The 'Handshake'

In few months I started feeling like a ‘myna’, flying around, singing tunes (it was called demo’s) etc …
Mynas were good at their singing and were quite innovative. They had their ‘emperor ‘and ‘king for Africa ‘and all of them believed in the song they sing!
When I started my singing classes, I realized it’s a ‘duet’ we have to learn and the song is of a young couple.
This young couple had met in Africa and before they had any love, some brilliant myna saw great potential in getting them married for the benefit of mynas. This brilliant myna convinced the families of these couple, the ‘wolves’ and ‘jackals’ to get them married.
These are very powerful families from ‘south’ and ‘west’ and under pressure from mynas and others agreed for the marriage which was called the‘handshake’. Marriage got registered but the families couldn’t see eye to eye and young couple had no clue why they are having the ‘handshake’.
My job was to find a home for this young couple in Africa. So after learning the song, I went and met the local chieftains (called the local partners) who are like real estate brokers in the country to look for houses. We found a big house and then the job was to make the land lord allow this young family to move in.
It’s a processes by itself, we had few rounds of song performance and land lord found this young couple very ‘modern’ and had great family background. Our real estate broker was singing his own songs which he had composed on his own in local language.
One day, the land lord decided to travel to India and meet the young couple and do some back ground checks before taking them as tenants.
It’s the job of mynas to arrange discussions with elders in both families (‘wolves ‘and ‘jackals’) in India and also get the land lord to do some background checks.
This is the time I realized there are some elders who sit in ‘glass cages’ and it’s not easy to get them into one room and prepare for the song performance. I had to line up minas with extra feathers to get the glass caged wolves and jackals come together and prepare for the song performance. This is the time I understood the political power of ‘CC’ line in an email. One senior mina had the unique skill of marking CC’s and making glass caged wolves and jackals ‘move’ and that was a real learning in life for me.
It was still becoming difficult to make all sing the song together and in ‘one voice’, so the strategy was to ‘pamper the visiting land lord’. Welcome with sandal wood garlands, taking them to places of interest and arranging dinner every night.
Strategy worked well and chieftains informed in few days that the ‘deal is on’ and we have to sign the ‘agreement’. Mynas started celebrating, but there was no excitement for wolves and jackals and I was wondering what the matter was.
That’s the time the ‘owls’ came into picture with a huge document called ‘ The Agreement’ which myna has to take to landlord and get signed with one condition that ‘ nothing to be changed’ . Job of the myna was to make land lord understand that what ever we have discussed so far will not hold good and this agreement will be final.
By the time land lord and owls agreed to sign, myna lost few feathers!