The Ghost

Dear Sir/Madam (How anti-feminist indeed.....if it’s a lady reading this, she might prefer Madam/Sir)
I would like to apply for the position of.......

I have recently completed my MBA from London Business School; previously MSc Economics from LSE, and graduation from....... (you better be reading this very carefully- it took me over two freaking decades of my life to fill up this paragraph)

I am really interested in the Investment Banking profile of the job. It is something that excites me tremendously (oh yes, I have wild, rave dreams about companies in the night)

In support of my leadership qualities, I have been the (President of the United States), and also spent some very constructive time during my previous internship (where I found out that I had a rare talent for online stick cricket)

Please find my CV attached. I am sure I can value-add to your company (Oh, I so love this term)

Yours Sincerely (Pleadingly, Grovelling-ly, Begging-ly)

Arijit Sen (Have a heart!)

“And now, ‘Send’ “. The button mocked a push with a light click of the laptop touch-pad. Immediately to be sent across cities and oceans and mountains, to join other applications into the e-dustbin of another company’s HR office, Arijit thought . Would he be really awarded this time for his absurd stretch of imagination? “Well somebody should fall for it", he soliloquised.

“So, Arijit.....”, with special emphasis on the ‘so’, was usually the way any of his mother’s friends would begin a conversation with him, just as he tried to sneak out unnoticed. “So, Orijit; akhun ki korcho” (Arijit, what are you upto now). Arijit realised that till not so long ago, the name of an exalted university and an impending exam would be enough to shut all of them up with an impressed smile. This time, Swapna aunty gave a long slurp to the tea and with remarkable snugness went on, “Don’t worry. With your qualifications, there are lots of jobs out there”, pointing her tea cup towards the open expanse from his ninth floor window. “You just need to keep trying. You know, my daughter. See, now she is working with TCS. Ofcourse hers was campus placement. For you, you need some experience. Puchhh. It’s not easy. But don’t worry”

Arijit wondered if Swapna aunty with her versatile daughter was infact his greatest worry; with his sordid condition of inaction being treated by her as biscuits to be moistened with her tea. “I need to go, aunty”, he replied, standing up abruptly,and giving a sweet smile that could have easily landed him a job of a butler at a five star joint. "Doesn't she have anything else to do?", Arijit rumbled under his breath

It’s been roughly two months. Two months since he came back from London. And reformed the contact details on his CV. And though every HR personnel had become intensely ‘Dear’ to him in cover letters, none bothered returning his affections. Some did, and then an odd interview would occur and then everything would again go deathly quiet between the company and him as if the subject of jobs was too taboo a topic to be discussed.
Back at home, his father would brew tea in the morning with an Armageddon look on his face. “Why don’t you apply to Analytics jobs? There are so many of those”.
“But Baba, I am not interested in those...”, Arijit would say wondering why there wasn’t a faster way to have tea than by luxuriously sipping it.
“What do you mean, not interested? Not interested. Job is job”. After a while, “Then government?”, Baba would explode with renewed energy. “Why not government services? Give an exam, clear it....”
“And then sit on a table and clear files”, Arijit mentally completed Baba’s sentence. In the big, cruel, cold world out there, his father still had admirable resolve in the behemoth Government sector to tuck his son in with paternal benevolence.

Arijit discovered that tea could be had faster when it grew a bit colder. One gulp and he earned his salvation from the living room that had turned into a career-counselling clinic.

“Yaaaaar, what are you doing today, man”? Arijit never really managed to give a coherent answer to that ebullient question of Rohit. In response to his mumbling, Rohit would quickly drown it by saying, “Chal yaar, movie pe chalte hai”.

Rohit was Arijit’s friend, who had risen from slumdog existence. Unknown colleges, unspoken grades, rocking parties.......an oblivious speck in the world of insecure toppers. When he started off with a job, he looked bit like a pet Labrador being thrown into a pack of street dogs to spend his life with them. Two years hence, and Rohit had transformed himself into a deft street-fighter. Into marketing and sales, he could churn out industry jargon in conversations as if it were being sprayed from machine guns.

At the mall, Rohit went on mindlessly chattering how he was marked for crucification next week, for not generating enough sales figures. “Arre, arre....please, I will pay”, Rohit stopped his monologue to prevent Arijit from taking out his wallet at the ticket counter. On the way up the escalator to the top floor where the multiplex was located, Rohit completed his interrupted oral sales report, and then asked, “So, wassup with you, dude? How’s the job search coming along?” Arijit’s summary lasted for barely one floor of the escalators’ ascent. As they handed the tickets to the usher, Arijit decided to summarise it with a ‘Chal raha hai, yaar. Let’s see.”

Back in McDonalds, after the movie got over, Arijit watched Rohit’s eyes move around with undercover stealth. Then suddenly in the middle of a bite of a burger, Rohit hissed “To your left, behind, in front of the glass wall, having a cold drink.” As Arijit attempted to turn around, Rohit stopped him saying, “What do you think you are doing! Turn slowly man; don’t turn like somebody is pointing out something to you!” Arijit this time turned with an orchestrated James Bond nonchalance to see a slim girl in a black dress sipping from a towering McDonald carton and staring out of the window. “Hot, na”? Rohit smirked with devilish intent. “Even she was staring at me.”

Arijit returned home tired. Normally he found Rohit’s newly acquired corporate sheen and his imaginary tryst with girls sitting a dozen tables away, quite amusing. But this time, he felt different. While he was tasting the new icecream-dipped-in-coke at McD’s, something that Arijit had immediately voted as one of the worst culinary innovations ever, and watching Rohit rattle alternately between sales figures and girls; he noticed a sense of pride and satisfaction in the guy. He was talking his heart out, as if he had earned the weekend. He was taking out his wallet with the relish of having worked for the notes ensconced in it. That girl by the window side was his affordable hobby because he was standing on his two feet. Arijit realised that he, on the other hand was standing on the red carpet of some exotic paper certificates. Pull the carpet, and he would be on the floor. Mentally Arijit told himself that any further movie with Rohit would have to wait.

Days inched by. Weeks crawled on. Diwali came. Amidst an outrageous cacophony of blasts that seemed to occur eternally outside, Arijit sat in his room with his laptop cradled on his legs. Nothing. No one. Yahoo mail tauntingly revealed no new mail, inspite of him refreshing the page with frustrating regularity. For the past half an hour, Arijit had been watching new status messages being posted in Facebook. “4 new posts”. After a while “1 new post”. Arijit felt like he was on National Geographic watching and recording when one lion would yawn and the other would sit down. Gtalk obviously had an array of red and green bulbs beside names of several of his friends. But nobody bothered dropping by for a chat. “Nobody really cares, do they”, he wondered. “I am after all the unshaven unemployed couch potato, writing flattering letters and boastful CVs, while all of you are leading smart lives in a smart jobs”. Arijit felt a kind of childish hostility against them all. “If they don’t bother chatting with me, SO WON’T I”.

Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen minutes. His Gandhian protest seemed to go unnoticed. “HELLO GUYS CAN’T YOU SEE ME”, Arijit felt like yelling. But each one seemed to be absorbed in their own parallel universes. Even if somebody did stop by, Arijit wondered if he really had any answer for the question, “How was your day”. The day was ............Arijit realised that he was decaying from inside. Nowadays if his mother would ask him to get something thing, he would idly stare at the object for some time wondering why it did not suddenly grow a pair of legs to walk past him. The ultimate shocker came to Arijit when he realised that he was watching FRIENDS....and wasn’t laughing at all. It was as if he was okay with the recorded laughter of the audience doing it for him. “I am going mad”, he told himself.

“Yaar, Wasssup”, Rohit’s enthusiastic voice came with the phone ring that suddenly flashed on Arijit’s mobile phone. “Hey listen, I need a favour man. It’s this babe, yaar. Met on the bus. And guess what, this one actually talks to me! So here’s the deal. I want to ask her out, but before that I want to sort of make her feel comfortable. So I thought that I would call her for dinner with my friends; you know just to make her feel as if I am not really dating her, or something..” Arijit decided that if there was indeed a low point of his dismal day; listening to Rohit make Bush-like plans to woo a girl, was most certainly it.
“So great, go ahead”, Arijit replied.
“That’s the problem, no one is free yaar.” Rohit replied as if waiting for the cue. “Why don’t you come along?”

“Hi, my name is Arijit”, Arijit replied to the slightly overweight girl at the side of Rohit. “Great, so let’s go then. There’s this really cool Chinese restaurant on the way. Let’s go guys.” Rohit suggested with orchestrated enthusiasm. “So what are you doing, Arijit?” Pooja asked over a glass of beer, once they walked into a plush restaurant that Arijit suspected would lighten Rohit’s pockets dearly once the bill came. “Well, actually nothing. Rohit here will tell you that I am even available for hanging his coat. But the answer to your question is that I am just out of LBS and LSE. Looking for a job.”
“Wow, that’s something, isn’t it? What do you need for getting into LBS.”
“Nothing much, actually; you need some profs who think that you are a prodigy. And some great essay writing”, Arijit replied.
At the end of the dinner, as they came out of the restaurant, Pooja gave him a rather penetrating stare as she said, “It was lovely meeting you, Arijit.”

“Bye, Pooja”, said Rohit.

Days later, Pooja Gupta’s friend request came on Arijit’s Facebook profile. There were three hundred and twenty nine faces lined up there already who did nothing more than just smile at him constantly. Another one could do no extra harm. “Just need to tell Rohit that she doesn’t seem his type”, Arijit thought as he accepted the request.

It was Diwali again. This time Arijit found himself in his office party wearing a rich sherwani, putting his life on the line for lighting a fire cracker. As he faked a laugh with some of his colleagues, he managed to efficaciously slide the paneer tikka off the serving-spoon onto his plate. Finding a quiet spot he seated himself, giving a royal brush to his sherwani to prevent sitting on it. Butchering the paneer into two neat halves, his thoughts flew to the evening last Diwali. Where he met Pooja. The only person who went on to poke him on Gtalk, saying “Hiya, how are you doing?” The one who turned out be his greatest support during those unshaven days when he had nothing to do but watch the screen for a mail to drop by. In all those days of inaction, she was the only one to reach to the phone to get his call, and return them back if she missed him. She was such a great friend.

But was he so absorbed in himself that he did not realise that she had actually fallen in love with him? Arijit would have perhaps never known. His new job started. Life suddenly picked up frenetic pace. Long philosophical conversations got converted into quick “Hw r u. Im fine” messages. New places, new people, new friends......without realising it Pooja faded to the background.
Arijit munched on the paneer piece as he remembered the day when in one phone call one evening Pooja admitted that she could no longer keep the crush to herself. Yes, she loved him. The words stung him like something he had never felt before. “I do like you”, was all he could cough out. In a fraction of a second, Arijit suddenly found himself delving into his own self like a person thrown off a cliff, wondering what he really felt for her.
“That’s ok”, came a gruff reply from the other side of the phone. “Hey listen Arijit, I need to go now.” Arijit could now feel Pooja’s pain float out pungently with her discretion. ‘Was I using her? Was I being selfish... But I never wanted to hurt her’, Arijit screamed out silently. Groping for words, he finally said, “Hey Pooja........I...” .“No probs Arijit” came a calm reply from the receiver; “ I wasn’t expecting it either. Good bye.”

Click. And then silence.
It was as if Pooja was there all though the darkness of recession, and then like a spirit disappeared theatrically when the first rays of recovery found its way into Arijit’s world.

Pooja never called after that. Neither did she answer calls. And Arijit had to accept the inconvenient truth that he was not doing bad at all. Yes, his good friend was lost. But several not-so-selfless ones emerged. Pooja was a small, itching blot on his conscience; the gnawing feeling of having let down a friend.

"Hi Ari", from the seat below, Arijit could only see a long expanse of legs till the skirt hit his view like a saving grace. "How are you doing? Aren't you the new guy who joined......."

Arijit forced a smile as the attractive lady sat beside him. "Have I seen you somewhere. I mean before this ofcourse. Would you be knowing....."
Arijit went on answering in his polite self. But in his mind there was a red flag that was billowing furiously. And he realised that he was giving guarded replies; smiling, but not laughing; conscious of an unease. Suddenly he found himself deeply analysing every word of the lady in the unknown recesses of his mind, wondering if they concealed anything more than what it seemed. It was as if something in the bottom of his mind rattled as if warning him of something dire.

The lady soon walked away, unimpressed by Arijit's muted and strange replies. "Rohit would have killed to be in my position five minutes back", Arijit chuckled.

But as he idly gazed at the slim hips of the lady oscillate off to another corner of the hall, Arijit knew exactly what was happening. Why he was behaving so charmlessly. Why he was being afraid of the unforseen circumstance of harmless flirting. What was stopping him from exploring anything else with anyone else.

It was the ghost of Pooja that was haunting him.