Page 157 of 12 Years
‘Life …’ she said, and sighed. ‘Well, a lot has happened in life.’
‘Oh, okay. How’s your family? Parents? Parimal?’ I said. ‘That’s your husband’s name, right?’
‘Parents are fine. Parimal, I don’t know. He should be fine, I think.’
What do you mean, I wanted to ask but didn’t.
‘Okay. Good,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I also wanted to tell you about SecurityNet’s AI strategy. On the AI—’
‘Parimal and I are not together anymore.’
I looked at Payal, shocked. ‘Oh …’
‘We got divorced two years ago.’
Okay, I want to know more. But what about my rules? The AI strategy discussion also awaits us. But damn, I want to know what the hell happened.
‘Really?’ I said.
‘Yeah. Anyhow, you wanted to discuss SecurityNet’s AI strategy?’ she said.
‘I did, yes.’
‘Let’s do that now. Let work meetings be work meetings. If you want, we can meet separately after work someday, in a personal capacity.’
I looked at her. ‘Right,’ I said. I went over our AI strategy as we finished our lunch.
‘Thanks for lunch,’ Payal said.
‘You’re welcome.’
‘And let me know if you want to meet after work someday to talk about the other stuff,’ Payal said, adding, ‘only if you want to.’
‘Oh, yeah, sure,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know.’
No, you may not. Just turn around, go back to work and forget about her. And her personal life.
Mudit and I sat in my office. We had just finished going over a report on SecurityNet’s progress in Europe.
‘We’ll need to open a European office at some point,’ Mudit said.
‘Frankfurt?’ I said.
‘Possibly.’
Someone knocked on my office door. I looked through the glass wall and saw Payal standing outside.
‘Hi Payal, come in,’ Mudit said, opening the door to let her in. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Hey Mudit. Sorry to disturb you guys.’
‘Hey, no worries,’ I said. ‘How can we help?’
‘I needed Mudit for a minute.’
‘Me?’ Mudit said.
‘We need some data on customer-wise revenues. It’s all classified. The IT head needs you to sign off on this. The file won’t open until you enable access,’ Payal said.
