No Not For Love

“Good morning Sir!” Shilpa knocked on the door and greeted her boss. She has been working here for the past 9 months. Not that she likes her job or anything, but it pays well. She is the personal assistant to the CEO of the biggest tech firm in the city. That has to account for something. But something doesn’t fit right with Quick fix Tech and that is what makes Shilpa uncomfortable. After getting the calendar discussed for the day she came back to her desk and started to collate all the documents particularly as per assigned folders.
“Hey, how is the nutcase acting? Did you ask about leaving early today for the movie?” Karan, an engineer with Quick fix Tech has been here for the past two years and believes in the philosophy of work hard, party harder. He has been going out with Shilpa for the past 2 months. “Naah! He didn’t really look jovial to me this morning, maybe I shouldn’t poke him for the rest of the day,” Shilpa understood her boss as she was supposed to, a guy with not too much humor to play around with, nor anybody to mess around with when it came to work ethics.
Darshan Gupta, CEO of Quick fix Tech, a middle-aged man, with streaks of grey hair has seen all sorts of time fly by as a professional. Started his organization in a room with a laptop; his company’s revenue last financial year was 25 million dollars. A rag to riches story that could match any fairy tale, could be associated with this 7-year- old company. Today was no different, Darshan had board meeting in the morning, and somewhere close to the afternoon he had a review for 3 of the running projects, and there was other work stuff that filled the rest of his calendar. Also, as the HR head was out of office for a couple of weeks because of flu, Darshan was responsible for picking out few of the resumes’ for hiring interview, he generally wouldn’t do recruitment interviews, for they bored him like hell. But here he was going through the folders & resumes’ of candidates shortlisted for interviews. He had to eke’ out flaws if any in any resume’ he found unfit. His sleepy yet alert eyes with years of experience to bank on were rummaging through the pile of resumes’ as something caught his eye.
Shilpa’s desk-phone rang, and she was asked to contact a potential candidate for recruitment. She was surprised, for in the last 9 months she has never been asked so, she has never had a call from her boss asking her to arrange an interview with a candidate, but today she was asked to arrange for it, and that also the interview should happen today. She knew how important her eccentric boss’s request was, it was to be taken damn seriously. She started pulling up the resume’ for which the call was made, for a fleeting moment she thought to look for what was unique in the resume’ which made Darshan jump. But time was of the essence. She made that call. “Hi, this is Shilpa from Quick fix Tech, may I speak with Mrs. Radhika?”
“Yeah, this is Radhika speaking.”
And the meeting was set for the same day afternoon 2 p.m., luckily for Shilpa Radhika was in the same city and she can make it to the office by 1:30pm.
Darshan was smiling as if a kid was given an entire candy store to feast on. He was going to meet her finally, as the full circle of life comes to a close, and he could sense it. He quietly got up from his chair, pushed it back and went over to the door on the side to another room. A 10ft x 10ft room, simply furnished with a study table, a chair and a couple of book shelves brimming with books. It gave way for another room; only this room was a bit bigger and was Darshan’s bedroom. A 6ft x 4ft bed lying in the center with minimalistic accessories and furniture filling the room, with a couple of closets located neatly in a corner. Shilpa’s eerie feeling, the whole office’s table topic, this was, Darshan’s home. A millionaire in the literal sense of the word lived his life alone in simplicity and away from everybody else. He hardly smiled and as eccentric geniuses are known to be, would behave badly with his employees. But he was smiling, he had told Shilpa to cancel all his meetings for the day, and not to disturb her, till Radhika arrives for the interview. He changed into casuals and sat upright on his bed watching the TV, he watched a comedy show for a little while, then he switched over to some music channel, and as he was humming a tune, he touched his chin. A fairly thick beard met his hand, which he quickly decided, had to be shaved off. He got up and started getting ready for his meeting. He cleaned up fairly well, and within a span of 2 hours, had lost 5 to 7 years for sure. 12 years is a long time, fairly long, he told himself.

2 p.m.

Shilpa entered Darshan’s office to check if he was ready for the interview, and to her surprise met with a different man.
“Err, Sir, Mrs. Radhika is here.”
“Oh! Ok, show her in... Shilpa, please wait, can you comment if I look presentable enough?”
“You look amazing sir.”
Surprised with this pleasant change and still smiling, Shilpa came out of the cabin, and checked on Radhika if she was ready.
With Radhika’s file in her hand, Shilpa led Radhika into Darshan’s office.
Darshan, excited like never before, and smiling like never before was waiting at his desk. He was behaving like a kid, palpably excited, but still can’t get enough of it. Radhika was stunned; she hadn’t seen Darshan in 12 years. And today also she didn’t expect to see him. She thought she is meeting the HR head.
Radhika knew this day would come and she was fairly comfortable with it, why wouldn’t she be, she had closed all the chapters of the previous life and had expected Darshan to do the same.
Radhika: “Hi! Long time.”
Darshan: “Hi Radhika! Yeah, long time, you could have told me, you are applying here, I would have arranged an interview long back. Never mind. You want to have something?”
Radhika: “No, its fine, just wanted to work with your organization, have heard you guys are doing fairly awesome.”
Darshan: “Yeah, I would think so. I will come to the questions then. How would you define your experience in the past companies?”
Radhika: “Well I was a Senior Project Manager at Curion Tech for the last 5 years, before that I was associated with Gimmick Internationals as a Program Manager, so overall the experiences were fairly satisfying and I learnt a lot in both these opportunities.”
Darshan: “Yeah, last I knew you were with Gimmick, then I went out of touch, I couldn’t follow developments after that.”
Radhika: “Oh, that’s fine, absolutely ok.”
Darshan: “So, how’s family?”
Radhika: “Great! Husband’s working with IBM, and I have two kids, one boy of 8 years of age and one girl of 4 years of age. They are really adorable & lovely.” Darshan: “I am pretty sure, they are.”
After around 20minutes of discussion....
Darshan: “I think we are done here, so why don’t we do something, let’s just have this file stay with me, you can come back and collect it tomorrow.”
Radhika: “Sure, no problems, looks like we are going to see each other often now.” As Radhika started leaving Darshan was still smiling, but his smile was not as strong as before.
Radhika felt a heavy weight lifted of her shoulders, once she came out of the interview, she was breathing a huge sigh of relief, the moment of reckoning had come and gone for her, and she had handled it fairly well.
Darshan had cancelled all his meetings for the rest of the day, and was inside his office almost the whole time. In the evening when Shilpa went in to give Darshan the agenda for the next day, he was fairly happy and satisfied, and was scribbling something on an A4 sheet. Shilpa thought, this was the sign for the things to come.

NEXT MORNING...

As sun dawned upon the sky at an angle which would tell you it was around 9 am, office goers started flocking in, Shilpa entered Darshan’s office to greet him but he wasn’t there. “Maybe he’s not ready yet,” Shilpa thought, highly unusual but possible. Anyways there were multiple incidents, which went differently the previous day, so it was not surprising, although she felt happy with the change in her boss the previous day. At around 10 am Radhika came in, for her file and as Darshan hadn’t occupied his office yet, she was waiting outside his office. Around lunch, Shilpa thought maybe she needs to check on Darshan, if he is unwell, and went ahead and knocked on his home’s door, but there wasn’t a reply. She feared something was wrong and as she turned the knob in her hand the door swung open. The feeling inside the room was very sad, but she didn’t enter the room. She waited and called out for Darshan. Finally, she gathered some courage and called Karan to help her with this and asked him to go in and check on Darshan.

15 minutes later...

The entire office was inside Darshan’s office & his makeshift home. Shilpa was dumbstruck and was unable to create words, she just had come back from a pass- out phase and Karan was comforting her, there was a nurse attending to Radhika who was lying on one corner of the Darshan’s bedroom, and was crying incessantly and was inconsolable, she was crying like a baby. A senior member of staff was holding a letter in his hands, which he had got from the side table, once the people were a bit quieter, and Radhika’s sobbing had given way to a more morbid expression. The letter said: -
“Please read this as soon as you get this, I just wish if Radhika is present there, would mean more, I never met any of you guys really with the warmth that I should have, I really apologize for that, I know as I go I leave you guys now with a vision but without a driver, I have made sure, it isn’t so. I am leaving you guys in more than able hands. Also I would like to thank all of you for your hard work and wonderful efforts. Please don’t take me as a coward because of this act of mine. I have my own reasons, reasons you might not understand.
This part is for Radhika, for someone who defined and guided my passion for all these years and made it possible for our organization to be where it is right now. She is an able manager and highly experienced. I have already left her offer letter on my office table. Along with this my will, which is already with my lawyer, has Radhika as the sole beneficiary for all my shares and assets.
Stay happy everyone,
I love you Radhika, but No, this is not for love. ”
As the last line of the letter was being read, the doctor checking Darshan for his pulse came and declared him dead. With his body turned in his bed, and with a peaceful smile on his face, and with minimal pain, Darshan left this world.