I Deserve an Amrikan Ratna

Mind It: The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or my organization through which the Internet was accessed.

‘…..Awaiting your earnest reply, regards Chakit Gupta’

It was like any-other day in office.

‘What else do they want from me? What is this earnest thing anyways? Can’t they be a bit different?’ late in the morning, stirred up I asked myself reading the lingo mail. There was a deluge of them.

I moved on ‘Delete this one…delete this one…and all these…’

I was having fun. The mails irrelevant I enjoyed trashing them from the intricately designed folders created painstakingly in my mailbox. The hunt simplified I was going through my usual, every morning junk-mail-bulk-delete operation.

‘Phew! I am done for the day!’ I exclaimed within. ‘Except for that damn issue of-course...I am hundred percent sure that is also not an issue.’

The naughty orangutan hopped on me jabbing my sore back. ‘These In-Ox guys have a habit of making noise unnecessarily!’ I muttered jerking my lynchpin.

The scoundrel fell down. I kicked it aside.

‘Another mail? Now what?’

My eyeballs popped out. The dreaded thing had just taken place. The In-Ox folder had a fresh new mail.

‘Hi Ranjan, Any updates? Regards, Trilok Chand Gautam’

‘Are they insane? This Ox team has gone wild!’ I grumbled.

‘You there? Please call me!’

‘Give me a break!’ I told myself, replying half-heartedly on the instant messenger. ‘Yes. Ok’

It was Prannath; our technical director. The shared phone was three feet away. I had to dial in though.

‘Did you check the mail from In-Ox?’ he demanded; his tone intimidating.

‘Yeah…Yeah I did.’ I stuttered meekly. The hairs on my body spiked up. His loud voice had reduced me to a terrified cat.

‘What is the…?’ Prannath stopped-short investigating. The sudden outcry of his child muffled his words.

‘Papa, Daddy! Pick me up.’ his son pleaded.

‘What, Pran?’ I dared to ask.

‘No not now beta, I am on the phone na. Go play with mummy!’

‘What, Pran?’ I dared to ask the second time.

‘You are a big jerk dude!! Did you know that?’ the Americanized child screamed.

‘Hey!! Hey! Where did you learn that from?’ the father thundered in his rustic accent.

‘Booo…hooo…’

The shrieks were deafening, unbearable. I immediately held the receiver away from my ear, clenching my teeth.

‘Ritwik! Come out Beta! Daddy is working na? Don’t disturb him. Good boy, come to me, come, come…’ his wife cajoled.

‘Booo….Hooo….Hooo….Aaaa…Hooo…Hooo…’

The expat child’s wails were getting louder and longer. The receiver clutched in my palm was going far, far away.

‘Hello? Ranjan?’

‘Yeah…yeah Pran?’

The cries died down. ‘What, Pran?’ I dared to ask the third time.

‘Issue, issue!! Did you find out the root cause?’ he demanded.

‘Yeah…actually I have just come in. I will be looking into it in sometime’

My head throbbed with each word.

‘Ok! Find it out and mail me by the end of your day.’

‘Only to you…I mean shouldn’t I keep In-Ox guys in the loop?’

‘No! Only to me. I will cross-verify and mail them separately.’

Prannath was in good mood. He clarified for once.

‘I will also verify with Param Doshi and check if there is a problem from the Gateway end.’ I volunteered.

‘Yes! Please do that.’

‘Fine…fine, no issues. Will do, Goodnight, Bye.’

I felt relieved putting the receiver down.

‘Sir-ji! Hello!’ Trilok Chand Gautam greeted.

I swung my head around to find the orangutan standing behind me.  He kept a keen watch on me.

‘Yeah! What is it?’ taken aback I mouthed letting loose.

‘That Fee issue? Did you get a chance to look into it?’ he poked me in his soft tone.

‘No! I will but later.’ I retorted. ‘I have other work to do as well.’

‘But it’s urgent! Can you look into it right-away?’ eyebrows raised he gazed at me for a favorable answer.

‘Don’t you get it?’ I hollered glaring at him. ‘I will reply my findings to Prannath. He will update you! Now go back from where you came from!’

‘But please ask him to reply soon.’ he gazed at me.

‘I need a break…’

I got up shaking my head. The wicked sensation on my tongue made me uneasy. I just had to smoke.

++++

‘Are you mad? No! I cannot come now!!’ I shouted.

The Ox people were at it again. One o’ clock in the morning and they were calling me in.

‘Prannath is calling you! It’s urgent!’ the nocturnal Chakit stated.

‘What is this? I have already mailed him regarding the fix. Didn’t he mail you guys?’ I argued reluctant to get out of my warm cozy blanket.

‘Yes, he did but that did not resolve the problem.’

The line went silent for a few seconds. I was busy cursing him.

‘Are you coming or not? What should I tell him?’ he threatened.

‘Mtch! Yes, yes I am coming!’

I gave in hanging up. Leaped out of bed, grabbed my clothes and dashed towards office. The machine was taking time to boot up. Hands on head, elbow resting on the chair-arm I shut my eyes.

‘You there? Please call me!’

Prannath wrote the moment I logged into my machine.

‘I have to disable this auto login feature…’

I took it up as an immediate action item dialing his number.

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, Ranjan!’

‘Yeah…Hi Pran’ I uttered in a dopey tone.

‘Yeah! What did you debug man? The cache clearing did not work.’

‘But Prannath the issue is not reproducible on the UAT environment? I verified it several times it has to be a cache problem.’ I conveyed baffled by the revenant-nagging problem.

‘No! The problem must be somewhere else! Give me the UAT details I will check for myself.’

‘Wait a second!’ I said opening the crooked file to give him the details. ‘Here! Take it!’ I uttered hurling the message at him.

‘Hang up! I will call you in ten-fifteen minutes!’ he ordered.

‘Ok.’

‘Yeah! Call you? I bet.’ I mocked.

‘So many mails on the same issue…’ I told myself reading them one by one.

‘What the ****!!’

‘Pran, I have found the issue!’ I messaged him. ‘In-Ox guys have cleared the cache of the wrong machine. They have cleared cache of 9111 machine whereas they had to clear cache of the 9786 one.’ I typed hurriedly reading simultaneously one of their lousy mails.

‘Ask them to do it for that machine and check’ he replied.

I copy-pasted my Hitch-cocky observation to the Ox team immediately; unwilling to waste even a bit of my sleep-time.

‘Wait, we are doing it.’ the vampire replied.

The wait was tiring. I was dozing off intermittently. Prannath was away.

‘Hey! Good news!’

The much anticipated message finally broke through at the break of dawn.

‘What?’

‘The store manager did a transaction and it worked.’ he blurted, pinging me.

‘It worked Prannath!’

I relayed the heart-stopping message.

‘What is he typing so much?’

My heart pounded waiting for his spooky reply.

‘Yeah! I know. Great catch, Ranjan! Good job, keep it up. You can go home now.’