six Excess Baggage
six
Excess Baggage
I’d spent the entire long weekend trying to convince myself that I was not, in fact, royally screwed.
So what if my intern knew my deep dark secret and was blackmailing me over it?
It could’ve been a lot worse. Like if he’d demanded a bunch of money in return for his silence.
Or … sex. Getting ready for work this Monday morning, the thought alone opened the floodgates to unwanted memories from the other day, like how strong his hand had felt clamped around my wrist in the parking lot and, worse, the irritatingly expensive cologne my brain had refused to forget.
My hand trembled, smudging the nude lipstick I was applying in front of the mirror.
I wiped it off with a fingernail. ‘You’ve got this.
Everything is going to be okay,’ I assured my reflection.
All I had to do to survive this nightmare was let Neil sit on his ass and do nothing. How hard could that be?
The first dent in my optimism came after the morning meeting.
It had been one of those never-ending marathons—nearly two hours of ‘strategic brainstorming’ where everyone from the marketing team pitched in for the year’s events calendar.
I’d tuned out halfway through a debate on whether Christmas deserved a bigger budget than Diwali.
Neil had been sitting next to me, dutifully scribbling the minutes Varun had asked him to email to the team after the meeting was over.
Or so I thought. You can imagine my surprise when I later discovered that he hadn’t been taking notes at all.
He’d spent the entire meeting doodling. Pages after pages of stick figures in superhero costumes, a clumsy attempt at Iron Man’s armour and something atrocious that looked vaguely like a female Hulk.
‘Wait, is that supposed to be me?’ I gasped, squinting at the green monstrosity in his diary.
He gave me a smug smile. ‘You do have a bit of a temper.’
My nostrils flared as he sniggered, tapping the sketch for emphasis.
‘How are you going to send the minutes of the meeting if you didn’t take any notes?’ I demanded, suppressing the sudden desire to whack him across the arm.
‘Good thing I have you to cover for me,’ he said, already pushing his chair back and strolling towards the pantry. Which is how I found myself scrambling to reconstruct a two-hour meeting entirely from memory.
By the time Tuesday rolled around, my confidence in this whole thing working out was teetering.
Jittery on caffeine and irritation, I powered through designing creatives at superhuman speed to keep up with the incoming workload.
Of course, Saloni’s team treated my extra pair of hands as an open invitation to offload more impossible tasks.
Every time Varun asked how my intern was settling in, I pasted on a smile so wide it threatened to crack my face into two.
Every time I caught Neil watching YouTube videos from the corner of my eye, I came dangerously close to hurling my mouse at his perfectly moisturized face.
But I knew he held all the cards. So, I forced myself to keep my head down and channel all that murderous energy into hunting down pretty fonts.
On Wednesday when I got back to my desk after lunch, my inbox was waiting with an email from him.
Research deck - work your magic pls
N 5/06/25 1:25pm
to Kavya
Yo!
Saloni roped me into creating a research deck on our competitors’ marketing assets. Attaching it here. Can you polish it up? Thanks!
Neil
Even though he was sitting right next to me, I typed out a response and hit send, then watched quietly as his screen lit up. He ignored the email and continued to browse on his phone until I cleared my throat loudly. After a few idle minutes, he finally clicked on it.
Re: Research deck - work your magic pls
K 5/06/25 2:00pm
to Neil
Hi Neil,
I think you sent the wrong attachment. The PPT is blank.
Yours sincerely,
Kavya
Sr. Graphic Designer
Jharokha
When I glanced at him, he was smiling smugly at his computer screen. I didn’t have to wonder why for too long.
Re: Research deck - work your magic pls
N 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 was his.
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 was enjoying this.
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. Watch Bojack Horseman for 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.
‘Mhmm,’ I hummed, distracted. Turns out other people’s drama isn’t half as interesting when your own life starts feeling like a daily soap.
‘Hey, you okay?’ she asked, peering at me.
I just shook my head, not knowing what to say. It’s not like I could tell Tanya about the unique predicament I was in. She knew nothing about my secret, so telling her about my blackmailing intern was out of the question.
‘Kavya?’ she probed, placing a hand on my arm.
Sighing, I looked up at her. ‘I’m exhausted. The work never ends.’
She pouted sympathetically. ‘What can I do to help?’
I smiled slowly, feeling a surge of love for her. She always looked out for me. ‘You can help me get drunk after work.’
‘I wish I could, really, but you know dad doesn’t like it when I’m out late.’
‘Just for an hour or two? Or you can stay over at my place if he doesn’t want you travelling late …’ I knew what she was going to say before she did.
‘I’m sorry. I just can’t.’
I nodded, feeling entirely deflated. Tanya’s unavailability beyond work hours wasn’t new.
It wasn’t her fault, obviously, that her parents were stuck in the Stone Age, but I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that she never even tried to push back.
Freedom is rarely ever granted with Indian parents.
You have to negotiate it—aggressively. I didn’t express any of that to her, though.
I just let her hug me before walking back to my desk to begin packing up for the week.
When I got there, Saloni appeared beside me.
‘Hey.’ She nodded at me before turning to Neil, who unplugged his AirPods and greeted her with a cheerful smile. ‘Great job on that deck!’
‘Oh, of course. No biggie,’ Neil said, looking up at her.
She leaned against his desk, one hand resting on the edge, the other tracing her hoop earring. ‘I’ve been asking Kavya to do a proper competitor analysis for ages, but she’s always swamped with God knows what. Glad it finally happened.’
Had she forgotten that I was right there? And why was she talking to Neil anyway? She’d never wasted her breath on an intern before.
Neil glanced at me from the corner of his eye. He must’ve noticed how furious I looked, because he said, ‘Well, she walked me through most of it. I’d have been lost without her.’
His words took me by surprise. The gall of this man—stealing credit and giving it back in the same breath.
She smiled politely before changing the topic. ‘Nice shirt, by the way. Heading somewhere after work, are you?’ She wiggled her eyebrows in a way that felt an awful lot like flirting.
‘Yeah, a friend’s throwing a party,’ he answered.
‘Your girlfriend going with you?’
‘No … no girlfriend,’ he said with a casual shrug, like there was nothing strange about this line of questioning.
I huffed, acutely irritated that I had to sit here and listen to this crap. It’s a good thing she left a few minutes later, or I’d have suffered brain damage from violently rolling my eyes.
‘Spit it out,’ Neil said, turning his chair.
‘Spit what out?’ I continued closing the million odd tabs open on my browser.
‘Whatever snarky remark you’re holding back.’
I tilted my chin up. ‘Why would I say anything? It’s your life … if you want to spend it flirting with a married woman, that’s fine by me.’
‘Aw, don’t be jealous,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Besides, I wasn’t the one flirting.’
‘I’m not jealous of her. I’m embarrassed for her.’
He leaned back and crossed his arms against his chest. The movement had his biceps flexing, the muscles peeking out from under the fitted sleeve of his crisp olive green shirt. It was a nice shirt, I’ll give Saloni that.
‘Right,’ he said, then added, ‘it’s a bit outdated, don’t you think? This women-competing-with-women thing?’
I let out a dry laugh. ‘Please. If I wanted to compete with Saloni, it wouldn’t be over you.’
That shut him up for a bit. When he spoke next, he was pointing at his computer screen. ‘Did you see Rajat uncle’s email?’ he asked.
The name of my boss’s boss always made me jump, a reflex born of my response to authority and the small matter of my ongoing lie. There, in my inbox, was an email from the company’s founder.
Website mock-ups
R 7/06/25 5:45pm
to Neil
cc: ,
Hey champ,
I’ve got a fun project for you. I’m in the middle of getting my personal website redesigned and thought you’d be the perfect person to help with the look and feel.
Nothing too complicated, just some mock-ups for the homepage and a couple of ideas for the inside pages so I can share with the developers.
Think you can send me a few options by early next week?
Warm regards,
Rajat
Founder & CEO
Jharokha
My head snapped in Neil’s direction as soon as I was done reading the email. ‘Neil, there’s no way I can take this on,’ I blurted out. ‘Website banners, layouts, mock-ups … it’s humanly impossible to accomplish this with everything else I’m doing here at the office.’
‘Look,’ he said, his eyes softening when he took in the expression of pure panic on my face. ‘I know you’re overworked. But I have no idea how to do any of this.’
‘Then you must say no! Just tell him you don’t know how,’ I pleaded.
‘What? No. Absolutely not.’
‘Why the hell not?’ I threw my arms in the air. ‘It’s not like he’ll hold it against his champ!’
He just stared at me. ‘It’s not going to happen.’
‘Well, you better figure out what to say to him because I’m not going to design a whole website just to make you look good,’ I all but hissed at him.
He was quiet for a few seconds and I almost thought I’d gotten through to him. But then he said, ‘Then you’d better figure out what you’re going to tell him too.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
He shrugged, distant and cold. ‘You know exactly what it means.’