Still somewhat reeling from the miserable days at home, Pallavi resumed work in Mansur just like the rest of them. When she shared tidbits of her days with Adhvik, he also had his share about marriage.

“A family came to see me last week for marriage.” Adhvik informed nonchalantly, making Pallavi jaw drop with it.

An indescribable feeling burnt through her chest. Disappointment, jealousy, longing, hurt she didn't know which. But when he talked about the girl and the family, although she was relieved knowing they didn't like her— Pallavi was hit with another soul crashing reality. That it was no use pining over someone with whom you never shared a future with. She had to suck it up and accept— their worlds were miles apart.

That night Pallavi wrote a long note in her diary, promising it to be the last note of Adhvik she would ever write. That she would stop thinking of all the ‘what ifs’ and move to ‘why nots’ like a champ.

She got to admit she felt relaxed working in Mansur after the completion of the N series of mobiles. The feelings were mutual for everyone in the development department. There was no deadline, no unnecessary scolding, no pressure, no mishaps, nothing. Like they are were broken free from it.

A little too free that is.

Except for the minor revisions of previous manufactured models in pehs and documents, there was no other work. Pallavi raised her head from the game she was playing on her mobile screen to see Rohan and Tulsi returning from the factory side. Together.

“Is this like the third or the fourth date with him to the factory side? Lucky you.” She commented to a giggling Tulsi.

“Instead of getting jealous, just ask Adhvik to take you, too.”

“As if. He's not like Rohan to ask you out like that...” Her eyes widened as realization dawned on her. She crossed her arms. “Nope. Nada! I'm not going to ask him anything!”

Eventually Pallavi became bored enough to take a round down the factory side herself. It might do her some exercise as well. Besides the usual manufacturing rooms, new additions were added recently at the dishoom dishoom house (aka warehouse). An office was going to be built there or so she heard.

Surprisingly as she took the rounds, she discovered her teammates gathered in the assembly room, discussing something serious.

“We need to find it guys...” Pallavi heard Sai say as if his life depended on it.

“Find what?” Pallavi asked and they gave a name. All she understood that it was a small part of a vernier caliper without which it wouldn't function. A fucking vernier caliper.

Were they high?

“They are doing what you call ‘timepass’,” Adhvik cleared her confusion. Oh, did she forget to mention that Adhvik was amongst them too? “Come on, join the timepass train. It's not like any of us has any work to do.”

“Okay.”

And then, something good happened. The development team dispersed to different directions in the name of vernier caliper, leaving her with Adhvik. Pallavi followed Adhvik to the new, white buffing room where the covers were polished with the help of a huge machines having wheels inside them. They closely resembled the scanning machines in airports where the luggages were kept and scanned inside. In this case, it was the mobile covers. Infact these equipments looked more advanced and new.

Adhvik and Pallavi stumbled upon the 3D and quality department guys who were inspecting the polished covers. The covers were arranged in the tables before them.

“Now look at them going berserk.” Adhvik lowered his voice, while smiling at the guys. “To an outsider it might look like the quality team is doing their work by checking the cover but in reality, they are also doing timepass.”

“You mean this isn't necessary?”

“It is, but not the extent that it takes a whole day. Tell me, how much do you see these guys in the office? It's because they are loitering around these parts. And so is the rest of our team now.”

Pallavi felt like she just unearthed a huge secret, even though it was nothing exceptional. The two of them conversed with the quality department guys for a while before Adhvik motioned her to get away from them.

“Come, I'll show you how to do timepass around these parts.”

Guess her luck meter was going easy on her today. The rest of the hour was spent with Adhvik and Pallavi roaming around the factory parts discovering how everyone was passing their time while doing the same thing themselves. All in the name of Vernier Caliper. They had a good laugh about it. Adhvik even performed his duty as a senior by explaining her the factory procedures in depth. They checked out the empty space beyond the warehouse where the new office would be built. She wondered if all the three of them would still be working by the time the new office was completed.

But the highlight of their little factory hangout was the new sub- assembly room that Adhvik took her to after swiping his card near the entrance. Surprisingly, Pallavi had never visited been here before, despite working for six months. The room was spacious than any of the rooms with machines she had never seen. It was like roaming around a garden as usual only to discover a secret hideout one day.

Pallavi was already used to seeing the injection and the moulding machines so this was a welcome change. There was one box shaped machine where luminescent green light peeked through its narrow gaps. A smartphone was kept inside. It was similar to an X ray machine. Her eyes lit up when she found the mobile models that were being used here— they weren't Xiaomi.

“I can't believe, this is—” Pallavi held the smooth black mobile on her hand, then took another. “Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and... Motorola? I thought Mansur was only responsible for Xiaomi. Did I miss something? Can I steal them?”

Adhvik chuckled at her surprise. “No, you can't. This lab was built recently around two months ago. This is a sub-assembly room where the assembly of the assembled parts is done. Hence the name. So yeah, Mansur has gained Samsung and Motorola as it's clients specifically for this. There's even a seperate documentation team for these models.”

“There is? Damn, I want to join that team!”

“You'll probably get a lesser salary due to less workload.”

They roamed around for a while longer until Adhvik left her for some other work. Pallavi took her sweet time discovering the manufacturing of LCD screens amongst other things before returning to the office with a sound mind. Her wish of roaming the factory with Adhvik was granted.

* * * *

Few days later, Hyoung announced the arrival of a new manager from Mansur branch in Vietnam. His name was Jung- ho which almost sounded like the name of the K- pop star Jung- kook. Pallavi let out a surprised yelp when she saw him. Being someone senior to Hyoung, she imagined Jung to be older and taller but he turned out to be younger and shorter. Toppled up with a bigger pair of eyes and mouth, it made him appear like a graduate student rather than a manager. Apparently, he had more experience than Hyoung who had been working in this field for the past ten years. Korean faces and their real age-- A beautiful mismatch.

Each member of the development team was asked to introduce themselves and their field of work. Jung- ho summarised about himself after which the team dispersed themselves. Pallavi watched as Hyoung arranged his belongings on the smaller cubical adjacent to him. Didn't it irk him that he was demoted in the least? She would have been devastated.

For a while Jung- ho did nothing, except chat with his department members. Like he was getting to know them.

“I like your Indian dresses. What are you two wearing?” Jung- ho singled out the two girls in their Indian attire. It was a coincidence that both were wearing traditional clothes that day.

“It's called Kurta- Salwar.” Tulsi answered, touching the end of her long length yellow- white top known as kurta. “Although what Pallavi is wearing down is legging.”

“I see. You both look beautiful in it.” Jung- ho complimented with a toothy smile and the girls seeming a bit surprised, thanked him. “In Vietnam, women wear a traditional attire close to yours. It's called ao dai. Wait, I'll show you on Google.”

Thus he showed the images on the internet that showcased colorful dresses of a Vietnamese silk tunic with pants. The conversation continued on discussing about Indian and Vietnamese culture and dresses. They also got to know that Jung- ho was a mixed breed, having a Korean father and a Vietnamese mother. So far, he was earning points for being friendly, polite and cheerful. More so than Hyoung. Pallavi didn't remember conversing this much with him. Maybe having a new manager wasn't such a bad idea.

Wrong.

It was one time when Jung- ho sat down alongside Adhvik to take a look at how documents were made. He was greeted with nothing but disappointment. He began to point out the minor things in the dimension sheet, reliability report, CPK table— to the smallest detail. Once he asked about the standard tonn that was required for the battery cover to run. Adhvik easily answered that, even gave the reason. But then, Jung- ho began to drill down further, questioning what ifs and what not's, even going further back to history. Obviously Adhvik couldn't answer that while Pallavi and Tulsi sat there, feeling as clueless as kindergarten kids.

Jung- ho called two men to place a whiteboard on the wall behind them. When it was done, he began to draw a tabular diagram explaining the concepts amongst other things. Pallavi stifled back a yawn, already feeling bored. Was she back to school?

Imagine a somewhat clean room. Imagine someone coming in and pointing out all the minute areas that needed to cleaned, then pointed out some more, and more. To the point where you started to wonder whether he had OCD.

Such was the case with Jung- ho. He had OCD towards fonts and formats.

He lined up the employees of the department and explained the format— the standardized format size of every type of table, fonts, space, colors used in the documents. Something that no one pointed out before. Some thought it was a good, some thought it was a waste of time. He was basically revamping the entire format of the 60 pages document that has been passed off to Xiaomi for years.

It was okay to lecture on this for the first day but by the fourth day, it became a painful chore. It got way worse was when Jung- ho started giving them work to edit the documents in the format he wanted. He specifically transferred the documents from Vietnam for this purpose.
Although Pallavi was spared from his formatting wrath, thanks to her Pehs work. She was specifically invited to visit Xiaomi today to attend a special lecture on the same.

“Enjoy yourselves, suckers,” Pallavi teased Adhvik and Tulsi before leaving with another girl from accounting department. The fact that Adhvik was not with her was for her own good. She told herself that.

Needless to say, she enjoyed her experience. This special pehs class had around forty people from different manufacturing companies with all of them producing one thing or another for Xiaomi. Moreover, one of the lecturers happened to be an blond English man— and a source of eye- candy for all the girls including Pallavi. Looking at the huge corporation building of Xiaomi, she couldn't help but observe the Xiaomi employees who were in a class of their own as they walked in suits and pencil skirts. Working here must be a different experience altogether.

* * *

“This Jung- ho is insane! I can't take it anymore,” Tulsi held her arms in surrender. “I've tried to draft the QAC table as he wanted but now he wants to change the font size, alignment and what fucking not. Again! Plus he says the shade is not navy blue enough. What the fuck does that mean?” She added, pointing angrily at document displayed on the computer screen.

“Don't bother. Seriously, we shouldn't get worked up for a measly salary of thirteen thousand.” Pallavi commented with a dismissive hand.

“She's right. On top of that, we have to bear with unsolicited judgement from people who can't keep their ugly mouths shut!” Adhvik raised his voice an octave higher, while drilling his gaze at the testing room door.

“Heh, what? That's so unrelated.”

“Not when you have such judgemental people around you...” Adhvik shot daggers. If looks could kill, he would have burnt a hole through the testing room door by now. When the girls probed him further, he told them what he heard from his close colleague Zahir from the purchase department.

Zahir was once talking to the stout man from the QAC department named Gaurav. It was around that time, Adhvik had approached them to enquire for something. Adhvik left after Zahir gave the bill that he required. Gaurav laughed downright, recalling how Adhvik had two young girls in the team and how friendly he was with them. ‘I'm sure he must be banging one of them in secret. I mean how can one resist such temptation, right? Lucky lad he is.’  were his words.

Wait, let me translate a bit in Hindi.

‘Dabake pelta hoga inhe.’

Both Pallavi and Tulsi had their jaws drop in utter disbelief. Not only it was disrespectful to Adhvik but to the girls as well. Previously it was Adhvik, but now there were three pairs of eyes trying to burn a hole through the door. “Dirty piece of shit!” Tulsi cussed.

“Do these people have nothing better to do than to cook disgusting theories?” Pallavi asked, with gritted teeth.

“Say this when Guarav exits the testing room. Make sure your voices reaches that cunt.” He paused, flaring his nostrils in anger. “You girls wonder why I think about reputation. This is why. Because we have such sick people around here that I'm forced to be careful. I'm single and I still hear talks like this. Imagine if I actually got committed to someone in the office? They wouldn't let me breathe another day.”

Pallavi wondered if Adhvik was remotely referring to the Valentine Day mishap. Just the mention of Valentine's Day made her blood boil.

“But whether you are seeing someone or not, he doesn't have the right to poke his nose into it. Ugh, why do these dickheads exist?” Tulsi ranted and the two of them shared their thoughts about the regressive part of the society.

Just then the stout man stepped outside the testing room while conversing with Harshit. The three of them exchanged a mischievous look.

“... But apparently some scoundrels have no other work than gossip like Aunties and cook disgusting theories in office!” Pallavi started in a loud voice.

“I know right! Their mind is so regressive that when they see a guy interacting with two girls or vice versa, hooking up is all they think about.” Tulsi backed up. Guarav stole a quick glance at their direction before reverting back to talking. The girls shared a high five at that.

“Perhaps their wives failed to satisfy these tharkis (perverts) in the bedroom so they build up fantasies. But guess what? Life isn't a porn movie.” Adhvik concluded. The trio watched as the stout man started walking away, without sparing a single distracting glance. But no matter how well one pretended to be non- existent, they could never shut their ears. Adhvik twisted his knuckles in anger, “Honestly feel like kicking their mouths so that they think twice before spewing shit. Abbey ja saale ja.”

The three of them shared a high five at that. Atleast they managed to get the message across that fucker. Their topic of conversation gradually shifted as they continued talking.

“You know Bhanu's boyfriend is Naman from the molding department.”

“What? You mean the same Bhanu we meet after lunch everyday?” Tulsi reconfirmed, her eyes widening. Adhvik nodded. “Wow, she never told us this.”

“You can now understand why she didn't. Honestly, I don't care who this Bhanu has or not have an affair with. I just gave you an example.” He snorted. “That's why people hide their relationships from family and society in India. It's sad.”

“Ah, I can never dare to have an affair though. Not in this office, not outside. Too risky.” Pallavi admitted. She was nuts to think she could have something with Adhvik at one time. That too when he worked in the same department as her. Preposterous.

Although one movie date and a kiss wouldn't hurt. Pallavi's inner voice said and she shook her head in disbelief.

“Why? I'd risk it for someone special.” Tulsi pouted, crossing her arms. Said the girl who was the first one to flee from Se-hun's party back then.

“Aree everything becomes possible when one wants to pursue it.” Adhvik commented confidently. “How do you think the youngsters— oh sorry, even married people involve in affairs. I know of some uncles and aunties who had one without ever letting their spouse know. Not saying it's right.”

“You don't know my family, okay.” Pallavi argued, narrowing her eyes slightly as she displayed her palm. “I have a fuckin' driver who picks and drops wherever I go— something which I'm not grateful about. My parents ask me before I go somewhere and start calling me if I take too much time. So I wouldn't be able to go on dates often. Eventually my imaginary boyfriend would get fed up of me. My college friends had relationships because they were away from their family that time. Saumya had her second boyfriend because she was working away. I should have had an affair during my college but I knew no one then. And now I'm staying with them. It's impossible. ”

Tulsi nodded slightly aghast at her sudden outburst. Pallavi was surprised too, but deep down she knew why. She hated that she was being restricted enough to prevent her to exploring more. From her parents perspective, they granted her enough freedom to visit her girl-friends, go shopping and roam around the society. She could even have sleepovers with her college besties. And Pallavi was grateful for that but firstly, she didn't have many friends around the area and secondly, she wanted more.

“Everything is possible in this world.” Adhvik concluded, looking into her eyes. “When it comes down to it. When you  want to see someone badly, you will cross all boundaries for them.”

***************

As promised an early update. I hope these chapters aren't boring you. That vile comment targeted towards Adhvik is true. *smh* Anyway, the next chapter is a bit different and nice. You'll see. Look forward to it. If I lose my patience, I might post it on Thursday, otherwise Sunday.

Have a nice week.