The first time Arup saw Rasika, he didn't really give her much of a second look. It wasn't because she was not good looking. She had a very pretty face with a white-pink complexion, big black eyes, slightly plump cheeks, and a sharp pointed nose that betrayed her Kashmiri genes. But she was dressed very simply, in a loose knee-length kurta and jeans with a cardigan on top, had her hair tied in a single ponytail. And her body language betrayed her nervousness. In a newspaper office, where a lot of actresses, models, and socialites dropped by, even the regular employees dressed very sharply. In contrast, Rasika's simple dressing style made her seem like a bit of a simple slob.
"New hires, senior staff, to the conference room." Shinde, the editor of the Pune city supplement and Arup's boss said loudly.
Arup saved a copy of the page layout and walked with the others. This introduction of new hires to the senior staff happened every few months. At that low level, there was a lot of employee turnover. The job wasn't very glamorous. It paid very little. It didn't even have a fixed profile. After all, the "real" work, as Arup always considered it, was the main newspaper, and most of the work for that was done at the offices in Mumbai and Delhi. Their office was dedicated towards the 4-8 page Pune city supplement. Most of it was local celeb spotting, page 3 parties, maybe descriptions of some events in the city, and a whole lot of advertorials. Most of the staff on that floor was dedicated to ad sales.
But the way Shinde gave his usual pep talk to the new hires, you would be forgiven for thinking it was the investigative section of the New York Times. Arup, with two other assistant editors, stood by his boss and looked at the young crop of employees sitting earnestly on the small chairs.
"Welcome to you all. This is going to be an exciting journey." Shinde said, flashing a wide smile. "You are about to join the biggest English newspaper in the country, in the most exciting and rising city in the country - Pune. People don't realize how important the city supplements are. They are the backbone of our very identity. After all, the usual front page news, financial news, sports news, people can get from the internet these days. So why do they still buy our paper? For the dedicated and painstakingly put-together Pune supplement."
Arup kept a poker face and saw the new hires earnestly nod. He noticed the pink-faced simply dressed young lady taking down some notes in a diary, and he felt like laughing. What could she possibly find noteworthy in this banal speech?
"Remember, it is our job to give everything to everyone. Excitement, emotion, excellence..."
As Shinde continued the same speech he had been giving for many years, Arup zoned out. He scanned the group of fresh-faced youngsters and knew that if the past was any indication, half of them would quit within a month. Another quarter would quit in three months. He remembered the day 15 years ago when he had been in their place, only in the Calcutta office instead of Pune. Out of everyone that joined with him, he was the only one still with the newspaper. Almost everyone else had taken up the job just to add a bullet point to their CVs with the name of the paper, before moving on to a postgrad course or a different better job. It was the textbook definition of starting at the bottom.
But not Arup. He had joined right after graduating from college, only to pay the bills. To just have enough money to get by while he pursued his real passion - a career in music. Fifteen years later, he was still in the newspaper business, but the big break into musical super stardom proved elusive. He had moved from Calcutta to Delhi and then to Mumbai, working with the same newspaper, while chasing his dreams. But the big break never came. Eventually when his wife got a high paying partnership offer at an elite architecture firm in Pune, he had no choice but to move with her, even though Pune wasn't exactly the hotspot for the music industry. But it close enough to Mumbai, which was.
"...and this is Arup." he suddenly heard his name being mentioned. "He is one of our veterans. He looks after layout, final copyedits, and proofing. If you want to learn the in's and out's of the business, there is no one better than Arup!"
He felt a little embarrassed and just waved uncomfortably.
"...and this is Mahesh..."
The introductions continued. Arup zoned out again, thinking about a melody he had been working on. Finally the pep talks and the introductions ended. All the new hires had introduced themselves. Arup had been paying only partial attention. Almost all of them had some basic experience in the world of publishing or had a degree in something vaguely related. The only exception, he realized, was Rasika. She had studied commerce, and had worked at some call center for a few months. But her spoken English seemed the most fluent and sophisticated of the entire lot. Maybe that's why Shinde hired her, he decided. Or maybe there was no one else left to hire.
Thus ended the very first time Arup and Rasika came face to face. They didn't even talk to each other. Nor did they notice one another too much. Rasika herself had realized during the introductions that she was the exception among the new hires with no training or experience in the field. And she told herself she would have to work extra hard to prove herself. Like all others, she had taken this job with the intention of getting a foothold in the media industry. She was preparing for entrance exams to mass communication postgrad programs, and she hoped this bullet point would help her admission prospects.
Over the next month, Arup and Rasika didn't interact much either. The way the city supplement worked was simple. They had a fixed number of pages to fill. Most of the staff was in ad sales. Arup and the others on the content side had a meeting to decide on the content. Much of it was syndicated or licensed stuff that they had to edit. There were occasional local features, usually written by these new hires, about anything ranging from trend and lifestyle pieces to traffic stories to reports on events etc. These assignments would be handed out. Arup usually came in late in the afternoon and stayed till after midnight. He would keep proofing, editing, and working on the layout. The ads would keep coming till the last minute, so he and people working under him would keep making changes to the content and layout. Finally at 1 AM, the pages would be finalized and sent to the printing press.
A big part of Arup's job was editing and rewriting what the junior staff wrote. He was often dismayed at how poor their grammar, sentence construction, and spelling was. Many errors that could simply be avoided by using spellcheck. But you get what you pay for. And these low level folks got paid barely anything.
As time went by, he noticed that anything written by Rasika needed hardly any editing or re-writing. He grammar, spelling, and overall sentence construction were impeccable. Despite having no experience or training, she was much better at this job than her peers. There was no literary brilliance or insight in what she wrote, of course, because the subject matter itself was mundane. Things like what are the new party spots for college students, or how a particular art exhibition was received, or the report on a local sports event. But whatever she turned in could be frozen in the final copy without much work. Arup mentioned this at a senior staff meeting.
"Yes, I have noticed as well, that she is a very hardworking and talented girl." Seema, another assistant editor said.
"Don't tell her that." Mahesh said.
"Why?" Shinde asked.
"Come on, let's be real. If we praise her too much, she will realize she could get another job somewhere else. Maybe with buzzfeed or scoopwhoop types. And we will have to hire someone else."
There was laughter all around.
"Well, she will not be with us for long anyway." Shinde said. "She was very honest in the interview. That she is applying for communication masters programs and taking this job up only for the time in between."
"If she lasts a whole year, that would be good enough, given our usual turnover rate." Seema said.
The really high turnover rate is why none of the senior staff really formed any friendships or much of a rapport with the junior staff. And there wasn't much camaraderie or esprit-de-corps in the city supplement, unlike in the main paper, where people stayed for years, maybe even lifetimes. The city supplement offices were almost like waiting rooms at railway stations. You were together for a while, but eventually you moved on and never saw each other again.
So the interactions among colleagues were very short term and almost transactional in nature. Plus the nature of the work was such that they were always chasing deadlines, and there was so much to be done in such a short amount of time. There was no time for socialization or building up a personal rapport even if people wanted. Arup himself had worked at the Pune office for two years, but had never socialized with even the senior staff much, except for the occasional company retreat.
Which is why one Sunday evening, when Arup ran into Rasika at a mall coffee shop, it was a little awkward.
"Oh hi Sir!" she was sitting at a table for two by the door, with a small stack of books in front of her. She noticed him as he walked in.
"Hey Rasika...how are you?" he smiled and said.
