No Deadline for Love
MANASI VAIDYA
No Deadline for Love
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
PENGUIN BOOKS
NO DEADLINE FOR LOVE
Manasi Vaidya spent her childhood travelling all over the world with her parents and reading all the books she could get her hands on. After a degree in commerce at Pune University, she went on to do her MBA at IIM Ahmedabad where she was first introduced to the wonderful world of brands and advertising. She has worked in brand management for many years and has been fortunate to have worked with exceedingly nice bosses who have been very kind to her during appraisals. No Deadline for Love is her first book.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR NO DEADLINE FOR LOVE
‘A light-hearted, highly insightful take on the lure of our professions versus the lure of life. A must-read for people who believe that careers define who they are.’
—R. Balki
‘Manasi has done a great job in her debut novel. This book has some valuable insights on the challenges and dilemmas faced by a career woman.’
—Ronnie Screwvala
For Priyank and my parents
One
The end!
Reaching the last slide of his two-hundred-and-seventy-six-slide presentation, Suketu looked around the conference room with an expectant smile.
A sea of bored faces gazed back at him.
It was the sixth presentation by the ad agency on the new Bright Biscuits project and they seemed to be getting progressively worse each time.
Sensing the general air of gloom around him, Suketu decided to salvage what he could of the situation. ‘What do you think, Shiv?’ he directly addressed our vice-president of marketing, flagrantly bypassing the ranks in between. I could see my boss Varun glowering in the background at this slight.
Shiv let out an audible sigh. ‘I’m disappointed, Suketu. And that’s putting it mildly. This is the sixth effort by your team in coming up with a good film idea for Bright Biscuits and we seem to be going nowhere.’
He strode out of the room with a last sidelong glance at Varun who, by now, was gaping like a goldfish.
Suketu sat down with a dejected thump and buried his face in his hands. I felt sorry for him. At thirty-one, Suketu was one of the youngest and brightest servicing directors at Blue Strawberry, the ad agency that worked with us, and one of the few people I knew who truly loved his job. He was also usually very good at it, but the series of disasters on Bright Biscuits seemed to be taking their toll on him. He turned to Varun now for guidance: ‘Where do you think we’re goofing up, Varun?’
‘Gah?’ Varun snapped out of his goldfish mode, staring at Suketu and then at the creative team whose faces mirrored Suketu’s dejection. ‘Well, I think that’s for the lot of you to decide!’ he spat out contemptuously before turning around to glare at me. ‘Megha, this is the sixth time we’ve had a disaster on our hands for heavens’ sake! Shiv must think we’re a bunch of losers. This is your project; you figure out what to do next. I can’t lose face like this on something that’s not even my responsibility!’ Spewing these words of wisdom he bounded out of the room, ostensibly to save face with Shiv and redeem himself of any blame.
I sighed and turned to Suketu. ‘It’s been a long day, guys. Maybe we should take a quick coffee break and re-group in fifteen minutes to brainstorm on what we ought to do next?’ The creative team brightened up considerably at the thought of a caffeine fix and heads nodded vigorously. I let myself out of the conference room and headed to the coffee machine. I was in desperate need of a caffeine fix myself. As I approached the bright little enclave in the middle of our floor which doubled up as the pantry and informal gossip point, I could hear Varun complaining loudly to someone about my ‘lack of project management skills’.
Typical.
Varun was an ace when it came to passing the buck. That, combined with his non-existent people skills and mammoth ego made him an absolute delight to work with. Unfortunately, he was also my boss and liked to think of me as his own personal slave.
I decided to skip the coffee and headed to the small open-air terrace at the south-west corner of our office for a breath of fresh air. The terrace was a rare luxury in the space-starved city of Mumbai and my favourite place in the entire office. Being housed in one of the older, more decrepit buildings of the city was a small price to pay for this piece of heaven. The efficient office housekeeping team had taken it upon themselves to make this the ‘green zone’ of the office—an array of plants and creepers jostled for space along with a plaster-of-Paris water fountain that merrily tinkled out a soothing gush of water in a corner of the tiny terrace. The place had a serene rainforest-like feel to it, which seemed surreal on the fifth floor of a corporate office block in one of the most crowded suburbs of Mumbai.
I often came to the little terrace to clear my head. Of late it seemed like I had a great many muddled thoughts to clear. For three years now, I had been working in General Foods, a leading FMCG player whose beverage and snack brands had become household names across the country. But in the last year or so, a vague sense of what could only be described as ennui had begun to creep into my being.
It had all started off in a very promising manner—I’d been placed as a management trainee with GF right after my MBA from the Reputed Institute of Management, the leading business school of the country. It was ‘a job to die for‘—as the recruiting HR manager had snootily informed me—and I’d been picked out of tens of aspiring candidates for the honour. The first year had gone by in a heady rush of excitement at earning my first real salary and getting a taste of the corporate world. But that initial rush soon faded away, leaving me with a lingering sense that this was not my life’s true calling. The only problem was I wasn’t quite sure what my life’s true calling was!
My reverie was broken by a loud, cheerful voice followed by a smack on my shoulder.
‘Wassup, dudette?’
It was Vijay, my batchmate from B-school and assistant brand manager on the Dinky Chips brand, one of the fun brands to work on in the company. Their ditzy ad campaigns had won several awards and the brand team seemed to be on the constant lookout for wacky real-life situations that they could translate on to celluloid. Vijay had even threatened to cast me in one of their ads as a chip-eating, daydreaming weirdo who needed to get out of the office terrace and get a life instead.
‘You tell me, Tau!’ I replied, addressing him by the nickname bestowed on him in B-school. He had been named thus because once, when accused of having the hots for one of the better-looking girls in our batch, he had insisted that he thought of her as a younger sister. And ever since, the name had stuck.
‘How come you’ve graced my humble terrace with your presence?’ I asked him.
‘Your dear boss was doing a tap dance on my nerves with his constant whining, man!’ Vijay groaned. ‘I needed to get out of there. Honestly, I don’t know how you put up with the guy.’
‘Oh, I just tune out most of the time,’ I sighed, ‘and pretend to throw imaginary poisoned darts at him when he’s particularly painful.’
‘Well maybe you should try telling him what a jerk he is! It’ll do him a world of good. So what’s the scene with Bright Biscuits? Did the agency come up with anything good today?’
‘Nope’, I shook my head dolefully. ‘Today’s meeting was an absolute disaster and Shiv looked like he was going to eat us alive. That’s why Vile Varun has been whining so much—uski izzat ka sawaal hai, after all. He just barked at me for making him lose face in front of Shiv.’
‘It’ll be rather nice if he does lose that constipated face of his,’ Vijay remarked wryly. ‘I wonder what’s with Suketu these days, though. He seems to be slipping up a lot, quite uncharacteristic of him!’
‘Really?’ I was genuinely surprised, but before I could ask Vijay to explain further, Varun burst upon the scene looking most agitated.
‘Megha! What are you doing here? Have you wrapped up the meeting already?!’
‘Pipe down boss, we’re just taking a coffee break,’ I replied soothingly. I was used to handling Varun and his melodramatic outbursts. ‘I’m just heading back to wrap up the discussion now and to finalize a plan of action for the next presentation. We can’t afford any more disasters like today.’
‘I don’t think you’re going to be afforded the luxury of any more plans of action either,’ Varun snapped. ‘Shiv has just called for an emergency meeting with the team. He’s extremely upset with the progress on this project. And so am I! I mean why should I be pulled up for a project that’s not even my direct responsibility?’
‘Why don’t we discuss this in private, Varun?’ I snapped back and charged out of the terrace. I was getting tired of Varun and his incessant rants. I hurried back to the meeting room to give the agency a quick heads-up before the meeting with Shiv.
A few minutes later we were all seated in Shiv’s office. Ignoring the poisonous looks Vile Varun was shooting in my direction, I tried to quell the growing feeling of uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. Shiv calling for an emergency meeting was a rare occurrence and I had a foreboding of not-so-good times ahead. I could see Suketu’s face mirroring my feelings as he nervously tapped his fingers on the glass-topped conference table in the middle of the room.
‘Right,’ Shiv said brusquely, snapping his cellphone shut as he walked up to the table from his desk. He had just concluded an ominous conversation in terse, low tones. ‘Bad news, guys,’ he began in his trademark cut-to-the-chase style. ‘Like I said earlier, I have been more than a little disappointed with our progress on this project. We have spent the last few months investing time, effort and energy into this launch with zero progress so far. I think it’s time now for some serious damage control. Guys, this is going to be one of our biggest launches next year and very different from anything we’ve done in the past. From being focused only on fun, taste and pleasure we are now venturing for the first time into functionality—biscuits that are good for your brain! It goes without saying that we can’t afford to take any chances with this launch. That’s why I have decided that we need to get a new creative team for this launch. I understand that you guys are currently overloaded with work across our other brands as well. This will give you a breather, while also allowing us to get some fresh perspective. I really think this is the best decision for all of us.’
I heard a sharp hiss and turned around to see Vile Varun looking like a volcano on the brink of eruption. I could almost read his thoughts. A change of creative team was a big deal, and not just for the agency. It didn’t speak too well for the brand team on the project either. Which meant Varun and me. Or, more aptly, just me, since this was my project and Varun had been only too keen to wash his hands of it right from the start. It was not a pleasant thought and the uneasy feeling I’d been trying to fight off resurfaced in a fresh wave.
The creative team, on the other hand, was looking rather relieved. Shiv was right. The poor guys were pretty overloaded with work in overdrive across all the GF brands, and the string of failures on Bright Biscuits had done nothing to boost their morale. It was probably a huge load off their backs, even though it had been a prestigious project to work on. Suketu, however, looked like he had been slapped across the face. He was staring at Shiv now, glassy eyed, with a look of disbelief and despair.
‘Suketu,’ Shiv said, as if on cue, ‘will continue servicing the Bright Biscuits account. We need someone from the old team to maintain continuity, and Suketu with his vast experience and knowledge of the brand is a valued resource. After all, he has been working on the biscuits portfolio forever. Right, Suketu?’ He directed a warm smile at Suketu.
‘Right, Shiv!’ Suketu smiled back, looking hugely relieved and happy at the same time.
Trust Shiv to say all the right things. He had managed to take a tough call without hurting any feelings—the creative team was grateful because their load had been considerably lightened; Suketu was feeling valued and happy; and the future of Bright Biscuits looked hopeful again!
The rest of the meeting went by in a buzz of what-happens-next and plans of action. Suketu was assigned the responsibility of getting a new creative team on board as soon as possible. We would start from scratch on the project with fresh, new work, and hopefully this time round we would get somewhere. Life had begun to look up again! I began to feel a little better. When the meeting ended, I walked back to my desk with renewed enthusiasm. My optimism was short-lived, however. In less than ten minutes, Vile Varun descended on my desk like the proverbial pall of gloom and summoned me to a meeting room.
‘I hope you’re feeling worried, Megha,’ he began before I’d even shut the glass door behind me. ‘A change of creative team is no joke, and it speaks very poorly of the brand team in charge. Basically, what it says is that the brand team is incompetent and incapable of providing strategic direction. This episode speaks very poorly of you, Megha. In fact, I’m thinking of having a word with Shiv to discuss whether you should be handling projects of such importance at all!’
‘Just hang on a minute, Varun!’ I snapped, feeling a familiar hot flush of anger beginning to course through my veins. My sister Sammy’s oft-repeated advice—‘Don’t act when you’re angry, Megha! ‘—flashed through my mind but I threw caution to the winds. There was no way I was taking this lying down! Varun had been downright insulting and worse, unfair. ‘Let me remind you that this project has been anything but easy so far,’ I continued with as much politeness as I could muster in my tone. ‘You heard Shiv say so yourself in today’s meeting. And, in addition, the creative team was overburdened with work. It’s really unfair to blame me for everything that’s gone wrong so far. You know I’ve been giving a hundred per cent to this project. Besides, we’re supposed to be working on this project together and you’re my boss. If you really thought I was slipping up so badly, why didn’t you point it out earlier? Anyway, failures happen, and I think we should learn from them and move on.’
I stopped to catch my breath, and also because Varun had turned a peculiar shade of purple and started spluttering wildly. He didn’t like being stood up to in general—and by me in particular. Well, he’d just have to get used to it, I thought wryly, bracing myself for some more scathing repartee, but just then the door swung open and Shiv walked in.