‘Late!’ barked Vile Varun as soon as I walked through the door. ‘You are seven minutes late, Megha. Really not the best way to begin an appraisal with your boss, don’t you think?’

‘Sorry, Varun,’ I apologized, glancing at my watch. ‘I was just in the middle of approving the last batch of stimuli for the Bright Biscuits scripts. The research in Delhi starts tomorrow and if there’d been even a slight delay in getting the material across, work would’ve stopped.’

‘Your detailed explanations are fascinating, Megha,’ Varun snapped sarcastically, ‘but I’m really not interested. I’m sure you’re old enough to handle these basics of project management by now. Let’s get started. I need to sign off on your appraisal form after our discussion and email it to Shiv. I, for one, certainly don’t like delays.’

I scowled at Varun and sat down opposite him, bracing myself for what was to come. This definitely wasn’t an auspicious start to what had always been an ordeal as far as Varun and I were concerned; we’d never got along and Varun liked to use appraisal time as an occasion to get that point across.

‘Right,’ Varun began, assuming his most constipated expression as he glanced through the papers in front of him. ‘Let us begin. As always, we’ll start with the positives and then move on to the areas of improvement. Then we can have a two-way discussion. I’d like to know what you think about how work is going, before we sign off.’

I nodded at him and he went on in an unctuous tone, ‘So Megha, you’ve been with us for three years now? Good, good. Like I’ve told you before, what I like about you is your sincerity, your stickiness—after all, you’ve been faithful to GF all these years—and of course you have an excellent pedigree, being as you are from one of the leading business schools of this country…’

I tuned out, my head nodding on autopilot at brief intervals as Varun droned on. We had been through this feedback millions of times before. Each time we had an appraisal, Varun began with a stock rendition of my ‘list of positives’, demonstrating only too well that he had applied a singular lack of effort in even bothering to think about anything remotely positive linked to me. He even used the same punctuation marks, pausing at exactly the same phrase each time round. By now I could probably rattle off this part of the ‘appraisal’ myself. It was downright irritating, not to mention humiliating—like I had only a finite set of positive qualities that remained static over time. Vile Varun almost made me sound like a faithful canine with his rendition of my good points: a good pedigree, loyal, sincere—woof, woof, woof!

I had tried discussing this with him several times in the past but it was like water off a duck’s back. I might as well have actually been a dog barking for all the impact it had! Varun brought his teeth together with a sharp click as he finished his little speech and the sound brought me back to a state of alertness—the gleam in Varun’s eyes was a clear indication that we were now getting down to the real thing.