Isn’t this too much too soon? What’s the protocol? He can ask me all these things in the
first call? Can I ask him too?
‘Are we sharing compensation already?’ I smiled, to lighten his operation-theatre mood.
‘Sure. Why keep it hidden? I make 100,000 a year. Plus benefits,’ he said.
What am I supposed to do? Clap?
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘And you?’ he said.
I don’t know why I didn’t feel like telling him. Perhaps I was getting tuned into male pride. I
could sense which guy could take it and who could not.
‘We can discuss all this later. So what do you want to specialize in? Or do you want to
specialize at all?’
‘I want to be an ophthalmologist. Eye doctor.’
‘I know. Good,’ I said.
I had a sinking feeling this wasn’t going to work. How do you end calls like this?
‘So how much is your salary again?’ he said.
Okay, he asked for it. Thrice.
‘If you must know, I made half a million dollars last year.’
I heard his chair creak in response.
‘Five hundred thousand dollars?’ he said.
‘Yeah. That’s what half a million is,’ I said. I kicked myself for that patronizing comment. It
wasn’t funny. I had a feeling nothing was funny to Dr Stuck-up Bakshi anyway.
‘Okay,’ he said.
Okay? What the fuck is a singular ‘okay’? They should ban this one-word reply in
conversations. How am I supposed to take it forward from here?
‘So yeah. What else do you do apart from work?’ I said.
‘Excuse me. But I have to go.’
‘Oh really? What happened?’ I said. I hate being rejected. Even by boring men doing their
residency in Boston.
‘Nothing... Okay, I will tell you. This is not going to work. Your salary is too high.’
‘How can you get too high a salary?’
‘I mean for me. I mean compared to me.’
I realized this was a dead end. Why not end it with a bit of fun?
‘Oh, so you mean you are not man enough to handle it?’ I said.
He hung up without saying bye. Oops, strike one I guess. Ha ha.
Three weeks later we had struck off all the ten shortlisted names from the list.
‘It’s not going to work, mom,’ I said.
We had come to Dishoom, a quirky modern-Indian café in Covent Garden.
We ordered pao bhaji and masala chai, a rare delicacy in London.
‘I told you not to mention your career too much,’ she said, upset that I had rejected all ten
suitors.