The Crew Of Outcasts
Note: This story picks up the story line from the events mentioned in my book. It also serves as a continuation of the previous post titled League of Shadows
The loud ring of the cell-phone shook me out of sleep. I blinked and rose from the bed with a start. The mid-April heat was making life unbearable. The fan revolving overhead was not helping. To top it all, my cellphone did not have a good signal in my own flat.
“Hello scamster” growled the voice at the other end of the phone. It triggered lots of memories and emotions in my heart. “Did you miss us?”
“You have no idea.” I whispered.
I had awaited that call for a long time.
Holding the handset to my ear, I walked out to the adjoining balcony. Spread beneath my gaze were the narrow streets of Sadashiv Peth, filled with smoke, noise, and chaos.
Yes. A year after the events mentioned in my previous book, I was still living in Pune.
After my German classes had ended two years prior, I had gone back to Goa to pursue my dream of writing a book. I was confident that my friends in the media would prove to be great help in getting a job, and that my book would be very well received.
I was wrong.
The writing venture just stopped short of failure as the book’s publication was financed by the government. On the job front, the tiny Goan media circle had no vacancies. Then I played the last card in my deck.
When I was in Pune, I had a job as a content writer with a web design company. The company dealt mostly with engineering firms, many of which were from the steel industry. My job had been to write a blog offering tips on mental peace to highly stressed workers. My employer had complained that my English was too good and I must dumb it down to the level of class 12 pass workers. That I simply wouldn’t do. Even when I left the company for Goa, one of the senior partners in the firm had said that I would be welcome if I were to come back.
He was my childhood friend, Emperor Akihito.
Desperation for work led me back into the arms of the Emperor and into his web-design firm. Here, there were many more shocks in store.
A year ago, the firm was owned by a guy in his late thirties whose right hand was Emperor Akihito. Sometime after my departure, the owner of the company had had some serious health issues and had left the firm. Following this, Emperor Akihito had taken control and had immediately shown the door to his former boss’s staff as well as the latter’s ideas and work ethics. From a web design firm, the company had evolved into a branding firm, venturing into customer outreach programmes and marketing consultancy for businesses. It was no longer just another web design company. It had now become the League of Shadows –nimble, adaptive, focused, and quality-conscious, like the industry of Japan. That is why its new boss is nicknamed after the emperor of Japan.
Despite expanding into all these areas however, it was still nascent start-up. Akihito ran the firm like a small informal tribe because doing business was not the only purpose of the firm. There was more to the firm than met the eye. It was how everyone in its team had ended up in the company.
The Emperor came from a humble background. He had struggled through engineering, which he had no idea why he was pursuing. Being an introvert and slow thinker, he had appeared to be diffident and unsure to job interview panels and had faced lots of rejection and abuse while hopping from job to job. At some point of time, he got tired of being abused and fired from everywhere and started a small firm in partnership with a friend. Akihito was a shrewd businessman and wanted to start a B2B branding firm. However, his rich partner was less of a risk taker and insisted on starting a web design firm instead. Five years later, the moment that partner had left the firm, Akihito had immediately transformed the start-up in accordance with his own dream.
The Emperor had faced the bitterness of rejection and the harrowing pit of depression in his early days. Thus, when he became a boss, he resolved to make his firm a kind of sanctuary for rejects, outcasts, confused, and depressed people till they found their way in life.
The Emperor’s deputy for instance was a brilliant 25-year-old mechanical engineer from the prestigious BITS. The routine and discipline of an office environment did not quite suit the latter’s temperament. He knew he didn’t want a job, but was unsure about what he wanted to do. Akihito took him on board the League of Shadows. His job was to generating ideas for newsletters and sales strategies. He was given the freedom to work for the League while simultaneously pursuing his hobby of theatre and drama. I called him Iga Ninja
The second guy, nicknamed Koga Ninja, was an IT engineer form Goa Engineering College. He was the Emperor’s friend from his student days. This guy had previously worked night shifts with a call center as the head of operations for US. Koga Ninja had been an efficient employee for over five years. it so happened that he had made a couple of suggestions to the firm about improving the work environment, but the management thought that he was trying to enhance his own power and lobby for a pay hike. Thus, he was promptly dismissed from service without so much courtesy as a prior notice. Within a few days, he got a call from the League of Shadows. It was agreed that he would stay till he found a new job but he never went anywhere else and eventually became a partner in the firm.
I was one of about fifteen such people in the team. From the outside, my life looked settled. I had a nice job and a caring boss. The group of friends in my German class was back, roaming the streets trying out street food. The conductor of the bus that I always took to work knew me by name. The milkman kept aside fresh milk for me; the grocer opened up to me about his wife and kids. Pune was now home.
However the picture was not as pretty as it looked.
It had been more than six months since I had started working with the League of Shadows. Learning business writing was a challenge. Being in the media, I was used to sensationalizing information. Sadly, the business people like to keep it simple, to the point and below 500 words. It was proving difficult for me because of two things: one had to come up with original ideas in shorter time than one was used to, and the client wouldn’t easily approve of everything one wrote. There were times when Iga Ninja and I sweated for two days over one newsletter, rewriting the content over 30 times before the client finally approved it.
I hated that aspect of business writing. Despite using elegant language, I could not seem to catch in words exactly what the client had to say. This was beginning to annoy Akihito. Then there was my propensity for typos. The emperor, already low on money and people, could not afford to spare either time or personnel to proofread what I wrote.
My work involved interviewing CEOs of engineering firms and thus I got a glimpse of the world of engineering. It is a world of people who make machines, and money; people who talk about machines, and money; people who work like machines to make money; people who are machines themselves.
This was not my world.
I could manage business writing but I was not really happy with my own performance. Ideating, which was my favorite exercise had started to turn into a nightmare because of stubborn clients and short deadlines. Akihito would himself be deeply frustrated at times as conventional-minded businessmen refused to accept his ideas emphasizing pull marketing. That is why our small firm was still a little volatile. Additionally, I was treated as a beginner in business writing and thus was paid a pittance. This was not very encouraging.
What if I get stuck outside my comfort zone (media and creative wiring) for the rest of my life, I often thought. What if I make horrible typos in business letters? What if Akihito doesn’t like my writing anymore and I get fired?
All these questions came flooding into my head when I heard that voice. It was the Insulting Sultan, calling from Goa. “We need your help in covering an incident.” said Sultan.
“What happened?”
“Check Twitter trends. You’ll know everything. Catch the bus this evening. We need you here asap.”
“But I am settled here! I have work! I need at least a week to wrap thing up here” I retorted
“Check twitter. Then you will call me back yourself.” Sultan hanged up.
He was right. The moment twitter trends flashed on the screen, I felt energy surge to my head. My fists clenched as I felt the cunning journalist persona rising from within.
My close friend Espana had become the top trend in India, and it was not exactly for good reasons. She had gone underground and Sultan obviously wanted my help to track down and interview the girl.
I cannot describe in words the excitement a journalist feels when he or she witnesses a great story unfolding. I was dying to be back in Goa right now. But that wasn’t easy for I was deeply entangled in some projects here in Pune.
“what?” mocked Sultan again when I called him back
“give me 24 hours. I am in some deep shit here.”
“Dude, you just write some shit for some websites. You can drop that anytime. Come home.”
“No, Sultan. I do a lot more than content writing here.”
“Huh? What is it that you do?”
An unusual twinkle appeared in my eyes as I searched and found the exact word for what I was doing right now.
“Scam.”
***
The loud ring of the cell-phone shook me out of sleep. I blinked and rose from the bed with a start. The mid-April heat was making life unbearable. The fan revolving overhead was not helping. To top it all, my cellphone did not have a good signal in my own flat.
“Hello scamster” growled the voice at the other end of the phone. It triggered lots of memories and emotions in my heart. “Did you miss us?”
“You have no idea.” I whispered.
I had awaited that call for a long time.
Holding the handset to my ear, I walked out to the adjoining balcony. Spread beneath my gaze were the narrow streets of Sadashiv Peth, filled with smoke, noise, and chaos.
Yes. A year after the events mentioned in my previous book, I was still living in Pune.
After my German classes had ended two years prior, I had gone back to Goa to pursue my dream of writing a book. I was confident that my friends in the media would prove to be great help in getting a job, and that my book would be very well received.
I was wrong.
The writing venture just stopped short of failure as the book’s publication was financed by the government. On the job front, the tiny Goan media circle had no vacancies. Then I played the last card in my deck.
When I was in Pune, I had a job as a content writer with a web design company. The company dealt mostly with engineering firms, many of which were from the steel industry. My job had been to write a blog offering tips on mental peace to highly stressed workers. My employer had complained that my English was too good and I must dumb it down to the level of class 12 pass workers. That I simply wouldn’t do. Even when I left the company for Goa, one of the senior partners in the firm had said that I would be welcome if I were to come back.
He was my childhood friend, Emperor Akihito.
Desperation for work led me back into the arms of the Emperor and into his web-design firm. Here, there were many more shocks in store.
A year ago, the firm was owned by a guy in his late thirties whose right hand was Emperor Akihito. Sometime after my departure, the owner of the company had had some serious health issues and had left the firm. Following this, Emperor Akihito had taken control and had immediately shown the door to his former boss’s staff as well as the latter’s ideas and work ethics. From a web design firm, the company had evolved into a branding firm, venturing into customer outreach programmes and marketing consultancy for businesses. It was no longer just another web design company. It had now become the League of Shadows –nimble, adaptive, focused, and quality-conscious, like the industry of Japan. That is why its new boss is nicknamed after the emperor of Japan.
Despite expanding into all these areas however, it was still nascent start-up. Akihito ran the firm like a small informal tribe because doing business was not the only purpose of the firm. There was more to the firm than met the eye. It was how everyone in its team had ended up in the company.
The Emperor came from a humble background. He had struggled through engineering, which he had no idea why he was pursuing. Being an introvert and slow thinker, he had appeared to be diffident and unsure to job interview panels and had faced lots of rejection and abuse while hopping from job to job. At some point of time, he got tired of being abused and fired from everywhere and started a small firm in partnership with a friend. Akihito was a shrewd businessman and wanted to start a B2B branding firm. However, his rich partner was less of a risk taker and insisted on starting a web design firm instead. Five years later, the moment that partner had left the firm, Akihito had immediately transformed the start-up in accordance with his own dream.
The Emperor had faced the bitterness of rejection and the harrowing pit of depression in his early days. Thus, when he became a boss, he resolved to make his firm a kind of sanctuary for rejects, outcasts, confused, and depressed people till they found their way in life.
The Emperor’s deputy for instance was a brilliant 25-year-old mechanical engineer from the prestigious BITS. The routine and discipline of an office environment did not quite suit the latter’s temperament. He knew he didn’t want a job, but was unsure about what he wanted to do. Akihito took him on board the League of Shadows. His job was to generating ideas for newsletters and sales strategies. He was given the freedom to work for the League while simultaneously pursuing his hobby of theatre and drama. I called him Iga Ninja
The second guy, nicknamed Koga Ninja, was an IT engineer form Goa Engineering College. He was the Emperor’s friend from his student days. This guy had previously worked night shifts with a call center as the head of operations for US. Koga Ninja had been an efficient employee for over five years. it so happened that he had made a couple of suggestions to the firm about improving the work environment, but the management thought that he was trying to enhance his own power and lobby for a pay hike. Thus, he was promptly dismissed from service without so much courtesy as a prior notice. Within a few days, he got a call from the League of Shadows. It was agreed that he would stay till he found a new job but he never went anywhere else and eventually became a partner in the firm.
I was one of about fifteen such people in the team. From the outside, my life looked settled. I had a nice job and a caring boss. The group of friends in my German class was back, roaming the streets trying out street food. The conductor of the bus that I always took to work knew me by name. The milkman kept aside fresh milk for me; the grocer opened up to me about his wife and kids. Pune was now home.
However the picture was not as pretty as it looked.
It had been more than six months since I had started working with the League of Shadows. Learning business writing was a challenge. Being in the media, I was used to sensationalizing information. Sadly, the business people like to keep it simple, to the point and below 500 words. It was proving difficult for me because of two things: one had to come up with original ideas in shorter time than one was used to, and the client wouldn’t easily approve of everything one wrote. There were times when Iga Ninja and I sweated for two days over one newsletter, rewriting the content over 30 times before the client finally approved it.
I hated that aspect of business writing. Despite using elegant language, I could not seem to catch in words exactly what the client had to say. This was beginning to annoy Akihito. Then there was my propensity for typos. The emperor, already low on money and people, could not afford to spare either time or personnel to proofread what I wrote.
My work involved interviewing CEOs of engineering firms and thus I got a glimpse of the world of engineering. It is a world of people who make machines, and money; people who talk about machines, and money; people who work like machines to make money; people who are machines themselves.
This was not my world.
I could manage business writing but I was not really happy with my own performance. Ideating, which was my favorite exercise had started to turn into a nightmare because of stubborn clients and short deadlines. Akihito would himself be deeply frustrated at times as conventional-minded businessmen refused to accept his ideas emphasizing pull marketing. That is why our small firm was still a little volatile. Additionally, I was treated as a beginner in business writing and thus was paid a pittance. This was not very encouraging.
What if I get stuck outside my comfort zone (media and creative wiring) for the rest of my life, I often thought. What if I make horrible typos in business letters? What if Akihito doesn’t like my writing anymore and I get fired?
All these questions came flooding into my head when I heard that voice. It was the Insulting Sultan, calling from Goa. “We need your help in covering an incident.” said Sultan.
“What happened?”
“Check Twitter trends. You’ll know everything. Catch the bus this evening. We need you here asap.”
“But I am settled here! I have work! I need at least a week to wrap thing up here” I retorted
“Check twitter. Then you will call me back yourself.” Sultan hanged up.
He was right. The moment twitter trends flashed on the screen, I felt energy surge to my head. My fists clenched as I felt the cunning journalist persona rising from within.
My close friend Espana had become the top trend in India, and it was not exactly for good reasons. She had gone underground and Sultan obviously wanted my help to track down and interview the girl.
I cannot describe in words the excitement a journalist feels when he or she witnesses a great story unfolding. I was dying to be back in Goa right now. But that wasn’t easy for I was deeply entangled in some projects here in Pune.
“what?” mocked Sultan again when I called him back
“give me 24 hours. I am in some deep shit here.”
“Dude, you just write some shit for some websites. You can drop that anytime. Come home.”
“No, Sultan. I do a lot more than content writing here.”
“Huh? What is it that you do?”
An unusual twinkle appeared in my eyes as I searched and found the exact word for what I was doing right now.
“Scam.”
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