Up or Out: Satya Gummuluri

Of course it all started at Team Drinks, with the four other Associate high-performance alphas at McMPrime’s– the epicentre of Wall St.– where you speak in exaggerated whispers because you must show that your words are too important to be heard by others. It was here that her tongue jammed for the first time, and she could no longer get her mouth to produce words on demand. It must have gotten stuck because the Partner, who knew exactly how to reply to her words with her own words, had walked in. Usually, when a Partner walks into that cocktail bar of black polished wood counters, faux-gilded edges made to resemble up-slanting arrows, and mirrors on its ceiling, Associates and their bosses– the Engagement guys– sense a shift in the air. The tops of their eyeballs were rolling antennae forever in scan-mode reading the room and its reflections. It was a moment of silent communion for the most efficient team at the Company. They all saw what they would become. They all knew what they had to do. It all boiled down to whose elbows moved first moved sharp; whose optically-driven tongue worked most optimally. No crime, no mercy, all’s fair in flatland. Because it was a flat org structure driven by meritocracy, you see. They took pride in this egalitarian hyper-geometry of a 2-D pyramid.pptx projected on eyeballs. They all had the opportunity to get to the Partner first for they were all equal. And here she was, locked and loaded, with the trigger jammed.

And silent replies that swirl invitation

Flow dark and troubled to an oily sea

And there’s dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight

And silence that speaks so much louder than words

Of promises broken

What had stopped her that other morning from seeing the subtle malfunction of her vocal machinery, its gear going slightly out of synch with the ocular processing centre? She had dressed immaculately that day, worn regulation pumps, flattened her micro-expressions, projected her brightest smile, chirped her best small talk recounting the exact temperature, weekend activities and vacation plans. Why then couldn’t she produce the right noises when faced by a graph that went one way while the Partners wanted it to go the other? All she had to do was access her vast ankle-deep pool of the prestigious Icy Leak  brand lubricant to grease her cords so she’d be able to produce the perfect tone-shapes of ear candy the Partners salivated for. Why was that pool now a deep salty ocean?

A distant ship smoke on the horizon

You are only coming through in waves

Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re saying

Or was it that other day at the Annual One Hour of Serving the Community in 2008 where she had instinctively bent down to pick up the scattered contents of the Company Care Package that had slipped from the frost-bitten hands of the elderly man who had generously sacrificed his home and retirement savings for the noble higher mission of Keeping Sight of the Company’s Long-Term Vision? Her female boss, the pink-suited brown-skinned future DEI Champion Girlboss Engagement guy had scanned the room in aggressive overdrive for her, “Where was she, she was required to be present in the photographer’s frame with me, the only other female on this high-performance Team I’ve formed to pump results into trickling up the glass in the ceilings of that building? We are gathered here to deflect the press with visuals and words of inclusion. How could she make the Team look even more deficient in projected wins by not offering her body for view like a good soldier? What was she even being paid for, if not to display on LinkedIn the Company’s care for the Community? Oh, she’s in for some Performance Improvement…”

On the day the wall came down

The ship of fools had finally run aground

Promises lit up the night like paper doves in flight

It had to be then that words started reflecting back at her. The Engagement guys, her boss, the Associates, all echoing exactly what she asked them.  “What would you like me to do differently?” turning into “What would you like to do differently?” And “What action did I take that stuck with you?” becoming “What action did you take that stuck with you?”… “I’m curious to hear your thoughts and feedback” going back and forth in an exhausting tennis rally. “Could we set up a one-on-one?” met with a breezy “I have an open-door policy, walk into my room anytime!” Only… that door was a shadow on a wall of mirrored glass, which she banged her head on trying to walk into, like a migrating bird on a skyscraper downtown. 

Why would they give no answer, when they were adept at non-answers? And where were the Partners with their crumbs they benevolently threw at her once in a black swan moon to keep her believing and behaving? To keep her coming back to McMPrime’s on Wall St.? There were no crumbs for her anymore, not even crumbs of condescension. Their speech was a silence, silencing her, deafening. Her words crashed off a solid blankness, a silent wall of empty space. Her voice was lost to surface drowning, of endless talking in a futile chase. Why couldn’t she hear them speak? What could she say to them so they replied with *their* words, not her own reflected back at her? Her attempts piled up, stuffed into sandbags that defended them against her flood. Their non-words bombarded her, body and mind, the barrage of emptiness flayed her skin raw, her ears bled. She had nothing more to say, and that’s how they would make sure she left the room. 

(Why won’t you talk to me?) I feel like I’m drowning

(You never talk to me) You know I can’t breathe now

(What are you thinking?) We’re going nowhere

(What are you feeling?) We’re going nowhere

The audiologist put her in a sound booth so quiet, it sucked air out of her head. He explained that he’d play static for her, interjected with occasional tones. She must press the button he gave her when she heard a tone. Cool test, she thought at first, as she went on to press and press. But what was this audiologist doing? Didn’t he know his patients? Was she supposed to keep the button pressed for the entire duration of the test?

[Refrain: Stephen Hawking]

It doesn’t have to be like this

All we need to do is make sure we keep talking

Keep talking keep talking keep talking keep talking keep talking I keep talking to you. How much does one talk to tall gleaming steel, glass and concrete transparent opacities? Where did we learn to say so much? Were we always so expert at it, that those who try to speak to us, speak *at* us, and hear themselves in return? Were we always an empty room? If nobody’s listening, who speaks? Where did we learn to obscure words into clouds of white noise? 

“There is no such thing as silence on earth, silence is only possible in vacuum, where there is no conception of sound” — how naïvely I used to think this. I see us seal ourselves hermetically into our exclusive rooms, where indifference casts its sheets of acoustic absorption over the walls, the ceiling, the seats, and the mirrors reflect flat hierarchies of Fata Morganas, distant ships available to anyone who dreamed hard enough, creating empty spaces in place of where we used to talk. I used to think silence wasn’t possible on earth. I now understand silence is only possible here, in this din of voices clamouring at fever pitch in the race to say nothing.

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In another place, another time, there is an old stone wall that accompanies her to the river. The wall bounds a cemetery. She walks through this courtyard of peace, where the trees are very tall. They crackle in the gentle breeze up there, static soundwashes accompanying the still. By the river, she sits at its bank on a rock overhang next to the wall over which the water falls, the shattered spray a roaring chorus of a million voices all out of tune. She revels in the silence.

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