The crowd fell so silent, you could hear the waves on the adjacent beach.
Ananya looked at me shocked. I shrugged my shoulders. I had no control over
this.
Anil realised the joke didn’t work and attempted a rescue. ‘You see in Bombay,
idli and dosa are seen as simple snacks,’ Anil said.
‘He’s digging himself in deeper,’ Ananya said.
‘Yes, luckily he has only five minutes.’
Anil realised his sense of humour only worked with people who worked under
him. He switched to what bankers do best, present boring PowerPoint slides with
growing bar charts.
‘So you see, when we came to Chennai, we started with a tiny footprint and
now we are a giant. From a mini idli we have become a paper dosa,’ Anil said,
gesturing with his hands to show the relative sizes of the two dishes.
‘Please, someone stop him,’ Ananya groaned.
‘We can’t. He is the boss,’ I said.
Anil finished his speech and the staff applauded hard. The clients waited in
pain as two clueless but confident research analysts spoke about global
corporate outlook for the next ten years.
‘If we assume a seven percent GDP growth rate, the picture is like this,’ the
analyst said. Nobody questioned how the seven percent assumption came about,
but after that, the analyst had enough charts to show what happens if the growth
rate is indeed seven percent.
We ended the presentations at 8.30 People started to get restless as Bala came
on stage again. ‘Not another banker,’ you could almost hear them think.
‘And now, for the music concert we have a separate MC, Miss T.S. Smitha,’
Bala said.
The crowd applauded as the extra busty Smitha came on the stage. She wore a
low-cut blouse, a tad too deep for Citibank sensibilities.
‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen,’ Smitha said, holding the mike in her hand.
‘Are you having a good time?’
Nobody responded.
nora
(Nora)
#1