

She smiled but also knew that the dinner interview would navigate to the juicy bits about the new molecule and she simply had to know more.

‘We have less time, Raza,’ she said, ‘and marketing is all about readiness. The way I see it, we are always in the WAR zone.’ She wrote down the alphabets WAR on pad lying in front of her and pushed it to towards Raza, saying, ‘Define it.’

Raza looked at the three alphabets and wrote:

Watertight strategy

Action-seeped tactics

Rapid reaction to feedback

‘That’s war to me,’ said Raza, as he turned the pad for her to read what he had written.

She just wrote: ‘We Are Ready’ on the pad and said, ‘Loved your perception of marketing. But remember, it is readiness that surrounds every iota of strategic thought and every inch of tactical manoeuvre. This is why I am happy to have someone from the research team here. I know you will give us information before the slowly moving files get them to us. We need the information. You get that? We need the information.’ She paused for a couple of moments before repeating, ‘We need the information.’

‘Ah! The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt,’ said Raza and smiled.

‘What?’ asked Singha sharply. The thought that blitzed through her was: ‘How much does this man know of my intentions? Has he been sent here to find out her true motives?’

Raza, on the other hand, was taken aback by the sharpness in her tone and simply said, ‘Martin Luther said this. Not my words. And I was just trying to talk about the fragile equation between the consumer and the marketer.’

‘Fragile equations!’ thought Singha, and then said aloud, ‘It is well past the usual lunch hour, and the company kitchen will be closed now. Let’s go out and eat something.’

Raza said nothing but again murmured, ‘Khalil Gibran said – Your friend is your needs answered.’

‘There is a war of needs going on here,’ thought Singha, ‘I know what I need but I don’t know yet what you need. But I’ll find that out soon enough.’ She then got up and they went out, with Raza echoing a similar thought in his own mind. What happens when two people with almost the same thought are walking together? They stop and look at each other.

Raza stopped. Singha stopped. They looked at each other. Anyone else observing them would’ve seen two armies of thoughts desperate to enter the other’s mind.

Singha said, ‘Life is so full of questions, isn’t it?’

‘You just have to press the right button for the right answers,’ said Raza with a smile as he stretched his hand to call the lift, and then once they were out of the lift and walking towards Udupi, the eatery they had decided to go to, he asked, ‘You always have the right answers. I know you do. I have been hearing your quarterly addresses that the research team also attends. Is it that you know the answers only if you are plagued with questions?’

She was not the sort to let an honest complement fade without a return gift and said, ‘Even I have been following your exploits in the research team and how you have this uncanny ability to dip into the cauldron of human expectations and magically bring out exactly what they want.’ Raza always took more time to assimilate what he had heard and while he did that, Singha had already moved on to her next volley, ‘What I mean is that your product innovations match what the market research team brings in.’ The research team was involved in almost everything, starting from package innovations to suggesting the manufacturing scientists with suggested molecules or combos that will finally lead to a new product being born. Raza was an expert in reading the market pulse and putting the scientists on the right track.

‘The new product,’ began Raza, ‘that we will be launching soon, is soon going to sanitize the entire world.’ Singha was all ears now.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘this is what we all know. But we don’t yet know anything beyond these cursory details. And devising a marketing strategy around a mysterious product is impossible. Tell me more, will you?’

‘Dosas are delicious,’ said raza.

‘What? Are we coming out with packaged dosas now?’ Singha exclaimed.

Raza laughed and said, ‘No, of course not. I just said I am going to order a dosa for me. What will you have?’

‘Ah! Yes, I love dosas.’

Raza gave her the soft-focus look that only a lover can reserve for someone he loves. He went to the payment counter and returned with two servings of dosas with steaming rasam and sambhar.

As they sat down to eat, Raza asked, ‘Have you ever wondered why a dosa tastes good only with sambhar? I mean, not with butter-chicken, for instance.’

‘The right stuff goes…’ began Singha and then laughed, ‘well, birds of a feather flock together, don’t they?’

‘Like you and more information,’ smiled Raza, and then hastily added, ‘I mean like our having similar tastes.’ Singha chewed on the first part of Raza’s sentence thoughtfully and said nothing. She would normally never have kept quiet on hearing careless remark like this, but she not only kept quiet she also seemed to like the way Raza was throwing caution to the winds! She was still circumspect though.

After they returned to the office, Raza went attend to some urgent request from his research section, and Singha settled down to think of how she could get hold  of more information on this new product… and slipped into what we all call a power-nap in corporate jargon.

The ring of the intercom brought her back to this world.

‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Can you come down for a minute, please? It’s urgent.’ This was her boss and he seemed hassled.

She went and returned after a while with a smile on her face. As she entered her cabin, she stopped. Raza was there and swivelled his chair to get up and greet her. ‘I’m back.’

‘So I see,’ she said. As she walked round the table to where she sat, she could see Raza looking closely at the file in her hands.

‘Will you still want to know something more about the new product that we are planning to launch?’ he asked, and then added, ‘The band on the file tells me that you have finally got hold of what we call classified information.’

Singha did not say anything.

Raza went on, ‘You are a marketing wizard. An artist. Can I ask you something?’ She looked at Raza and nodded her head indicating him to go on and ask.

‘Do artists need a muse or loneliness?’

‘Life is so full of questions, isn’t it?’ she said and smiled.

Raza laughed but persisted, ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

She said, ‘The keyword is neither muse nor loneliness. The keyword is that small innocuous word hidden in the question you asked.’

Raza went over his question in his mind and guessed, ‘Need?’

‘You’re so perceptive,’ she said, and then went on, ‘the day we stop needing, we transcend everything. We cease to yearn to be artists… and become one. We stop seeking a muse or loneliness as they are anyway all around us all the time.’ As she said this, she found her voice trailing off into a whisper. She whispered, ‘Need is what makes us do what we might not like to do.’

Then suddenly Singha put the file on the table and said in her usual brisk and business-like tone, ‘Wonder why I was finally handed over these details? Look Raza, why don’t you go and meet the rest of the team while I go through this file?’

Raza got up and went out.

Singha read the file fast as she knew she knew that all the relevant information deep inside her would make her so cruelly attractive to the CMD of the rival company who she’d be meeting tonight. Just then the intercom rang. It was her boss.

‘Forgot to mention this, Singha but it was Raza who had this file sent to be handed over to you,’ said her boss, ‘In fact, it came with a note that said… and I’ll read it out for you… Information delayed is information denied, especially when it is to be used to device a powerful marketing thrust. This file may please be handed over to Ms Singha as strategic decision-making needs the insights mentioned on these pages. Raza Sufi has insisted that this information be handed over immediately.’

‘So thoughtful of him,’ was all she could say.

The boss did remark, ‘You were so desperate to get this information, Singha. Now you have it. Let’s see some marketing adrenalin course through your strategy now.’

‘Yes sir.’

Singha closed the file and mumbled, ‘Raza is certainly sharp and a go-getter. Needed in marketing. Need! Ah! Need is the keyword here and everywhere. What do I really need? The tag of  VP?’

She got up and pensively strode up and down the small cabin in small, slow, and deliberate steps. Then she opened the door, went out and took Raza aside.

‘Yes, Ms Singha?’

‘Sigiriya. Call me Sigiriya.’

Raza looked at her, smiled, and slowly asked, ‘The Udupi dosas were good… but would you want to taste the best dosas in Delhi?’

Singha flung aside her dinner date with a promotion telling herself that that magic was an illusion, and said, ‘Sure. Let’s have a magical dinner. We need to be backtomorrow and…’

‘…and I’ll watch you weave your magical marketing net tomorrow,’ Raza completed what she was anyway planning to say.

COCUSB

Author Introduction: 

Words fascinate me. Spent my years in the OGs, then in sales and then heading corporate communications… and now discovering myself through blogging. Words, obviously, have always mattered everywhere — yes, even in the Army, where even a firing command needs words spoken loud and clear and from the head! However, my journey is now taking me into a different world where words get written but emerge from the heart. I don’t know yet if they do visit the head before tumbling out to disperse themselves into the dustbin of eternity.

The Story:
Dates had stopped bothering him ages back. Even in the POW camp he had never once made parallel lines of hope, despair, and anger. His captors were as perplexed as were his co-prisoners.

‘You never think of your home and family, Major?’

‘I do,’ he had replied and then got up to go to the other side of the cell do his brooding. He did think of his wife and his son, who would now be on the verge of entering his teens. But he was not the sort who counted days. He knew he wouldn’t want to give his captors the pleasure of gloating about having troubled and disturbed his emotional equilibrium, and every time they tried to play with his EQ he mentally chanted his mantra: ‘Cocusb.’

He remembered the morning he and the other eight prisoners in that camp were abruptly woken up at 3 in the morning and were driven away from the 10 ft high walls of their jail in Lyallpur. They were nervous, circumspect, and defenceless but they could also see that there were no watchtowers with machineguns and searchlights as far as their eyes could see.

‘You are eight,’ announced the young and arrogant Captain, and went on, ‘if you live, you will reach Wagah and sent across the border. Or you die.’ The eight looked at each other, confused if this was an announcement that warranted joyous leaps, firm protests, or a hobbled walk into the arena of doom? There were no senior and responsible officers around and they were out in the open where for miles around us was sparse vegetation, big and small boulders, and obviously undulating contours and folds of earth.

‘Teen baje ki line. Dus meel,’ roared the officer. We looked at the 3 o’clock direction he mentioned and waited. He went on, ‘There is a safe 50 yard path beyond which are a network of landmines, so don’t even think of losing your way.’ The officer paused to see if his command was understood and then went on, ‘You have forty-five minutes to cover this distance and I’ll be waiting at the other end. There will be a mortar and grenade firing exercise in forty-five minutes, so if you don’t run fast, you’ll be caught in the mayhem.’ There was a pause after which he simply said, ‘Go.’

The prisoners had no footwear and the terrain was harsh with thorny plants dotting and, at times, blocking the safe zone. Yes, they ran and ran fast not bothered about the thorns, our bleeding feet, the scorching sun, nor their parched throats. All eight made it to the RV and as they stood at the spot where Captain Hanif was busy handing out new pairs of clothes, they could hear the sounds of explosions behind them.

They crossed the border at Wagah awed by their own silence. Sometimes when the heart is full of happiness, there are no words and no sounds coming out. He spoke only when he was asked a question and by next morning he stood outside the house that he had left more than five years back. ‘Cocusb,’ he said in a low voice, and pressed the bell.

His mind could sense that there was joy flowing all around him and curious words, softened glances, whispered touches, and endless sighs were all a part of the celebration that only long absences can get. He was tired and exhausted and full of bruises of the past five years, so it wasn’t surprising that he suddenly got up and said, ‘I want to sleep now.’

This was a week back and he knew this for sure because, for the first time in his life he had put a large pencilled circle around the date he had reached home. He opened his diary – yes, his own diary from the past that Anahita, his wife, had kept carefully folded in an old sari – and meticulously went through what he had written these past seven days.

15 June

I have never cared for years because they don’t matter. Time is an abstraction that doesn’t bother me. So why did Anahita ask: ‘We have five years of solitude waiting to be filled, Jatinder.’

Jatinder! This was not how she ever addressed him. She was the one who had first called him Zat because of the way he pronounced his J like it was a Z. Where has Zat gone? Is Zat nowhere in her life now?

There weren’t any long stories that he had jotted down in his diary. He was never known for his verbosity. He had always had a knack to pin-point the most vital aspects in anything and just focus on them. This is precisely what his years of training at the NDA and then at the IMA taught him. He remembered how Captain Bakshi, his DS at the IMA had roared in one of his class: ‘You bloody buggers, learn to look and think of only what is going to matter in your plan. The rest is all crap. So when I say,teen baje ki line…’ This voice from the past faded as he smiled and wondered if he was destined to be looking at this particular direction. Or is it that three was woven in some intricate way into his life?

Zat wasn’t a philosopher and never liked to ponder on the imponderables but this mystery of three was so like a military plan where this number loomed like a zone where he was supposed to keep his sights fixed on.

16 June

These bloody civilians are so noisy. They won’t let me sleep. They won’t let me focus. And they won’t let me be me. Why does everyone ask me the same questions?
How did they treat you there? Is that country the same as ours? You look so frail and troubled – are you going to join your unit or will you lead a retired life now? Tell us some stories of the land beyond the LOC? How many did you kill?

Damn these bloody fuckers. Why can’t they just mind their own business?

No, he had not protested any of the zillions of similar questions that seemed to be thrown at him because he had soon realised that they never wanted answers. All they were interested in was throwing in their questions and feeling proud that they had come and patronised a war hero of sorts. He wasn’t so much bothered by the acquaintances who stumbled into his life hour after hour… he was more bothered about the fact that Anahita was not there by his side to protect him from these onslaughts.

‘Why has she taken up a job that keeps her away for the entire day?’ he thought and then when he had asked her this question she had just asked him to relax and not bother about it. ‘We had enough money in the bank,’ he had angrily asked.

‘Not enough to fight with the sort of inflation that has been attacking the economy,’ she had retorted and then explained to him that her job was not just being a provider but also helping her keep sane.

17 June

Sane. Ha! How can jobs keep you sane? Sanity is when you are together with those you love and care for. Why can’t Anahita understand that all I want is that she take leave for a few days to be with me by my side. I don’t want to talk to those false acquaintances who come in only for stories that they don’t have the capacity to live and experience.

I want her. I want her attention. All the time.

He had found himself getting alienated from everyone, including his wife and his son Zesty. Yes, Zesty was a name given by him to his son because he always found his toddler so full of energy and a craving for action.

‘How is Zesty now?’ he had asked Anahita when he came back from his training in Mhow.

Anahita had smiled and said, ‘His name is Prateek and he responds to his name very well now.’

No, there was no war between Anahita and him on the name of their son, but he remembered he loved to insist on the name Zesty. This was true even now. He had said, ‘Zesty, you need to play more games and keep fitter than you actually are.’

‘Aw, come on now,’ Zesty had replied, ‘don’t be old fashioned. You need to come and tell me how protect my village in this game.’ He was always in front of his computer screen and was playing some game called Caesar II which was really such a ridiculous way of trying to learn tactics and strategy. He told Zesty that only team games have the ability to teach you the tactics of ground manoeuvre and that this is all that would help him in his later life as a professional. Strategic thinking too was something that meaningful interactions with the peer group could give.

‘You’re boring now,’ said Zesty to all his logic about games and strategy, ‘I know my PC is going to teach me everything. I wish you were like you were before.’

18 June

Zesty wants me to be like I was before. I don’t understand this at all. I was like I am now all the time. Have I really changed? Why is Zesty treating me like a stranger?

I still remember the good times we had on the basketball court together. The long walks and the jogging we did together. I still remember the time when I taught him the intricacies of under-water swimming.

But I don’t have much idea about his new world that is so immersed in the PC. It wasn’t there when I…

He wondered if it was technology or his lack of awareness of the new technology that was causing him to drift from his son. He wondered if he really cared to bridge this gap that was seemingly becoming wider.

‘Am I confused?’ he had asked himself when he was alone in the house. He had, it seemed to him, returned to a world that was defying him. Or was it simply that the world had moved on and all he needed was to increase his pace and catch up with it? He did not have the answers and whenever that happened now he found himself moving to the other side of the room he was in, just like he did in his prison cell in Lyallpur jail.

19 June

Is my world really out of my reach now? Can I bring back any of my learning from my own past to help me put me back into this new seemingly alienating world?

Yes, I remember Harlal Sa’ab on the Drill Square giving us marching commands in such a rapid succession that after just a couple of minutes of this the entire squad found itself full of GCs facing different directions and spread unevenly all over the concrete there. ‘This is not good sa’ab,’ he shouted and then laughed before continuing, ‘just hear and do. Don’t hear and think and do.’

Yes, just hear and do. Will this mantra save me?

‘Why is it that life never really works out the moment we start filling it up with the stress of deliberate thinking?’ he asked himself that day. He was not just a fauji, he was a fauji with ‘OG stampeding all over him’ as they used to say back in the Academy. ‘Yes, I need to get over this romance of half-baked thinking that civilians are so fond of and get back to my Olive Green or OG way of life.’

That day when Zesty had come from school he went to him and said, ‘Tell me how to open this PC. Tell me all about passwords. Tell me how to play Caesar.’

‘Later,’ Zesty had said as if trying to brush him aside because of his ignorance.

An hour later when Anahita returned from her office, he asked, ‘So how was your strategic marketing meeting today?’ Anahita gave him a look of surprise that had suspicion written all over it and went into the kitchen to instruct the maid for what was to be done for dinner. ‘Sir has told me what to do,’ he could hear the maid telling Anahita, ‘and dinner is already prepared.’

20 June

I am trying.
I am trying to find my way through this maze, this unfamiliar maze that evolves due to an absence.
I am trying to understand myself.
I am trying to instruct myself.

Will they try and unlearn and be willing to relearn?

He woke up that day feeling better than he had felt on any morning in the past week. He opened his eyes to find Anahita bent over him, smiling.

‘Good morning,’ said Anahita, ‘wake up, wash up, and get ready to wind up.’

He looked questioningly but Anahita laughed and called out to Zesty, ‘Zesty, your father is awake.’

He was told that the day being a Sunday, there would be no office and no school… however, Zesty had decided to teach him all he knew about the PC with a hope that he would learn and not remain technologically challenged ever.

Anahita then added, ‘And we’re going out for lunch to that restaurant where we had gone on the first day after marriage.’ He smiled.

21 June

COCUSB.

It is time to live again.
It is time to type out my formal resignation from the Armed Forces on MS Word.
It is time to spell romance the way it is spelt.

He looked at the last page of his diary and muttered, ‘Cocusb. Not many know what this means. Not may know that this is what makes a fauji what he is.’ He paused for a while, went zipping back into the past and heard his PT instructor shouting to cadets: ‘Don’t ever slouch. Remember, you must always have your chest out, chin up and shoulders back.’ His mind had immediately converted this vital piece of information into an acronym and whispered, ‘Cocusb.’

Mega learns her ABC...

Author: Arvind Passey

Author intro:  Words fascinate me. Spent my years in the OGs, then in sales and then heading corporate communications... and now discovering myself through blogging. Words, obviously, have always mattered everywhere -- yes, even in the Army, where even a firing command needs words spoken loud and clear and from the head! However, my journey is now taking me into a different world where words get written but emerge from the heart. I don't know yet if they do visit the head before tumbling out to disperse themselves into the dustbin of eternity.

Story:

Her parents called her Meghana. Her friends shortened it to Mega. Was there any reason to it? Yes. They tell everyone who cared to listen that once in class, the teacher asked, “I need only two volunteers to help me set the new PCs in the lab. Up went Meghana’s hands… yes, both her hands… and she shouted, ‘A mega yes, Ma’am’… and as there were no other volunteers, she was asked to go. She went and single-handedly set up all the PCs in the lab.” 

“Some job,” most listeners tend to mutter, and then add, “a puny, short girl who wears glasses did this. A mega job done indeed!” 

Her friends add hurriedly that this wasn’t the complete story. “There was a time when the principal wanted the opinion of the House Captains on how to deal with truancy,” they are grim as they tell this story, “Most said, ‘They are kids, Ma’am, given them another chance.’ But Meghana just spoke with a firm resolution, ‘A mega no for the suggestion. Punish them and set the right precedence.’ The principal did what she said and the school has had less truancy ever since.” 

The listeners had no choice but to nod their head in agreement and quietly resolve to fall in queue of people who called her Mega. She was indeed a mega success wherever she was. 

After completing her degree in metallurgy, she decided to get into software development as all through her student years she had been the uncrowned queen of the computer department. She was the one who was called whenever there was a problem with both hardware and software. In her room, she always had one eye on her subject books while the other eye roved restlessly on the PC screen where she would invariably be trying to find her way around software issues and solutions. 

Thus Mega became a mega source of inspiration to the CS students. When it was time for the placement interviews, she simply walked in the CS department, and asked to be allowed to be interviewed by the top companies there. the company executives were not told anything but were mildly surprised to find a metallurgy student barging into a software interview… but her answers made them sit back with a respectful awe. She got into a top job with an MNC into a technology that would be all geeky Greek to anyone not a part of them! 

In less than five years, she had proved that strategy was oozing out of her in wholesome quantity. One day she walked in the room of the CMD and said, “I’ve cracked CAT and will be joining IBS here in this city of Paradise biryanis and Karachi biscuits, sir. But I need to keep this job as well.” 

With an expression of mild tolerance, the CMD asked, “How can that be managed? You’re good, we’ll hire you back when you’ve completed your MBA. Don’t worry.” 

“I’ll be here for six hours every evening and on Saturdays as well as Sundays,” she insisted, and went on, “Can’t afford to let my mind be without the issues that it needs and can’t afford to study in peace without the salary. Try this system and you will see that my productivity will only increase.” 

Now, the best part about a sound professional company is that sound professional ideas are never summarily executed. She was permitted to follow her dreams. She did and was soon the VP in the development section and hurtling ahead in full speed… well, she was moving fast in age too and was in her thirties by the time she was able to have a plush cabin of her own. 

Mega was known as the person who did two things with two eyes… you see, she had kept her job and also completed her MBA… and now she had this uncontrollable urge to follow this logic even in her evenings. She had one eye on the multi-player online game that she was fond of playing and the other eye was always on some or the other book of poems. Her daytime was full of harsh management decision-making and tough software strategic thinking… and her evenings had gaming and poetry. It was strategy and romanticism converging seamlessly after a day of blunt and point-blank rasping of instructions, orders, and warnings! 

One of her team members in the organisation was Arup Balakrishna Chopsey. His friends thought they will get away by calling him chopsuey but he was always smart enough and never ordered one, saying, “I prefer having something Indian than Chinese.” Then he went on to tell them all about the merits and demerits of ajinomoto and the other ingredients, and added, “Healthy food is what will make you stay active longer. Junk food can make things quite messy and unmanageable.” And then seeing everyone go quiet with some unseen apprehension, he generally smiled and said, “Don’t worry though. ABC is here and will make sure that you get the best care!” 

Well, this is how Arup came to be called ABC… and he did know his basics well, though he was only a diploma holder in CS. Almost like Mega, ABC too had shuffled his way through a maze of recruitment rules and was now at a supervisory level in the organisation despite his diploma. His mates were all degree holders though much younger. The general buzz was always, “ABC is the walking encyclopaedia around. Ask him if you can’t find it all in the books!” ABC also loved to hop from one desk to another, helping people sort out their problems. 

ABC also played the same strategy game in his evenings… and progressed up because he strategized his movements by including empathy, compassion, sharing, and teamwork. He always seemed to stride confidently into strange worlds… therefore even he wasn’t surprised to find himself choosing the name ‘outlander’ for himself once he was inside the game. 

That morning began in a rather usual note. Mega strode in taking short, fast, and sure steps. Everyone was on their alert. ABC, however, was standing right in the centre of the aisle in some deep thoughts. Mega came close, stopped, and asked, “Waiting for you job to get completed on its own?” There was a very slight cynical smile on her face as she said this. This cynical posture could have been more severe had it been someone else, But Mega knew that ABC had a mind of his own and was quite capable. But the way she had moulded herself all these years always manifested themselves, though immensely controlled when confronting ABC. 

“I have a thought that needs some discussion,” he said calmly. 

“Come with me.” 

They entered her cabin and the hall buzzed normally again. “Yes, what is it that needs a discussion?” asked Mega as she sat on her chair and waved him to sit opposite. 

“We’re including all the logic parameters in the software we’re developing. What it needs is an extra dimension,” said ABC. 

“An extra dimension?” asked Mega, thinking frantically about something crucial that she may have either overlooked or forgotten to include, and finding nothing of relevance coming to her, added, “tell me about this and I’ll think if it can be included or not.” 

ABC stood quietly for a while as if arranging his thoughts and words, which he was actually doing, and began, “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent. This is why we need to have warning pop-ups at ten critical spots that I have spotted…” 

“Wait,” said Mega, “Do you know you’ve just quoted Bob Dylan when you said ’People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.’ You like his music?” 

ABC blinked at her and said, “I don’t know Bon Dylan. I don’t listen to his music. But these words were what I read yesterday. You see I play this strategy game where people celebrate their entry into a stage by writing their thoughts. I was the second one to reach the socio-political stage and read what the first person had written.” 

“Right,” said Mega, suddenly going weak in her knees, but managed to control her impulses, listened to what Outlander… Oops! ABC had to say, and then sat down slowly, thinking, “I was the one who reached the socio-political stage first and I was the one who quoted Bob Dylan there. I am the one who admires the help-them-all and plod-together strategy of ‘Outlander’ even though I myself generally move faster with my think-hard-and-think-without-emotions approach. So ABC is Outlander?” 

She looked down on her table and opened the day’s newspaper and read this headline: 

Will it be a take-a-decision-and-move or a debate-and-wait approach? The nation waits for the ruling party’s decision.