The interview:

Well, the written test and then a week’s wait for the interview.

The waiting area had other people, people who worked, people who were like her amateurs.

The call made her enter a small room, rather a tiny room to call it.

There were four people,

The director and managers.

The three men on one side and the woman in the seat aside me.

They asked me questions

My strengths,

My weakness,

My studies,

Their work.

She answered mostly all. She could read faces.

Except one rest all faces were expressing doubt.

She came back. The last question she was asked.

“What do you do if you don’t get the job?”

She needed the job, but her heart did not sink, she said,

“Well, then it was nice talking to you, I will find another and won’t rest till I find one.”

There were shifts and it was human pain basically. Pharmacovigilance they called it.

The money was not good but life could not offer her more right then.

The first few days were blissful.

Lunch, cafeteria, training and client introductions.

The bunny tooth had not got it and he cried bitterly.

A girl she liked got in and the guy with the car also got it.

One day while in the afternoon shift, Shrum went to collect some munchies.

The manager cum director one of her interviewers asked her,

“How do you like it?”

“Good, very good.” She smiled.

She smelt nothing fishy in giving out that answer.

She followed a few rules to keep her safe in this city.

1) She wore what she always wore, no changes in apparel.

2) She lived and breathed her time in the work, without learning anything else.

She received comments later,

1) Look up sometimes, just looking down at the computer won’t help.

2) Hard workers don’t win the race, there is a friend of mine who is a smart worker…Mr. Kumar’s favourite task was to bug others.

Well, for the first comment she remembered thinking,

“How to bear boring human faces, none to call anything except flatly boring.”

For the second she thought just one thing,

“Bugger. Why on earth don’t you try?.” With a sweet smile spread with honey.

It was March when she walked the floor with everything declared confidential in her life by then,

Clients forever confidential. She was obeying, aye aye even when she ceased working.

Salary confidential

Work is confidential and all stringent rules. Well, don’t worry the work would always go down to the grave even when I tell Shrum’s story lest someone is scared.

During the trainings the manager cum director lets call him, Durjoy John.

He told us about Chinese whispers, a psychiatrist by qualifications.

Hearing about it, Shrum thought the story was perhaps said to avoid Chinese whispers only to realise later that the whole place ran only on Chinese Whispers which ran far and wide.

Note: the story points out the fallacy of human life and the build shows the struggle of a young girl within office and outside office. It does not intend to provoke or uproot any system or belief.

No measures of confidentiality regarding work are broken and integrity of humans are preserved in every aspect.

The story revolves around the wrongs, humans do to other humans through actions and words which need to be often relayed. It has fiction mixed well balancing facts, hence aims no derogatory details.

A story to enjoy, to provoke thoughts. Women are not only festered by incidences of bigger scale but smaller ones which can often explode immeasurably.

No personal grudges and no personal interests are being used as targets by the writer of the story.