2 States The Story Of My Marriage (13 page)

He shook his head as he picked up two envelopes and passed them to me.

‘Here, some letters for you. The servant said a girl had come to see you.’

I looked at the letter. One was the welcome letter from Citibank. The second

envelope had Ananya’s handwriting on it. I looked at the curd rice again and tried

to imagine it as something yummy but I couldn’t gather the courage to eat it.

I came to my room and lay down on the bed. Ramanujan shut the lights in the

rest of the house and went back to sleep.

‘Should we wake you up?’ he had asked before going to his room.

‘What time is office?’

‘Nine, but trainees are expected to be there by eight. We target seven-thirty.

We wake up at five.’

I thought about my last two months in Delhi, when waking up at nine was an

early start. ‘Is there even daylight at five?’

‘Almost. We’ll wake you up. Good night.’

I closed my door and opened Ananya’s letter.

Hey Chennai boy,

I came to see you, but you hadn’t arrived in the afternoon as you told me. Anyways, I
can’t wait any longer as mom thinks I am with friends at the Radha Silks Shop. I have to
be back. Anyway there is a bit of drama at home but I don’t want to get into that now.

Don’t worry, we shall meet soon. Your office is in Anna Salai, not far from mine.

However, HLL is making me travel a lot all over the state. I have to sell tomato ketchup.

Hard, considering it has no tamarind or coconut in it!

DX @ www.desibbrg.com

I’ll leave now. Guess what, I am wearing jasmine flowers in my hair today! It helps to
have a traditional look in the interiors. I broke a few petals and have included them in
this letter. Hope they remind you of me.

Love and kisses,

Ananya.

I opened the folds of the letter. Jasmine petals fell into my lap. They felt soft and
smelt wonderful. It was the only thing about this day that made me happy. It

reminded me why I was here.

DX @ www.desibbrg.com

16

It is bad news when you hate your job in the first hour of the first day of office. It
isn’t like Citibank did anything to piss me off. In fact, they tried their best to make
me feel at home. I already had an assigned cubicle and computer. My first stint

involved working in a group that served ‘priority banking’ clients, a politically

correct term to address ‘stinking rich’ customers. There is little a customer

needed to do to become priority except wave bundles of cash at us. Priority

customers received special service, which included sofas for waiting areas

instead of chairs, free tea while the bank representative discussed new ways to

nibble…oops sorry, invest clients’ money. And the biggest touted perk was you

would get direct access to your Customer Service Managers. These were

supposed to be financial wizards from the top MBA schools who would take your

financial strategy to a whole new level. Yes, that would be me. Of course, we

never mentioned that your customer service manager could hate his job, do it

only for the money and would have come to the city only because his girlfriend

was here.

I had to supervise eight bank representatives. The bank representatives were

younger, typically graduates or MBAs from non-blue-blooded institutions. And I,

being from an IIM and therefore injected with a sense of entitlement for life, would
obviously be above them. I didn’t speak Tamil or know anything about banking,

but I had to pretend I knew what I was doing. At least to my boss Balakrishnan or

Bala.

‘Welcome to the family,’ he said as we shook hands.

I wondered if he was related to Ananya. ‘Family?’

‘The Citibank family. And of course, the Priority Banking family. You are so

lucky. New MBAs would die to get a chance to start straight in this group.’

I smiled.

‘Are you excited, young man?’ Bala asked in a high-pitched voice.

‘Super-excited,’ I said, wondering if they’d let me leave early as it was my first
day.

He took me to the priority banking area. Eight reps, four guys and four girls

read research reports and tips from various departments on what they could see

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today. I met everyone though I forgot their similar sounding South Indian names

the minute ii heard them.

‘Customers start coming in at ten, two hours from now,’ Bala said. ‘And that is
when the battle begins. We believe trainees learn best by facing action. Ready for

war?’

I looked at him. I could tell he was a Citibank lifer. At forty, he had probably
spent twenty years already in the bank.

‘Ready? Any questions, champ?’ Bala asked again.

‘Yeah, what exactly am I supposed to do?’

Bala threw me the first of his many disappointed looks at me. He asked a rep

for the daily research reports. ‘Two things you need to do, actually three,’ Bala

said as he took me to my desk. ‘One, read these reports everyday and see if you

can recommend any investments to the clients. Like look at this.’ He pulled out a

report from the equities group. It recommended shares of Internet companies as

their values had dropped by half.

‘But isn’t the dot com bubble bursting?’ I asked. ‘These companies would

never make money.’

Bala looked at me like I had spoken to him in pure Punjabi.

‘See, our research has given a buy here. This is Citibank’s official research,’

Bala spoke like he was quoting from the Bible. Official research was probably

written by hung-over MBA three years out of business school.

‘Fine, what else?’

‘The second important job is to develop a relationship. Tamilians love

educated people. You, being from IIT and IIM, must develop a relationship with

them.’

I nodded. I was the endangered species in the priority-banking zoo that

customers could come throw bananas at.

‘Now, it is going to be hard for you as you are…’ Bala paused as if he came to

a swear word in the conversation.

‘Punjabi?’

‘Yes, but can you befriend Tamilians?’

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‘I am trying to. I have to,’ I said, wondering where I could call Ananya apart

from her home number. If only these damn cell-phone prices would drop fast.

‘Good. And the last thing is,’ Bala moved forward to whisper, ‘these reps are

quite lazy. Keep an eye on them. Anyone not doing their job, tell me.’ He winked

at me and stood up to leave. ‘And come to office early.’

‘I came at seven-thirty. Isn’t the official time nine?’

‘Yes, but when I was your level, I came at seven. If you want to be like me,

wake up, soldier,’ Bala said and laughed at his own joke. The Tamil sense of

humour, if there is any, is really an acquired taste.

I didn’t want to be like him. I didn’t even want to be here. I took a deep breath
after he left and meditated on my salary package. You are doing it for the money, I

told myself. Four lakh a year, that is thirty-three thousand a month, I chanted the

mantra in my head. My father had worked in the army for thirty years and still

never earned half as much. I had to push bubble stocks and the cash would be

mine. Life isn’t so bad, I said to myself.

‘Sir, can I go to the toilet?’ one female rep came to me.

‘What?’

She looked at me, waiting for permission.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Sri.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Coimbatore,’ she said, adjusting her oversized spectacles with cockroach-

coloured borders. Fashion is not a Chennai hallmark.

‘You went to college?’

‘Yes sir. Coimbatore University, distinction, sir.’

‘Good. Then why are you asking me for permission?’

‘Just like that, sir.’ She said.

‘No one needs to ask me permission for going to the toilet,’ I said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

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I read reports for the next two hours. Each one had financial models done my

overenthusiastic MBAs who were more keen to solve equations than to question

what they were doing. One table compared value of Internet companies with the

number of visitors to the site. The recommended company had the lowest value

to eyeball ratio, a trendy term invented by the analyst. Hence, BUY! screamed the

report. Of course, the analyst never questioned that none of the site visitors ever

paid any money to the Internet company. ‘It is trading cheap on every multiple

conceivable!’ the report said, complete with the exclamation mark.

‘Sir, my customer is here. Can I bring them to you?’ Sri requested well after

her return from the toilet.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘Sir, this is Ms Sreenivas,’ Sri said. A fifty-year-old lady with gold bangles

thicker than handcuffs came to my cubicle. We moved to the sofa area, to give a

more personal, living room feel as we robbed the customer.

‘You are from IIT?’ she peered at me.

‘Yes,’ I said even as I readied my pitch about which loss-making company to

buy.

‘Even my grandson is preparing for it,’ she said. She had dark hair, with oil

that made it shine more.

‘You don’t look old enough to have a grandson preparing for IIT,’ I said.

Ms Sreenivas smiled. Sri smiled back at her. Yes, we had laid the mousetrap

and the cheese. Walk in, baby.

‘Oh no, I am an old lady. He is only in class six though.’

‘How much is madam’s balance?’ I asked.

‘One crore and twenty lakh, sir,’ Sri supplied.

I imagined the number in my head; I’d need to work in this job for thirty years
to get there. It almost felt right to part her from her money. ‘Madam, have you

invested in any stocks? Internet stocks are cheap these days,’ I said.

Ms Sreenivas gave me a worried look. ‘Stocks? Never. And my son works in

an Internet company abroad. He said they might close down.’

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‘That’s USA, madam. This is India, we have one billion population, or two

billion eyeballs. Imagine the potential of the Internet. And we have a mutual fund,

so you don’t have to invest in any one company.’

We cajoled Ms Sreenivas for five minutes. I threw in a lot of MBA terms like

strategic advantage, bottom-line vs. top line, top down vs. bottom up and it made

me sound very intelligent. Ms Sreenivas and Sri nodded at whatever I said.

Ultimately, Ms Sreenivas agreed to nibble at toxic waste.

‘Let’s start with ten lakh,’ I said to close the case.

‘Five. Please, five,’ Ms Sreenivas pleaded with us on how to use her own

money.

I settled at five and Sri was ecstatic, I had become their favourite customer

service manager.

Bala took me out for lunch at Sangeetha’s, a dosa restaurant.

‘What dosas do you have?’ I asked the waiter.

‘We have eighty-five kinds,’ the waiter pointed to the board. Every stuffing

imaginable to man was available in dosa form.

‘Try the spinach dosa. And the sweet banana dosa,’ Bala said as he smiled at

me like the father I never had. ‘So, how does it feel, to get your first investment?

Heart pumping?’

My heart didn’t pump. It only ached. I’d been in Chennai for fifteen hours and

had not spoken to Ananya yet. I wanted to buy a cell-phone as soon as possible.

Wait, I’d need two.

‘I see myself in you. You are like me,’ Bala said as he dunked his first piece of
dosa in sambhar. I had no clue how he reached that conclusion.

I had Ananya’s home landline number. But, she didn’t reach home until seven.

She had a sales field job so no fixed office number as well. I remembered how

we’d finish lunch in campus and snuggle up for our afternoon nap. It is official,

life after college sucks.

‘Isn’t this fun?’ Bala said. ‘I get a rush every time I come to the bank. And it is
twenty years. Wow, I still remember the day my boss first took me out for lunch.

Hey, what are you thinking? Stop work thoughts now. It is lunch-time.

‘Of course,’ I said and collected myself. ‘How far is HLL office from here?’

DX @ www.desibbrg.com

‘Why? You have a potential client?’ Bala asked as if the only reason people

existed was to become priority banking customers.

‘Possibly,’ I said. One good thing about banking is that you don’t feel bad

about lying at all.

‘It is in Nungambakkam. Apex Plaza,’ he said.