Chapter 2 -- Akshata and Sundar -- The Proposal
| 3 years earlier |
When Akshata joined GloboDynamics Technologies as a Media Intern, it was like a breath of fresh air for the company. Sundar still recalled how she thought, on her first day, that formal clothing would be mandatory at work and showed up in an elaborate kurta-pyjama with odhni. Her oval face, ready smile, clear skin, and taller-than-average height made her the object of the attentions of both genders and all sorts of corporate rungs. Everyone at GD Tech wanted to get to know her better.
She was an intern in Sundar's team, who headed the Marketing department. In his entire career at GD Tech, he had not had as many at-desk visits from his colleagues in a single day as he did the day Akshata joined. As for Akshata herself, she took her place next to Sundar and immediately asked for work so her 3-month internship could get a kick-start. She was a fast learner and after being trained for a day or two, she was handling as much work as a full-timer and doing it with flair. For the three months she was there, she never allowed any guy to approach her to flirt. They kept at it for days, but soon realized the futility and gave up after a while.
As days went by, Sundar learned that Akshata Kurien was a native of Karnataka, a state in Southern India. She lived here, in Mumbai, in a flat that she shared with four other girls, who were all at various stages of their corporate careers and had come to Mumbai to pursue better careers than their home towns would be able to give them. Akshata, at 19, was the youngest of the five and was pursuing Journalism. She was in the second year of the 3-year Bachelor in Mass Media (BMM) program. It was due to this program that she thought of doing a Media internship in her vacations from college, and that was how she landed at GD Tech.
During the months that Akshata was interning at GD Tech, Sundar was in a committed relationship that had lasted nearly a year. Sundar, who was 27 years old at the time and a self-aware sexual masochist for 13 of those, had only recently come clean about his need for physical pain to feel sexually stimulated, and his girlfriend had taken it well. She was his fifth GF in seven years of dating.
In his experience, they all acted as if they weren't shocked at first. But when they came to fully realize what it meant to have a masochist for a boyfriend, they found that they were better off without the hassle of play-acting sadistically while in bed, even if it was just on the weekend. Nevertheless, because he was with another woman, Sundar never flirted with Akshata. However, the thought of Akshata demanding a quick smooch on her rear every afternoon as she entered the office premises did flash through his mind more times than was healthy.
--
About 2 months into Akshata's internship, GD Tech took on a new client and they liked what Sundar's team was doing for their brand image. Work piled, and Sundar's team members were soon pulling all-nighters. Akshata voluntarily stayed until 9 pm when her official timings were 2 - 7 pm. Sundar was very busy, but he did notice this and urged Akshata to keep to her usual timings more than once.
One evening, as Akshata was drafting an email for the CorpComm at 8:30 PM, Sundar once again offhandedly asked her to pack off and be gone by 7 PM every day. She refused point-blank and informed him that she was very much a part of the team and felt equally responsible for pending work. She said this a bit sharply, and Sundar stopped looking into his laptop to look into her eyes, only to find her glaring fiercely back at him. The look they shared lasted a bit longer than was strictly necessary. Any Marketing Head worth his salt in India knows how to read eyes; knows how to decipher them for what lay within the mind. As Sundar looked into Akshata's, it suddenly dawned on him that maybe, just maybe, for the first time in his life, he was gazing into a pair of female eyes that were truly capable of dominance; truly capable of achieving independence by seizing control.
--
A couple of days later, as Sundar returned to his seat after a long-winded conference call with the well-paying client, Akshata was waiting with his phone in her hand.
