by Vrushali Haldipur
It was the perfect day for nostalgia, cool and cloudy, with a drizzle and a mist just light enough to cover the top half of the Empire State Building. Looking out the big bay window overlooking Washington Square Park, Divya took a long sip of her caramel macchiato and thought, boy do they make better kaapi back home. This burnt stuff just sits on the tongue all day, unlike the mellow Coorg coffee hand roasted to perfection at her parents’ home. Coffee at her home was Suniti bai’s speciality. Suniti was their very own personal barista who used to double up as cook, cleaner and major-domo at their home years ago.
Divya smiled to herself as she recalled how she would command Suniti bai, even before the era of Starbucks-style ordering. ‘One coffee, with extra cream, two teaspoons of sugar. Elaichi on top,’ she would say. Now of course, her coffee was from one of this ‘artisanal’ coffee houses run by hipsters whose unsmiling faces soured the drink if it wasn’t already bitter enough.
The drizzle had stopped. As Divya walked towards Waverly Place, she took in the ivy-covered townhouses around the NYU campus, the dogs gambolling happily on the sidewalk, the students chattering away, a lone sax player by the marble arch of the park. This was how she would remember New York, its electric energy spilling out from every corner. She was done with her internship, ready to complete her Master’s degree in Business Administration and rady to come home.
‘But don’t you want to work in New York?’ asked her roommate Chrissy, surprised that anybody would want to go back to what she called a third world country. ‘Think of all the opportunities you have here!’ Divya smiled. Chrissy just wouldn’t get it. As an Indian in America, she knew she would have to jump through hoops to get her work permit, and then continue jumping till she reached the end of the line at a green card, which in reality, could well be a twenty-year wait. And at the end of it, she’d just be another hard-working middle class professional in the most expensive city in the world, coming home to work equally hard to do her chores and cook and clean, like any housemaid back home. Where was the comfort in that? No, she had decided, as many pragmatic Indians did, that she would go back, get a good gig thanks to her NYU degree and family connections and take it easy.
But you’re not going to get ahead without working hard, Chrissy used to say, in their frequent discussions. She of course, subscribed to the very American pull-yourself-by-your-bootstraps ideal – a conviction that sounded hollow to Divya. It was all very well in stories, but real life was a zero sum game, according to Divya. People laboured because they had no other way of climbing the corporate ladder. She knew that in an extremely competitive workplace, everybody would be expected to put in their share of overtime, but if you knew the right people in the right places, you would leapfrog over the rest. Connections could make or break careers. Back at home, she would argue often with Kavita, Suniti bai’s daughter, who was the same age as her, about the importance of going beyond working hard. ‘Hard work alone is not enough, Kavita,’ she would hector. ‘It’s about working smart.’ Suniti had hoped her daughter would have a role model and a playing companion in Divya, so she would often bring Kavita along with her to work. The two girls got along famously, even if Divya usually got the upper hand.
Being ambitious, smart and competitive, Divya saw herself uniquely positioned above the rest. Some people like her, with her social network, could rise to the top in society and work, unlike someone unlucky to be born on the wrong side of the tracks. ‘Working smart means you have to play the game, and work your connections to achieve your goals,’ she would point out. ‘And Kavita, it’s perfectly okay to accept that you just don’t have what it takes to get to the top.’ Kavita would nod silently. If only Chrissy would understand this. She had heard only the success stories of the Preet Bhararas and the Sanjay Guptas of America, but would never realise how difficult it would be for a brown foreigner to break that ceiling. Divya would explain, ‘Chrissy, working hard here is never going to be enough for me. And frankly speaking, I don’t see why I should be yet another faceless paper-pusher here when I could do so much better home.’
So it was without a heavy heart and with bright hopes for the future that Divya took the flight back home to India that September. Mumbai welcomed her with its distinctive smell of ten million strugglers, a unique odour combining their aspirations and perspirations in equal measure. She reconnected with her friends and those all-important, very powerful friends-of-friends, all the time networking furiously and scanning her career prospects. Going by the encouraging responses to her foreign degree and valuable internship experience in the United States – not to forget her gap year in South Africa and her projects for her best friend’s father’s event management company – she was assured she was on the right track to professional success. She was young and ambitious, and all the big-name multinational corporations needed bright and personable professionals like her.
Divya was particularly attracted to the Poseidon Group, a global consultancy that every blue-chip firm had on their radar for their world-class services. Getting hired by the Poseidon Group was notoriously tough even for Ivy-leaguers, but once you were in, your personal social capital zoomed sky high. Executives were given unlimited expense accounts and flown across the world on Gulfstream jets. Top executives from the Poseidon Group were regular speakers at Davos.
Divya left no stone unturned to ensure she was noticed by the Group. She was on her A-game. It was all about who you knew. She had her parents call their friends and their bosses, she begged her poshest friends with tenuous connections to the top management in the Group to put in a word for her, she wined and dined anyone with any link to the company. ‘Work smart,’ she reminded herself. It would be not her meagre work experience, but her connections that would play to her advantage in securing a position at the Group, she reminded herself.
When Divya received a call from the Poseidon Group’s HR team to interview with them for an open position, she was beside herself. Apart from the sheer excitement, it was gratifying to understand that this was something she thoroughly deserved, it was her destiny to be what her New York classmates often called ‘The Master of the Universe’. She was destiny’s child.
With sheer confidence she breezed past the interview rounds. ‘Just another quick interview,’ the HR executive had whispered, ‘if you would come to our headquarters in Nariman Point, our Senior VP will meet you. You will have to report to the Senior VP, so it’s quite important that we get approval from that level before we can consider giving you an offer,’ she informed her.
It can’t be long now, thought Divya. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the corner office on the 15th floor had a particularly good view of the city. From the tip of her Louboutin pumps she could see the whole of Marine Drive stretched out in front of her. This was the beginning of her ascent to corporate stardom, and she was killing it. Winning, she grinned to herself, inexplicably thinking about Charlie Sheen. She had it, the tiger blood, like Charlie, and dragon energy like Kanye.
The door to the VPs’ office was shiny and smelled of success. ‘This office will be mine,’ Divya vowed. ‘Our VP will now see you,’ the HR exec purred. Inside, the office was exactly the type Divya had pictured on her manifestation dream board. Oprah was right, if you dreamed it, it would happen. Right down to the wall of books and the Eames chairs, this was her dream office and now it was her destiny.
‘Miss Kavita Anandan, please meet our latest candidate, Miss Divya Gupta,’ said the HR executive as she led her inside.
It couldn’t be. This had to be a dream, thought Divya, as she clutched the chair weakly, almost ready to fall. ‘Why, Miss Divya, you look quite unwell. May I help you to your seat,’ asked the tall, slim and impeccably dressed Kavita. It was her, after all these years.
Divya’s composure for once failed her. ‘But how did you get here?’ was all she could manage to stammer.
‘I have to thank you, actually,’ said Kavita, smiling. ‘Didn’t you say hard work was not enough? I always kept it in mind,’ she said.
‘But you… you had no connections,’ muttered Divya.
‘Ah, but my mother did. You know her, how she would always talk about me in all the households she worked for,’ recalled Kavita fondly. ‘As usual she was gabbing about my IIM results to Vinod Uncle, you remember the family in the next building?
‘He was so impressed that he offered me an entry level position here a few years ago. It was a big break. This was probably before you went to NYU.’
Must’ve been during the gap year, recalled Divya. Sure, it had looked good on Facebook to post pictures with foreign kids, but in reality it was a series of vacations.
‘So, you see, Divya, I have to thank you for reminding me, it’s not enough to work hard…’
‘…. You must work smart,’ completed Divya.
Very well written article.I can perfectly connect to it. For being in the corporate sector you have to work smart; be it India or US!! Also- never underestimate anyone’s capacity.