I am an honest, god fearing, true to my word, sincere in my
work terrorist. I love my wives and children, I help old women cross the road and
I spare some change for the beggar on the street. I am telling you all this so
that you take my advice seriously and realize that I only have your best
interest in my mind.
I have done some stupid things in my life, my third son from my second wife (she was not my wife then) is right on top of the list; I have watched Tashan first day, first show; have bought a Macbook Pro and have tried to race a Haryana Roadways bus (that’s why I limp and my Wagon R is no more). But all these don’t even come close to my biggest blunder in life; taking over an IT company and holding its employees hostage.
It was a Friday afternoon when after months of planning,
recruiting people, arranging the weapons, getting an approval from the agency,
services and our high command we finally decided that today is the day. I had
spent months on researching the potential target and I had realized that Rashtrapati
Bhavan was too difficult, no one actually came to the campus of BHU, crowded
markets in Bombay and Delhi were done to death, and that it was an IT company
that was the perfect target. Being an IT savvy terrorist myself I had done my
research on them; tens of thousands of people came to them every day, they were
mostly located outside the city, generated a lot of foreign currency so were
the darling of the government and were full of meek IT geeks. They had a
strenuous security procedure though, people were frisked, the luggage was
scanned, and the cars were checked so it had the right mix of ease and
difficulty. But most of all I wanted to be different, no one had done it before
and I wanted to get noticed and rise up the ranks.
We loaded the guns, bombs, walkie-talkies and ourselves into two Qualis (stolen from some company which provided cabs to that IT company only) and stormed the campus. After firing a few rounds in the air, pushing the employees in the buildings and rounding up the security guards we were all set. The so called security guards were so terrified after seeing guns that they nearly crapped in their pants, only one of had seen a gun before that too in the Indo Pak war after which he had retired, the rest of the boys had only been trained to lookout for missing ID cards and pen drives. In fact all this seemed easier than writing a novel these days (the thin, big font, 100 bucks a piece ones I mean, ‘metro reads’ I read somewhere; they are called).
But then the gloom started setting in. Even after a quick
glance I had realized that there were a lot of people un-accounted for, at
least 5000 less than our estimate after we counted. “It is Friday and most
people have left for their home towns after lunch” said the man in charge of
the campus after I slapped him twice and demanded an explanation. Now it was
only 2 o’ clock and not even the Sarkari Babus go home this early, this was
beginning to look bad. Then came the first distress call of the day from one of
my colleague who was sent to manage some hostages in a building.
He was a newbie and already seemed to be in tears. Over sobs
he told me that the people in his building are not terrorized, in fact some of
them have not even realized that they were hostages. I quickly rushed to his
building, the last thing we needed was somebody playing John McClane. But the
situation was something else, I realized, after entering the lobby, people were
not rebellious, they were just sleeping and too morose to care for anything
else. After shouting terrorist, you are taken over, bomb, I will shoot you,
hands up at the top of my voice I finally resorted to firing in the air, after
the deafening sound of bullets was through the most it did was one guy opened
his one eye, looked at us, then looked at his watch, asked the guy next to him
that “do we have a call now?” and went back to sleep. This was embarrassing to
say the least. I have successfully blown up buildings, armed force’s jeeps and
tortured a traitor to death but this scenario looked very bleak. Admitting
defeat I asked my colleague to lock this building and leave them to themselves.
As soon I was exiting the building I heard gun shots coming
from the neighboring building. While I am all for teaching people’s manners, shooting
a lot of people wasn’t in my to-do list for today. It reduces your ability to
negotiate with the police. As I rushed to that building I saw another colleague
of mine shooting a mass of people sitting on their chairs, unarmed. After I
snatched the gun from his hands and reprimanded him in the harshest words he
said, he saw them making some move, as if their trying to draw some weapon.
After the screaming and hysteria had subsided I also noticed the same thing,
their hands twitched every 5 minutes as if they are trying to draw a knife or
something. After frisking and finding nothing on 9 people, I leveled with the
10th guy and asked him what it was. He said it was an involuntary habit
of moving the mouse every 5 minutes to stay ‘Green’ on the office communicator
and all they are doing is mentally clicking a mouse. I was further alarmed when
somebody suggested bringing a cake for their recently dead team-mates. This was
looking worse than my village cage where they kept all the crazies locked.
I had finally come back to the main building and was
thinking of how to negotiate with the police when one lady approached me and
asked for my email id, she said she was an HR manager and wanted to mail me a
list of demands from the employees. When I asked them to state them verbally to
me she asked one young guy to come with a notepad and asked him to note the
minutes of the meeting. Firstly she asked that they few of the employees wanted
to be tied to more comfortable chairs. Second one stray bullet had shattered a
glass and AC cooling was going to waste, this building was losing points in the
‘go green’ challenge. Thirdly the restroom was running low on liquid soap and
wanted that to be refilled. Fourthly if the hostage situation continued till
tomorrow they wanted a written approval from their managers for a ‘comp off’. Fifth,
the coffee machine was not working so they either wanted to be moved to a floor
where it worked or wanted a working coffee machine brought here And lastly and
most importantly she thought that employee morale was running low so she should
be allowed to send a mail with some quotes and a 'face painting' contest with a chance to win a
pack of 8 crayons. I think the last point that kid wrote down was “If you don’t shut
up and sit down I am going to shoot you and the guy left to you, just for the
heck of it”. This was getting intolerable.
As I just sat down I head another SOS from my colleague.
What I witnessed as I hastened to his post was absolute pandemonium. People
were running amok; trying to login to their machines, checking their Blackberrys
and even the threat of shooting them down was doing nothing. Finally I caught
one guy running like crazy and I could get only two words out of him - ‘Client
Escalation’. They looked more scared than my suicide bombing instructor who
realized we had switched his demo kit with a real explosives belt as an April 1st
prank. One engineer came up to me and clearly told me that he would prefer
getting shot in the head than risking another client escalation, especially now
when the annual appraisal was due. Frantically I searched for his project
manager who he mentioned had the name Sathya and even after going through the name
on ID cards of the entire floor I was unable to find him. Finally I mixed my
yell with a few bullets in the air and demanded Sathya to come forward. Three
people came forward but only one of them looked old enough to be a manager. His
name was Sathyadhiran Srinivasulu Mucherla Laxman, no wonder I was not able to
find him! I asked him to tell all his sub –ordinates to get off from their
computers, go to one corner of the building and be in total silence. He
responded by saying that he wanted an requirement document detailing which
corner of the building he was supposed to go to, what was the SLA of total
silence and number of man hours given to him for the job. I was too
flabbergasted to say anything and sheepishly excused myself out of the
situation.
I went back to the center building again. The police had
come by this time and wanted to negotiate. I said ‘Hello’ in my most
terrorizing voice to the inspector. ‘Cheppandi
Anna’ came the reply. I repeated in Hindi. ‘Enti ‘ was the reply this time. I tried 3 other languages but no
avail. I needed a translator. I caught hold of a Reddy from the crowd and asked
him to translate. “Talk-a?” he asked,
“to the police-a” while moving his hand with his thumb out which meant ‘fuck’
in my part of the world. He then flat out refused after I said yes; he said it was the onsite
people’s job to talk to the client and translate the requirements, he always
the got the final document. Also, this was not a part of his current allocation
and hence would require the approval of his team lead, Project manager,
Development track lead and Offshore Delivery head. When I insisted that this is
not required he suggested me to log my demands in a tracker and mail it to the
police while keeping my manager in CC, he even volunteered to give me the
latest template for the tracker. This was pathetic. Not only was I feeling like
a ring master, trying to juggle 5 balls on a unicycle. But I was also not able
to tell the police that I wanted my three colleagues freed, 1 Crore rupees and
a chopper brought to me. This day was getting worse than when my iPod had crashed, that too
before a 10 day hike from Kabul to Waziristan.
But the straw or rather the pillar that broke my back was
when I thought I would check in with my team till they mulled the issue over
outside. Alpha 1, who was in charge of the recreational center was not
replying. Fearing the worst, that Indian government has finally learned its
lesson and has sent the cavalry in, I rushed to his post. But what I saw were
beyond my wildest dreams. Abdullah the 6’6” Pathan from Kabul was found
merrying in the Jacuzzi, his 2nd in command was taking a Sauna,
while the rest of his unit was either in the pool or playing foosball. To the
people who had seen nothing donkey turds and each other for months at a stretch
it seemed like someone had torn open the gates of heaven. One of his guys was
even making a deal with an employee, in exchange for referring him he would
tell him how to get into US without a H1 – B.
At this point I broke down and started sobbing. I had taken
the sandstorms of Afghanistan, the blizzards of Siachen, torture of US Marines
and nagging of Kherunissa (my 1st wife) but this was beyond all
that. As all my dreams of a promotion, Interpol red corner notice, Al-Jazeera
exclusive videos , hot virgins in heaven and finally be able to afford an iPad2
came crashing down as I realized couldn’t go any further and I walked out and
surrendered myself. Anything would be better than this.
Now I as pass my days in an Indian prison and enjoy the VIP
treatment alongside that new kid Kasab, I have nothing to do but ponder over my
past actions and I always reach the same conclusion. Don’t take over an IT
company!
