Samarth did not like her from the start. Something about her put him off. His dislike of her had become so strong that he would often take the lift up to the fifth floor if that meant avoiding her. She was part of his rewrite team but he never called her into his cubicle, choosing instead the services of his junior staff. He would delegate work to her through them. For her part, she was quite satisfied with the existing scheme of things. She thought him a pompous, unremarkable man who was clearly not in her league.

And so for four months at a stretch the two kept their distance from each other with neither of them in a hurry to change the pattern of their interaction.

It was the Finacle Fever Events Program that finally upset the applecart.

For all those non -Infoscions out there.. Finacle is a Universal Banking Solution from Infosys. Fortunately ,I too belong to that IBU(Independent Business Unit). Finacle Fever (™ : to avoid Infosys, charging case on me for using the name.. ) is looked upon as part of the company’s training programme for the staff and management to engage together, once a year, in an endeavour to team building and fun activities.

As a member for the Finacle Fever Chennai DC(Development Centre),I was given the charge of organising one activity.. And by the post name you must have very well guessed what it must have been.

The game was an improvised version of Dumb Charades.

A square tin box was passed around with the names of the participants folded in closed envelopes. Samarth was the first among the males to pick up the envelope. He opened it and felt his colour recede as the name became apparent to him. Sheetal… God! Of all the names, he thought with disgust. But he merely looked up and read out her name, his expression, inscrutable. A hush fell over the rest of the participants. His dislike of Sheetal was an open secret.

Wishing to make her feel self-conscious, Samarth opted to be the player who would figure out the word while she was made to act out the word.

To his surprise he discovered her to be extremely good at pantomiming, and as the evening progressed he noticed that there were many things she was good at. He watched how easily people gravitated towards her. In the course of the game, Sheetal too had made some pleasant discoveries.

She found the ‘pompous’ boss was actually a charming fellow. By the time the event finally wound up, the two had felt a nameless kind of attraction building up between them. Impulsively, he turned to her and said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been very rude and presumptuous about you. I’m normally never like that.”

“I too wasn’t exactly the personification of courtesy towards you… but attractive women often rub some men up the wrong side I guess.” She smiled as she said it and he looked at her and thought, “I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman in my life!”

Was it this attraction or their thorough genius that led them to win, is a mystery in its own. Whatever it was, this event brought the true essence of the fever.." Team Building". And I am dying to take the credit for it.. :)