Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero, Santosh Jha [mystery books to read .TXT] 📗

who have brought the Tsunami should also foot the bill of rehabilitation, ain’t it?”

The general manager looked at the sales head for support and confirmation. He smiled as usual and offered him a cigarette which the general manager took and gave it to the marketing head who kept it in his shirt pocket as if it was a trophy of victory.

As the marketing head moved out of the room, the general manager worked out his strategies and assigned the sales head his little part in his game plan.

“You can use the services of my personal secretary; her English is as beautiful as she is. Ask her to draft a mail to the Boss. In the mail, you only express your concern that newspaper looked weak in the last one week and though the sales were not down yet but the unsold percentage had gone up on account of poor cash sale. Do not mention anything about editorial and shoot the mail within half an hour so that it should sound to the Boss that you are still unaware about the resignation of Mayank”.

As the sales head moved out of his room, the general manager picked up the phone to call the chief reporter.

“General Manager here... got the news? What news? Lo… a journalist asks me what news. Your dear friend Mayank has been fired and you don’t know yet.”

“Fired…? But he has resigned! Editor Saheb had phoned me half an hour back and he told me Mayank resigned citing personal reasons. He even asked me to go to his place and ask him to talk to Editor Saheb as he was not picking up the call”, the chief reporter replied to the general manager in utter confusion.

“What else the poor man could do? He was demoralized so much. And what was his fault? What a simple and honest man like Mayank can do but tender his resignation when you push him that hard against the wall? I know the inside thing; there were efforts to influence the Boss against Mayank and all sorts of wrong information were being fed to the Boss so that he fired Mayank. He took the right decision and well in time to save his career. And I tell you, you may be next in line as you are being publicized as a man of Mayank’s lobby. But do not worry; I am the general manager here. Mayank should have come to me but he trusted someone who did him in. Bad choices always make people pay for it. I hope you understand”.

Satisfied that he had made best use of his resources to attain what he wanted, the general manager started writing the mail to the owner.

Dear Sir,

I’m writing to you in utmost confidentiality.

It is truly unfortunate chain of events that we find ourselves into. No doubt, there is an immense need of caution and care in handling the situation. Prima facie it seems that somewhere, this important point has been missed.

As Mayank is not responding to anyone right now, we have reasons to believe that he looks hurt and down. What I have gathered from editorial team is that he had not taken things too kindly and had some sort of run down with Editor Saheb (Details awaited).

In the past too, I had pleaded with Editor Saheb to go easy with his penchant for office time booze bouts as often it affects his judgment and handling. This new development may unsettle many in editorial but I will see to it that nothing untoward happens.

Sincerely yours.

General Manager.

PS: I’ll call as and when I get to talk to Mayank.

Prakash Pandey, the sales head had to take a tough decision. He smiled at his own predicament. The choice between the devil and deep sea! He was himself a living predicament. A man of high academic credentials but he was onto a profession which demanded street smart levels of hawking and at times, extents of cunningness which his heart would not approve of. He hated the autocratic and closed door mannerisms of the editor and was equally at war with the ‘me-only’ attitude of the general manager who technically was his boss. The editor would make serious efforts to boss around him but with little success. The editorial and sales war was always on.

The sales head had amazing gift of putting self-made quotations in the mouth of historical figures and he would do it with such seriousness and aplomb that it would be impossible to disbelieve. This he would do intentionally to embarrass his rivals. Once in the chamber of the editor, he had said to Mayank, ‘Winston Churchill had told Roosevelt in 1943 that the chief curse of humanity was that superior intelligence was always ruled over by inferior intelligence and that was because God Almighty believed in the theory of balance of power’. Mayank had understood his jibe and had prodded him to add more by asking, ‘how do you know of this historical fact’ to which he had said, ‘Joseph Stalin has written the full account of the conversation between Churchill and Roosevelt in his autobiography’. Mayank had a hearty laugh as he knew it too well that to whom it was directed. The editor had neither doubted the story nor did he understand and had continued watching live cricket on his desktop computer.

This was however unusual, as often, the sales head would credit Marco Polo and his accounts to most of the quotes he would muster up. He would say it with a dead face, ‘I admire Marco Polo as he was an obedient husband like me and had left home on the advice of his wife to find and write about all those living people on earth who were superior stupid than him. I will too do the same someday.’

The sales head weighed his options on the basis of long-term mileage and arrived at a decision on the basis of the old corporate wisdom of balance of power. He rubbed his hands in sheer joy to visualize the end result of his game plan.

The editor was almost done with the morning meeting with the reporters when the sales head entered his room. He gestured him to have a seat.

“So, what’s the bad news from your side this morning”, the editor initiated the talk.

“Why bad one…I think it is a usual day of business!”

“Pandey Ji, it suggests you do not seem to know the full story. Everyone today is interested in grabbing a slice of my precious ass. But they don’t know that like a lizard, I can grow my ass as many times they chop it off.”

The sales head laughed heartily correcting him that lizards were more fortunate than humans as God had chosen not to trouble them by giving them a protruded ass and instead gave them a tail. He then told him in a manner of earnest inquisitiveness, “Yeah…morning birds were talking about a rebellion in your army.”

“Rebellion…! And in my army! You need to see it differently. This is battleground of life. This is men’s war. Do we invite these pigeon-hearted boys to join the battle? We don’t. We face the enemies upfront. Losing or winning is part of the game but your destined part is to fight like a man…a true warrior with a lion-heart. Sad it is that at times, some soldiers join the ranks whose best place to breathe is in their mothers’ lap. These cowards are deserters when the first shot of enemies’ artillery rends the air in the battleground. For the general and the army, it is often a good riddance. The general is saved of the unnecessary burden of footing the bill of their coffins.”

“I presume; this is an overreaction and circumstantial assessment of reality.”

“So be it.”

“It should not be it. All wars are not won in the battleground and all enemies need not be taken to war to win against them. Some gentleman said somewhere at sometime that more muscles, more hurdles in peace and that’s why brain has the least of both.”

The editor calmed a bit and threw a circumspect gaze towards the sales head. His instinct warned him against it but he felt he was getting inclined to listen to what the sales head was saying. He didn’t trust him, no doubt about it but the way the sales head sat relaxed and spoke with authoritative composure, making constant eye contacts with him, he thought it was not bad actually to pay heed to what he was attempting to hint at. The sales head realized that his words had succeeded in doing what they were intended to and he quickly changed the tack.

“Editor Saheb, Marco Polo once visited our town after his long journey to China. Outside the town gate he saw a man with a sword walking impatiently, looking every now and then towards the path, sitting hesitatingly and within seconds start walking again. Marco Polo thought he was a robber and he might even kill him. But, as he approached him, it was clear that the man with the sword was least interested in him. Marco Polo could not resist his curiosity and asked the man what he was doing there with a sword in hand and why was he so impatient. The man said in apparent anger that he was waiting here for his friend to come so that he could kill him before his unholy foot could disgrace his town. Marco Polo asked why he was ready to kill a person who he was calling a friend. He replied that his inevitable victim was once a friend and no more as he had said disgraceful things about his dear wife whom he loved more than anything in the world. Marco Polo asked how he could know that his friend had done such grave injustice to him to which he said his neighbor had said so a few moments before. Marco Polo asked how he was sure that what his neighbor said was true. The man said with confidence that his neighbor was a notorious thief and he had overheard his friend saying such nasty things against his wife’s integrity when he had gone late night at his friend’s house for committing theft. Marco Polo smiled and asked him to go home right then assuring him that he would hold his friend there till he returned from home after ensuring that his wife was well. The man reluctantly went home but Marco Polo knew the man had lost his wife to his neighbor who, after ensuring that he would be killed by his powerful friend would have fled away with his beautiful wife.”

“So, what is the moral of the story then?”

“It is subjective…it depends on your individual positioning…there may be more than one. One moral of the story, the objective and mandatory one is that since the age of Marco Polo, the truth remains that your neighbor always has the potential to be your worst enemy because he is the nearest and especially when you have a beautiful wife at home”, the sales head said closing the door behind him.

The editor promptly swung into action to rush to the facts. He called the attendant who was in the morning duty for the general manager’s cabin and asked him some straight questions. He smiled as the attendant answered his queries. He handed him a hundred rupee currency and lovingly enquired about the health of his ailing wife.

He recollected the story told by the sales head a few minutes back and made some mental calculations. There were some loose ends in the scene. He could not accept that the sales head would not align with his neighbor and instead look like being supportive to him even when he was in crisis. Hesitatingly, he picked up the intercom.

“Pandey Ji, as an afterthought; it might be possible that the friend of the man in your story had done something similar in the past or something wrong and that’s why this man