E2:- Anusha Sardana

There was no reception area at the bare-bones office of WeDonate. Just a

desk where the disinterested guard made me write down my name, the time

of visit and purpose.

‘Vishwas ji, I have been waiting for two hours now,’ I said to the guard

who was glued to his phone.

‘Monday busy hota hai (Mondays are busy),’ he said.

Vishwas ji didn’t look up from his phone. I’m sure if I were a man he

would engage me in a conversation. He seemed the type who would look at

the girls working at WeDonate and grumble inwardly about their presence

outside their homes. Pretty sure he went back home and beat up his daughter

or wife, or both.

I thought of reporting his excessive phone usage during work hours to his

security guard agency but assumed this behaviour was long-standing and

tolerated.

WeDonate.org managed to beat other crowdfunding companies and raise

250 crore and yet they couldn’t schedule an interview on time? I wouldn’t be

surprised if Sarita Sharan is caught siphoning money two years from now.

Why would an IIM Ahmedabad graduate with six years of consulting

experience work here?

When Mumma called I told her I was still waiting for the interview. She

thought I was lying.

‘Did you get rejected?’ she queried.

‘No, not rejected yet. Arre? Why would I lie?’

‘You tell me why you would lie? How am I supposed to know that?’ she

said.

Mothers have a way of getting under your skin.

‘I will talk to you later,’ I said and disconnected the call.

This was my fourth job interview that week. After every rejection Mumma

would go on like a broken record asking me to do a post-graduation instead.

When I would ask her where the money would come from, she would mutter

incoherently about education loans. Who takes a loan to learn writing? What

course can possibly teach someone to write?

‘Your Poonam chachi keeps telling me about prospective grooms. How

long do you think I can hold them off?’ she would tell me.

Poonam chachi, that pockmarked pig, would like nothing better than to get

me—an only child—married, change my surname, forsake the house we

lived in. Mumma never took my suggestions of checking Surinder chachu’s

phone history seriously. If she had, she would find a viewing history of a

multitude of jawaan devar–bhabhi (young brother-in-law–sister-in-law) sex

videos.

I waited for another two hours rehearsing for the interview before I was

summoned in by Karunesh Talwar.

‘Hi!’ said Karunesh Talwar and ****** out his hand.

When he shook my hand, it felt like I had dipped my hand in a tub of

Vaseline. Karunesh Talwar was more nervous than I was. He looked the kind

of awkward man-boy who shares fat girl memes, and prefers skinny, fair girls

with big breasts. Do I have any proof? No. Do I still firmly believe in that? A

100 per cent. People are the worst.

He walked oddly with his legs splayed apart—rashes from thighs rubbing

together, I guessed.

The cramped open-plan office had around thirty people sitting on long

desks, eyes on their computer screens. There were a few boys prancing about

in their shorts. The girls were better dressed but I’m sure these boys in shorts

would harass them if they too came wearing shorts to office. It’s a universal

truth—men are the fucking worst! Women are a close second.

In my white shirt and a solid dark pair of jeans—I was more sharply

dressed than anyone around me—I looked like I was there to take an

interview, maybe audit their books, restructure their debts. My relatives often

told me my face didn’t match the rest of my body. I was big-boned like Baba,

but my face was a mismatch. Sparrow-like and fleshy; Mumma told me I

looked like Durga. Not the high-jawboned, fierce Durga of the northerners,

but the soft, grandma-like, duskier Durga of eastern India.

Karunesh led me to the interview room and kept turning back to check if I

was following him.

‘There’s not much to get lost around here,’ I said.

We took our seats in the allotted interview room. I remembered my

mother’s words. At least pretend to like your interviewer.

‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘So, you’re Anusha Sardana.’

I smiled as widely as my cheeks allowed me. ‘Good morning, and yes, as it

says on the résumé.’

‘You know what we do here at WeDonate?’

‘It’s a crowdfunding company. WeDonate collects money for people who

can’t afford certain things—medical emergencies, indie film projects, college

start-ups and the like. Last year you raised 250 crores and beat out the

competition by a margin.’

‘Hmmm. What made you apply here?’ he said, squinting at his phone. For

someone who had prepared for the interview I found his questions quite

basic.

‘I want to be a writer,’ I said. ‘And being in the entertainment vertical will

help me be a better writer.’

‘What do you want to write?’ he asked.

‘I believe medium is irrelevant. Books, scripts, plays, they are all

interchangeable if the story and the characters are in place. I just like to write,

be it anything.’

‘They say the best way to learn writing is to just start writing. Why haven’t

you started doing that till now?’ he asked as if he had himself been awarded

critical acclaim for what he had written. At best, what WeDonate has

produced till now is average.

‘I have tried more times than I can remember. I will go back home and

write about this interaction too, how my day went, etc., just to practice. But I

don’t have an interesting character to write about yet. I figured I need to live

a little more, see a little more, experience a little more. And while I do that, I

need to learn the craft of writing.’

‘Why didn’t you join a film school then?’ asked Karunesh.

‘I don’t have the money,’ I said.

Karunesh Talwar, the head of the entertainment division, kept asking

hackneyed, obvious questions and swiftly ran out of even those. So much for

being creative, eh?

The interview went infinitely better than the ones I had given earlier at

publishing houses, newspapers and streaming platforms.

When Karunesh was done with his questions, Ganesh Acharya from HR

joined us. He introduced himself, sat right across from me and did what HR

people do best, indulge in split-second judgements. Like every HR person, he

exuded a false confidence. I guess it helps them hold on to the delusion that

their jobs are important.

He looked at my résumé, squinting and grimacing and smiling, trying to

throw me off my game. I would wrap up this life, move to the hills the day I

let an HR person outsmart me.

Ganesh made a dramatic gesture of keeping my CV to the side and said,

‘Tell me about yourself? Something that’s not on the CV. I have read of all

this.’

I could see the pointlessness of this question reflect even on Karunesh’s

face. Ganesh was asking to be screwed with.

I lowered my voice and said, ‘Ganesh, I thought you would never ask. But

since we will work together, if we work together, and since WeDonate touts

itself more as a family and less as a corporate, I should probably share with

you what I wouldn’t in any other interview.’

‘Go on,’ said Ganesh.

‘Ganesh, my father’s dead. He’s been dead for seven years now. My

mother and I haven’t quite gotten over it. If you ever come to our house, you

will feel like he never left. Of course, we don’t talk about his departure, or the big hole he left in our lives. We just let it be. Like he was a guest who had to

leave sooner than later. We have left it at that. What will we talk about

anyway? It’s done. We should get over it. What do you suggest we should do

about it? Don’t tell me we should visit a therapist. We can’t afford one.

Especially now that their rates have ballooned no thanks to everyone

advertising on Instagram that they are going to a therapist. Life’s strange,

isn’t it, Ganesh?’

I watched Ganesh’s Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat.

‘I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that. Do you have any more questions?’ I

asked.

‘That’s about it,’ said Ganesh. ‘Do you have any questions that you have

for me?’

‘I just wanted to know if ethnic wear is allowed on Fridays,’ I asked.

On my way out, Vishwas ji was sleeping.

I was jostling for space with annoying little shits in the bus when they

called to tell me that I had been selected and would be needed in office the

next week. I was over the fucking moon! In my happiness I even gave up my

seat to an old man who was pretending to be more tired than he was. I

regretted it immediately when he stared at every woman who entered the bus.

Why do I give them the chance to disappoint?

It was a big day.

At night, to celebrate, Mumma and I ordered Chinese. We put out a plate

for Baba. The chowmein on his plate swam in soya sauce and chilli vinegar.

Just like Baba used to like it. Years of smoking had numbed his taste buds.

We watched Arjun Reddy on cable TV. Baba loved the sharp cuts and rapid-

fire machine-gun storytelling of Telegu movies. He didn’t understand the

language and often watched the movies on mute. Looking back, it seemed

like his life was a reflection of those movies—concentrated moments of

happiness, anger, work and love, and an abrupt departure.

*****

I could barely sleep the entire week. I spent my waking hours watching and

re-watching every documentary, music video and short movie WeDonate had

made in the past couple of years. When the day came, I was one of the first

ones at work. I went straight to Nikhat Shaikh and Nimesh Arora to pick up

my office laptop.

Nikhat and Nimesh were amongst those handful of fools—including

Karunesh who’s a bigger fool given that he was an IITian—who had given up

better jobs to be at WeDonate. All for the greater good.

‘You’re giving me this?’ I held up the Lenovo ThinkPad Nikhat handed

over to me, heavy as a boulder, with a design aesthetic of a brick. ‘Is there a

password or do I need to sacrifice a lamb on this slab?’

Then I pretended to drop the ancient sundial they called a laptop. The faces

they made. Classic!

‘ANUSHA!’

‘Behind you,’ said Nimesh.

‘That’s Sarita Sharan,’ said Nikhat.

Sarita Sharan—standing tall over the troops she commanded—was calling

me from the other side of the office. I had seen every one of her interviews.

She was composed and sharp; the interviewer was the one usually fawning

and bumbling. She looked older in person, more intimidating and very

attractive. I felt a growing need to impress her, to be friends with her, to go to

her house and cook her dinner, be in her good books, call her to my wedding,

make sure the paneer’s soft for her. I hated to admit it, but I liked her. I still

harboured suspicions that she siphoned money from the donations, of course.

‘IN MY CABIN,’ said Sarita.

I followed her into her cabin which was a mouse hole for someone built

like her. At 5’6” I was used to being taller than the average girl around me,

but sitting across the table from her, she towered over me. When she rested

her elbows on the desk, the veins in her forearms snaked like an intricate,

unplanned roadmap. I could make out in incredible detail the place where her

shoulder muscle ended, and her biceps began. A stern smile rested on her

face, a striking resemblance to the Night King.

‘I have some great ideas, Sarita. I was looking through all the filmmakers’

works and I was thinking—’

Sarita spoke as if I wasn’t in the middle of my sentence.

‘You’re in the medical emergencies team. I have mailed you the guidelines

and cases where we have registered impact. Go through them as soon as

possible. I will find you someone to work with. You have to hit the ground

running, there’s no time to waste,’ she said.

What.

‘I’m here to work in entertainment. I will be a bad fit in medical.’

‘What made you reach that conclusion?’ she asked.

‘I’m not that type.’

What I really wanted to say was that when I saw their medical campaigns I

could only think of fraud. Twelve-year-old girl whose parents don’t have a

single rupee left needed Rs 15 lakh for a liver transplant. Are you sure about

that? Maybe they do have a little tucked away in bank lockers? Where’s the

wedding jewellery? What if they are trying to cover this expense through

donations while they have the money?

That’s how I looked at the world. That boy in the school uniform in the

metro? Pretty sure he stole money from his father and sniffed glue. The auto

driver? Definitely rapes his wife every night. The boy who I shared the lift

with to WeDonate? Well, he could damn well be cheating on his fiancé.

That’s how I saw the world, and in all likelihood that’s how the world was.

‘Anusha? I’m free the entire day to talk to you about how you think I

should do my job,’ Sarita said, looking into her computer.

‘Sarita.’

‘Great, then. Ganesh told me about your father, so you know a good deal

about loss,’ she said. ‘So here’s what we do in the medical vertical. We vet

the stories of patients, check the estimated costs with the hospitals and then

the writers write out the stories. We check the urgency with the hospitals, talk

to the doctors and then fast track them. The urgent ones get promoted on our

social media channels. Most of our donors are the ones who have donated

before. The stories need to be written in a way that even if it doesn’t make

someone part with their money it will make them share the stories on their profiles,’ she droned. ‘What you need to do right now is to edit them and iron

out the mistakes. We are all looking forward to your contribution here.’

‘Sarita, anyone can write these stories. I’m a writer and I think—’

Sarita squinted her eyes and my words dried up.

She said with pursed lips, ‘I started here as a writer for the medical team,

so when you say “anyone” you’re talking about me, Anusha. I have saved

more lives here than I would have in a hospital. So don’t tell me this is a

talentless job. Now get out of the cabin and do the job you have been

assigned to.’

****.

I left her cabin.

Within minutes, Sarita sent me no less than fifty write-ups about sick

parents, babies, husbands and fathers to edit and upload on the website.

It was grief-porn.

The sadness poured out from the laptop and wrapped itself around my

neck.

I started with a story of a seven-year-old child with a failing liver. There

was a picture of him with tears streaming down his big, yellowed eyes, his

mouth, half-open in mid scream, stared at me.

Mummy, will I live? Please save me, mummy.

Next.

A father—a penniless, auto driver—sat on the ground, holding his crying

daughter in his arms. The three-year-old lost both her eyes to retinoblastoma.

She needed artificial eyes and two rounds of chemotherapy.

Everyone around me was unhappy I had a girl, but I was the happiest. I

wanted her to fly but now I just want her to live.

Next.

Three-year-old bald, wasting boy with a single parent needed money for

his cancer treatment. He believed he got cancer because he drew on the wall.

His mother loved his hair and now there was none.

Maa, I promise I won’t be naughty. Please take me out of this hospital.

The stories were endless. Each more terrible than the last. Why would

anyone want to write and re-write these? Drown themselves in this brackish slime of sadness?

*****

‘We saved three children last week,’ Rachita Somani, the de-facto head of the

medical team, told me during the coffee break.

She unlocked her phone and showed me post-surgery pictures of the three

young girls on her phone. She clutched at my hand like a madwoman and

didn’t let go. Rachita Somani had been at WeDonate for three years. The job

was leaving tell-tale signs on her face. The intricate crow’s feet at the corner

of her eyes, the huge bags underneath, the despondent look on her face, it was

unmissable. She was only two years older than I was but the stamp on her

face was of a much older, weather-beaten woman.

During lunch, the medical team sat together quietly and forced food into

themselves. They mingled with no one. Their lunch break was the shortest,

their faces most haggard, they spoke little, their eyes droopy despite getting

in the most money for WeDonate.

Rachita Somani and the others in the medical team feasted on the feeling

of being holier than everyone, on their work being more important than

anyone else’s.

I had planned to eat alone but Nimesh and Nikhat came with bright smiles

and sat next to me. Of course they didn’t ever leave office. They spent bucket

loads of their time socializing with colleagues.

‘By the end of the day, you will watch at least one of them cry,’ said

Nimesh when he caught me staring at the medical team.

‘They can’t take it. Too much work, too many deaths,’ said Nikhat.

‘The doctors work twenty-four hour shifts in hospitals as your teammates

do here,’ said Nimesh.

‘I’m going to shift, they are not going to be my teammates for long,’ I said.

To willingly be a part of this team is an act of masochism and extreme

stupidity. Their jobs are more unrewarding than even the doctors’. Unlike

doctors, the medical team doesn’t have the luxury of not knowing the patients

and their families. The medical team knows everything about the person who’s on the death bed. The person, their family, their history, their

desperation and their bleak future. It’s their job to know everything and then

to glean out the most heartbreaking details.

‘We have a counsellor who comes every week and talks to the team. Sarita

had made it compulsory after Karan killed himself,’ said Nimesh.

‘Karan refused to live in a world that couldn’t spare a few thousand to save

a child,’ said Nikhat.

How are people so naive? How can they not know that people are rotten?

They finish the story I had no interest in listening to. It was two years ago.

One of his cases were of twins, a three-year-old boy and girl, both needing

bone-marrow transplants, a cruel trick of genetics. Despite all of WeDonate’s

efforts, they couldn’t collect enough money for both. Karan, who got too

close to the family, pumped in his savings, even took a small personal loan,

and yet it could only cover one child. The parents chose the boy. The cancer

metastasized and killed the girl. The girl spent the last few days watching her

brother get better. The boy’s went into remission. But six months later, the

cancer relapsed. Without his sister, the boy couldn’t muster up the strength to

mount another fight against cancer and he too died. Karan ended his life the

day the boy was buried.

The rumour around the office was that Karan and Rachita were dating at

the time. It’s said she blamed herself for not having worked hard enough on

the story. But as more people told the rumour it shifted. By the time it was

evening, the story had changed to Rachita was manic about the cases because

she had lost a patient she was trying to source money for and had nothing to

do with Karan.

In every scenario, Rachita came out at the bottom; and every person in

medical had a story like hers.

**** the medical team. I didn’t want to be a hero.

Later that evening, when I got home, Mumma was pretending to be busy. I

could see how much she missed me.

Apart from the minor inconveniences of having a gaping hole in the heart,

Baba’s absence had also put a considerable dent in our social life. Mumma wanted me to be around her, to save her from the loneliness that consumed

her. It took me time to understand that. I was fifteen when I lost my father.

Baba left Mumma utterly and embarrassingly alone. How long can you

hold on to his smell in the bedsheets, his half-used shaving cream, his shoes

with mud still stuck to the soles, the four hundred rupees in his drawer, the

spare spectacles, the inhaler he left behind. What do you do of that four

hundred rupees Baba hadn’t spent? Where would he have spent those? They

tell you that after marriage your husband and your family is everything,

neglecting to tell you what to do if one of them is not there one day.

After the aggressive mourning turned into a dull pain, Mumma’s attempts

at forging friendships around the locality were met with hostility. ‘Look at

her visiting neighbours; look at her smiling; look at her in the mall; look at

her ordering food; look at her eating food’, everything that she did was open

to discussion and condescension. She was expected to walk with a bent head,

talk little to none, never smile, live every day as a burden. She was supposed

to hide.

The Sharmas, the Guptas, the Mandals, our friendly neighbours kept us at

an arm’s distance. We were harbingers of bad luck. It might have been five

years, but the stench of being unfortunate women hadn’t worn off. The

women of our locality clutched at their suhaag, their married status, with a

sense of pride because what else could they be proud of? Not their husbands,

of course! All of them, walking bags of heart disease, disappointment and

erectile dysfunction. I had legit reasons to be proud. They were still having

sex days before it all ended, and not the married, tranquilized, once-a-month

kind of sex, but sex that woke me up in the other room, the kind of sex that

made them shy and look away from each other the next morning. None of the

women who shunned her like a bad omen could claim that.

Now Surinder chachu and Poonam chachi waited for me to get married so

they could make Mumma shift to a tiny flat and sell the house.

Baba’s side of the family never once looked back. All the time Baba,

Mumma and I, as a family, had stressed about what they would think about

my clothes, my marks, my career choices, our investments, our car, our house

was a waste. Even both of Mumma’s brothers who would travel across the city to get rakhis tied would sparingly answer our calls, fearful that we would

ask them for money.

That was our breaking point. We knew that niceness in people was an

illusion. Deep inside, everyone is a raging asshole. No one cared.

Being the oldest in my generation, all my cousins—all unsmart and

talentless—were still in school. I had decided that I would introduce them to

methamphetamines and cocaine the day they turned eighteen. That would be

some revenge.

For the longest time, Mumma had tried to hide our ostracism by her friends

from me. Every two weeks, she would dress up for her kitty party and leave

the house. She would then read newspapers on her own at a Chinese

restaurant close to our house and then come back. Once she knew I knew she

stopped the charade and we never once discussed it.

‘It was bad?’ asked Mumma about my day.

‘It was very bad.’

‘What are they asking you to do?’

‘Say I get cancer and you don’t have the money—’

‘I will slap you right now,’ snapped Mumma.

‘Say a girl has cancer and her mother doesn’t have the money. She can

come crying to WeDonate, tell them her sob story, and they will reach out to

donors to help the mother out,’ I explained.

‘That sounds like a good thing to do. Why are you being so condescending

about it?’ she asked.

‘Mumma, I don’t want to save anyone.’

‘Beta, did you tell your boss that your heart is made out of stone?’ said

Mumma. ‘Did you ask to change your department?’

‘I tried but she was scary,’ I protested.

‘More than you?’ she asked.

Just because she was the first woman in her family to get an MA, only one

to teach in a polytechnic while her sisters bore petulant boys and insufferable

girls, she thought she could act cute with me.

‘I’m talking to Ganesh from HR tomorrow. Maybe he can help,’ I said.

I was hoping he would have decision-making capabilities and wouldn’t

just parrot sentences Sarita Sharan asked him to, though my understanding

was that he was nothing more than Sarita Sharan’s sock puppet.

________«»_________

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