But at the very bottom—or perhaps, if you understand power correctly, at the very —sits Kambi Aunty .
If you have worked in an IT park in Chennai, Bangalore, or Hyderabad between 2005 and 2015, you know her. You owe her money. And you probably never learned her real name. For the uninitiated (read: those who worked only in fancy, sanitized WeWork spaces post-COVID), let me paint a picture.
At 11:00 PM, Kambi Aunty rolls her cart out from the gate, right under the streetlight. The smokers gather there. The heartbroken gather there (nothing cures a breakup like a Pazham Pori – banana fry). The exhausted gather there. kambi aunty
You won’t find her on the company org chart. She doesn’t have an employee ID, a company email, or a login for the HR portal. She doesn’t care about your KPIs, your sprint reviews, or your quarterly losses. Yet, she holds more sway over the office morale than the CEO ever could.
Thank you for the days I had no money and you fed me anyway. Thank you for the days I was sad and you yelled at me to eat. Thank you for never charging GST, for never asking for a credit card, and for always knowing that sambar fixes everything. But at the very bottom—or perhaps, if you
There is a sacred, unspoken hierarchy in every mid-sized Indian office. At the top sits the MD, ensconced in a glass cabin with a view of the traffic jam below. Beneath him are the VPs, the Managers, the Team Leads, and then the grumbling masses of developers and analysts.
I don't know if you ever learned to read English, or if you ever check Google. But if you are out there, still pushing that cart or sitting under that banyan tree: And you probably never learned her real name
But I refuse to let her go.