How to Kidnap the Rich

by Rahul Raina

  He nodded. “How do we know Oberoi won’t fuck us?” he asked.

  “Oh there’s no danger of that,” I laughed. “You’re the number one draw on Indian television. You’re his career. He won’t do anything to you. He just paid a fifty-crore ransom to save you.”

  “I’m worth double,” he said. Didn’t miss a beat. Maybe he would be okay after all.

  We ate a nice Punjabi dinner downstairs in our disguises: sari and sunglasses. We had mostly ghee, with a side of ghee, washed down with ghee, then went shopping for torches, flashlights, knives, utility knives, chopping knives, saw-type knives—I had a sudden fondness for knives—and another sari for Rudi. We needed to be better prepared. I had no idea how long we were going to spend like this. Better to get him extra clothes while we could.

  We also needed some makeup, because while he looked somewhat fetching as a woman, I didn’t know how much running and jumping and sweating we’d be doing. The trip to the metro station had been relatively short. I needed the disguise to really work if Rudi was going to spend more time in it.

  At the dress shop, I tried to hold Rudi’s hand, give the impression we were a young couple out on the town. You know what he did? He slapped my hand away, the shit. I gave a little smile to the elderly owner, a what-can-you-do? one, a big mistake, for he spent the next twenty minutes boring me to death about the flightiness of women while Rudi was changing.

  “She’s a feisty one, yours, you have to get her under control,” he said, tongue anointed with paan residue, clenching his scissors and measuring tape in unsteady hands. I was trying to guess in my mind as to when exactly his wife had left him.

  “You don’t know how right you are,” I said without thinking, and on he went about estrogen-laden fast food and declining sperm counts and how all women nowadays dressed so immodestly and deserved everything they got.

  After we got back, I made some excuse and wandered down the street. I nearly rang Priya. I held out. Rudi was right. We had hurt enough people already. I had hurt enough people. I would never add her to that number.

  Just because you long to hear someone’s voice, just because you desperately need someone to tell you they care, doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. What am I? American? This is India. We have duty and honor and all sorts of other things to keep us miserable.

  On my walk, I thought of my early business endeavors. Everything had fit together so perfectly, like dance moves on India’s Got Talent, progressing easily from one client, one lie to the next.

  But I had become sucked in. I had lost myself in the world of crookedness.

  And I had ended up here. This whole situation was what I had wanted to avoid.

  Rudi was right. We should retire.

  When I got back in from my walk, the poor kid was clucking aimlessly on our shared bed, arms crossed, giving me dirty looks. It was the longest digital detox he had ever been on. He eyed my phone. He looked like he would murder me just to touch it.

  “No social media,” I had to remind him whenever he complained, or gave me a look, or breathed. “No internet. God knows who will be tracking us. Not just Mark Zuckerberg this time, but Mark Rudigetsmurderedberg.” He didn’t laugh.

  Of course I was a hypocrite.

  Of course I was a liar.

  I’d been lying to everyone since I was seventeen.

  I’d bought in samosas for a miserable midnight snack. The year-old vegetable oil melted through newsprint with breathless snapshots of celebrity parties. We ate like dogs, smearing the sheets with grease. Extra fees to be paid at reception, no doubt.

  The next morning I called a cab. It came at nine sharp, with a two-horn blast at the front of the building. I did a quick bow to Ms. Geeta in the lobby. A step behind me was my bride, ravishingly made up, avoiding all eyes but her husband’s. We walked out.

  I let Rudi climb into the car.

  “Just a day trip,” I shouted back to Ms. Geeta. “Showing my bride my old haunts. Jantar Mantar, Lotus Temple.”

  She stood in the doorway, smiled her benedictions upon me. “Such a good girl,” she said, looking over at Rudi.

  “Very well brought up,” I said.

  We wouldn’t be back, of course, so that was an extra night she had been paid for. She’d be even happier with us when she realized.

  I climbed into the back of the car and waved to her.

  The driver was young, with a miserable little moustache of soft hair.

  We drove off and were just about to merge onto the GT Road when I tapped the fellow on the side of the shoulder. “Stop, brother,” I said.

  “Sir?” he said, pulling up. He had a look of abject fear on his face. I’m just like you, I felt like saying, apart from being able to buy your family a thousand times over.

  “I’ll give you ten thousand rupees to leave now and give us the car for the—” I started to say.

  Rudi gave a little cough and squeezed my arm.

  “Fine, twenty thousand,” I said. Was that enough? Rudi smiled. I continued, “Go away. Buy a nice Diwali present for your girlfriend. We’ll ring you when we’re done. You don’t tell anyone anything. You make a month’s salary. Yes?”

  He took the deal in an instant. He thanked us and ran like the wind. He must have really hated his boss. Always check on your employees, I say. Give them psychometric questionnaires. It will save you many tears in the long run.

  I moved to the front, adjusted the seat, and eased off into the traffic. I pressed the horn, I swore, I was a little on edge. Rudi sat behind me, complaining.

  “How are you doing back there?” I asked twenty minutes of unrestrained driving later.

  “It wouldn’t be so bad if you could bloody drive properly,” he grunted.

  Where’s Mr. Liberal Charity-wallah when you need him, eh? At least he was only complaining about my driving. See how the rich live! Even the trunks of their cars are more commodious than the highest aspirations of the poor! And still they complain!

  We crossed over the Yamuna via the crumbling, rust-ridden Old Iron Bridge—look what the British have left us, idiot laws and broken bridges and marrying for love.

  I parked up outside Golden Jubilee Park so we could hide Rudi. He ducked down into the footwell. I spread a thick shawl over him, one I had bought for his feminine transformation. The park was deserted. Weekday morning, no Romeos, no cricket, no homeless people picking up cigarette stubs, no diabetic middle-aged joggers poleaxed by the mixture of freezing fog and building dust. Just male street sellers at the gates lazily shouting out their wares to the drivers piling up at the bridge crossing. After checking Rudi was comfortable, which was most unlike me, I eased back out onto the main road.

  It took an hour to get to the studio. The morning rush was usually murder, but the festive season had made it worse. Buses of relatives coming in from all over the country. Trucks full of chickens and goats, ready to be slaughtered. Vans of would-be kidnappers. The air conditioning couldn’t hide the smell of acrid smoke. Where it came from, no one knew—a useful conversation starter with the posh people.

  I read an article that said we Delhiites lose four inches of height due to pollution. I salute our street urchins whenever we pass, paying the price that every rich man does not, with their German air purifiers chugging away, removing the poison from their every surrounding. Their children will not have ten years of life stolen, their children will not have lungs dyed black. I am one of you, I want to say to the hollow-cheeked young, and we will have our revenge somehow, but for now, I must play my part and watch and wait until the moment is right.

  All that wonderful life energy that in the West goes to making muscle-bound athletes and smiling, white-toothed CEOs here goes to combating the dust, the dirt, the whole world trying to send you to your grave. No wonder we are fighters, no wonder we are all little stunted bags of energy, no wonder we never stop. The world has made its mark on us, tried to smother us from our first moments, and one day we will rise and laugh and piss on it all.
r />   The guards at the studio were their usual annoying selves, more facial hair than brain.

  I stopped by the gate, and the questioning began.

  “Who are you?” one of them said. “What do you want?” said the other. All I could see were their bushy moustaches.

  “Are you a Pakistani spy wreaking vengeance upon our glorious reality television industry?” I half expected.

  “Just a driver, brother,” I said. “Have to collect one of these TV star fellows. You know how they are, annoying, rude, inconsiderate.” I heard a grunt from behind me.

  “How would ten thousand rupees each be?” I said. I heard the cough again, my bloody mistake. “Twenty thousand, sir? Just let me through. You never saw me.”

  They looked at each other and nodded.

  I pulled out my wallet and handed over the money. Their moustaches twitched with delight. They even gave me a little salute. You had to admire their professionalism.

  We got out in an alley behind the canteen. Rudi swore at my driving, at being dressed like a woman, at the whole fucking socio-historical situation.

  “Want an Evian, do you, boss?”

  “Oh fuck you,” he said.

  We walked inside as calmly as we could, past uninterested porters watching nautch girl item numbers on phones, all of them ignoring the wigged man escorting a poorly made-up young girl through the bowels of the studio. No one got out of our way, no one showed deference, no one held doors open. We were nothing. A young writer type walked straight into us, some pipsqueak who Rudi would have shat on normally. He gave us a dismissive, 30 Under 30 look and went off. Rudi grunted, but held his tongue. It was good being famous—you could deal with that sort of pissant person, sometimes.

  We shuffled through the corridors, heads down, until we reached Oberoi’s room, and gave three loud knocks. “What the fuck do you want?” we heard.

  Rudi and I shared a look. This was it. I turned the handle. The door opened. We went in.

  Oberoi was sitting at his desk. He raised his sunglasses to the top of his head. His face, usually so ruddy, so full of life, so full of whisky, drained of color.

  He knew who we were the minute he looked up. So much for the saris, wigs, and sunglasses. Rudi raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged my shoulders.

  Rudi threw off his wig. It lay on the floor, shorn of life, looking like a drunken rat. “Hello, Oberoi,” he said. “Pleased to see us?”

  Oberoi looked at me, then Rudi, then back to me. He scratched his cheek, scuffed the skin, left deep red welts above the track of his designer stubble.

  “You’re alive,” he said. He tried to compose himself, tried to pull out words, continued to scratch, then opened his arms wide to show how wonderful this all was, that we were back, that we would be welcomed like sons returning without white girlfriends from MIT.

  He stood up in shock, opened his mouth a few times, and then fell down again on his chair. It squeaked in protest.

  He collected himself for a moment. “What happened?” he said. “Who took you? We have to get you back to the show straightaway. It has been impossible. We have to get a shoot, we can do an ad campaign, have you thought about a charity for disappeared children?”

  “He had his finger chopped off,” Rudi said. How sweet.

  I waved my hand in the air.

  “My God. I’ll call the police. I know people. We can get this sorted, straightaway,” Oberoi said. “How atrocious!”

  “We know who it was,” said Rudi. “Developer called Aggarwal. The father of that boy that we humiliated.”

  “Aggarwal, Aggarwal,” Oberoi said, with stresses on each syllable, stretching the vowels this way and that, as if some secret of the name might reveal itself. “Never heard of him,” he said, as he pulled out his Samsung. It was covered in little false jewels, and shone like a bald man’s skull. He dialed and put it to his face. I was dazzled by the light reflecting off the back and nearly raised my arms to my face.

  “Sub-Inspector!” he shouted, and got up, his voice rising in volume, like when you had a phone call on the metro you wanted to show off. “You won’t believe who’s turned up! Yes! Send some men over, would you? We must sort this out, straightaway!”

  He put the phone down, and folded his hands across his cotton shirt. “This is fantastic,” he said, swiveling in his chair, trying to give the impression of having recovered from his shock. His foot tapped on the carpet. “My life has been hell, honestly. And to make it worse, my wife’s on a fast, she says for Navratri, but that is so far away, and she has been a fucking nightmare. Another goddamn juice cleanse. Speaking of which.” He reached into a drinks cabinet behind him on the wall, the labels proudly arranged next to a ten-year-old photo of him and his family at some Scottish distillery, and unscrewed a bottle of something expensive.

  Rudi had his head in his hands, thanking God the nightmare was over, and that he’d have his precious YouTube again.

  Oberoi sat back down in his chair. On the table in front of him was a pile of headshots, children, hundreds of them, with a piece of paper attached to the back of each one.

  “You boys, you’re going to be fine,” he began to blather, and casually started to move the pile off the table with one hand. He was smiling, he was laughing, he was sipping whisky, he was saying how wonderful our lives were going to be now, but still he kept moving the photos, his hand like a claw around them.

  “What are those?” I asked.

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said.

  “What are those?” I asked again.

  He dropped the tumbler in his hand and it hit the table. I knew immediately that it was something, with that same gut feeling all Indians are born with, it’s just that the fat ones have lost it, the air conditioning and drivers and Economist subscriptions dulling that innate primordial knowledge.

  “Oberoi,” I said, in a cool, calculated voice that came from God knows where, “why are there hundreds of pictures of children on this table, and why do those look like casting questionnaires?”

  Oberoi shook his head vigorously and tried to cover up the photos as I grabbed at them. Stapled to each one was a profile with the silly little details of each child’s life: their favorite book, how frequently their parents beat them, the name of their therapist, and the name of the program—

  “Beat the Brains?” said Rudi, reading the paperwork.

  “It’s a spin-off,” Oberoi said, but his voice betrayed him. He snatched the paper back from Rudi and grabbed as many photos as he could, clutching them to him, embracing them in his arms like a doting mother. It looked like he was wearing one of those Rio carnival dresses, all the feathers white. I moved past the desk, as did Rudi from the other side. Oberoi was trapped.

  Never has there been a worse liar in the history of high-level production executives.

  I moved in closer. I could smell his aftershave, like kharbujas rotting in heat. What is it with the men in this country and their hideous perfumes?

  “It’s a spin-off,” he repeated, as he gripped the papers.

  I snatched an application from him, and he groaned as if he’d been hit.

  “The date on these is two months ago,” I said. All the kids had glasses, looked like the children in milk ads, chubbily studious, white teeth, never answered back, your perfect child made into flesh.

  And then came the smoking gun.

  “‘You saw Beat the Brain,’” Rudi read quietly from one of the profiles. His other hand gripped Oberoi’s collar tight. “‘But now meet the next generation, taking over the mantle of the cleverest in the country. Before there was one. Now there are many. Beat the Brains. They’re the future.’ You’re behind this, aren’t you?” He was whispering. The sari and the makeup made his rage even more terrifying.

  We shared a brotherly look of mutual respect. Rudi brought his face close to Oberoi’s. Where had he learned all this from?

  “No. No,” Oberoi moaned.

  “Know someone called Pratap?” said Rudi, and Oberoi flin
ched.

  He had worked it out even before me.

  I looked around the room. In the corner, Oberoi had installed a new little shrine, to curry favor with any visiting religiously minded dignitaries. I walked over, picked up something called a religious services directory, solid as a phone book, full of saints’ days and cut-price priests. I marched back to him, hefting the book in my hands. The pages were saffron-edged and smelled of incense.

  “Talk,” I said.

  “There is nothing to talk about,” he said. “I am your friend, your producer, why would—”

  I hit him hard across the head with the book. Again and again and again. When I’d finished, his skin was red. It stung. No blood.

  “More?” I said.

  “It was me,” he said.

  “We weren’t ever meant to come back, were we?” said Rudi.

  Oberoi kept silent. His sunglasses hung from his ears on a broken frame.

  I hit him again, that sweet last one a parent does because the kid doesn’t expect it. That one hurts the most. When you hit them, make sure they can’t get back up.

  Rudi kept his grip on him. Oberoi wriggled like a worm.

  “Fuck you, Rudraksh,” he said. “You take all the money, and what do I get?”

  “Millions,” I said. “Not enough?”

  “Nowhere near. You make hundreds of millions, and I get a producer credit. That’s nothing. My wife, my kids, they all want and want and want. I can’t pay for my house. I can’t pay for their Diwali presents. They have college and school fees—”

  “I could always do their exams,” I joked, but the bastard couldn’t be stopped. Just had to tell us everything. Couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

  “I came up with this bloody show. And who got to star in it? The moneymen had to go and pick a fucking cheater. You think I wouldn’t find out? Who do you think made the anonymous tip-off to Anjali fucking Bhatnagar? But your lawyers made her stall. I know Himanshu Aggarwal. He’s angry, he’s vain and thinks his son deserves to be on TV because he’s rich and has a nice face. So I told him I’d put the kid on the show, make him a big star, and then you did just what I thought you would. Rudi couldn’t help humiliating him. It’s easy to manipulate you once you realize how stupid you are. How could anyone believe you could be a Topper?”