‘Good afternoon GF!’ Puru screamed suddenly from the little podium erected at the front of the cafeteria. The audience erupted in roars, eager to get over with the formalities so they could unleash themselves upon the food that was being laid out on side tables at the far end of the cafeteria. Puru had the irritating habit of repeating his introductory greetings until the crowd replied with adequate boisterousness, so it was better to scream yourself hoarse at the very outset and get it over with. After a few more rambunctious good-afternoons were flung back and forth, Puru finally launched into a sales and business update. He was followed by Shiv with an update on the brand performances in the last quarter. Dinky Chips had done well as always. It was fast emerging as the star performer from among GF’s new launches in the last two years. The latest Dinky Chips ad on air had done exceptionally well, winning thousands of new consumers for the brand, and was still going strong. Shiv briefly announced that the new Dinky Chips film was being awaited with great anticipation and I noticed Vijay nervously tapping his fingers on the armrest of his chair a few seats away. The new Dinky Chips film was still in troubled waters from the looks of it.

The rest of the update was pretty predictable and I found myself tuning out. Cup o’ Cheer had turned in a rock solid performance and so had Sinful Swirls which had been on a roll for the last few months. A cheer rose when Shiv spoke about the latest Sinful Swirls ad campaign—the entire agency team from Sinful Swirls was in office for a meeting that day and they had all come for the update to cheer on their brand. The latest ad campaign had been spearheaded by Priyanka and she smiled around the room now as Shiv went on with glowing reports about the brand’s performance. Then in a break from protocol, for the awards were generally announced after the brand updates were over, Shiv announced Priyanka’s name as the winner of the Star Performer of the Quarter award and invited her to join him on stage. The room erupted in applause as Priyanka made a great show of raising her hands to her mouth in mock surprise like a Miss India winner and slithered to the podium bestowing gloating smiles all around. I clapped along with everyone else as Priyanka accepted the award and made a little speech, feeling horribly jealous and then feeling even more horribly ashamed of myself for feeling that way. There was no doubt that Priyanka was fantastic at her job—she loved her work and spent most of her waking hours slogging her shapely behind off. There was even a famous anecdote about how she’d once fallen asleep at the office desk, hunched over a bunch of new film scripts for Sinful Swirls and had been discovered like that by the housekeeping team the next morning.