Foreign Affairs - Chapter 5

 

Chapter – 5

After we loaded Mia’s luggage in the car, we left for the hotel, where she was to stay.

“I hope you are comfortable, ma’am?” I asked her, as I got into the seat next to the driver. Mia was seated at the back.

“Please don’t call me ma’am. Call me Mia,” she said.

“Okay maam. Sorry, Mia,” I said.

She just smiled and asked, “So, Sachin you are working with Systech?”

“Of course, I am one of the back-end developer. I had been working in this project with your bank from day one. In fact, I had been in touch with you through mails,” I said.

“Oh, is it?” she said with furrowed eyebrows, as if she was in some deep thought and then said after a pause, “But I don’t remember seeing any of your mails.”

“Oh, that’s because my full name is Sachidhanandha Swaminathan,” I said with sheepishly

“Oh! Okay. You are SS?” she said with a laugh.

“SS?”

“That’s how we used to call you at our office,” she said, “it was too hard to even attempt to read your name.”

“Oh,” I said.

“But Sachin is a good short form for Sachidha….Can you please say your name again?” she asked.

“Sachidhanandha Swaminadhan,” I said.

“Sachi..dha..nan…” she tried her best but couldn’t.

“Sachin, is fine. Even many north Indians in our office can’t pronounce my name. That’s why everyone her calls me Sachin,” I said with a smile.

“Oh! But one day, I will learn to tell your full name”, she said.

“Ok,” I said with a smile.

“So, you are South Indian?” she asked.

“Yeah, isn’t that obvious?” I asked.

“No. For me you all are Indians. That’s it,” she said with a smile.

“Oh! Like how we do not know if you are German or French or Italian and we just call you Europeans?” I asked.

“Yes, exactly”, she replied.

“So…,” I started to ask her something when her cellphone rang.

“Excuse me,” she said and took the call.

She spoke on phone looking all anxious and a tad furious. I could not even understand in which language she was speaking. Was it French or German or Luxembourgish? I had no clue.

She was silent and was in deep thought after her call ended.

In an attempt to restart our conversation I asked her, “So, this is your first time in India?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“That’s great,” I said.

After few more seconds of silence, I asked her, “So, are you excited to be here?”

“Hmm. Yeah,” she said, but there was not much of an excitement in her voice.

“Hmm,” I said.

After another long pause, I asked her, “So, you are from Luxembourg?”

What a lame question to ask, I thought to myself as soon as I asked it, and looked at her in the rear-view mirror.

She was nodding.

“So, how is Luxembourg?” I asked.

“It’s a pretty good place,” she said looking all serious.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

After few more moments of silence I asked her, “Hey, does it feel weird to ride on the left side of the road?” That was my attempt to amuse her.

She looked up from her mobile to look outside the window and also saw the driver on the right side of the wheel and said, “Yeah. It does. But I have been used to it in London.”

“Oh, so you have been to London?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I have never been to anywhere outside India, even outside South India,” I said.

She nodded again.

I was trying to build some conversation with her but in vain. I knew that I was bad at talking but did not knew that I was this bad. I really did not know what to talk to her. And she was also only nodding or giving me one-word answers, which did not help me too.

“So….,” I started, when she interrupted me and asked, “Are we there at the hotel, yet?”

“It has just been 10 minutes since we started, we have another 1 hour of travel,” I said.

“What? Are we going out of town or somewhere? The office is in Bengaluru or someplace else?” she asked, looking confused as well as surprised.

“Actually, only now we are going to the city, the airport is far away from the city,” I said.

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.

“Yeah, the hotel, is about 50 kilometres from here. Since it is midnight, there is not much traffic, otherwise at normal office hours, it would take about two or more hours,” I explained to her.

“Oh my! That’s worst,” she said and let out a heavy sigh.

I looked at her in the mirror, once again. She looked pretty tired and her eyes were looking sleepy.  She clenched her lower back with her hand and crinkled her nose, as if she was in pain. I could understand that she was tired of all the sitting in the flight and she wanted to stretch herself.

“You know, you can just lie down on the backseat if you want,” I said.

“No, that’s not necessary,” she said.

“Or you can come to the front seat and recline it, that way you can relax,” I said.

She considered it for a moment and said in hesitance, “No, it’s ok.”

“I insist. You will feel better. Do you want me to switchover?” I asked.

“Yeah. But I hope it is not a problem for the driver, if I sleep in the front,” she said.

“No problem, madam,” our driver said with a smile.

So, we quickly exchanged our seats and I ensured that her seat was reclined fully so that she can stretch as much as possible and I also pulled the seat backwards so that she had enough leg room. As soon as she stretched herself on the seat, I could see her relief and she said turning to me, “Thank you Sachin.”

I just smiled back at her.

She slowly closed her eyes.

“Anna, play some music in low volume,” I said to the driver.

The driver switched on the FM and a melody song just filled the air.

Soon, we reached the hotel.

“Mia, Mia,” I called her.

After few seconds she woke up.

“We have already reached?” she asked.

“Yes, we are here at the Marriot,” I said.

The driver had already taken the luggage out of the car.

“Okay,” she said and got up.

We soon checked into the hotel and we were taken to her room.

“So, tomorrow at what time shall I come to pick you up?” I asked.

“What time does the office start?”

“It starts at 10 am. But you can rest for some time and maybe join in the afternoon also. You must be pretty tired and must be facing jet lag too,” I said.

“No, that’s ok. I will be there at 10.”

“Ok, I will be there at 9.30 to pick you up,” I said.

“That’s not necessary. You can just send the driver, she said.

“Its ok. I will come. That’s not an issue for me,” I said.

“Its really sweet of you to insist. But that’s not necessary. Even if your bosses in office have told you to do so. I will meet you at the office tomorrow. We have lots of work to do,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah, ok,” I replied back with a smile.

“Good night, Sachin,” she said.

“Yeah, Good night, Mia. Bye,” I said, as she closed the doors behind me.

“She seems to be a nice girl,” I thought to myself as I left.

 

The next day, she was at our office, sharp at 10 am. She was dressed in a formal shirt with a coat and a skirt and looked as fresh as a daisy. “Oh! That’s Mia?” every guy in my office asked with wide mouth as she walked in. Even the girls were seemed to be amazed seeing her elegant beauty.

I wondered how she looked so very energetic despite sleeping so late and all the travel. I myself looked like a zombie because of less sleep.

As she came into our conference room for giving her presentation, she spotted me and said, “Hi Sachin.”

I smiled back in response while all the guys looked at me with envy.

“Good morning, everyone. I am Mia Koch, from Luxembourg. I work with the Deutsche bank and I am here to give the brief on the software we want you develop for our banking system,” she started and went on to explain their requirements.

She finished her presentation by saying, “I will be here for the next one month, where we can have all our discussions and start the work on this software keep and keep reviewing the work in progress. I just need to make sure that all our requirements are well understood by your team before I leave back to Luxembourg. I hope it is clear. Now you can ask me any questions you have.”

“Can you please tell us about Luxembourg?” Tarun, a guy from our team asked.

“Okay,” Mia said and continued after a pause, “Hmmm, Luxembourg is a lovely small medieval town surrounded by a lot of beautiful nature. It has traditional roots and also a very modern outlook. It is also one of the rich countries in the world with one of the highest GDP. You can see most of the people working in banking sectors, just like me. And, you can find more cars in the road than people,” she said with a smile.

“Oh, great!” Tarun replied.

“Any more questions?” she asked.

Many people raised their hands.

“About the project?” she asked with a smile.

All hands went down.

“I guess everyone is interested to know more about Luxembourg,” she said with a chuckle as she closed her laptop.

“Yeah. This is our first project in Luxembourg, so people are pretty excited to know about it,” our team leader Rama Reddy said with a sheepish smile.

“That’s great to know. I am sure that many of you will get a chance to visit Luxembourg soon to work with us there. And we are really excited to have you there,” she said.

“Sure. And let me now formally introduce you to everyone in the team who would be working with you her,” Rama said and started to introduce us to her. We were a team of about 7 people.

Just when Rama was supposed to introduce me by saying, “And this is…”

“Sachin,” Mia said with a smile, “the back-end developer. We had met yesterday.”

“Oh, yes”, Rama said as if he did not remember, “hope he had taken good care for your arrangements.”

“Of course. He has also been working in this project from the start, right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Rama said with a nod.

‘Maybe he can be the one to come along with me to Luxembourg to continue working on the project and the rest can come later,” she said.

Before Rama could say anything, I jumped into say, “But sorry ma’am, I can’t go on-site right now,” I said.

“Oh okay,” she said.

“Maybe after my marriage I will come there,” I added.

“Okay. Not a problem,” she said with a smile and left.

Rama glared at me.

“What!? You know that I can’t go,” I said and left too before he could say anything to me.

 

That night, it was around 9 pm when I shut down my laptop to leave to home. The whole floor was empty and I was the last one to leave. So, just as I was about to enter the lift lobby, I just caught a glimpse of Mia sitting at her cubicle and still working.

I slowly walked up to her cabin. She was on a call, so I hesitated to go inside but just as she saw me, she gestured me to come in.

She was speaking in her language, maybe she was on an official call, I thought.

Just after her call was finished, she said, “Hi Sachin. Leaving for the day?”

“Yup. And you are still here?” I asked.

“Yes. It is official timing as per Luxembourg. It is only 4.30 pm there now,” she said.

“But in the morning, you work as per Indian timings. So, evening also you should close as per the same,” I said.

“Ha! That’s true,” she said, “I am a bit of a workaholic,” she said.

“I can see that,” I said with a smile.

She smiled back and said, “Guess, I will also leave with you,” she said.

“Sure, you can just pack up,” I will wait, I said.

“Thank you, Sachin,” she said and quickly shut down her laptop.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked.

“Yup,” she said, still busily packing her stuffs.

“May I know what language, you were speaking? I couldn’t guess whether it was Luxembourgish or German or French or whatever it was.”

She said with a chuckle, “That’s a mix of German and French. We people in Luxembourg tend to mix both the language as we speak. It is very common as we know both the language. Sometimes we mix Luxembourgish too.”

“Oh, just like we mix English with our regional language!?”

“Oh, yeah, maybe,” she said, “that’s the advantage or maybe disadvantage of being multilingual, I guess.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We were walking out of the office now.

“Let me call the driver. He will drop me at the hotel. And where do you stay? You can get dropped off there too,” she said.

“I stay quite near to the hotel too. Just a ten minutes’ walk from this place. I go by walk every day.”

“What!? It took me half an hour to reach by car and you say it takes only 10 minutes by walk?” she said looking shocked.

“Ha, ha. That’s Bengaluru for you. The traffic here is pretty wild,” I said.

“Then maybe I can walk with you to the hotel. You can take me to the hotel, right?”

“I can. But my company will prefer that you go in the car,” I said in a hesitant tone.

“Come on, Sachin. I don’t want to sit for half an hour in the car when I can just walk for 10 minutes. It is boring. I would feel better to walk than go by car. And anyway, you are there to help me, right? Then what’s the issue. It is not like I am going to walk alone.

“Yeah, but,” I tried to give her some excuse.

“Please. Please,” she said with pleading eyes to which I couldn’t say no.

“Okay,” I said finally.

“Cool. Let me call the driver and tell that I am going by walk with you. Otherwise, he will be waiting,” she said and took her mobile to call him.

And then we started to walk towards the hotel.

 (to be continued...)