Mr. Joshi's Bride
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Mr. Joshi’s Bride
Vani
Mr. Joshi’s Bride
1st Edition Published in India by Vishwakarma Publications in May 2024
© Vani
ISBN – 978-93-95481-79-3
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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TORONTO, CANADA

I don’t remember dozing off on the sofa in my living-room, my laptop still open in front of my eyes. What I do remember is being woken up by a strange combination of sounds – a pop remix or a beep on my cell phone, maybe even both, I’m not able to immediately tell in my grogginess. I nearly fall off the sofa as I grope for my phone to attend – a WhatsApp video call? – From an unknown number in India?

A hundred thoughts race through my mind, all in a matter of seconds. Maybe my grandmother has been taken ill, and a kind, friendly hospital attendant is calling to inform me of her dying wish. Or maybe my sister has met with an accident and she’s using someone else’s phone to inform me. I can scarcely hide my panic as I swipe my phone and say ‘hello’.

The voice that greets me on the other end seems rather relaxed as if it’d all the time in the world for a long and lazy chat. It belongs to a middle-aged man with a jowly face and a salt-and-pepper moustache. He’s sitting on a wicker chair in the veranda of his house, holding a cup of tea in his hand, a plate full of pakoras lying on a table in front of him.

‘Namashkar, Parshuraman,’ he says to me in a North Indian accent. ‘Myself, Shashi Bhushan from India. Your family has selected my sister as a prospective match for you. And I thought before taking anything forward, it’d be better if I clarified a few things with you.’

A wave of relief washes over me as I realise this has nothing to do with my family, that they are safe in India. I rub my eyes, stretch my limbs and struggle to get up from the sofa, groaning as I bump my head against the wooden armrest. I look at the television that is playing a song from my favourite thrash metal band and at the clock that hangs behind it.

3 am for goodness’ sake!

‘Are you sure you want to talk to me now?’ I ask the man, not bothering to hide the irritation in my voice. ‘I’d appreciate it if we could do this another time. How about next Sunday?’

The man pauses for a moment. I can see him peering at his cam to apparently make out the contours of my face in the light that’s streaming in through the windows of my room. And then, making nothing of my request, he continues to deliver his opening monologue.

I want to hang up the phone, I really do, but I know that would get me into bucket-loads of hot water with my sister. She’d called me up not more than three days ago to let me know of this family in Lucknow which was looking for a non-resident Indian groom. Even if I try, I can only recall scraps of that conversation: ‘religious, well-settled, non-drinkers, non-smokers, and to top-it-all, they are all vegetarians, Parsho; they don’t even eat onion and garlic?’ she’d said, making me wonder what ‘vegetarianism’ had to do with the selection of a prospective bride. But before I could ask her that, she’d delivered her veiled threat. ‘This family has come to us through Radha auntie’s reference so you had better take this one seriously. If they call you up, be respectful and answer promptly, otherwise…’

‘Hello? Hello? Are you there?’ the man bleats on the other end of the line, alerting me to the fact that I’ve left him dangling for almost a minute. ‘Hello? I can’t see your face.’ 

‘Give me a moment, please,’ I say to him, turning on the lights in my room, squirming as I see my image popup on the cam, all nice and clear now, but not very delightful to look at, to be honest. Late nights of working on a high-stakes project for my company have begun to show  on my face. My eyes look bleary from lack of sleep, my hair needs a trim, and on my cheeks, I wear a week-old stubble. My sister wouldn’t have liked me looking anything less than perfect, especially at a time like this when she’s looking for a bride for me. So I hope she never comes to know about this. But maybe I’m overthinking and it’s not as bad as that. There’s an unmistakable glint in the man’s eyes suggesting he doesn’t mind my jaded look. That said, there’s a whole lot else that he seems to be having a problem with – my living alone in Canada, for instance, and what I might be doing with all that extra time I’ve on my hands.

‘I don’t have much of a social life, Mr Bhushan. So, it’s either work for me or nothing else.’

‘Why, what about girls? You must be speaking with a lot of them at your workplace,’ he says. ‘So, any goris or Asians you’ve dated, done, got over with till now that we must know or care about?’ he asks me point blank. ‘It’s always better to know about such things at the beginning. We don’t want our Dolly babysitting someone else’s kids.’

I feel so flustered that for a few seconds I don’t know what to say, and then I speak. ‘I’ve never dated nor done anyone in my entire life, Mr Bhushan. In fact, I’ve never even had any crushes except on some of those cute-looking Bollywood actresses. But then, who doesn’t like them?’

‘He wants a wife who looks like a film star,’ the man whispers to someone and presently turns to me and asks, ‘what about drinks? How many times a day or week?’

‘No, that’s one thing you could be sure of, Mr Bhushan – I don’t drink.’

‘Never even tasted alcohol?’

‘Hmm. I had Jack Daniel’s once, a shot or two, puked so much I could never have it again.’

‘He drinks,’ the man whispers again, his jowls quivering as he shakes his head. ‘So, what do you do in Canada?’ he asks me next. ‘Do you work for desis or a multinational?’

‘Are you trying to measure me up, Mr Bhushan?’

‘Is there anything wrong with that?’ the man asks, an imperceptible frown flashing across his face. ‘We have to be careful, right? We can’t just marry our Dolly to anyone. Who is to blame if the boy turns out to be someone working at a desi chicken shop in Canada? You’ve no idea how many such stories get reported in the newspapers here, almost every week.’

‘In that case, wouldn’t it be better to find a local match for her?’

‘Settle her here? Just because it saves us some legwork? What are you saying?’ the man asks, looking peeved at my impromptu suggestion. ‘If you think our Dolly is an ignorant fool, let me tell you, she is not. She holds a degree in Computer Hardware and Networking from Oxford Computer Academy in Lucknow. This course has a lot of scope in foreign countries, she tells us, which makes it all the more important to find an exceptional NRI match for her.’

‘Rest assured, Mr Bhushan, I don’t work for desis. I work as a Business Analyst for Vezza.’

The man looks at me as if trying to understand what this new profession and the unheard-of company is all about.

Somewhere in the background, I hear the clanking of bangles and then the voice of the man goes live once again. ‘How much time would it take for you to call our Dolly to Canada?’

‘How am I supposed to know that unless I worked in the immigration department issuing visas or had anything to do with it?’

The man does not reply and I feel guilty for speaking so abrasively with him.

‘Look, I work for a company called Vezza. It doesn’t issue visas, the way you might think,’ I tell him, trying to go slow with each word to make it easier for my listener to understand. ‘Vezza develops technologies that enable the use of digital currency. Just look around you, do you notice that far fewer people use cash and cheques these days, at least that’s the case in Canada, I don’t know about – ’

‘How much does this company pay you?’ the man interrupts. 

‘Oh, I earn well, Mr Bhushan. It’s enough to support a family,’ I say to him, stopping short of giving him an exact amount. Does he really think I’ll disclose my take-home to him in our very first conversation? But then, such being the nature of questions in an arranged marriage rapid-fire, I don’t think he’s asked me anything that my sister hasn’t prepared me for. So, I take a deep breath and answer in all earnestness, ‘eighty thousand Canadian dollars per annum.’

The man snorts in response as if he was expecting as much. ‘That’s a bit low.’

‘What makes you say so?’

‘My colleague, Mr Shukla, his son works as a Vice President at a reputed bank in London and earns a lot more than you. So, if you want to make money, you must consider moving there,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’ll ask Mr Shukla’s son to help you find a high-paying job in Canary Wharf, and then we could consider you for our Dolly. How does that work for you?’

‘Er, I’ll let you know,’ I mutter, somewhat surprised at the gall of this man for putting things across to me like that on my face. Is this even civil because I haven’t faced a situation like this before. And to think of him as my would-be brother-in-law? Ha! I’d rather stay unmarried for the rest of my life or don the robes of a monk than have anything to do with the likes of him.

But that’s probably not what he’s thinking.

Ten minutes into the call, he’s still not ready to let me off the hook when I decide to end the conversation with a ‘thanks, but no thanks for your offer’. But before I’ve said even a word to him, I hear a movement behind me that nearly startles me into dropping the phone from my hand. For years I’ve lived alone in this squeaky-clean, eerily-quiet, one-bedroom rented apartment so it almost slipped my mind that my colleague Jennifer was staying over tonight.

I turn my head and there she is, making her way towards me in a chic pyjama set, exuding her usual mix of spunk and sassiness. Despite pulling in all-nighters for our company just like me, she has none of those visible signs of tiredness on her face as I have – it looks radiant and flawless even at this hour. Her shiny, black hair is falling in bouncy curls over her shoulders, quite unlike the way she wears it in the office. There’s a mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes and a sly smile playing on her lips as she takes the place right next to me on the sofa.

‘I’ll take that for you since you have absolutely no tact for conversations like these,’ she says, plucking the phone out of my hands and positioning the cam in such a way as to make both of our faces visible to the man. And then she begins her verbal attack.

‘Mr Bhushan!’ she says. ‘Minutes ago you didn’t even know what Vezza was all about and now you’re advising him to look for a job in London with the help of God-Knows-Who-Mr Shukla and his son? Have you lost your mind or what?’

The man is gaping at Jennifer, and joining him at this very moment is a woman in a sari and bangles. The two of them have their faces drawn so close to the phone screen, it’s almost as if they’d hop over to Canada, if given a chance, of course, to see who this girl is and what she is doing at my place at this unearthly hour. The man has opened his mouth to say something, but Jennifer doesn’t give him a chance and continues with her tirade irrespective.

‘Please take my honest suggestion, if you will,’ she says. ‘Get your Dolly married to Mr Shukla’s son if you like him so much. This guy here is not interested. B-Bye.’ She hangs up the call and presses the phone into my hands. ‘That was easy, was it not?’

 

 

At first, I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to say. A lot has  happened with me in the last half hour or so, and try as I may, I can’t seem to calm down my frayed nerves. My mind is in a spin, thinking up all the scenarios that might unfold after this incident, but Jennifer seems oblivious to my struggles. She’s looking at me, waiting for an answer, perhaps. ‘It could have been handled more gracefully, you know,’ I say to her when I’ve gathered my wits.

‘“Gracefully?” What are you talking about?’ she asks, gaping at me. ‘The guy was trying to walk all over you. He needed to be put in his place.’

‘And you think you were successful in doing that?’

Jennifer answers with a shrug. ‘Didn’t you see his face, the way he was staring at us?’

‘That is what I’m talking about.’ I flash her an anxious smile. Leaving her on the sofa, I walk towards the windows of my living-room to get some much-needed fresh air. From my vantage point four floors above the ground, the view of the maple tree-lined street that opens up to me is rather striking, and that’s all I need to cheer me up on normal days. Except, today isn’t a normal day. My no-nonsense life feels suddenly transformed into a Broadway play, and although I’m the main lead of this story, I don’t know where the plot is headed. But what’s worse is that the person who messed it up for me doesn’t even know what she did. What is she feeling so pleased about anyway? ‘Do you know that the stunt that you just pulled is going to blow up in my face?’ I say to her, padding back in and squeezing myself into the space next to her on the sofa, there being no other item of furniture in my living-room.

‘Oh, really,’ she says, tucking her legs under her and looking intently at me. ‘How so?’

I’m still thinking about how best to explain the dynamics of the Indian matchmaking process to her and then I give up. She’s from India. She’d understand. She’s supposed to understand. We’re the same age, after all. Those same pressures that are playing on me must be playing on her as well, or so I imagine. ‘Mr Bhushan came to me through my auntie’s reference,’ I begin. ‘So, whatever he saw and whatever he heard today is going to be relayed to her. And the chatterbox that she is, I need only count the number of hours before everybody in India knows about this.’

‘About what?’ Jennifer asks, leaning towards me, her dark eyes alight with childlike curiosity.

‘That I’m living with a girl in Canada and that’s why I’m rejecting all the proposals that are being sent my way or something like that; I don’t know,’ I say to her, letting out an exasperated sigh. ‘I’d be lucky if this gossip doesn’t reach my family because if it did, they wouldn’t take it sitting down. Next thing I know, they’d be on my tail, forcing me to get married to whomever this girl is. Can you imagine the nightmare?!’

‘Well, I don’t see a problem with that.’

‘Jennifer, I don’t have a girl in my life!’

‘Well, that’s why I am here,’ she says, cocking her eyebrow playfully.

‘Sorry, what?’ I say to her, and then it begins to slowly dawn on me.  

‘Last night when you called me for help, you said you had issues with your landlord,’ I sputter, ‘roommate,’ I cup my hands over my face and cry out, ‘best friend? Or was it your sister, eh?’ My heart is pounding so hard at this point, I think even Jennifer would hear it if she sat a bit closer. ‘Was that an excuse to stay over at my place?’

Jennifer nods in response and lowers her face in apparent embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it this way, not at least at 3.30 am. But I’d no choice,’ she explains. ‘You’re always busy in the office and never available on the weekends. In fact, if it were not for Mr Bhushan’s call waking me up, I’d have talked to you tomorrow morning. That was the plan!’

‘Plan?!’ I mutter, looking at Jennifer with rapt curiosity now. ‘What is this all about, Jennifer?’

‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ she says, twiddling the ends of her hair. ‘I wish my parents were here to do the talking for me. Or even a bumbling idiot like Mr Bhushan would have worked just okay. But there’s no one. My father and I haven’t spoken in months, and I don’t know where my mother went after her divorce from him. I’ve got a step-sister but we aren’t close.’

‘Jennifer, we’re colleagues. I don’t need to know your family history.’

‘Maybe you do,’ she says, looking directly into my eyes, her body inches away from mine on the sofa, accentuating the tension between us. ‘I’ve had strong feelings for you since the day you joined Vezza and I wanted to ask if you’d like to –’

‘No, stop!’ I say to her in a spur-of-the-moment decision to not engage in any such conversation that might ruin the camaraderie between us. ‘I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding, Jennifer. We’ve been on such good terms and I’ve always admired you as a professional,’ I say to her, taking a moment’s pause to get my thoughts in order. ‘Did I – Did I ever say or do anything to give you a signal? Because I could be so dumb at times! Ha! Ha!

‘Don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault,’ Jennifer replies in a comforting tone of voice, which is quite unlike her. ‘It was I who was drawn to you like a moth to a flame – sounds clichéd, I know, but that’s true. You’re so different from all those men out there; you know that?’

‘I am? Oh…’ I don’t know whether to thank Jennifer for the compliment or apologise for it.

‘Listen, I know how awkward you feel,’ she says, reaching out for my hand. ‘I feel the same way. It’s a first for me, too. So, I don’t mind you taking some time to think about us.’

‘There’s nothing to think about, Jennifer,’ I say to her, sliding my hand from under hers and stretching my 6.2” frame as far out of her reach as possible. ‘My family is very conservative and there’s no way they would accept you…us.’

Jennifer returns my hesitant gaze with an unblinking stare. ‘Your family doesn’t even come into the picture,’ she says. ‘You’re an adult and if you told them that you wanted to be with someone, they’d understand. Or that’s at least how I was brought up by my father.’

‘Lucky you, then! In my case, if my family does not approve of something, that’s it for me, and dating someone – whoa! – I better be careful about that lest I end up causing a lot of heartache,’ I say to her, and then mustering all the courage I can find within me, I ask her to leave. ‘Now that things have come to this, I don’t think you should be here. It’s inappropriate.’ 

‘But –?’

‘Please,’ I say to her. ‘I don’t want anyone talking about us. Come, I’ll drop you back in a cab.’

Jennifer looks at me with a frown on her face. ‘No, thanks! I don’t need your help for that,’ she says, gets up from the sofa and heads inside.

Next, I hear the trigger of a lighter, and then smoke from a cigarette billows from my bedroom. I can see her shadow as she paces near my bed, talking to someone, probably a cab company. A couple of minutes later, she emerges wearing a jumper and a lower, her hair drawn in a messy knot; nightwear peeking from her handbag. She gives one final look to me and walks out slamming the main door behind her.

The first thing I do upon entering my bedroom is to push the slats of the vertical blinds to one side and open the windows to get rid of the cigarette odour – how I hate it! As I drop onto the bed, I can’t help thinking about this twist in the plot, wondering what Jennifer would do next.

 

 

I’m lying half-awake in my bed, my fleece blanket thrown somewhere on the floor. A cold draft of wind is blowing into the bedroom through the open window.

All of a sudden, an old car horn roars to life – my alarm. Is it 7 am already?

It’s hard to get out of bed on Mondays, and today is no exception. I’ve made up my mind to work from home when my gaze falls upon a cigarette stub lying near the desk in one corner of my bedroom. I sit bolt upright in my bed recalling the events from three hours ago and how Jennifer abruptly left.

Sitting at home will not do, I tell myself. I’ve to go to the office to see what became of her – a combination of sympathy and curiosity, that’s how I explain it to myself.

 

 

It’s an effort to get dressed, an even bigger effort to walk the entire length of Grange Park to reach St Patrick Station. The subway is packed with office-goers, most of them women, and for some reason, they all look like Jennifer. My mind is in such a muddle that I first get off at the wrong station, then I lose my way in the jungle of skyscrapers, taking half an hour extra to walk down to my building which is located in the heart of the Financial District.

I reach my office on the fourteenth floor and find my colleague, Koel, parroting my name in the corridor.

‘PJ! Late again today?’

‘Oh, you sound so miserable, Koel! Let me buy you a cup of coffee.’

‘I think you need it more than I do, mister,’ she says. ‘Team meeting with Daniel. Tempers running high. Discussion on Project Jade. Conference room. Right now.’

Holy Mess! I completely forgot about that!’ I grab my files from my desk and run along the corridor, stopping briefly to peek inside Jennifer’s cubicle, but she isn’t there.

Panting, I open the door of the conference room to find my entire team assembled around my Project Manager, Daniel Byrne, who’s sitting with another man whom nobody seems to care about much. I glance around to do a quick headcount. Maria, Julia, Satya, Lee Chang, Deena, Andrew, Veera, Jay, Sana, Faisal and Jennifer – Jennifer – neither this side nor that side.

Where is Jennifer?

I hope she hasn’t resigned or requested her job to be moved elsewhere.

My doubts are cleared when I see her opening the door and strutting right through the room in a dark grey pantsuit, a pink scarf wrapped around her neck. Our eyes do not meet, but I can feel the bitter vibes she gives me before settling down next to Maria.

The room looks distinctly sombre today (“tempers running high,” Koel had said) but before I can pin down the reason for it, Daniel has addressed the team. 

‘Uh – guys,’ he says in a tone of voice that’d more likely suit a priest at a funeral service, ‘meet Jonathan Smith. He’s the Director of Operations at our headquarters in California.’

The man in question keeps glancing through a file without bothering to acknowledge a word of his own introduction (that’s rude!).

‘Over the weekend, Jon and I have looked at the progress of – ’Daniel is saying when Jonathan signals him to just leave it there, and that’s the end of all niceties. 

Jonathan throws the file he was looking at on the table, utters a loud, obnoxious grunt as a bull in a Spanish fighting pit, and charges at the team, all horns and rattles. ‘I’m amazed to see what a bunch of dimwits we have here, in this office. The way you’ve all been bullshitting on Project  Jade; you all should be ashamed of yourselves. Is this what we pay you for?’

Almost at once, he’s interrupted by Maria, the Team Lead of the project. ‘That’s no way to talk to people, Jon. Could you be more civil with my team?’

Jonathan regards Maria with an icy stare, his gaze lingering on her purple-dyed bob and her freckled face. ‘Sorry, I’m quite incapable of doing that. What’s your name again?’ he asks, but doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘We’ve less than two months to wrap up this project and you all are still gathering the fucking requirements?’

There’s a brooding silence in the room as the whole team stares at Jonathan.

‘Let’s get this straight,’ he says, his hawk-like eyes inspecting everyone, ‘this project isn’t just about creating prepaid cards, it’s about taking us miles ahead of our competitors. We’ve spent millions of dollars on the publicity of these cards before we launch them at a press conference in California. And if things are not ready by then, I swear to God I’ll fucking fire you all.’

Everyone looks agitated by this verbal onslaught first thing in the morning, including Jennifer. The way she’s shaking her leg non-stop, it looks like she’d storm out of the room any minute, but she doesn’t, and thankfully so, or she’d probably be on top of Jonathan’s hit list.

Meanwhile, Maria keeps coming back at Jonathan, imploring Daniel to intervene, and when he doesn’t, she slams her pen down on the table and declares, ‘sorry to say but you aren’t going to achieve anything by intimidating my team, Jon. This is a lot of work, and my team will deliver it as per the deadline given to us. Not a day early. Not a day late. And that’s final.’

The statement from Maria is enough to start a round of heated debate in the conference room with everybody jumping into the fray as though their life depended on it. So my face literally moves from one person to the other like a ping-pong ball– doink, doink, doink, doink – as Jonathan questions Daniel, Daniel (who looks like a bundle of distress, what with his eyes sporting sacs and stubble overgrown) diverts the attack towards Maria, Maria fights back highlighting the limitations of the resources and everyone else joins in the free-for-all slugfest. There are moments when Daniel gets up to silence the team, after which they start arguing once again. The blame game continues for hours, and at the end of it, everybody is staring at Jonathan who can’t seem to stop cursing; it’s a moment before he speaks again, and that too as if reminded of something.

‘We’d outsourced parts of this project to a vendor in India, right? When are they planning to turn in their work? Who is coordinating with them? Is it you?’ he asks Maria.

‘Oh, no, no,’ she answers, looking too eager to shove the burden onto somebody else. ‘That’s your guy,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘It’s him you need to chase, not me.’

‘Well’ – I clear my throat to borrow a second – ‘I’ve been interacting with the Indian team, but it does look like they need more time to finish their work. They,’ I hesitate, ‘they seem to be working at their own pace – The Indian Stretchable Time, as they love to call it.’ 

‘And clearly, you’ve done nothing about it,’ Jonathan says to me with a smirk.

‘I’ll speak to them today and find out more,’ I reply.

‘Speaking doesn’t work, it simply doesn’t,’ Jonathan retorts. He takes a brief pause, and then says, ‘let’s do this, while Daniel and Maria rustle up the work here, you go and figure out what’s going on with the Indians. Daniel, let’s put him on the next flight to Delhi, okay?’

I try my best to suppress a smile, but I’m not able to. I mean, what could be more exciting than a trip to India, even if it’s a whirlwind business trip? I can already picture my homecoming after all these years, how gloriously happy my grandmother and sister would be to see me – their boy, a success story in Canada! The pride they’d feel in introducing me to everybody! I need not say this, but Project Jade is the last thing on my mind, until I hear Daniel’s voice.

‘You’ll coordinate on this visit with Jennifer. She’s worked on this project since the beginning, and being a developer herself, she’ll be able to assist the Indians better than anybody else.’

What – India with Jennifer? 

My happiness suddenly evaporates, but nobody seems to realise that, busy as they are rejoicing in the solution that’s just been suggested.

Meeting over, I take my files and plod to my cubicle.

 

 

I’m so lost in my thoughts that I don’t quite notice when my colleague – and my best friend, Reyman Minhas, comes strolling into my cubicle, a mug in his hand.

‘Coffee?’ he asks me.

‘You’ve anything stronger than that, Rey?’

‘No, but we could go to the bar downstairs after work and –’ he pauses, ‘I thought you didn’t drink. Is everything alright with you?’

I clap a hand on my head. ‘This project will take my life, I’m telling you,’ I murmur.

Reyman keeps his coffee mug on the desk and rests his arms on the partition that separates his cubicle from mine, his heavy athletic frame dominating the entrance. ‘Go on, I’m listening.’

I sink into my chair and cover my face with my tie. ‘You know, as a kid, I always wanted to be someone like Bill Gates,’ I say to him. ‘I thought I’d have a posh job, a lovely house, a great boss, a BMW, a hot secretary and a beautiful wife. And here I’m living a life of drudgery.’

‘This isn’t drudgery.’

‘Then what is?’ I ask him. ‘I’ve a great salary but minus a lovely house, I can’t see a BMW, a beautiful wife is missing, a hot secretary is nowhere to be seen, and most certainly I’ve got a boss who’s always favouring everybody else but me. So I may be spending all my days and nights working on this project, even weekends, to be honest, but it still means nothing to him. On top of that, I’ve to now coordinate with Jennifer. Travel with her to India. Why?’ I ask him. ‘Does he not trust me to take care of things on my own? And if he had to send somebody, could he not have asked you, instead? You’re as good a developer as her. In fact, I’d rather it was you than her. We’d have worked, travelled, and met our families in India…’ I haven’t even completed my sentence when I hear a firm ‘No’ which puts an end to all my speculation.

‘One, he doesn’t know anything about Project Jade. And second, we aren’t going to India for a vacation,’ Jennifer replies, startling both Reyman and me at once.

I didn’t hear the click-clack of her high heels and neither did Reyman, which is apparent from his face as he steps on one side to give way to her. Why is she here, though, and what else did she hear, I wonder?

‘Send your passport details to HR. They need to book our flight tickets,’ she says, reading into my thoughts; ‘and hey,’ she continues, ‘I know you’re upset, but I’m not as bad at my work as you think and certainly not so boring. You can ask Rey if you want – we go back a long way. He’ll tell you all about me. Won’t you, Rey?’

‘Oh, come on, Jennifer! It’s bad enough that you heard his rant, please don’t start believing in it now,’ Reyman says with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘The guy is having a bad day, that’s all. Happens to the best of us. He was probably jinxed by someone.’

‘Mr Bhushan?!’ Jennifer and I cry out in unison.

‘Mr Bhushan?’ Reyman repeats, staring at the two of us. ‘Who the hell is he?’

‘No one,’ says Jennifer; and, ‘I can explain that,’ I reply almost at the same time.  

Jennifer squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head, looking visibly embarrassed at having exposed herself so carelessly in front of Reyman.

‘Time for me to go, guys. See you later,’ she says and scampers off down the corridor, leaving me to do all the explaining to Reyman – which I do, except, I don’t tell him the real reason why Jennifer came to my apartment yesterday. 

‘Hmm,’ Reyman says after listening to my story, ‘so you basically asked her to leave at 4 am because she misbehaved with who –?’

‘Mr Bhushan.’

‘And who is he? – No one! But Jennifer is our colleague. The least you could have done was to ensure her safety as she left your place at that godforsaken hour,’ he says, sounding a little put out by the whole affair and how it was clumsily handled by me. ‘Why didn’t you offer to drop her?’

‘I asked her, but she didn’t want me to accompany her. What could I have done?’

‘You could have followed her in another cab,’ Reyman says as if it were the most obvious thing to do – and perhaps that’s what I’d have done if Jennifer’s confession hadn’t tied me in knots.

‘Er, do you think I should go and apologise to her?’

‘Nah! What’s done is done, as they say, but…’  Reyman’s next few words are lost to me as he dashes towards his cubicle, returning moments later with a glossy-covered paperback; and handing it to me he says, ‘this is what you need to read so you aren’t such a dumbass in future.’

A dummies guide for desi nerds who can’t get their shit together in front of women by Raunak Amonkar, I read. ‘What sort of trash is this?’

‘This’ – Reyman taps his finger on the book – ‘is not trash, PJ. It’s quite hands-on in its approach. You won’t be disappointed, trust me.’

‘And why are you reading a book like this?’

‘Because I’m just like you, a bit better, maybe, but, yeah. I too struggle with the entire lot of them, my mum, my cousins, and a certain someone, to be specific,’ he says with a wink.

‘Okay,’ I reply slowly, tucking his book in my laptop bag, ‘do I know this “certain someone”?’

‘Course, you do. Can’t you guess already?’ Reyman asks me, his dark skin glistening as though someone sprinkled gold dust on it.

If my eyes are not mistaken, he’s blushing – but why? I hope he’s not in love with someone or planning to get hitched because I don’t think I can deal with my friends getting into that kind of stuff right now. I mean, it wouldn’t be very nice to see them getting loved up with their partners while I’m still single and looking. I’m about to tell him as much when I see Maria appear in the corridor to remind me about Project Jade, Jennifer, and my passport details that I still haven’t sent to HR. This discussion with Reyman will have to wait, it seems.

‘Party is over, man. It’s back to the salt mines for me,’ I say to him and quip, ‘wish me luck.’

‘Safe flight! And do be mindful of the lady who’s travelling with you. Don’t leave her alone and be nice to her, okay? Can’t wait for the two of you to come back,’ he says, moving towards the pantry with a swing in his step.