Death of a Consultant

I am a dying consultant. Well, I'm not really dying, but my career as a consultant is pretty much over. I'm 35, recently diagnosed with a condition called something in which any hypothesis that leaves my vocal chords hurts me, and the more far-fetched the hypothesis, the more the pain. And not only that, I literally spew blood and my voice gets reduced to sharp squeaks when my statements get inaccurate. The last meeting I had with a client, things got so out of hand that the whole group was sitting with blood on their faces and their hands on their ears. My bullshitting days were over, and I got fired.

But enough about me. Let me tell you about her. She was the sunshine in our otherwise gloomy office. She could not only play the clients, but everyone inside of our office too. This is the story about how she played me that one time. Today she is married to some guy in some ministry and has two kids, and remembering their lovely faces, I'd keep the raunchier details of our relationship and her real name out of this story. I'll just call her Layla.

It was a rushed beginning of the day in office while the cool Bangalore morning lay wasted outside. She came to my cubicle all worked up. She told me she had to fly to Mumbai that evening for an early morning meeting the next day at the customer support of a bank. She had to present a report to some big-shot there and had nothing at all. I was pleasantly surprised that she had came to me until she told me I was to go with her and make the presentation. She told me that since she had nothing and I had nothing, I might as well present. And take this - I stalled my work and agreed. It was Layla.

Did I love her? In a way. It was the kind of love you feel whenever you walk past a certain cubicle and then don't feel it again for the rest of day, until you pass by it again. There was only one such cubicle for me, and it was Layla's. On our way to the airport she told me the client's problem. They wanted to 'increase efficiency' across their floor. Increase efficiency, I thought, you couldn't be more vague. But I was happy with this, if they're vague, we can be vague. So this was the problem I'd have to keep at the back of my mind while I'm courting her tonight. Now don't get me wrong. In my interactions with women I'm never a wolf, I stick to my species.

I needed to get something else cleared up too. While waiting at the airport I casually asked her, if she didn't mind, how things were going for her outside of the office. "You know how it is, I hardly get time for anything outside of the office." That is good, I thought, she is single. I was amazed, and even a little embarrassed at how different things were now from school or college. I always started out sincere then. And today, I needed to go through an entire awkward routine before I allow myself to start getting sincere.

She went to sleep as soon as we took off. I was a bit sleepy myself, but there was no way I could sleep - I had two major projects in the next 24 hours. The lights were switched off and soon most people dozed off. In a while a child's whimpering turned into loud yelps. I was surprised that it woke no one up except its mother. The mother took out a box and tried to feed the child out of it. She seemed to be having a hard time so I walked up to her seat and held the box for her. There was candy, biscuits and the like inside. She was pretty calm and started chatting. I told her I could check with the attendants for some dinner for the child. "No, not necessary, I have what I call his Anytime Breakfast Box with me. Kids don't follow our meal timings. They just wake up anytime, take a few bites, and go back to sleep. Something sweet, something salty, a little sip of something, and it's done. It's the solution to everything." Great, I thought. The solution to everything. And this started a chain of thought that would lead to my suggesting the Anytime Breakfast Box to the client as the solution to his efficiency problem.

I walked back to my seat. Layla was sleeping like an angel but I had to wake her up. I told her about the Anytime Breakfast Box.

"You're kidding."

"I'm serious. See how I do it tomorrow."

"Fine, it's your project now. Do it the way you want."

I soon realized that I had gotten carried away, The thought crossed my mind that if this fails, it would be last project in the company. But I had told Layla, and now I couldn't back-off.

My presentation slides were all pictures. Three categories, titled - Sugar somethings, Salt somethings, Fluid. It was pretty easy to prepare. Candy, granola, chips, oats, biscuits, lemonade, soda - I put everything in there. I give you here the proceedings of the meeting -

"Gentlemen, we have performed an extremely detailed study of your processes, and have narrowed down your problems to one fact - a definitive, though short-term decrease in the effective IQ of your employees that takes place while they work. Any person doing repetitive work faces a decrease in effective IQ which lasts only a few hours. To recover the lost IQ, the employee, against his will, engages in activities which the low IQ dictates him to, such as idle chatter, blank staring at walls, mumbling and fumbling, cracking poor jokes, drooling, excessive urination and facebooking. This is the root cause of all inefficiency."

I made a pause, letting it sink in.

"But as always, we have a solution. And as always, it's cheap and effective. The philosophy behind our solution is a continuous supply of energy to the employees, continuously replenishing their effective IQ. Gentlemen, I present to you - The Anytime Breakfast Box."

As I ran through the slides, I couldn't tell if the contortions in their faces were disbelief or anger. Layla had closed her eyes, awaiting the storm. "You are shitting us," was the verdict. The big-shot asked his man, the guy who had hired us, "Were you in on this charade?" He said no.

I sank. My head spun. I lost speech. It was a total black-out. I realized the absurdity. I had gone insane. I could check myself into an asylum. The only thought that passed my head was the disbelief with which they would fire me back at my company. I was sinking deeper and deeper when I looked at Layla. Nothing happened. I kept on sinking. My eyes must have closed because the letters CONSULTANT flashed before me. They were lit in neon. I saw that I was standing on a busy crossing and all the shops around me had these letters flashing blinking marqueeing on them. I realized at that moment that it was by hands like mine that civilization is built. I am the consultant in this room. I'm the one to be listened to. I shot back like a rocket, my blast radiating the room.

"Gentlemen, I understand your thoughts. I felt the same way when the thought first came to me. But think about it, your processes are dictated by your business. You can't do much about them. You can't do much about distractions - people walking in, change of weather, telephone calls. There are others who'll tell you the solutions that never work. I'm telling you something that'll work. You can choose to implement it, or you can repent five years later when the Anytime Breakfast Box is the industry standard. Every new idea seems ridiculous at first. Think about how simple it is - give one of these boxes to every employee every day, and see your profits rise. So tell me gentlemen, do you have the stomach for change? Of course, if you want the stale security of old solutions, I can work one of those out for you in a couple of hours."

I saw that shadow pass over their faces, which tells you it has worked. They were nodding. The consultant mojo had prevailed. Layla could see it too. She was beaming. My heart was barely within my chest. I had nailed both my projects.

The client agreed to the solution. I don't know about Layla but I walked out of there nothing but stunned. I wanted to run, as if I had picked their pockets and it was only a matter of time before they discovered that and chased me down. It was then that Layla lay the bomb on me.

"I'm so excited, I can't wait to tell my boyfriend."

"Boyfriend?"

"Yes, he works for Rahul Gandhi."

I stopped dead. I stopped dead in the middle of the road. The traffic stopped too. I was looking into the eyes of every driver in every vehicle, seeing the anger in their eyes that had risen in sympathy with me. She had tricked me. I thanked them and assuring them I could handle myself, I crossed the road.

After that day, I went on a mad spree, a death spiral where I didn't care what happened to me. I wanted to get hurt. Badly. Fired, destitute, starving, stoned. In this insanity I sold to dozens of organizations the Anytime Breakfast Box idea, and others I invented, crazier, such as the Midnight Anthem Recital, the Corpse Perspective Parade and the Dog-Bitch Laydown. Amazingly, I grew and grew. The ideas which were certain to get me fired were the best accepted ones. I gave up, and just basked in the glory until, as I told you earlier, I got this condition. I guess I abused my gift. Now I spew blood whenever I speak, or rather, squeak.

I have lost any sense of the truth. I mean it's one thing to lie, it's another thing to not even know what truth is. But then, here I am. Of course, it's not the end of the world, because I've taken to writing. Writing fiction. Finally channeling my bullshit in the right direction.