CHAPTER 1

We had advance intimation of his arrival.  I was keen to see him. Not because of anything else, but curiosity. Was he young?  And handsome? Easy to work with?  There were a hundred questions. The terse e-mail from the headquarters did not impart any details about this man who was to head our branch. It gave just his name and the day he would be joining us.
 
On the appointed day, he arrived. The door opened barely enough to allow admittance to his thin frame.  There he was, surveying the room with proprietary airs.  So this is K.R. Khanna, I told myself.  If I was a bit disappointed at the first sight, I did not it show on my face.

As he advanced towards the large executive table, I put an abrupt end to the phone call to my friend Anita, assuring her that I’d ring back in a minute.  Getting up without undue haste from the chair that was to be his, I offered in an even voice, ‘I think I’m your secretary.’  
 
‘Are you?  It’s a pleasure…’ he left the sentence hanging in mid air.

We changed places across the table.  He sat now in his revolving chair and I stood before him with an encouraging smile.  But my new boss appeared unmindful that he had left me anticipating. 

I turned towards my own chair in the corner and was about to pour myself into an accustomed posture, when he spoke again.  ‘My name is Khushi Ram Khanna.  Everyone calls me “KR”.’
 
‘I am Roshni,’ I said.

‘Roshni what?’

‘Just Roshni.’

‘You look too young… to have married.’  KR gave me a toothy smile, which improved his otherwise anile expression.

‘At twenty-nine I don’t think I am all that young.  But yes, you are right, sir.  I am unmarried.’ 

My reply had sent him into another silence.  I caught him looking at me and he smiled again.  He had gray hair, a narrow wrinkled face on a narrow body; but a smile that imparted him a youthful radiance.  I liked him for his smile.

‘We are going to be fine…’ he said quietly.

‘Did you say something?’

‘I said we are going to be fine.  And tell me, why are you sitting so far from me that I have to shout to you?’  KR had raised his voice, though his expression retained its cheerfulness. 

‘I sit here because there is no spare chair to sit before you.  The office threw a party last Friday and they took away all the spare chairs from this room.’
 
‘Then ask the section in-charge to replace them. Talking aloud is not my style, and I cannot see anyone standing before me.  It gives me a terrible complex.’

The telephone rang.  Before I could take the call, he nimbly picked up the instrument at his desk and intoned ‘Kay-aar’ into the receiver.

I had time to watch him while he was busy attending the call.  The way he changed from English to Hindi to Punjabi and back to his Punjabi-sed English told me that he had reached his pinnacle, which was not quite high.  With some diligence and luck, I too could aspire to reach his level, and at a much younger age.  He must have been sharp in his youth to have landed in the company but that was that.  I had a hunch that KR had been posted to this branch to bide his time for superannuation. 

Madhavan, that wily Madrasi, had left abruptly on securing for himself a plum posting in Chennai, and the Administration had taken its own time to post KR against the vacancy. The absence of a boss during the hiatus had reduced me to a mere taker of calls and minder of papers. After initial bouts of irritation, I had actually begun to enjoy the long hours of inactivity, reading Jeffery Archer or any other book that came my way. 

But from the day he arrived, KR sought to quicken the pace, wanting as if to make up for the time that had been lost. Weeks flitted by in a haze of activity.  I was left with little time for any thing else than taking dictation, transcribing it on the PC, fixing meetings and so forth.  True, he did not spare himself either.  But, then, wasn’t he expected to do the extra bit for being the boss?

Matters came to a head on a Friday.  It was about five in the evening. Freshening up for homewards journey, I was busy applying gloss to my lips in the empty room.  The door opened with some force and there stood KR before me.  His entry was so abrupt that I jerked my hand and smudged my chin with lip-gloss. At that moment I felt like wringing KR’s scrawny neck with my own two hands.

‘Roshni! We will be sitting late today,’ he said peremptorily. ‘Dinner has been arranged for the entire office.  I have also instructed the staff car driver to drop you home at the end of the day.’

‘Please leave me out,’ I said icily, ‘My chartered bus is leaving in five minutes.’

‘No, no. You can’t go. Ramesh, the Assistant Manager, has got the wind that Chairman is coming tomorrow on a surprise visit, you see!  There are a hundred loose ends…’  KR now chose to adopt a conspiratorial tone.

‘Loose ends, or no loose ends.  I have to go, and I’m going!’  Words fell from my lips, loud and crisp, like hail stones striking a window pane on a cold windy day.  Presently, I picked up my bag and stood up to leave.

‘This is the limit!’ cried out KR in impotent rage. ‘Here I’m worrying to death over the visit.  And my secretary is in a hurry to leave office!'

Look, Mister Khanna,’ I said, resolutely moving towards the door, ‘I’m your secretary, all right. But I am not your slave.  Is that clear?’

Awkwardly, KR moved aside to let me pass.  As I walked, the clatter of my pointed heels sounded embarrassingly loud.
 
                                    To be continued ....