I felt the room spin around me as Shiv spoke and I began to feel slightly nauseous. I looked at him, dumbfounded. ‘Shiv, how can you take away the one thing that has given me a sense of purpose over these last few months, just like that? Bright Biscuits is more than just a project for me. It’s my baby!’

Shiv sighed again and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. I’m not taking anything away from you, Megha. I’m not saying that I’m taking you off the project. All I’m saying is that you step aside and let Varun do the presentation tomorrow and we will discuss this matter in further detail day after. It’s really not a big deal—it’s just a presentation! And anyway, most presentations are done by the senior brand managers in any case. You’re still an assistant brand manager.’

I opened my mouth to speak but words failed to come out and I noticed that my hands were beginning to shake. A sense of numbness was slowly beginning to envelop me. I had always detested office politics. It was one of the pitfalls of corporate life that I tried my best to avoid. I had managed reasonably so far too, preferring to keep to myself and staying away from the suck-ups and office sycophants. But it had finally come back to haunt me—and worst of all, it had been engineered by the biggest sycophant of them all. I felt a strange sense of disconnect as I looked at Varun’s loathsome face. I didn’t even want to be a part of this shit any more. I listened without really hearing as Shiv spoke for a few minutes more and then handed over the presentation wordlessly to Varun before I walked out.

I heard Shiv say something again as I was leaving the room but I didn’t turn around. I didn’t care any more; I was so done with this place! Even the thought of the Bright Biscuits film failed to ignite the warm sparkly feeling it normally did whenever I thought about it. Nothing mattered any more. It was going to be Varun up there on stage tomorrow, showcasing the film and taking all the credit, schmoozing from a presentation he hadn’t even seen till today.

I stumbled towards my desk, my mind still spinning, and nearly fell over Debbie who was sitting cross-legged in a corner of my cubicle, reading a book. Debbie was in town for a few days and she normally dropped in at office around lunchtime so that she and Vijay could grab lunch together. Vijay’s cubicle was like a beehive of intense activity even on normal days, and in the run-up to the conference it had started to resemble a beehive in which the bees were preparing for war. The rather shy Debbie had taken to waiting in my cubicle—which was in the relatively quieter part of our floor—while Vijay wrapped up his work. She normally sat silently in a corner, doing a jigsaw or reading a book and accompanying me for a tea break and a chat whenever I was free.