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very tough - tougher than most men at her workplace.
    Like everyday, even that day she walked into office at 9.00 a.m. She was very particular about reaching on time. While everything seemed fine, her instinct told her that it was not so. She passed a few desks on her way to her workstation. Heena was already there. Savitha saw her and smiled. It didn't evoke much of a response.
    Shrugging her shoulders she walked to her desk and sat down. Heena's desk was right across hers, with only a two feet high wooden partition separating the two.
    'Shhh...shhh.' She looked up. It was Heena trying to grab her attention.
    'What?' She was a bit annoyed with Heena's response when she had walked into the office in the morning. 'Bitch!' she muttered under her breath.
    'Boss is in a foul mood.' Heena didn't seem to mind her hostile looks.
    'Is it? What happened?'
    'Don't know. But don't go anywhere near him today. He might bite.'
    'But why?'
    'Am not too sure. But have heard that he was pulled up by his boss for not meeting the target this month.'
    'But I thought that was because Deepak and his audit team created an issue. The pipeline was there. We had reviewed it on the morning of 28th before Deepak created chaos.'
    'Dunno! Seems like his argument was not taken well. And Ramneek Chahal is extremely unhappy with him. Wealth Management, Insurance, NRI...in fact none of the teams under Ramneek have met their numbers this month. He was counting on mortgages to make it big - and we, too, didn't meet our target. Mortgages as a business would have met country targets, but Mumbai's numbers screwed it up big time. Ramneek apparently called up Karan and blew his top. This is what the grapevine says. I don't know what the true story is.'
    'It's ok. In any case my targets were met on 22nd itself. So no one can point a finger at me,' said Savitha and got back to work.
    'Savitha,' continued Heena, oblivious to the hostility demonstrated by Savitha, 'did you see Karan's mail this morning? He wants to do a portfolio review this month.'
    'What portfolio review?'
    'Apparently Bhisham has got back to him saying that the performance of his team is quite skewed. In fact Bhisham has pointed out to Karan that there are a few of his sales guys who are sourcing loans which are so bad that the customers have started bouncing their instalment cheques within a few months of availing the loans.'
    'So?'
    'So Karan wants to sit with all of us and mull over it. He wants to do it this week. He has just sent a mail this morning giving a heads up on this and wants us to be prepared.'
    'Hmm...ok,' said Savitha and got up and walked out of the door to pick up a cup of coffee. That seemed better than listening to Heena's constant chatter. There was another reason for it. She knew that the loans sourced by her team were among the worst performing loans.
    That morning again Deepak had laid out devious plans. The fact that Karan had been humiliated and fallen short of his monthly targets by a big margin was not enough to please him.
    He walked up to Bhisham's room and knocked on the door.
    'Bhisham, do you have a minute?'
    'Yes, yes, come in,'
    'Bhisham, I just want to emphasize an important issue to you.'
    'Yes.' Bhisham was all ears.
    'Bhisham, that day you stopped me from carrying out an audit on the month-end. I seriously think the business that we write at month-end is fraught with risks. The way even your credit team turns into file pushers in the last few days of the month defeats the whole purpose of their work. Neither is it advisable nor prudent. You have the entire sales team, led by Karan, sitting on the credit team's heads trying to get their cases approved. Is that a sensible thing to do?'
    'Isn't that normal? Sales would push their cases. They have their numbers to meet, Deepak. If the credit folks can't stand up to them and argue their case, they don't deserve to be in credit.' Bhisham took a balanced stance.
    Deepak was not the one to be discouraged so easily.