The Other Deepak

Intel, Airport Road, Bangalore

Well, it was just another dull afternoon in office. My sleepy eyes were just fooling around the computer, passing over lots and lots of letters, which at times, joined together and made sense and at other times joined together and made nonsense. The sight of minimized work windows in the toolbar made the situation more pathetic by reminding of all that's left for the day.

The telephone rang. "You have a visitor" said the guard with his (and mine) typical mallu accent. Delighted, went down immediately to see who had this wonderful idea of not informing beforehand and giving me 6 floors of suspense. The guard pointed me to a tall fat guy in the sofa. I did not recognize him. He also looked puzzled. He said "No no, he is not Deepak Sreedhar"! I could not even stand the thought of losing my name, let alone the identity. I retorted "No no, I'm deepak Sreedhar". Then he says, "Deepak Sreedhar is a short guy with no specs - I met him last week". Now totally convinced that he is not looking for me (see I had my specs when I was 10 and time travel is not here yet!). I told him "boss - I know i'm Deepak Sreedhar, but you may be looking for another Deepak". He smiled, apologized, shook hands and left. Refreshed by the turn of events, I returned to work.

The telephone rang again. "Deepak - are you coming for the meeting>". Oh no, yet another meeting coming up. "Which meeting are you speaking about?", "Mohan's meeting". "Which Mohan?". "Are u not deepak". "Yes I think so". "You dont know mohan?" .. set me thinking - neither my ex classmate mohan nor mohanlal works in intel .. "No, not here - I think I'm not the kind of deepak you would love to invite for this meeting". "Sorry, can you transfer the phone back to the reception?". I did that. A minute later, the phone rang again. Same voice. The reception had directed the call back to me!

Evening: I was just about to shut down the system and get back to house, when I saw a new email from a new female who had a nice name. It said "Hi Deepak, i think you are the cousin of Padma, if so writing to say a hi to you, otherwise, sorry for the mistake". Ha, the third incident! Of course i had to reply - "I do not think I have a cousin by that name"

The next day morning: I was happy to see a letter in my mailbox after a long time. The letter was unfortunately from Citibank and said something like "last week you asked for the TPIN and we gave it to you". Ha! Banks beginning to do automatic transactions for us was a frightening prospect. I checked the address again - it started with "Mr. Deepak Sridhar, Intel Technologies". Again " D E E P A K correct S R I" ..

Yahoo! That is it and this is him.. Mr. Deepak SRIDHAR. I send the Sridhar a mail, "Hello The Other, lets sign the treaty to transfer mails and calls and visitors to the correct person. Thanks, The Other" . Next day morning, i got a great reply "I hope it stops with misdirected letters - I would hate to send away a good looking girl looking for me!"