The Visitor

Reghu paid a visit to my office in Kochi in the year 2016.

I first met Reghu 12 years earlier when he was just out of college and working as an Internet cafe assistant.

Every day, I reached the cafe 15 minutes before opening time. As soon as the shutters went up, I grabbed the same computer I was using until the previous night. Cloud computing was still around the corner, files stayed on the same hard disk, and work continued on the same system.

Those were my early days as an entrepreneur. The credit column in my savings account forbade me from dreaming about a new computer. Hence, the cafe was my workplace, and access to the same computer every day was critical.

Reghu usually came in the afternoon shift. Conversing with him was easy. With that perpetual boyish smile on his face, saying hello came naturally. In any case, I was a permanent fixture in the cafe, and when the crowd was light, he would walk over to my desk and ask me about my work. Soon we started conversing about information security and my plans for the startup. I think I piqued his interest.

He would always hold my seat when I went to grab a quick lunch or coffee, gently guiding new clients to other available seats. Maybe he understood my journey.

Finally, when I landed my first client, I popped the question, and he answered in the affirmative. Thus, Reghu became the first employee of my startup.

We worked and travelled together to fulfil client projects. Desperate to impress our new clients, we shared ideas, developed solutions and constantly fine-tuned them. After work, we conversed about our favourite topic, music and films, over long lunches and dinners.

Time passed, opportunities arose, and I shifted my business to a new city while Reghu went on to work for some of the best names in the industry.

Now, 12 years later, when he visited us, he was working for one of the biggest money exchanges in the world. His designation was Associate Vice-President, Information Security, and a few years earlier, before Reghu joined them, that company had become our client.

I took him around and introduced him to my colleagues as a client. Then, I told them that he was also our very first employee.

After saying this, I looked at him. He was smiling, and it was the same boyish smile.