“How?” Sophia asked, unable to stop herself, even when she caught the frowns on the men in Bharat’s team.
“How?” he repeated blankly.
“How are they going to have a better quality of life, think better for themselves if there aren’t going to be any jobs for them and they won’t be able to make a living anymore?”
“Well,” he spoke slowly. “The idea is to make the idea of making a living itself redundant. With Caliban and technologies like her, governments could eventually be able to afford a median universal income that would allow every man, woman and child to afford a debt-free education, learn anything they want to and put that knowledge to good use in order to lead a quality life.”
Sophia smiled. “That sounds like a lovely idea. It truly does. But your argument presupposes that A, everybody in the world is smart and B, everybody in the world wants to learn and lead a quality life. That is both arrogant and erroneous, in my opinion.”
“Well, if they aren’t, they damn well should be,” Harrison said firmly. “That was quite the presentation, Bharat. Even I am impressed and I am never impressed. Ask Mathilda.”
That broke the tension in the room and everyone chuckled.
Everyone except Sophia and Bharat, who looked at each other as if they had never seen each other before. And maybe, she realized, they never really had.
“If you all will excuse me,” Sophia murmured when the laughter ended, rising up from her seat next to Mathilda, making a show of checking her silent phone. “I should get back to the ship. There’s been an emergency. And I’m needed, while I still have a job.”
No one commented on her lame attempt at sarcasm.
Bharat rose too, tossing his phone on the couch, his precious technology. “I’ll drop you,” he offered.
Sophia shook her head. “No. I’ll be fine. I’ll take a cab. You should continue with your meeting.” She smiled at Harrison. “Impress Harrison some more. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”
Bharat could do nothing except watch as she walked away in the most awkward silence ever.
Chapter Fifteen
Nakul Kulashreshtha always had plans for his future. Dreams even, if you wanted to call them so.
There had been a leggy redhead at Penn State who’d been impressed with the way he played basketball, the pansy ass way, since he wasn’t built like Kobe fricking Bryant and knew how to play the damn game. He’d wanted to work for a Fortune 500 corporation, make his own way in the world instead of taking over his dad’s investment firm after Rajeev’s retirement.
He had time, so Nakul assumed, years and years to build his own future.
He was catastrophically wrong. So, Nakul put all of his dreams, including the lovely Heidi, on permanent deep freeze when his dad bit the bullet.
He’d dropped out of Penn State and come back home like the kortobyoporayon – obedient and dutiful – boy that he was. The son his father actually had instead of that piece-of-shit addict slash genius coder, who’d dragged his father down to hell.
Nakul had come back and taken over dragging the business behemoth uphill - the broke, almost out-of-business business his dad had successfully managed to destroy by betting on startups, ninety percent of which were headed for failure.
Sure, he understood the basics of tech – he wasn’t a coder but he knew what a petabyte was. He read the tech blogs and The Financial Express so he knew that data – decentralizing it, democratizing it, leveraging it - was going to be the next big tech innovation and leveraging it was a billion dollar idea.
But he’d never understood his dad’s fascination for investing in small and emerging businesses.
What was that about? Why couldn’t he have invested in blue chip stock like Infosys and Reliance, piled the money away for future generations of Kulashreshthas so Nakul didn’t get insomnia worrying about extending their line of credit?
After two years, he’d stopped being bitter with his dad because he was just so fucking exhausted from running the day-to-day ops of a dying company. In fact, it was a wonder he’d managed to keep it afloat as long as he had. It did help that his dad’s buyout share from JoyXS had kicked in in year three and they’d sold off the Lutyens’ property for a hefty three crores.
But the thing that really saved them all? Nakul understood numbers and could play the blue chip stock market better than his father ever had.
But, for six long years, he’d never forgotten Bharat. Never forgotten the single person responsible for the plight his family was in. The person who’d taken away his sister’s dreams of working in Washington D.C., taken his father’s life. The person who had turned him into this angry, anxious, vengeful and bitter man.
If he hadn’t been so occupied with trying to save his father’s legacy, Nakul knew he would have made it his life’s mission to go after Bharat Shrinivasan. As it was, it was inconceivable that Bharat was, at this moment, enjoying a second chance at success and the golden ticket while he, Nakul, still suffered. While his family still suffered.
Nakul ardently hoped that Sophia could do what he wasn’t able to do – find the thing Bharat cared about the most and destroy it.
Do not drag Meethi into your own problems, idiot!
He shushed his conscience by telling it to mind its own business.
Nakul glanced listlessly at the small window his New Friends Colony office afforded. They had moved premises yet again. Into a small, nondescript office complex that depressed him every time he stepped foot into it. The outside was greasy exhaust in a small gully that also housed a garbage dump.
His own worn Karizma was illegally parked in the gully, since he couldn’t justify monthly parking for himself while his miniscule staff still used public transport. His stomach growled, reminding him quite vehemently that he’d not had lunch.
“Shalini,” he called, running a hand through a shock of truly brown hair.
Shalini, his long suffering assistant-come-general dogsbody and all-round Superwoman came in, wearing a perpetually bored expression. She was an indeterminate age between twenty and fifty, who arrived before he did and always had coffee ready for him when he needed it.
Nakul had long ago figured he would have perished without Shalini Shenoy. “I am--”
She placed a packet of local fried potato chips and a cup of steaming hot coffee on the very edge of his table.
Nakul very nearly whimpered. “Marry me,” he whispered.
Shalini shot him the same bored look she always shot him. “Anything else, Nakul?” she asked him, politely.
“Nope.” Nakul tore into the chips bag while simultaneously inhaling the coffee, feeling his brain start to run again. He thought about checking Re/code or TechCrunch to see if they had broken further news on what the kankir pola was up to.
His personal phone rang; it was his sister. He snatched it up with oily fingers and swiped to answer the call.
~~~~~
“Pechu,” Nakul said eagerly. Unwittingly he used the earliest name Rajeev had given Sophia – Pechu. Little owl, because she refused to sleep through the night. “I was just thinking about…”
“I’m out, dada,” Sophia said flatly.
Nakul frowned. “What? What are you saying?”
“I said, I am out. I’m done. I don’t want to be part of whatever revenge game you’re planning for Bharat. If you want, you can come here to Australia and do it yourself. I don’t care. I don’t want any part of this anymore.”
“But…” He felt the breath get knocked out of his lungs. “I don’t understand.” He slipped back into Bengali, automatically.
Sophia sniffed, as if she was crying. But that was crazy; she was holidaying in Sydney!
“What is there to understand, Nakul?” She retorted. “I don’t want to spend any more time with that soulless robot. You should be happy.”
“But what about our plan?”
“What plan?” She almost yelled. “There is no plan; it’s not even a real plan. Stealing the guy’s technology
like I am sort of industrial spy? I can’t even lie properly, you know? This was a doomed idea and now it’s reached its natural conclusion. I want to come back home.”
“I’m sorry, Soph.” Nakul’s mind reeled from everything she wasn’t telling him. “Of course, you should come home if you’re not feeling okay.”
“But I can’t come back home, can I? I have to go work twenty hour days and have assholes grope me so I can make extra in tips in dollars to send home.”
“Sophia.” Nakul sucked in a swift breath, as a strange shooting pain attacked his chest. Visions of a Jeff Bezos-type jerk harassing his baby sister, his Meethi, filling his mind. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”
Fuck! What kind of a big brother was he that he couldn’t protect his sister from the Jeff Bezos’ of the world!
Sophia sighed. “Nothing happened, dada. I am exaggerating. I’ll talk to you later, okay? I am going to sleep for like three days now.” There was a slight pause before she said, “I love you, Nakul.”
“I love you too, Pechu.”
“You’ve called me Pechu twice today. Is everything okay with you?” His sister laughed, and it struck Nakul that he’d not heard Sophia laugh in a long time.
“Everything’s great. I’m sorry…for everything.”
“It’s okay, dada.”
The call ended and Nakul looked out the drab window, his coffee churning in his gut. He opened his personal bank account statement and looked at the available funds available. He checked airfare to Australia. They were astronomical. But some things were a justified expense.
Saving his baby sister from lechers and potential rapists was one of them.
“Shalini,” he called out. “I need you to go home and pick up my passport for me…”
~~~~~
“What a strange woman,” Harrison murmured, after five minutes of thrumming silence following Sophia’s departure.
Henry laughed, a little stiffly. “Indeed.” He gave Bharat a mild censuring look. “Where on earth did she get the idea that her opinion was needed much less welcome?”
Bharat said nothing. He couldn’t get Sophia’s stricken face out of his mind. He felt hurt. He’d thought, no, foolishly, he’d hoped that this woman who knew nothing about heavy-duty tech and how investment pitches worked would somehow, magically, be in his corner. Become his number one cheerleader.
Even though Caliban didn’t really need cheerleading. It was a superior piece of software with the potential to become a world-changer. And businesses and economies were the only way to change the world. There was no doubt about it.
Bharat felt no need to defend it, had never felt the need, because anyone with half an iota of business acumen would get what it could do. But Sophia wasn’t about the business. She believed in people. In the infinite potential of them.
She wanted to change the world too.
She wasn’t…wrong?
He stood up abruptly from the couch he’d occupied for the last five minutes.
Henry stood up too, and with a subtle shake of his head, so did Thierron and Donald.
“The meeting isn’t over, is it?” Harrison asked expansively. “Dinner is yet to be served. We’re being served vegan Kobe lobster, gentlemen.” He smiled, a little thinly as he took in the preoccupied look on the star inventor’s face.
“What?” Bharat asked, distracted.
“Of course, we can stay back for dinner,” Henry said. “Right, Bharat?” He closed his hand around the other man’s forearm. Squeezed in a gesture of friendly support, although his eyes were unsmiling. Hard. “Right?” he repeated.
Bharat opened his mouth. Henry squeezed harder. “Vegan Kobe lobster sounds delicious,” he said, at last.
Sixty interminable minutes later, Bharat escaped the Villa Aria and practically flew to his room. The dinner had been tense and awkward and Bharat had spent most of it shoving food – incredible, Michelin star food – into his mouth. So he wouldn’t say what he was thinking.
That Sophia wasn’t wrong…that Sophia wasn’t wrong.
The minute he stepped into the elevator, he dialed Sophia’s number and it was switched off. Worry for her, coupled with guilt and a thousand nameless emotions ricocheted inside him. Made him frantic, careless.
What if she’d been unable to get a cab? Or she’d gotten into a shady cab? Or the driver didn’t know the proper address? Or…
“Come on, Soph,” he muttered. “Pick up.” He dialed her number yet again. The same message intoned on the other side.
Bharat opened the door to his room and the lights all came on in a blaze. He blinked once, to adjust his eyes and his gaze landed on Sophia’s hobo tote.
FUCK! She was without wallet or money. And it was all his fault. Urgency filled his chest, expanding it till he couldn’t breathe.
His phone rang and he answered it without checking caller ID. “Hello, Sophie.”
“It’s not Sophie,” Thierron said. “It’s me, man. What the hell happened to you? We need to have a strategy meeting right fucking now. Henry’s losing his mind with the shit you pulled.”
“No,” Bharat said, picking up the bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’m not working tonight.”
“But…Bharat.”
Bharat ended the call over Thierron’s protests. He held the strap of Sophia’s bag in a clenched fist and exited his hotel room.
No, he wasn’t working tonight. There was something more important for him to do.
Find Sophia. And be with her.
~~~~~
Sophia was having a very rough night.
She knew she’d overreacted. It wasn’t personal. It was business. Bharat was absolutely right in wanting to monetize his invention for the most profit.
She knew all of this. She knew her father would have applauded Bharat tonight for his absolute cool and control during his pitch. She knew even Nakul would have grudgingly appreciated the ‘kankir pola’s tech – it was what he called Bharat.
She knew all of this and she couldn’t help it. There was something so personal about the way Bharat had spoken to her in the end. As if he wanted her to be convinced about the absolute rightness of his thought process.
And she knew, in the soulless, dog-eat-dog world they lived in, he was right. He was absolutely right.
But she was a romantic. She wanted to fight for political causes and make the world a better place. She’d always believed in things that didn’t exist -the absolute math of blackjack. The warmth of her father’s hugs. Her brother’s ability to run a dead-end investment firm when he was meant for so much more.
Bharat’s kisses and his smiles.
So, she felt betrayed and there was no logic, no explanation for it. That sense of betrayal had given her the courage to call her brother and give him a piece of her mind too. Damn her dada for wanting to use her the way he’d planned to.
They could all rot in hell together, as far as she was concerned.
“Stop thinking about those idiots,” Sophia told her reflection firmly as she removed her makeup defiantly.
She’d already ditched the dress; it was now crumpled in a heap next to the commode. Sophia wanted to pick it up but physically felt unable to do so. She splashed cold water on her face and felt some semblance of dignity return to her brain.
Clearly, the high life didn’t suit her. Neither did hanging out with a brilliant, rich entrepreneur. She was now firmly and permanently middle class.
“And that’s fine with me,” she told her reflection.
Sophia smiled and patted her face dry with a ratty towel.
There was a knock on her door. “Sophie, you there?” It was Tessa.
“Coming,” she called out. “Are you on break?” Sophia opened the door to Teresa Luigi, who still looked perfectly put together after six hours on shift. Tess worked as a hostess and maître’d at the French fusion restaurant on The Dragon. She also moonlighted as a backup singer on the nights she had off.
In short, she was gorgeou
s, had boobs till Canada and was the warmest person Sophia had ever met.
“You.” Tess pointed red talons at her. “You are not supposed to be here. Isn’t that what you told Juggy the Jerk? ‘I want a break. I want a night off’.” Tessa mimicked Sophia’s desi accent. Badly.
“I am on break,” Sophia said. “I am taking the night off.”
“Offshore,” Tess stressed. She gestured at the tiny bed. “This is not offshore, Sophie. You’re still on the damn ship. And what did you do to my dress?” Tessa loped over to the tinier bathroom and scooped it off the floor. Shot her friend the evil eye.
“I am going to kill you,” Tess pronounced.
Sophia chuckled. “You’re such a drama queen, Tess. I love you.”
“Clearly not. You just ruined my dress,” she muttered. Then she pinned her friend with a hard glare. “What happened between you and that high roller who bought your services?
“Tessa! You make me sound like a hooker.”
Tessa shrugged her elegant shoulders and smoothed out the wrinkles in her third-favorite LBD. “I’m never letting you borrow my clothes again,” she swore. “And, seriously. What do I know what you two get up to when you’re together? I mean, what if you play strip poker instead of blackjack!”
Sophia rolled her eyes. “You’re such a bitch sometimes.”
“So are you,” Tess shot back. “This is vintage Ralph Lauren that I picked up at a Victoria Street flea market. One does not simply throw a vintage Ralph Lauren on the floor like it is garbage.”
“I was going to pick it up,” Sophia muttered defensively. There was another knock on the door. And she frowned. “You think Juggy the Jerk knows I am back?”
“I don’t know. Give me a second to straighten up, babe. He’ll fire me if he knows I sneaked here instead of being at my station.” Tess straightened the skirt of her tight, tight dress and thrust her boobs out.
Against All Odds Page 12
