The Presentation

Presentation time. It’s your big day.

It’s an opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Finally, you’ll get a meeting with the head of the department.

You have a solid deck to present to them all. It will be the greatest FU to your boss when the HOD finally sees that you’re worth more than the measly bonus you were offered along with a “We value you” sticker.

You’re all dressed up for the big occasion, suit, tie and all. Finding those things was darned difficult though. You did have to dig into your cupboard like you were extracting termite fossils from the wood or something. But you finally found them and got them pressed- an activity you engaged in after a good decade or so.

But it’s necessary. After all, a striking appearance certainly adds value and even compensates for your ugly haircut. It almost makes you look half-decent, which is a world-beating trick in itself.

You wake up early that day. The meeting’s at 11 AM but you’re awake at 6, something that’s possible only when you’ve been watching Splitsvilla through the night. This time, it’s important. It’s mission-critical. You need that promotion, the one you never got and have been dying for since the last thousand days.

You do all the right things this morning. You have breakfast on time, which leaves your maid gaping in awe and she almost falls off the terrace. You take a bath, which is rarer than watching Haley’s Comet. You even try to meditate for a bit. This part doesn’t work though, because you’re too distracted by vulgar visuals that typically dominate your thoughts. Never mind. At least you tried.

The next few hours are spent on fine-tuning the PPT- editing typos that could you make you the laughing stock of the entire team, removing verbose statements that can trigger a yawning pandemic, and adding a few cheeky visuals here and there- which you later delete because they could be grounds for getting fired without notice.

It seems to be in place now. All your hairy ideas nicely packaged into a shiny, 128-slide deck. It’s going to be so interesting that nobody would want to arrive 35 mins late for this. It even has a quirky thank you slide, just in case you get there without being interrupted mid-way because they already want to promote you to VP and fly you to their head office on Venus.

After all those stupid cosmetics are done, you’re still left with some time before the second most significant hour of your life comes up. The most significant one was when they confused you with some other candidate and ended up giving you the job. It’s now time to undo all these perceptions and get them to recognize your real value.

You spend that time praying which is ironic, considering how you go around parties presenting yourself as the most woke atheist in town. All those pretensions shatter when faced with the daunting prospect of presenting to your HOD, and you’re practically shitting your second-hand pants. In such times of duress, only a deal with the divine can provide some comfort. So you resort to all sorts of heavenly requests and search the house for agarbattis and rosary beads- stuff that’ll make your mom proud in a microsecond.

Time passes by pretty quickly as you soon gravitate from all that panic to obsessive LinkedIn stalking in a bid to understand what the people on the call are going to be like. It doesn’t help much because you get distracted by fake stories of how people got a job after reaching the interview 13 hours late.

And the clock strikes. It’s time. You join the meeting 5 minutes early for the first time in corporate history. Time to go for the kill. 

A few moments pass. You eagerly stare in anticipation, waiting for the leaders to trickle in one by one for the PPT that’ll shake the earth under their feet. But nothing happens. Seconds turn into minutes. You’re the only one on the link, staring so hard at the screen that your eyes almost develop cataracts.

It’s 11:15 AM now. You’re flabbergasted and don’t know what’s happening when you suddenly hear that shrill sound when a participant joins. It’s your boss. Even though it’s a face you’d much rather avoid looking at, it’s a welcome relief. The show might start now, you feel.

Nope. The boss is there to tell you to wait for a few more minutes for the HOD as he’s caught up. You wait obediently. After all, the big things in life always involve some pain initially. The pain gets chronic though, as the clock strikes 11:30. Sill no one. Anticipation slowly turns into a rage as you start feeling like a sucker for getting up five hours before you usually do.

Your boss joins again, his expression as plain as the surface of a fridge. You’re quickly told that the meeting will have to be rescheduled. Apparently, the HOD’s stuck because his kid lost his beloved yellow socks and he’s busy trying to manage this ‘personal crisis’ at home.

“It’s got to be another time, buddy” he says and drops off as fast as he came, leaving you staring at yourself yet again. You almost end up smashing the laptop to bits, but then realize that you don’t have money for a new one.

And that’s how it ends. A night of foregone TV shows, a morning that actually contained a bath, an ultra-decorated thank you slide- all of that for what? “It’s okay” you tell yourself. “Next time, I’ll crush it”, and then you get back to further beautifying the PPT, hoping that someday you’ll finally get to present it, ask everyone if it’s visible, and then go ahead and blow their minds.

Never mind. At least you tried.