February 11, 2026
On a balmy Thursday evening of late January 2026, when the weather in Calcutta is at its most pleasant, I was sitting on a red plastic stool near a tea stall on the foot path of Southern Avenue, sipping my favourite spicy lemon tea laced with fine slices of ginger and chatting with a friend visiting from abroad. The phone started ringing. It was Bebu, my daughter. This is odd. She has never quite called me unless in some emergency or to exchange information. Was she going to give me some good news or bad? I wasn't very sure which but I knew if she was calling me it had to be either of the two.
For two days we have been waiting anxiously to hear from Penguin (now Penguin Random House) about the outcome of the written test she had taken for an entry level position in their editorial team in Delhi. It was a gruelling two and a half hour test that she took using my laptop from her room behind locked doors. At the end of it when she came out she was almost on the verge of tears and fretting if not fuming that she was let down by the useless Windows laptop whose key board she was not used to and hence it took her a very long time to finish. She had to individually key in each letter and couldn't type fluently without looking at the board. Struggling as she did with the keyboard, she couldn't do justice to the passages that she was asked to edit etc etc. She was almost certain that she wouldn't make it because of the laptop.
Mentally I remembered what type of workmen complaint about their tools but kept my thoughts to myself. Because she was not a "bad workman" after all.
I was quite sad. Geetanjali Roy will fail in an English test anywhere in the world is something I find very difficult to digest. Not because she is my daughter but neutrally speaking, her English is impeccable by any international standard. If we were sure about one thing it was that she would sail through this phase of the interview process quite easily. If she had to get a job on the strength of writing decent English she would walk into any organisation anywhere in the world. But struggle with the keyboard was not something I had counted.
Having known her for more than 22 years now, she has this habit of managing her expectations in this way. She promises low so that she can deliver high. I repeatedly asked her, "it is okay that you didn't perform as per your own standard but do you think by a general standard what you wrote was bad?" She gave some evasive answers and we let the matter rest there. Keeping fingers crossed in such situations is all that one can do. That is exactly what we did.
Penguin's HR had called her on Tuesday and gave her a short notice to take the test with a computer that had a working camera. They would monitor her when she took the exam to prevent any cheating. Her Macbook's camera (she has never used anything else in life) had stopped working long ago and she borrowed mine for the test. She had two hours to finish it but when she realised the computer was literally not upto speed she sought some more time from them which was granted. Even then, apparently she could not do full justice to the last passage that she was asked to edit.
Other than some five longish passages to edit, the test had a grammar section which she breezed through and an essay to write on the most striking novel she had read in the recent past. I asked her which book it was and she named some esoteric Dutch author's name that I had never even heard of. I wanted to tell her that even if it is true you should not write about such books because the examiner might think you mugged it up to make an impression in the test. But better sense prevailed and I said nothing.
We spent Wednesday hoping to hear from Penguin but no one called. On Tuesday when they had made the first contact they had shown a certain urgency. The HR lady asked her how soon she could join to which she said she was doing an internship with Kolkata Lit Meet (KLM) where she was required to be till the middle of the month.
KLM happened in her life earlier in January. And that is from where a chain of events took place that brought her thus far in this Penguin journey. Therefore it takes a very important role in her career as a literary editor. Call it serendipity or propitious or whatever but I have noticed that when you want something very earnestly you end up getting it, no matter how impossible it might sound at the germination stage of the wish.
My theory is that when you focus intently on a particular path in life you end up, consciously or otherwise, doing things that are related to that area. And there things happen that take you to your destination. If you are prepared opportunities definitely come.
One evening, 6th January to be precise, while surfing from the living room sofa I was looking at the list of authors and speakers who would be attending the KLM scheduled for later that month. It had the who's who of the Indian literary and publishing scene. Among others Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Kiran Desai and Banu Mustaq would all be there. The absolute elite of Indian writers (not all of them live in India though). Together they have won everything from Booker to Pulitzer.
I thought Mampu would love to be here and I knew the owner of the company - Jeet Banerjee - who with his wife Malavika organizes the event (they do another very important cultural festival which is the Bengal Biennale). So I asked Mampu if she was interested in volunteering here and I could send in a request on her behalf. A few years ago she had shown a desire to attend the Jaipur Literary Festival and we encouraged her to do it too. In fact while in Calcutta she had attended KLM in the past too as a visitor. She had also volunteered for a Seagul event.
In a propitious moment Mampu agreed without batting an eye lid and I sent a message to Jeet asking if they required help. Things happened quite fast that night after this. By 12.30 am she got a message from Mala (Jeet's wife), after she took a look at her CV, asking her to come to her office the next morning for an interview and Geetanjali Roy started working in her office - Gameplan - from the very next day. Eighth January.
While there, she met among others Arundhati Roy, Banu Mustaq, Upamanyu Chatterjee - all elite Indian writers. In fact as things turned out she was tasked with picking up Kiran Desai from the airport and bring her to the hotel via the Book Fair. Nothing could be better than this as Kiran was her most favourite author at the Meet. And she got a chance to privately chat with sucha a literary celebrity for a few hours. In fact, Kiran wrote her a beautiful message while signing her book.
All this while, when she was going to KLM I was hoping that here she would meet someone important in the field of publishing. I even told her - "for all you know Chiki Sarkar might be there at the festival. Get introduced to her".
Chiki Sarkar is the owner/publisher of Juggernaut and had earlier been the publisher of Penguin where her father Aveek Sarkar held a big stake (Penguin later merged with Random House and Aveek Sarkar sold his stake to the new owners as part of the global deal. This made Chiki Sarkar leave Penguin to set up her own publishing house). Mampu had sent her a cold email offering to intern with her company but as it happens with such cold mail in most cases, she got no response. Poor Mampu. But I hoped something would happen here.
In football, coaches say if you are a good scorer and can position yourself in the right place at the right time you will get at least one opportunity. But when the opportunity comes you must be ready to score. You cannot fumble.
That one opportunity came and Mampu didn't fumble and scored the all important goal.
One Saturday afternoon (24th January) the publisher of Penguin, Milee Aishwariya (ironically enough, she replaced Chiki at Penguin after the takeover), was waiting at the author's lounge for her turn to moderate a talk. And Professor Arunava Sinha, our very own Bultuda, took this opportunity to introduce Mampu to her as a promising young student of his from Ashoka who writes very well. Mampu told her, albeit a little cheekily perhaps, "you have my dream job", to which she smiled indulgently. They had some exchange of pleasantries and it ended there. After all, all professors praise their students.
After some time another important character arrives in the scene. Kanishka Gupta. He is a hot shot literary agent in Delhi for who Mampu has worked very dilligently as an intern for a few months. Though an intern she almost worked full time for his company reading new manuscripts, writing reviews so that the agent could take a call on its "publishability" and pitch to publishers, editing copies, writing jacket covers etc. She even wrote the text to go with the exhibits at an art exhibition.
All this without ever even meeting Kanishka.
I still remember how Mampu came dancing to my room one afternoon saying "I have got my dream job. I will be working as an intern for Writer's Side of Kanishka Gupta. Among others they represent Geetanjali Shree".
When Mampu saw Kanishka at the KLM author's lounge she went up to him and quietly introduced herself to him saying - you might remember my name. I am Geetanjali Roy. Mampu's engagement at his firm ended a little acrimoniously as Kanishka very conveniently forgot to pay her for a couple of months. If I am not mistaken Ashoka has perhaps black listed him from any future relationships.
However, here Kanishka was delighted to meet Geetanjali and promptly decided to introduce her once again to Milee (perhaps atoning for his past sins). Mampu smilingly told Milee "so here we go once again". But Kanishka said glorious things about Mampu's writing skills and how she helped him on four book projects. He also said, I know you need people in your editorial department at Penguin. You should consider hiring her.
This was a turning point in Mampu's life. Endoresement from an industry player means a lot in any industry. Milee gave her email id and told Mampu to send a CV. She said to enter Penguin one has to pass an English test. This was the through ball that the striker was waiting for and she volleyed towards the goal from the top of the box.
The CV went out on Saturday night and after the two holidays of Sunday followed by India's Republic Day, she got the first HR call on Tuesday. The ball was going towards the goal but it took some time to hit the net.
Coming back to the phone call from Mampu on that Thursday evening, she started with - "so Penguin had called". The editor-in-chief, Saloni Mital who would be her line manager (meaning Mampu would be working under her) had called Mampu and told her that she liked the edit test performance and grilled her over what she wrote. After this they discussed her salary and when she would join etc. She also said that the head of HR, Ms Aditi Kumar, would speak to her and the CEO might also speak to her.
I was more than certain the goal had been scored. But Mampu did not want to celebrate. She said let the HR lady call me and let's see. Of course, as they say there is many a slip between the cup and the lip but I could smell the tea hotting up in the cup. I told her these prcise words - unless you goof up big time during the chat with HR and CEO you have got the job. Once your line manager approves you and sends you to the head of HR it's just a matter of formality now. But you need not celebrate now. Wait for the final word.
Next day the senior HR lady called her and they had a very cordial conversation. Mampu came out and announced - I have probably got the job :) Ms Kumar told her that their CEO might speak to Mampu as he likes to do that with all new joinees but it would depend on his availability.
Next day the junior HR lady called in to say, today the CEO may or may not speak to her depending on his availability but she would issue the offer letter before "EoD" in any case. Neither the CEO called nor did the offer letter come. Even on the next day there was complete silence from Penguin.
Just when we were beginning to worry if something went wrong somewhere, Mampu got a call from the junior HR lady saying since she was a fresher it goes against Penguin's policy to give her a direct employment on their pay roll. She was instead offered a consultant's position meaning she would be on a renewable contract for six months with a consolidated pay and TDS only.
My opinion was this was fine and she had no reason to refuse it. Although it was a step down of sorts but if you look at it as a stand alone offer (without considering what was promised to her earlier) this was good enough to start. My only contention was that this they should have realized before offering her the job verbally.
Mampu was sent a soft copy of the contract which she accepted. As per the terms she would need to "not come to the office" and work from home during this period. However, she would be required to be in Delhi for two weeks starting the next Monday, 9th February. They would pay for the two way flight ticket but not the stay.
Using her Delhi network she promptly got herself a PG accomodation for a month. I told her to spend one more week in Delhi looking for a suitable stay after couple of months. If she wanted to make a career in publishing she should relocate to Delhi - whether she is required to go to work or not.
So on Sunday our little Puffin flew out to Delhi and on Monday she became a Penguin.
Epilogue
Mampu has got a work laptop (the same "damn" HP machine with which she got in) and a Penguin email id. She is being issued a consultant's card to wear around her neck while in office. She has also been told that if she lived in Delhi she should go to work twice a week, as they all do. These might sound like small things in future when she looks back at how her professional life began but to a young girl starting her life as part of a large organisation these are big prestige issues. And she is very happy with them. Because, it shows Penguin is treating as a bonafide employee for all practical purposes.
They have told her that her contract situation will be evaluated after five months and they will decide on her future after that in the sixth month. They might roll it over for another six months or confirm her in August. At The Economic Times I worked as a trainee for a year. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
If quality of work as an editor is all that she is going to be judged on, she should walk into a confirmed job in August. But large organisations have many other things to consider before final full time employment. So, let the little Puffin now slowly morph into a Penguin and enjoy an independent life in Delhi.
We shall see what happens in future when future comes.
