5/06/25 2:02pm
to Kavya
Hi boss,
Oh, that was me leaving space for your genius. Didn’t want to cramp your style.
Your hardworking intern,
Neil
I read the email a few times over, mostly to confirm I wasn’t hallucinating. I’d never witnessed such nauseating, unearned confidence.
‘Hardworking or hardly working?’ I scoffed.
His smile widened. I watched as he wheeled his chair closer to mine, leaned over until his face was near enough to whisper without anyone else overhearing. A whiff of his cologne had me pulling away.
‘You know, delegation is a skill. You should try it sometime.’
‘Shut up,’ I muttered in his general direction, my nostrils flaring.
‘You really should work on that temper of yours …’ he said, then plucked a thumb pin off the vision board behind my iMac and tacked up a piece of paper.
It was the Hulk sketch.
I spent the rest of the week working overtime and trying to make peace with my new reality. Neil was not my intern. If anything, I washis. What bothered me wasn’t the fact that I was stuck doing all his work … it was that I also had to put up with his smugness. I could see it in the way his smile lingered whenever he handed something off to me—he wasenjoyingthis. Meanwhile, he got to sit back, scroll on his phone and watch me drown. It felt like I was back in school, bending over backwards to ace a group project while the freeloaders walked away with an undeserved A+.
But, at least, I had the weekend to look forward to. Not that I had any grand plans, of course. I rarely did, knowing barely anyone in Mumbai. You’d think that spending three and a half years in a city would’ve been enough time to make a set of friends, but I’d had poor luck in that department. My roommates over the years had led vastly different lifestyles than mine, leaving very little room for common grounds. The people from work, barring Tanya, had never been interested in hanging out with me—nor I with them. And that one time I had downloaded Bumble to make friends had been a total bust. So, yes, the weekend didn’t hold the same promise for me as the rest of the bright faces in the office, who no doubt had exciting parties, family get-togethers and, maybe, even getaways to look forward to. But at least it meant I could sleep in. WatchBojack Horsemanfor the millionth time. Go grocery shopping. And even catch that new Varun Dhawan movie that had just been released.Riveting, I know.
Sighing, I opened Tanya’s chat box on my screen and started typing.
Kavya: Let’s go for drinks after work? My treat.
If it could, my bank account would kick me for that last part. But getting Tanya to hang out after work was not easy. Her parents were quite strict and wanted her home before dark. Which was a shame, honestly. Because if there was one thing Mumbai was good at, it was keeping its women safe. I watched her get up from her desk two bays away and walk towards the pantry, her silver chappals clapping on the tiled floor. I glanced at Neil, who was busy watching a stand-up special on YouTube, and decided to follow her.
When I plopped down on the bench next to her, she was smiling into her phone. The end-of-day lull hung over the narrow room, broken only by the buzz of the coffee machine.
‘Dude, did you see this? @devilwearscolaba bruuuuutally roasted Gargi Khattar’s premiere night outfit,’ she said, thrusting her phone in my face.
