Training lasted for a few weeks.
After that, people were expected to know enough to make mistakes on their own.
The new batch moved to the operations floor.
For the first few days they still looked like trainees. They carried notebooks, checked every mail twice and asked for permission before leaving for a tea break.
The older employees enjoyed watching them.
Somebody had done the same to them a year earlier.
Sudharma’s desk was at one end of the floor.
Sanvi’s team sat two rows away.
She had developed a habit of calling him instead of walking across.
His phone would vibrate.
Come to cafeteria.
He would reply.
Busy.
A second message would arrive.
Liar. I can see you.
Sometimes he still wouldn’t go.
Though Nobody discussed what they were to each other, the office had already decided that for them.
One evening she kept looking at the display section of a mobile shop during their break.
“You should buy it,” Sudharma said.
“It costs one month’s salary.”
“So save for two months.”
She looked at him.
“You think everything is easy.”
“No. Only shopping.”
She laughed.
A week later she bought a different phone.
A cheaper one.
She seemed happier with that decision.
On the operations floor, the trainees had stopped looking like visitors.
Jahnavi sat near the end of a row with three other girls from the batch.
She spoke very little.
If she had a doubt, she would ask the person sitting next to her first.
Only if nobody knew the answer would she walk to Sudharma’s desk.
The first time she came over, she stood there without saying anything.
He looked up from his monitor.
“Yes?”
“The system is showing an error.”
“What error?”
She handed him a sheet of paper.
She had written the message down exactly as it appeared.
He looked at the paper and smiled.
“You copied the full stop also?”
She looked at it.
“Shouldn’t I?”
He fixed the issue and gave the paper back.
“You can throw this.”
She folded it and kept it inside her notebook.
The next few days passed in the usual way.
Targets.
Team huddles.
Escalations.
Birthday cakes from the cafeteria that tasted exactly the same regardless of whose birthday it was.
One night the transport desk announced that some cabs are running late.
People started rearranging seats in other vehicles.
Sanvi had already left.
Sudharma was helping the coordinator when he noticed Jahnavi standing with two girls from her batch.
“Which route?”
She told “Basavanagudi”
“Wait. There are two empty seats in that Tavera. SRT 104.”
She nodded.
The other girls thanked him.
Jahnavi did not say anything.
She simply got into the cab when it arrived.
The next evening, one of the boys from the training batch walked up to Sudharma.
“Anna, your student is waiting.”
“My student?”
He pointed towards the vending machine.
Jahnavi was standing there.
She held out a small steel box.
“My mother made too many holiges,” she said. “I brought them for the team.”
“The whole team?”
She nodded.
He took one.
“So this is not special treatment?”
She looked confused.
“No.”
He laughed.
“Good. Otherwise HR will have another training session.”
She did not understand the joke.
She waited until one of the girls from her team came over, gave her the box and walked away.
The holiges disappeared in ten minutes.
By the end of the shift, nobody remembered who had brought them.
A few days later, Sudharma was leaving the office when his phone vibrated.
It was a missed call from an unknown number.
He ignored it.
The same number called again.
He answered.
“Hello?”
There was silence for a moment.
Then a familiar voice.
“Sudharma?”
“Yes.”
“This is Jahnavi.”
He waited.
“I wanted to ask…”
She stopped.
“What happened? Any problem in the process?”
“No.”
Another silence.
“Tomorrow… is there training for the new update?”
“At seven.”
“Okay.”
She disconnected.
The conversation had lasted less than a minute.
He put the phone back into his pocket and walked towards the cab.
The next day she was in the training room ten minutes early.
She already had a copy of the update mail.
There was nothing she needed to ask.
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