Robinstantly I told him that I was working on a top-secret project at Lederman—just like that I decided to call it ‘Operation CyberFireStorm’—which was looking at how to optimize Lederman’s IT bandwidth consumption and costs while delicately balancing it against the enterprise’s need for system and human uptime mapped across vertical and horizontal competency–efficiency metrics.

Diary, I swear the manager didn’t say a single word for a full 30 seconds. Not one word whatsoever. It was so silent I could hear the music in the hotel lobby through the phone.

Then he promised to talk to the IT guys and revert.

Overall this day has been one of disappointment and embarrassment.

And now tomorrow I have to face Dominic. Who thinks I am some Bihar MLA type character.

YouTube is my last chance for some Raveena.

11.47 p.m.

Man. There is so much Raveena on YouTube.

Silver lining.

25 March 2007

9.56 a.m.

Dominic that wily fox. Wink. Wink. Later.

9.25 p.m.

Sorry I am so late today. But a couple of things happened that might look like coincidence … but what if there is a higher purpose in all this?

But first things first. The day started with an entirely unexpected meeting with Dominic.

From the moment I opened my eyes and checked to see if Mohra was finished, I’d been feeling very very vomitty. This usually happens to me just before moments of intense stress and pressure.

Not that I will have any difficulty in finding opportunities with other management consulting firms in UK or India or in any other lucrative market. But I was upset about my meeting with Dominic. Dominic is one of the rising stars of Dufresne’s European operations. Just three months ago, at the regional conclave, he became the first consultant in Dufresne history to win both the ‘Best Managed Banking Project (Repeat Business)’ award and the ‘Best Wardrobe (Gents 35 to 45 Western)’ award in the same financial year.

If he tells any of the partners that I acted unethically then they may not only cancel my secondment, they might even fire me outright. Tom Pastrami no longer cares for me. He probably doesn’t even remember me.

Mother fucker.

So I was extremely tense from morning itself and had absolutely no appetite for breakfast. But in any case I carried three or four boiled eggs in my laptop bag as a backup in case I suddenly felt hungry.

By the time I reached office the eggs were beginning to smell horribly. So instead of throwing them in my dustbin I went and threw them in the dustbin in the small conference room next to the server room.

And then I went to Dominic’s room. By this time you can imagine the state I was in. Fully nervous and vomitty.

When I went in Dominic was still having his breakfast. He was drinking tea from a plastic cup and eating small boiled egg sandwiches with blue cheese in them.