Puru was a living legend in GF folklore. A mere sales boy, he had started out his career in GF at the lowest rung of the ladder and risen all the way to the top. A complete people’s person and a devoted family man, Puru commanded fierce dedication within the ranks of the GF sales team. His career graph itself read like some Bollywood flick complete with midnight raids at errant distributors’ offices, stupendous success stories of new launches in which he had personally got involved and heroic tales such as one in which he did door-to-door selling on foot in the heavy Mumbai rains just to achieve a quarterly sales target.

Puru had his share of quirks to go with his larger-than-life personality. He was famous for his large appetite which also acted as his Achilles heel sometimes, his habit of grinding his teeth in times of stress and, most famous of all, his ‘Englishisms’. Puru had been born into a lower middle-class family and done his entire schooling in a Hindi-medium school in Eastern UP, as a result of which he hadn’t known a word of English when he embarked on his career at GF. Never one to give up without a fight, he had taken it upon himself to master the language soon after and had educated himself, armed with DVDs of popular Hollywood flicks and racy crime fiction. The result was ‘Puru’s Englishisms’, a phenomenon everyone at GF was fond of as much as they laughed over it.

‘Boys and girls!’ Puru boomed now as he approached us, looking like a festive Chinese lantern in his brightly coloured dragon attire. ‘Discussing work, eh? No time for the treasure hunt which our poor Priyanka has so sincerely organized.’

‘Actually I was just looking for Priyanka myself, Puru,’ Yudi replied smoothly without missing a beat. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Oh yes, I just banged her in the reception!’ Puru beamed at Yudi. ‘She was there announcing the winners of the treasure hunt, you know.’

‘Oh, you bumped into her in the lobby, did you?’ Yudi smiled politely. I was itching to guffaw loudly by now and the suppressed laughter escaped from my mouth in the form of a little snort. Yudi glanced at me quickly and addressed Puru again. ‘I believe you were looking for me this morning, Puru? I didn’t get a chance to catch up with you earlier.’

‘Oh yes, Yudi, I wanted to discuss the Dinky Chips script with you, you know.’ Puru turned towards me, ‘Megha, will you excuse us? I want to pick up Yudi’s brains on the Dinky Chips new ad film you know. I have some fantastic ideas that will romancify the brand!’

‘Sure, Puru!’ I replied a tad too brightly. ‘See you guys later!’ I shot one last sympathetic glance at Yudi who looked like he would much rather be crucified than discuss scripts with Puru, and headed toward the lobby area to see what everyone else was up to. Most people were drifting towards the lunch area by the time I got to the lobby. Glimpsing Vijay among them I joined the little group he was with.