Mondays are typically nail biting days for us in office and the  ‘Monday morning blues’ start ringing right from Sunday evenings or sometimes,  well from sunday morning. Our Boss GJ the monster ensures that we have a head rolling session on Monday morning so that he feels that he has kickstarted a great week ahead for us.  Monday Mornings start with a grilling session by GJ in a closed door conference room. The session is restricted to our team which reports to GJ.

We are five of us.  Me, Chandita, Rohit Bagga, Anita and Avik.  All of us shit scared of Mondays with Boss and all of us having our own strategies of dealing with mondays.

Chandita is a very agile, bubbly and intelligent girl who is a quick thinker and even well an orator.  Rohit Bagga, the “Brand Rohit Bagga” is  one of the  most innocently stupid guy in this whole world. For readers who are not into regular reading of my blogs, do read a blog called , “Adventure of Bagga and Momo Plaza” that is on a 100% mind and footage space of Bagga. Anita, who is very good with facts and figures and when I say figures, I do not necessarily mean numeric. I also mean the “36-27-36″ and both the figures contributing as a good reason of being handled with softer emotions by GJ.  Avik, is the hysterical guy who is a hard worker not a smart worker and who, possibly,   just because of being hyper in  the display of all human emotions,   face the blow of GJ the most. Then comes poor me!! who hasn’t got any fixed strategy or weapon on counteracting GJ.  The only strategy of mine is probably my spontaenity.

Every monday morning, I wish that GJ meets an accident on the road or his wife elopes with his driver or some clautrophobic incident happens and he fails to make it to office, but without fail, I find GJ in office sharp by 9am , all geared to grill us.  Mentally I calculate on different “save strategies” to apply once GJ starts his grilling questions but everything falls flat and I  sit there frozen as an Ice cube , nodding head to everything he says, while GJ bombards us with his performance related frustrations of an entire last week.

But this  Monday went  unexpectedly different.  As usual we were all on the heights of Monday morning blues,  in office, well  by 9AM, with  cold and wet palms  wondering what lay ahead…

“  Guys, Can we all proceed to the conference room?”, said GJ with a pleasing smile which I could identify with the guy who slaughters chickens in the local shop of my neighbourhood.  GJ is over polite just before such a  monday meeting till he takes all of us ( Chickens) inside the closed door  conference room for the meeting ( Slaughter).  

GJ has his own strategies for us. He has himself chosen this particular conference room out of the five conference rooms in our office for his Monday meetings.  The room has dim yet sharp, yellow lights and the entire ambience is gloom and cold. There is nothing in the room to which you can divert your attention apart from a single poster of Iceland, which has the highest rate of Interest in Deposits. There is a picture of Iceland in the poster and in times when GJ bombardes, I try switching my mind off, pressing a mental mute button on GJ and imagining that I am in Iceland.

The meeting began this monday as it does every week with allegations of taking our work  lightly.  GJ would speak in a monologue blaming session now for an hour at least and if he is in a bad mood then for 2 hours, I thought in my mind as I kept nodding to all the blames that GJ was putting on us.

” Can we order the tea coffee please?”, interrupted Bagga.

GJ seemed displeased but he couldn’t say a no to such a basic request for his  obedient audience.  Bagga took the honour to do that.  For the next twenty minutes,  Bagga took our orders understanding who preferred what.

First he asked,  who among us preferred tea and who coffee. He went down to the canteen to order it but came up in a minute with his diversifications. Then he asked to all who said coffee, whether they preferred it black or normal, strong or with more milk, with sugar or without,  or with sugar free. To the ones who said tea, he asked if they preferred masala tea or tea bags or normal “chai”, or vending machine tea or what more versions invented by Bagga. Worst was,  even when we gave Bagga our preferences he either confused it on who said what? or he tried to convince the coffee drinker to try masala tea and vice versa. It felt as if it was a party or a picnic that we had all come to,  and eating was the main objective.

“CAN YOU WRAP THIS OFF, BAGGA?”, shouted an impatient GJ when almost twenty minutes passed off and we were all mentally thanking Bagga of saving us for twenty minutes. 

“Yes I will, but most importantly, what will you have?”, Bagga asked.

GJ remained quiet for a moment probably wondering at the audacity levels of Bagga and then replied,” NOTHING!”

“Try a lemon tea. Its good. It will soothe your nerves. A good way to start a day, with lemon tea.“, Bagga said and without waiting for an answer from GJ walked towards the canteen.

“So where was I ?”, asked a confused GJ… I was mentally thanking Bagga for diverting GJ’s focus from the blame game that was on.

“You were on saying that we have been highly irresponsible and insincere last week.”, plugged in Anita.

 The next twenty minutes GJ blasted us and then he indiviually started grilling us. With Anita he began, but couldn’t or didn’t want to  leave much an impact on her because she was looking stunning in her new outfit and he somehow decided not to bother such a  sultry siren creature very much.

Next in line was Bagga. “ So… Rohit Bagga, you seem to be more happy playing the role of  the waiter of this bank than in my team. YOU…..

GJ was speaking at monologue accusing Bagga of all his shortcomings that he has observed and he went on for six seven minutes shouting  when Bagga interrupted, ” Shant, Shannt“. ( Peace)

Bagga spoke the words slowly like a vedic chant and continued,” So much excitement is not good for health. If we shout too much then we  get High BP. Not good for your health GJ. You should not over stress so much. Just try unwinding, take it easy, take it cool. Deep breath and let peace be there.”

 Bagga was saying the words in a slow Vedic chant tone and we were all listening to him fearing the dire consequences that he would face now. GJ was looking at him, surpised by Bagga’s audacity and display of courage.

” What else should I be doing supposedly to keep my nerves calm, Mr. Bagga?”, asked GJ in a mocking tone trying to see to what limit Bagga can go to.

For the next 15 minutes,  Bagga went on and on telling GJ about Deep breathing,  its advantages,  eight hours of “must” sleep and all “gyan”.  I was once looking at Bagga and once at GJ and was observing the change of colour  in GJ’s face.  Bagga was then telling GJ  that he drinks Corex every night, which is  supposedly a  cough syrup and then sleeps.

” You get such good relaxing sleep after a day’s work and corex.”, said Bagga…” Wait, I’ll show you the bottle “, Bagga left the conference room without GJ’s permission and came back in a minute with a bottle of Corex. 

We were all bursting in fits of laughter by then as Bagga was giving a live ad of Corex to GJ.

” CAN YOU SHUTTTT UPPP!!!!!”, said GJ once his dam of patience  broke.

We all went quiet and frozen by then and we knew that now no one can save us. With Bagga, displaying so much audacity, GJ will go even more dangerous now on us.

Just then , there was a large sound of alarm. For a minute I thought it was a new voice modulation that GJ was trying on us.  But then we saw everyone else in the bank rushing out.

“ Hey! there’s a fire drill going on. Its an Audit isuue to try and see how well we are prepared incase of a sudden fire. Come on… we need to vacate office soon.”, said the Branch Manager.

All of us, including GJ ran out and the catastrophic monday meeting came to an end.

Once outside, away from GJ, we were all patting Bagga’s back for being such a saviour for us.

” How did you do all this? “, we asked.

” Do you think only you guys can think of counter strategy for GJ? even i can do that. “, said Bagga as he winked at us.

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