Six

‘Megha, I need you to come to the conference room right now!’ Varun whined on the office intercom in his most petulant voice and I sighed and got up from my desk. I had been dreading this day for weeks. It was time for my midterm appraisal, which meant that Varun, being my immediate superior, would get an official platform to run me down— something he thoroughly enjoyed doing. I was sure he had been eagerly looking forward to it for weeks, ticking off the days on his calendar in preparation of the grand finale when he could rip me apart.

Besides, I was totally unprepared for the appraisal this time round. The last couple of weeks had been crazy with work stretching on till midnight almost every day and spilling over on to weekends, giving me barely enough time to focus on anything apart from the new Bright Biscuits film. We had developed some awesome scripts, even if I said so myself, and were now about to test the scripts through market research planned across multiple cities. The winning script would then be taken forward for development into the new Bright Biscuits ad film. I had spent several sleepless nights with Neil, Shubhra and Suketu over the development of the scripts and now we were working overtime, trying to get the stimuli for the market research ready in time.

True to his promise, Yudi had shown up only for select meetings after our row in Goa, even though Neil had reliably informed me that he was doing a lot of work behind the scenes on the Bright Biscuits scripts with him and Shubhra back at the agency. I tried to quell the familiar wave of bitterness that rose up in me at the thought of Yudi. I had to stop this emotional dithering! True, I’d been unthinkingly outspoken back in Goa, but did Yudi have to react in such a juvenile manner even weeks later? Not only had he avoided me like the plague for the rest of the Goa trip, he’d successfully maintained his distance even after we got back to the office grind, putting on his best cold and distant act each time we happened to run into each other. Not like I cared either way, I told myself for what was probably the ten-millionth time. I was going to show Yudi that work on Bright Biscuits was going to progress just as successfully, whether he chose to get involved directly or work behind the scenes with the creative team.

Pausing to compose myself before the conference room door that was staring me in the face now, I took a deep breath and walked in. It would not do to show Varun that I was nervous even though an army of butterflies was doing the salsa in my stomach. I had to act cool, composed, put up a confident front even if it was a total facade. Besides, I tried to reassure myself, there was really no reason the appraisal should go badly aside from the fact that Vile Varun hated my guts. After all, I had been doing nothing but working myself into the ground on Bright Biscuits.