Just Another Office Romance
It was the first week of August in when Mumbai monsoon had reached its peak. It was work as usual for Anirudh. He had just finished working on his presentation, which his Boss had wanted. After turning it in with his Boss’ Executive Associate, he started thinking about his Mundane Job.
It has hardly been a year since he joined his current organization – a well known foreign bank, after graduating from a premier B school along with 3 other students. They were tasked with assisting the CXO in strategy related projects. It was a roller coaster ride for Anirudh in the first year, working on multiple projects and getting to be in the same room and interacting with various Board members in various meetings. These are some of the privileges available to him being in the CXO’s core team.
But things began to get monotonous since the last couple of months and Anirudh began to lose interest in his work. It was already 4 in the evening that day and Anirudh was joined by Jack and Aditya from the Process Improvement Team who worked with the Startegy Team and shared the same bay in his office. Ani and Aditya were lamenting about their work life and how their Bosses were taking them to the dogs.
When the discussion was just getting heated up, Jack interrupted them and asked Jack what he thought about the new customer relationship team that had just started in their floor pointing at a group of girls who were having tea infront of them. Jack is the self appointed Casanova of the group. That was when Anirudh first set his eyes on her. She was the most beautiful girl he had seen in a long time. She wore a simple white dress. Her hair was long, wavy, and black, falling brilliantly over her chest.
The girl’s face was mesmerizing, with large dazzling chocolate brown eyes. The girl was stunningly gorgeous, like a painting of a goddess brought to life. She smiled sweetly at Ani’s group realizing that they were looking at them, her eyes sparkling like stars. Ani felt he needed to talk to her at any cost.
It was day 2, Anirudh was thinking about different ways in which he could interact with the girl. But to carry out his scheme, he needed a wingman. He tried to ask Jack for help. But Jack chickened out stating that he would be in trouble if he misbehaved with any girl in office. During tea, Ani could not gather the strength to talk to this girl when she was with their group. The biggest problem faced by Anirudh was that he still did not know the girl’s name.
Anirudh devised a scheme to get her name. He knew where the girl’s workstation was located. And all the office landline phones had the names of the employees to whom it was allocated to.
Anirudh waited till everyone from the floor left for the day. He then inconspicuously moved towards the girls desk and looked at her phone. He finally got a glimpse of the text written there. It spelt Bondita das Anirudh left home that day along with a sense of achievement.
Almost a week had passes since that eventful day. Anirudh still could not speak to Bondita and silently waited for an opportunity. He also kept pestering Jack to accompany him during their tea break, so that he could go and talk to the girls. As usual Raj was lost in work that day and was absent-mindedly staring at his monitor. He sensed someone was standing behind him. He turned back and he got the surprise of his life.
Standing behind him was Bondita who seemed confused and lost. Anirudh was immediately nervous, he brought a facade of some confidence and asked the young lady “May I help you”. The girl replied stating that she wanted to take a printout and her team did not have access to the device. Ani helped her out with the print. Bon thanked him and quietly went back to her chair.
Jack who was quietly observing this event smirked at him and told Anirudh “Dude this is your opportunity to interact, why don’t you go to the girl’s desk and help her configure her printer”.
