The Mystery of Silence

One day, as I and Aman, were having a break together in the cafeteria, in the evening, we ordered a Mango drink, Maaza. We chatted for a while and were back to the production floor and continued with our shift, however, during the rest of the shift, she wouldn’t speak to me and during another scheduled break, she excused herself from accompanying me. I was aghast. What in the world had gone wrong? For the next many days, she wouldn’t speak to me. On multiple occasions, I pleaded her for a reason but she wouldn’t spill it out. She would just shrug me off. I would soon come to know of the stupid reason.

This training batch, would turn out to be a very special and different as, out of this batch would come few, who would become a thorn in my flesh, actively work against me, backstab, betray and harbor grudge against me. Few others, when I would call for their help, would desert me and run away like cowards. There was this one guy, in particular, Gaj Banerjee, who I was always in conflict with. He had come from a non-Hindi speaking state, West Bengal, and like many non-Hindi speaking people who try to converse in Hindi, Gaj also did the same and ended up using words and phrases considered rude in Hindi knowing society. In addition, he was extremely loud, brash and would always get into my face. I detested him, being ugly was not the only fault of his. There was another who claimed to be my friend, even was, yet in due time would raise his heel against me, to prove and reveal that he never was my friend, to begin with. I had not gauged the severity of their depravity. I should have snipped them at the budding stage itself. But alas! To my own hurt, I bore them.

In the month of October 2004, the team decided to go on a weekend trip to Mussourie, a hill station in the Dehradun district, on the northern part of India. This trip gave me a chance to renew my relationship with Aman and dig out the reason for her sudden change in attitude towards me. Fresh air, cool breeze, beautiful scenic mountains, without the pressure and tension of office work, eased our nerves and we both went for a walk together. We would have had barely walked for a few minutes, struggling to do away with initial uneasiness and awkwardness, when we were joined by Gaj. I was infuriated but had to swallow my anger. He was aware, I didn’t enjoy his company and he wasn’t invited but without conscience that he was, he just wouldn’t leave. Not wanting to create a scene, I left them as I couldn’t tolerate his presence. During the whole trip, Gaj just stuck with her like a blood sucking leech. I just hated him; I loathed him. I would have killed him for that. Aman assured me that after the trip she would tell me the reason. I waited for the trip to end and was glad that it came to an end. 

On the way back home, Aman visited my home and met my Mom. While leaving she told me that she would call me the next day to share the reason. Boy! Was I glad? Sure I was and relieved too.

A Spring in my Barren Life

The messages that we used to share were very personal. I remember one of her messages that said that ‘I was a very good person and that she wanted to remain my friend for as long as possible.’ As you will see, it was not meant to be. Again, a message read, ‘Please be with me’, ‘to never leave me.’ She sent a message which stated that she wanted to hug me. Out of the many, one of her messages stood out when she wrote, ‘You’re a God’s gift to me.’ I was glad for her. She was like a spring in my barren life.

If you happen to see my face,

will you love me the same again
if you happen to see my face,
will you wipe my tears away.

I remember sending her a message that stated, ‘I was happy that though we had less time to talk but every single conversation was worth it.’ Again, ‘We’ll always keep this tradition of messaging each other.’ It was not to be.

Later in her complaint, she would deny all of it, wipe her mouth as if she was done with me, and wash her hands off me handing me over to my tormenters and torturers to revile, humiliate and punish me. I would be betrayed by the very one I was in love with.

She had the audacity to deny this relationship being a great liar that she was. How great the darkness in her if she was able to walk away from all that we had shared and promised and to offend me by leveling blatant accusations against me? She would make public the words I spoke in private moments, with deepest and purest emotions, in a sacred relationship. A sacrilege of a beautiful feeling that would completely erase my faith in the concept of love! She would make it all the more difficult, nay, impossible, for me, to ever fall in love again.

The Beginning of a New Chapter

The more I tried to keep a distance, the more I found her attractive. However hard I resisted, I was only drawn closer to her. It was so refreshing to just look at her. I wanted her but I didn’t want it to be obvious. I was conscious to not show any special attention to her lest she would sense that I was all over her. I had too much ego for that. Strange are the ways of a man around a beautiful girl! But that was about to change.

I was the liveliest person in our group. We used to have lot of fun during the breaks. This helped us to bond with each other. One day, as I and Falak sat in the cafeteria, waiting for other members of the group to join, we quickly exchanged our phone numbers. That was the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I was thrilled to have found a friend in such a beautiful and attractive girl. However, I was still scared, apprehensive and hesitant to go all out in this new relationship. I had too much baggage of old unhealed scars and disturbing memories to deal with before I could give my best to her. I was about to pile up more to my existing baggage.

At the very beginning of our association I made it clear that I wouldn’t be able to talk to her on the floor, for if our colleagues ever got a scent of our relationship, would create misunderstanding between us and that would be an end to it. I was very well aware of the envy and destructive mentality of my colleagues. Since my college days itself, I had been a victim of it in my relationships which would end abruptly, thanks to my jealous friends.

I requested her to keep it as confidential as possible. We began to message and during the weekends would talk on the phone. We were able to keep our relationship secret as none of my team members or anyone from her training batch, ever, got a hint of it. Except for a few occasions, though we had our systems next to each other, we would rarely express our emotions.

I was in Awe of Her Beauty

During the end of April or beginning of May 2005, one Falak Deb, a Bengali and a resident of Dhanbad, joined our team. She was a small, strikingly beautiful girl and so attractive that it was apparent that many boys would have been after her. In fact, while she was still in the training, she had already become the talk on the production floor. Originally, she was scheduled to join another team, but, to their misfortune, due to a last minute change, she joined our team. She was soon to become my misfortune. Strange are the ways of destiny!

I was smitten by her beauty. I wouldn’t even dare to look at her afraid of being thought of as a cheap guy. Whether it was to retain my respect, seniority and integrity or to attract her towards me, I don’t know. Though, I prefer to go with the later thought. I secretly observed and admired her beauty.

Within a few days of her hitting the production floor, IBM organized a small party and I believe it was during the party I got introduced to her. I was in awe of her beauty. From the corner of my eye, I observed her seated at a distance with a guy from her training batch. I envied him!

Meanwhile, my team mates, Prerna Sharma and Pahari Singh, were good friends. They both were top in production. My fort was quality and product information and thus was considered the best in product knowledge which, later, the members of other teams too would come to recognize and appreciate (vanities of all vanities!).

Pahari, wanting to retain the top slot, felt challenged by Prerna increasing her production and they stopped seeing eye-to-eye. I would take break with Prerna, Gaurav, and Priyanka. Thus, Pahari was out of the group.

Falak and Priyanka became friends as they stayed in the same society and Falak would tag along with her during our breaks. That is how she came to take break with us. She became an exception as no one else was allowed to join our close knit group. 

That she was able to penetrate our closed group gave her an advantage and edge over other members as she was now seen as an important member in the team. She would soon capitalize on her special status.

A Fresh Lease of Life

In May 2005, I emailed the report with the screen shots to Kalmer Sharma, Operation Manager, requesting him to consider taking action against Fang. I was not after Aman but Fang, who should have known the severity of his fault. This was after I had a private meeting with Kalmer. To our relief, immediately an action was taken and by the end of May, Fang was taken off our team and was given another team to take care of. With his departure, we got a fresh lease of life.

Looking back, I feel sorry for those times that Aman had to endure. It would have shattered anyone but she was a strong person. She silently suffered through the whole period trying hard just to stay afloat. I knew the hardships she had faced in her life. She just clung to the job knowing how important it was to her survival. She struggled hard to find a foothold in the system. I do not know if she had realized her folly of having resorted to unethical means to rise higher up the ladder of success. No one does. Soon another ‘Aman’ would arrive with the same motive and motto of success to turn the tables on me.

I continued to have a strained relationship with Dakur. I wasn’t on good terms with him. The management had reprimanded him for his failure to take action. I believe this was when he must have sworn to himself of revenge. Soon, he would have someone, willing to offer her shoulder, to let him avenge himself against me. Boy! Was he thankful to her? I bet he did. We’ll see that later.

I Had It Enough

During the month of November, 2004, I was assigned the task to collate the production data of the team. It gave me access to the daily production data of each member of the team. One day, I chanced upon a variance in the output shown by the information system and that reported by Aman. The first time she manipulated her production data, I warned her but reported it to Dakur. Both of them ignored it. The second time she did, I mailed the data as proof to Sheetal Thakur, Senior Operation Manager, without keeping Dakur in the loop. He was not aware of my email to her. After a few days, she mailed him back, wanting to know the status of the matter and if it had been resolved to the satisfaction of everyone involved. He still would not address the matter and pushed it under the rug. I would soon pull the rug from under his feet.

It was during this phase that the whole team stood united and boycotted Aman, Gaj and Dakur. We neither spoke with her nor with Dakur. It didn’t matter if he was the team leader. It shocked him that I could lead an entire team of 15-20 guys to revolt against him. For a month, with the exception of Gaj, no one in the team conversed with Dakur. Gaj was his right-hand man, his messenger, a serpent not worth trusting. He was our and Dakur’s one-man channel of communication. But we wouldn’t entertain him outside the production floor. He was an outcast.

In the month of March 2005, to provide proof of Fang’s collusion with Aman, I began to keep a close look on the route bin of both of them. I knew that there would be some evidence to nail them, even though they were very cautious in not leaving any proof of their misdeeds. However, I continued to keep a watch on their bins in the hope of unearthing evidence. My persistence paid off when I found in his route bin a few claims which were routed by her for audit purpose. The audit was crucial as it ensured that we did not end up releasing more or less than that prescribed under law. Both would result in loss to the client and IBM. I took a screen shot of a particular claim that had a financial error and left it in his bin. I waited for him to complete the audit and route the claim back to her bin. After a few days, he audited it and as expected, did not report the financial error in his report to the management. To show that he was doing it deliberately, I followed the same procedure with few other claims as well. I emailed the report with the screen shots to Dakur, requesting him to take action against Fang, based on the evidence adduced. Aman was not my target; Fang was a scourge in the team. Dakur still would not take any action. We continued to persist with him to no avail. At this point, the communication channel broke down between me and him. I was no longer communicating with him. I had it enough. I decided to escalate the matter to the management.

We hadn’t had a proof

For the time being, I resumed friendship with Aman. I would begin the day by chatting with her over the phone. It felt so good. But things changed and we soon were on a collision course. The purpose of this book is not to explain how things changed between me and her. Those are beyond the scope of this narrative. I had not realized that our friendship was still fragile. Though we continued to work in the same team yet we weren’t on talking terms. We both tried yet it didn’t work out. I suppose it is difficult to regain a trust once lost. I had learnt the principles of life the hard way. But this was not going to be the last of my romance to go kaput. The last was yet to come. And what a last!!

The training lasted for three months and from the month of October, our on-the-job training began. I had a good rapport with Dakur Danda, my team leader. For our ramp up, Fang Vome assisted us in our insurance claims processing. He was a senior specialist with good product knowledge. Within a few days into the ramp up, Fang began to be partial towards Aman, in the sense that he used to assist her more than the rest of the team. We brought the matter to Dakur. He would have a word with Fang, which obviously, didn’t had any effect on him for he continued to favor Aman. He taught her complex claim processing skills and gave her tips to better production even going to the extent of processing her quota of claims, to the neglect of the team. It was all about Aman and Fang in the team. We, the team members bore the brunt. We continued to bring this issue to Dakur but he demanded a proof. He would not take any action against Fang until we furnished a proof. We hadn’t had a proof.

Our ramp up period went hay wire. We were at the mercy of Fang. The difficult part was we weren’t aware of how the system worked in this process. I for one felt handicapped as I had no one to turn to. It was frustrating. For the most part of the day, we were confined and isolated in our bay, engrossed in processing claims. We had no seniors to guide us through the mess. I firmly believe there is no crime committed without evidence. There had to be proof, however insignificant it may be. In this case, it was just a matter of time and hard work, before the bones came tumbling out.

Sip it, it would become much sweeter

The next day, I do not remember whether it was on the phone or in the office that she shared the reason. On the day we had Maaza, a sweet mango drink, I had kidded with her that if she would sip it, it would become much sweeter. On becoming aware of her reason, I responded, “Is that it? It’s just a joke I heard in the team. I didn’t intend it that way.”

However, this stupidity of mine had laid a seed which would soon flourish and make me eat its sour fruit. Later in her complaint, she would refer to this statement and accuse me of harassment. What I spoke, during a moment of lapse, in September of 2004 would come to haunt me in August of 2005.

I find it strange that she did not feel the urge to complain about it immediately or soon thereafter. It’s surprising that she had to wait for more than ten months to consider it as worthy of being reported to HR (Human Resource). It is obvious that there were other factors which influenced her to revive the annoyance she felt about the statement. 

The purpose of this book is to expose those individuals who conspired and the events which transpired that led to the complaints and after.

The Beginning of my goof-ups

I was in the Sprint’s back-office process. Being my first full-fledged job, I was nervous, terrified and hesitant to speak much. There was this one guy, my team member, who would taunt me on a continual basis. He would imitate my style of speech and would pass unwarranted comments. He just got on my nerves. After a month, I decided I had it enough. I thought about my plan of action in the event he bullied me again. He didn’t let me wait for long. One day, he interrupted my conversation with someone and mimicked my tone, I paused for a second and retorted back with the choicest of abuses that even surprised me, not to tell about the shock on my bully’s face. The whole team watched shell shocked. He was taken aback by my outburst. He would never again dare to pick on me.

This incident taught me a lesson which stayed with me for the most part of my stay in IBM. You cannot afford to be soft in the BPO industry. This revelation transformed me overnight. Once inside the gates of IBM, I was a different person. I vividly remember how I used to turn on this new me, the moment I entered the gates of the company. This was the survival of the fittest. There was no place for the good, simple and weak. Over the years, this would become my second nature. But for now I had no friends in the new department. I never will.

The training period, in BPO parlance, was considered as a honeymoon but in Aetna it wasn’t anywhere close to be deemed as fun and I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I was attracted to Aman Panwar, my colleague and a team member. She was beautiful, mature, grounded, and intelligent and we instantly clicked with each other. My romance with her was still in the courtship phase when a team member, who too was attracted to her and harbored a secret admiration for her, went and told her a thing which I, stupidly, shared with him over the phone. Next day, in the office, she walked up to me and asked, ‘Did you say such a thing about me?’ I was stunned; realizing that I couldn’t get away by denying the facts, I accepted that I did. Fortunately, she was aware of the intentions of the other guy, so understood that he wanted to sow seeds of discord between us. I do not remember what happened next or whether I apologized, we continued to be friends. This was not to be the last of my goof ups.

The Black Palace Mexican Prison

It was in the July of 2004 when I joined BFI-Aetna's back-office insurance process, after having been on the bench for a few months. Uncertainty loomed large as I along with many others had held on to the hope of being absorbed in some or the other processes. IBM’s management urged us to get selected in any process to which opportunity was offered and not expect the company to continue to feed us for long. I sure panicked. There were few openings in the Aetna process, rumored to be one of the most difficult back-office processes. My two friends, who too were on the bench, urged me to stay put, deliberately fail the selection process and suggested not to opt for the Aetna process. I declined to hear them and followed my own instincts. I cleared the interview and was all set to join the Aetna process. That decision was going to cost me more than I ever bargained for.

Even after having spent over a year in the company, I only had few colleagues whom I considered worthy to be called friends and there were not even a handful of them. Within the next few months, they too would be absorbed in another process. I was left with no trustworthy friend in an industry which resembled the Black Palace Mexican prison. Here, you would be killed if you do not stand your ground. Within a few months of entering the BPO industry, I had found out the hard way that I was among some of the most notorious people in the country. I was soon to encounter the dreaded ones.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in India is manned by a workforce which comes from faraway small towns, suburbs and villages, not familiar with big cities and it's culture, mesmerized and overwhelmed by a whole different lifestyle, not accustomed to office and professional life, staying alone in small rented rooms in unhygienic colonies which lack basic amenities of life, far away from their loved ones, without being accountable to anyone, not having information regarding their rights, from poor families trying to make a life and career in a country where industries are condensed in a few metropolitan cities and the industries and multinational corporations non-existent in a vast majority of cities of India.

Preface to my book

After I had survived two complaints, of mental and sexual harassment, from two female colleagues, in a single day, I had decided that someday I would write about the events that led to the complaints and the mystery behind my Great Escape. I have always held that it was a miracle.

Another complaint, from one of the above two girls, followed the aforementioned complaints and which led to my termination from IBM. After a span of over seven years, I have found it worthwhile to bring to fore this current narrative in as detail as possible. I have attempted to be as fair and true as possible to the two female employees. I have tried to understand their perspective through the charges they leveled against me. Their written complaints are the only documents available with me to present their point of view.

The copies of the complaints were made available to me after I had filed a labor and defamation suit against IBM. Along with them, I received the copies of Md. Shadab, Dakur Danda, and Asra Math’s emails which they had sent to the investigation team constituted by IBM to investigate the charges of sexual harassment. I also received the copy of their investigation report and my written apology and confession statement.

What I went through and what I did, had to be understood from both the human and divine point of view. The people I faced in IBM, the harassment, humiliation and torture I had experienced, the situations and hurdles I encountered in over four years of my stay in IBM would only make sense when you realize that I was a saved Christian who had rejected the authority and lordship of Jesus Christ.

This book is to help those saved Christians who have experienced pain, hurt, sorrow, anguish, torture, harassment, failure and opposition to understand the true purpose behind those emotions, feelings, events, and situations. You cannot overcome an enemy if you do not have the right perspective. The book is an attempt to open the eyes of Christians who are hurtling down the roads towards hell.

For those who do not believe in the God of the Bible, this is to expose their lies, wickedness, darkness, and evil. By reading this book, you may perhaps cease and desist from your evil, wicked, corrupt and deceptive ways.

This book is a complete, true, honest, and faithful account of all that transpired between me and Falak; me and the God of the Bible. To my own hurt, I have unveiled the darkest secrets of my life.

As I write this preface, it dawns upon me to effect change in the names of all the characters, except for IBM.

On bent knee                                                                           September 24, 2012