The Circle (Part 3 - the culmination)

Note: This is the third and final part to “The Circle”. Before you read it, please please read Part 1 and Part 2 so that the below may make some sense. :-)          
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After the fright of the morning, Sunita and Shyam finally managed to get ready for work, all the time keeping an eagle eye on Piya though that was not really necessary anymore seeing how scared Piya had been. Getting off the car close to her office, where Shyam dropped her, Sunita knew how lucky they were that Rajni happened to notice Piya’s not being there and she couldn’t thank God enough. It was with this feeling of gratitude that she entered her office building, gratitude for where life had brought them, for her lovely family and her beautiful daughter.

Sunita was the principal consultant in a large software development company and her job involved understanding the client’s requirements and getting the product made exactly as per the client’s wishes. She had been working here for almost 6 years now and was a respected employee. Over the years, due to the constant high pressure, Sunita always had a perpetual frown on her face along with stiff shoulders from keeping herself on her toes all the time.

But this morning, something had changed and her immediate colleagues got the full blast of the warm persona that Sunita really was under that professionally “removed” exterior. Her eyes sparkled and she seemed more relaxed than she ever had been. Today, she was extra nice to her team, as if she wanted to make up for all the times she had taken them to task. During the mid-morning meeting with her team, she suggested that plan a team outing the next weekend. This was a first for Sunita, who was known to never mix business with pleasure.

After the meeting, Sunita was walking back to her desk when she saw the door to the adjacent meeting room was wide open though there was no one in it. Seeing a lot of papers spread out on the desk, she went in and immediately realized that these were the extremely confidential requirement documents for another project that was ongoing. This particular project was being anchored by Varun, who was another principal consultant. Varun was very competitive, so much so that he looked upon Sunita as a threat and did all he could to undermine her projects. This included him trying to get his hands on any innovative ideas Sunita and her team thought of and using them in his projects. To top it all, he would not think twice about taking the entire credit for the same. It would be true to state that Varun was not very popular with his colleagues but he had the knack of getting hold of large projects and driving his team into a frenzy about meeting the stretch deadlines he set for them.  

Today, the documents that Sunita had in her hands were those of Varun’s latest baby, a cutting edge requirement from a company known to be asking for the best in technology. It was a known secret that Varun was pulling out all the stops and had already planned some tools that had not yet been thought of ever. It was the detailing of these tools that was given in these documents. A voice in Sunita’s head told her to quickly get a photocopy of these 2 pages and it would be possible for her to modify them and detail them out for HER project. And no one would ever know.

But Sunita’s thoughts today were on a different plane; while she didn’t like Varun much, she knew that his insecurities stemmed from some deep rooted problems in his personal life. While most people did talk about it, no one really knew much about Varun as a person. Today, Sunita let her conscience get the better of the “voice” telling her what to do and decided to return the papers to Varun herself. She gathered all the papers from the table, put them in the manila folder kept there and quickly walked towards Varun’s cabin. Seeing him in there, she knocked and went in.
 
It was obvious he was taken aback to see her there seeing they never really talked much or interacted. Sunita quickly handed the folder to him and said, “Guess you forgot these in the meeting room. You shouldn’t leave them lying round unattended.” Varun managed to say something about having just finished an urgent phone call and that he would have been going back there in any case. Sunita just smiled and said, “By the way, I haven’t looked at them. So don’t worry, your project is safe. But I’m not sure if our other peers would be that honest. Have a good day.” And she left.

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Varun stood up and watched Sunita go. He had just gotten off the phone with his lawyer; his messy separation case from his wife was finally through and they had both agreed to a mutual divorce. It obviously hurt to end a relationship of over 10 years like this but he knew it was for the best as they couldn’t see eye to eye anymore. The happenings on this front in the last 3 years had made Varun very bitter and affected every aspect of his life. It definitely didn’t help that his job was high stress and competitive.

As he couldn’t really live in the same house as Seema, his older sister had asked him to come and live with her and her husband. She had said that she would be glad to have him and as they had an extra bedroom, there wouldn’t be any issues. So he had taken up her offer and was living there now – it also helped that this house was closer to his office.

About today, he didn’t know what to think. While he knew Sunita was a complete professional, he had definitely not expected this at all. While he had only Sunita’s word that she hadn’t gone through them, he knew he could trust her on that. He knew that anyone else, including him, would have been tempted to at least have a peek at what they knew to be the most cutting edge developments in the company. This thought led him to another line of thought and after ruminating over it for some time, he quickly dialled a number. He spoke for a good 15 mins and then ended the call.

Varun then sat back in his chair and let out a deep breath. The call he had just made had a been a tough one to make but he was glad he had done it. He suddenly got up and left his cabin. He was going to speak to Sunita and thank her and also hope to clear the bad air between them. He hummed out of tune to an old Hindi number as he went making a couple of his juniors stare in amazement.

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She replaced the phone in its cradle and stared at it. She was still not over the shock. The shock that her own kid brother could do this. Yes. Varun was her step-brother. Her father had remarried when her mother had passed away. She had been 7 when Varun was born and she was overjoyed to finally have that sibling whom she could take care of and call her own. The fact that he was a step-brother was a minor detail and one that didn’t hold much strength with either of them. Varun always looked up to his “didi” as he called her and she would always find him trailing in her footsteps all through his formative years well into his teens as well. Even when he went to college and became a brash and cocky youth, he adored her and her word was the last one for him.

When she went abroad for her MS, he would write her long mails to which she always replied and they never really lost touch. Varun was overjoyed and dismal both when his didi got married – he quickly became his brother-in-law’s favourite and they had the best times together, be it drinking or indulging in their shared passion of biking. Didi would look at the 2 of them fondly and indulgently smile. Varun met Seema through some common friends and after a whirlwind romance, they got married.

Funnily enough, Varun’s sister, while cordial to Seema was never close to her. Seema, right from the outset, was a very outgoing girl and as the years progressed, this got more and more evident. Varun too didn’t mind going to clubs and parties but then he was also at heart, a romantic and loved being in his own space with his wife. Over time, Varun and Seema slowly started to drift apart as it was obvious they both wanted very different things. The bomb dropped when Seema put her foot down about having a child of their own and said she didn’t want to have children. This broke Varun’s heart and even though he tried his best to convince her, Seema never agreed. This was just an excuse for another of their bitter arguments, one which culminating in them deciding that enough was enough. Being the person he was, Varun let Seema stay in their carefully done up home and went to stay with his sister. The last 3 years had been bad on Varun and this had resulted in him going into a shell and focusing on the only outlet, work.

Didi had seen Varun go from bad to worse, putting in inhuman hours at work, drinking heavily and getting more and more cynical. Manoj and she tried their best to pull him up but what had happened weighed too heavily on him. Varun’s sister understood how work can be a distraction from your emotions as she too worked for a medium sized company in a senior position. She had a team of 5 people and most of them had been with her for a while now. While much of the initial client interactions were done by her juniors, she initiated each discussion herself and the finally costing for a new project before going live had to go through her.

While it was a busy situation at work, she was a balanced person and believed in leaving office at a reasonable time. This meant that she was used to carrying documents home where she could peruse them at leisure and get that some important tasks done in the relative peace of her home. What Varun had told her or rather confessed now over the phone, shocked her to the depths of her soul. She knew that Varun would always be her kid brother no matter what. Even now, all she felt for him was sisterly love and the fact that he had mustered the courage to admit to what he did melted her heart and she had told him so already. But it also meant taking care of some things at her end.

He had told her that he had gone through the quotations of her last 2 projects without her knowledge when she had got them home. Then he had his team target the same clients and quote a lower price for the same solution and bagged those orders. He said he was very sorry and he didn’t know why he had done so. She attributed it completely to his state of mind post his separation from Seema. She was actually very happy to hear about the divorce; it meant Varun would get a new lease of life and she would do all it took to bring back the brother she knew and loved.

She was relieved too. She had decided to take a tough decision and fire the team member who was the anchor for these 2 orders as no one other than her and him knew about the quotes being given to these prospective clients. She was not the kind of supervisor who liked to let people go. But now she realized it was no fault of his and she felt really sorry about the cold treatment she had been giving him the past few months. She had a meeting scheduled with the junior today where she had intended to break the news to him. In fact, the meeting was just 5 mins away.

Priya picked the phone, dialled an internal extension and said, “Sumant, can you come to my cabin please?”. And then finally, she smiled.

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Note: This is a rudimentary work of fiction by an amateur. No ideas or “inspirations” has been knowingly picked from any existing situations or writings. Would love to receive healthy feedback on my attempt so do comment. Thank you.