YDN-12

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good Morning! Shubo Bijoya and a Happy Diwali in advance!

As I embark upon rediscovering my writing skills after a span of almost ten months, there were quite a few things on my mind.

I made sure the spelling and grammar check of MS Word was activated, the innumerable stories and comic events of these last few months were still fresh in my mind, the erstwhile warriors of our department were pending a befitting farewell speech, the new incumbents were due for a warm welcome and the secretaries had been unduly deprived of a very justified break from the routine and the mundane.

In short, welcome to the world of fun, laughter, gossip and entertainment. It’s been a while I wrote. But I will try and compensate the time lag with a fairly longer edition of your favorite update, ‘Your Daily News’. This name, ‘Your Daily News’ is indeed ironical. The last time I wrote was in January 07! This is like Pankaj Agarwal, claiming to be a regular diner at McDonald’s while staying in the holy town of Bhadrachalam!

The first four months of 2007 took me to cities like Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chandigarh, Bangalore, Sonepat, Narela, Una, Ahmedabad and Saharanpur! I will not be surprised if Jha ji reminds me of a few names I might have missed out in that list. For the uninitiated, RK is the latest ‘hottie’ in the department (after the original style icon, Saurabh, was ceremoniously shunted away to Hyderabad). Not because he has an awesome sex appeal. But because he reminds me of the steaming hot Madhubani Samosas!

During the month of March, I had the wonderful opportunity to meet my long lost colleague G Satish in Chennai. The two of us were entrusted with the important responsibility of addressing an audience of young bright and energetic batch of freshly qualified Chartered Accountants, all eager and hell bent upon becoming Internal Auditors.

While Satish tried his level best not to look nervous, I could notice the tension on his legs. They were shaking vigorously and spilling the water kept in the glass in front of me.

He later took me to his bungalow in a beautiful town called Tiruvittuyur. (I apologize if I have spelt it incorrectly. MS Word fails to come up with suggestions for words that are associated with Satish!) The moment you step out of the car right in front of the bungalow, you face a huge board with even bigger names such as Thungabhadra and G Satish carved upon it. That surely does not suggest that the former is Satish’s wife! It is his big bungalow with three rooms, one kitchen, one washroom, one washing machine, one television, one bed, one chair and one picture of Lord Ganapati kept in the darkest corner of the ghost house. His maid, by the way, has generously gifted the last one to him!

For Vikram, the ‘Foods audit’ has truly been an extremely rewarding experience. He used to laugh like a mad man. Not only when the topic of the discussion was funny, but even otherwise. Is it a sign of fatigue, I often used to ask? But only later, I learnt he had made a huge windfall in one of his ‘not-known-to-everyone’ investments! To my amazement, I found out that for a good part of the month of April, he was deprived of his staple diet of doses from Economic Times and CNBC. Poor guy had to only contend with ‘Doordarshan’ in places like Chandauli and Varanasi!

‘Sharad Kumar Khaitan, the name inspires trust and confidence’. No, this is not the tagline for the new brand of TMT bars Jai Balaji Group is launching for Diwali. This is what his colleagues and his Audit Managers thought and felt for him for close to two years of his precious time he gave to the Department. Till the time he ran into a roadblock! Poor guy must have desperately tried to have a night of peaceful sleep adjacent to the tomb of Mumtaz in Agra! Good wishes to him in his future role on the fourth floor!

Exactly a month ago from today was Gandhi Jayanti. I noticed ‘Bapu’ looking down upon me from the misty clouds of the pale and gloomy Calcutta sky. And smiling. He probably thought I was singing ‘Raghupati Raghav’. Actually I was in the middle of a very interesting telephonic conversation with Rajaram! We were discussing the intricacies of Jaundice- SGPT, SGOT and Bilirubin (the chemical compositions and parameters that decide if your skin is yellow, does one need to consult Dr. Lal?) Yes. Rajaram is that same tall, dark and colorful man the secretaries of ‘ITC Center’ were going mad after from the day he got recruited. Till the time he decided to formally invite all his colleagues and bosses and present his charming and lovely wife before them!

During the month of July-September, our Audit Managers suddenly decided, one city needed to be raided simultaneously. With an army of 14 bright, enthusiastic and young (and some not so young-read Ashwin, Pankaj and Sai) bunch of pokers! (Also referred to as Internal Auditors in common parlance) The city of curd rice, sambar rice, rassam rice, besi billa bhaat, lemon rice, tamarind rice and ghee rice! No points for guessing this one now!

While Pankaj, Vidhu and Sharmaji were entrusted upon with the important responsibility of ensuring that Satish and his team of young AUTs were awake at work, Saurabh and Amita wanted to make sure the first ITC Hotel in the country had not lost its sheen!

But in today’s day and age of ‘compliance’ auditors, I happened to discover hidden talent! Satyajit Ghosh. For the first time I noticed someone auditing inherent skills, intuitive creativity and the art of conjuring up a hundred recipes in almost the same amount of time. No wonder all chefs of the Chola Sheraton not just tipped our dear friend on which spice ingredient to add in what quantity to which dish, but also on the best of local cuisine restaurants in town. Satya hence became the most sought after resource for us on weekends for his invaluable suggestions on which Chettinadi restaurant to go to!

Anisha and Venky made an awesome team. While the former thrived on her papad and naan (even though what she ate was one quarter of what she ordered for), our own sweet little Brahmin just loved his Sarvana Bhavan idlis and mug fulls of sambhar. How most of us ‘eating out’ animals would be jealous of Sidharth? The bugger will hardly have to spend anything when he will take Anisha out for dinner!

Early in the mornings, when the clock struck 9:30, some recurring chanting of a shrill female voice in an alien language, often broke Anisha’s intense concentration from Meenakshi’s funny forwards. Only later, she learnt, her pious and holy colleague was listening to Hanuman Chalisa in Tamil!

Vidhu Jain was a woman, who looked like a lady, giggled like a girl and ate her candies like a child. I am told her armory of weapons were always full. She dropped audit points on her auditees at free will and yet had the courage to laugh her way through. No. Please do not be mistaken. I am not writing her obituary speech! I am just trying to recollect what TVT was abuzz with during the month of September.

So when Vidhu and the gang of smarties from different audit teams, hired a Sumo to head to Mahabalipuram from Chennai on a nice cosy autumn morning, we thought we were in for a wonderful time. Hardly did anyone realize, that the incessant chirping of the not so sweet voice-overs of Miss Jain would constantly interrupt the melodies of Himesh and Sonu Nigam, over the car stereo! When she gets started, even the holiest Imam of the biggest masjid in the city of Hyderabad will have to use double speakers to make himself audible!

I guess she must have been very relieved to know I got married recently. Out of sheer happiness, she has started calling me ‘Bhaiya ji’ these days! I just hope and pray to God that people who overhear her do not misinterpret me to be a ‘doodhwala’ milking cows during the day and selling their wastes as organic manure during the night!

If I carry on in this fashion, this piece of literature will have to be renamed ‘Your never-ending news.’ I will not be surprised if more than half of you would have the time or the energy to read the full edition in any case.

Warm Regards,

Abhishek Gupta.