Fiction – “I wish I knew about it”

Disclaimer: All names & instances are purely fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

I flung the papers on the desk and barged out of his cabin. The door behind me shut with a loud thud. He did not say a word to stop me. Even if he would have, I think the line was crossed.

Our staff outside stared in amazement. They had witnessed the worst fight ever in the last 12months of business, rather the first one.

Ajay and I never had an argument when any staff member was around. It was an unspoken rule and an important one to maintain office decorum and discipline; and most importantly keep any sort of politics at bay. This was the first time they heard such high decibels in our conversation.

But things had gone out of hand and I could no nothing about it. I couldn’t stand some of his recent business decisions and I raised an alarm. But he wouldn’t budge. I knew I had to pull the plug sometime, but did not expect it to happen so soon and in this fashion, given that our friendship goes back a long way in time.

We knew each other since the time we learnt to speak. We were neighbors in the small town of Dehradun. Our families have known each other since generations. It was more like a joint family split by a wall. Since our schooling days, I had been the one who would top the class and he just managed to scrape through. But that never stopped me from sharing my sweets and gifts with him. He was always the person who would adopt shortcuts to get the work done, but always morally and ethically. He would never cheat to succeed, I could vouch for that.

Post schooling, we both moved to Delhi to complete our graduation. After completing our graduation, we both were contemplating about our future. He had made up his mind that he would not study further (much against the wishes of his parents). But knowing how stubborn he is, it did not make sense reasoning with him. Obviously, I knew for a fact that he did his graduation just to oblige me. He wanted to start his own business. Being a good influencer, he set-up a Branding and PR agency in Delhi. His parents were under the impression that he was preparing for post-graduation. The lie did not last, but his business picked up quickly and that was enough to shunt all the inhibitions his parents had.

Meanwhile, I managed to crack the CAT and got selected by IIM-A. It is the dream of almost every Indian student to pursue MBA from IIM-A, I was living the dream.

I had completed a year at IIM-A. We had a short break before commencement of the second year. So, I went to Dehradun followed by a trip to Delhi. There I met Ajay at his sprawling new office he had moved into recently in Gurgaon. It was mindboggling. I was amazed to see the progress my lesser educated friend was making. It made me think – was I wasting my time doing my MBA? What’s next? Take up a job and earn money right?

He was doing the last part of it without requiring to go through the pain of being an IIM-A student (that’s a different story altogether). A year back when I left for Ahmedabad, I had seen him do well. But the growth I saw during this trip left me speechless. He was doing extremely well beyond all our expectations. His progress was phenomenal.

On the last day of my trip, his partner was poached by a competitor by showing him a higher pay check. I just wondered will I become like his partner one day where companies would come hunting and poaching for me. Even that distant vision made my eyes sore. But that left Ajay in a huge dilemma. Ajay used to mainly get business for the company and maintain customer relationship while his partner took care of the deliverables, quality control and meeting timelines. They had close to 10 on-going projects and around 12 more in the pipeline. Work had come to a halt.

I knew Ajay would resolve the problem at the earliest. But obviously, there would be a temporary shift of focus and he would be required to do a double shift – pitching for clients at one end and managing deliverables at the other end.

He dropped me at the airport. I saw the tension on his face. This was the first time I had seen him be worried about something in the last 23 years. He loved what he was doing and totally passionate about his business. And the results were in front of us.

I hugged him and bid him good bye. All I could say was that things will return to normalcy soon. He ignored my comments; he was still lost in the new hurdle he had to overcome. I walked in to the gates, cleared the security check and was waiting in the boarding zone for my flight to Ahmedabad. All the while I thought that after graduating from IIM-A, I should join Ajay. After all I was good at making presentations and reports and that’s a resource he was looking for.

I do not exactly recollect what went through me but the next moment I found myself walking out of the Delhi Airport and hired a cab to Gurgaon – I was on my way to Ajay’s office. Why wait? The time was now.

I woke up from my dream to drop out of ‘the’ IIM-A. The authorities sent a letter to my residence a month later to explain my absence. That’s when I broke the news to my parents – nothing less than a hurricane. But I eventually managed to survive.

A few months into the business, I loved every bit of it. Money, fame, passion, excitement – it gave me all.

But then a few assignments surprised me. A client came to us with a major assignment, unacceptable deadline but with a fat pay check. I knew Ajay was a tough negotiator but I failed to understand the logic. I ignored it thinking that he may have done it to retain the client from going to a compete. We all worked in multiple shifts to meet the scheduled deliverable timeliness while not affecting our other projects. The client even ended up giving us an additional bonus for the awesome work we did. We partied hard that night, and if I say that we just had a hangover next morning – I was being modest.

But I did not need a lemon shot to dilute the effect, I had 7 more client emails waiting in my inbox with similar unacceptable deadlines. I tried reasoning with Ajay – our quality could be affected. He countered me saying that pitching clients was his work and deliverables was mine – by hook or by crook. I did not get the logic. We recruited more analysts, stretched the working hours. The environment in office suddenly went from being that of a chilled out one to that of a boring workaholic one. We all hated it and grumbled but worked for the company’s growth. And suddenly few of our soldiers gave up the battle midway. Attrition set in.

If you talk in business terminology – the revenues were on an upward sloping curve but the employee satisfaction was sloping downward. It became a pure workplace from being a place where we loved to come, share some fun time and work happened alongside – mind you quality and timeliness never suffered.

But in the meanwhile, ignoring all this factors, Ajay continued bringing in more clients with unreasonable expectations and false promises. I confronted Ajay once again but to no avail, he continued to remain adamant.

And one fine morning, we had some 20 projects in hand for which we were already racing against time when he handed over an additional 5 with simultaneous deadlines. I got furious and walked into his cabin and we had a heated argument.

We both wanted to take the company to greater heights. I was ready to wait and enjoy every moment on the way; he wanted to reach the mountain peak at the earliest. We were at crossroads – the ultimate goal was the same – just the roads were different. I could not take it any further. I did not understand what was the reason that made him so adamant with the way he was working. It wasn’t early success hitting him – he was never that way. Even while all this happened he never cheated any client – his morals and ethics were intact. He wanted to live life on the fast lane.

I decided to call it quits. Threw the papers on his face and walked out for good. I cleared my desk and packed my belongings. While walking out of the office instances from the past flashed in front of my moist eyes – abandoning the flight to Ahmedabad, dropping out of IIM-A, joining Ajay pursue his dream, giving it my everything, the ups, the downs, the clients, the employees, the deliverables, the timelines, the team meetings, the parties – everything was in front of my eyes. All this and 12months later, I was in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what life awaited me.

It was time to restart life.

Ajay could not manage the business any longer, he could not find a replacement for me and plus several employees quit in the meantime. The operations were shut 6months down the line. He was probably going to fast – the venture got caught in the rat race and over turned over the speed breakers. He had lost it all.

A year after that, I came to know that my sister was suffering from a rare disease, a hole in her heart. We needed lakhs of money for her operation. My parents never told me, but Ajay knew about it and was collecting money from all possible sources. He had promised that I not be told about all this. I was suffering from BP and cholesterol (yes, at such a young age – it was hereditary). Just so that I would not be negatively affected by this news, they decided that it was better kept hidden from me.

And if that was less, his girlfriend had blood cancer. He was in dire need of money. The money we earned by our usual operations were not sufficient.

But when the business shut, he was already laden with a lot of debt; he went into a financial mess. He committed suicide.

My sisters operation was successful. His girlfriend fought the battle against cancer. But in the middle of all this – we lost Ajay.

He was laid in the coffin with a smile on his face – he had been the perfect son, brother, friend – and me, I never got to know the real Ajay.

Was I to be blamed for all this? I was like a son to his parents. I couldn’t face them. How come he never told me? Wasn’t I supposed to be his best friend?

I wish I knew about all this, I just wish. I betrayed his friendship, I would die of guilt.