Page 122 of 12 Years
‘I had to focus on my job and then my company. How about you? What makes you single?’
‘It’s not by choice,’ Neha said, smiling ruefully. She brushed her hair back from her forehead. She had some make-up on. The dark-red lipstick she was wearing made her lips look even thicker. Or maybe she’d had her lips filled—that seemed to be an extremely popular trend in Dubai. She looked like a heroine in one of those Abbas–Mustan murder-mystery movies—a little tacky, but sexy nonetheless.
‘I came to Dubai five years ago. I’ve met quite a few guys on dates. However, all they want to do is party and then sleep with me. Nobody wants anything serious.’
I nodded.
‘That’s why I’m still single. Even though my friends say, “You’re a catch, how are you not taken yet?”’
‘I agree with them,’ I said, more out of courtesy than anything else.
‘Yeah, so that’s that,’ she said, smiling. I smiled back.
Two minutes of awkward silence followed. It felt like two hours. She twirled the straw in her glass. I took a sip of my drink. What are you supposed to do on dates that fizzle out even before the first drink is over? Someone needs to write a bad-date protocol manual, seriously.
Maybe I should talk, I thought. What do I say? I don’t even know her. Dating and meeting new people is so stressful. I decided to ask the lamest first-date question ever: ‘What are your hobbies?’
Seriously, Saket, that’s how boring you’ve become?
‘I like playing musical instruments.’
‘Oh, which ones?’ I faked interest.
‘In school, I used to play the piano and the violin. Now, I have a keyboard at home.’
‘Ah, okay. I have a keyboard too. Only, it doesn’t make music, it makes code.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said.
‘It was a joke. Like when you say “keyboard”, you mean the synthesizer, a digital piano, yes?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And I use the keyboard on the computer to write code. Anyway, forget it. Didn’t land again.’
‘What didn’t land?’
‘Nothing. Should we ask for the cheque?’ I said.
Or a gun, so we could shoot ourselves out of this misery?
‘How did this happen?’ I said, biting my lip to prevent myself from bursting out in anger. Hands on my waist, I stood in front of the four stacked computer monitors in Alok’s cubicle. Our website and our server both had crashed. Our helpline number was choked with calls, most of them with complaints from irate customers.
‘Our own cloud server crashed,’ Alok said, furiously moving his mouse around, trying to figure out what had happened.
Others in the office gathered around us. Mudit came out of his office as well. He had moved to Dubai and worked for SecurityNet now. We’d set his office up in the room right next to mine.
‘Did someone hack us?’ I said.
‘No, there’s just too much load on the server,’ Alok said.
‘This looks terrible as far as all our clients are concerned. Like we’re a fly-by-night company that can’t even keep its server running.’
‘I’m sorry, Saket.’ Alok stood up, looking downcast.
‘But in a way, this much load on the server is a good thing, isn’t it?’ Mudit said. ‘Our services are in demand …’
‘In a way, yes,’ I said in a loud voice. ‘But we can’t have our server crash. This is just sloppy. Increase our server capacity. When have I ever stopped you from spending on infrastructure, Alok?’
