Chapter 4: The IOU and the Layoff Meeting

With the crowd cheering him on, my colleague puffed out his chest like a union leader. "See? Majority ki baat suno. Share kar lo, bas khatam karo yeh drama."

But a thousand wasn’t enough for him. He’d seen me spend five hundred on the meal, so with Barbeque Nation’s five thousand rupee compensation, he demanded two thousand five hundred. "Do hazaar paanch sau toh banta hai na, bhai," he insisted, counting on his fingers.

I shrugged, "I don’t have the money. Like I said, it’s already in my mother’s hospital account. Jo hai, sab Amma ke ilaj mein lag gaya. Ab main kya karoon?"

Unfazed, he whipped out a paper and pen, and began scribbling an IOU with the pomp of someone signing a property deed. I fidgeted, tapping the pen on my desk, glancing at the office clock, wiping sweat from my brow as the spectacle grew. People craned their necks, some thinking he was writing a cheque. But no—he was solemnly penning an IOU, total: forty-five hundred. "You borrowed two thousand before, and now, splitting the compensation, you owe me forty-five hundred. If you agree, just sign here. Yeh lo, sign karo. Sab paper pe set ho jayega!"

Inside, I was fuming—"Bhai, yeh kya nautanki hai?" But I tried to keep my face blank. The HR aunty nearby watched, eyes wide like a daily soap audience.