by Rahul Raina
“Yes?” said Rudi. “I’m waiting. Any time now,” he said, as if he had any clue about what to do. Neither did I. We were just running. We needed someone to do a little thinking for us. Indian men! At least I knew my limitations.
“We have to go to Anjali Bhatnagar,” Priya said.
“Her?” shouted Rudi, jumping out of his chair. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. The makeup made everything he did funny. I was amazed he hadn’t wiped it off yet. Maybe he’d grown used to it on television. Maybe he liked it. “Her?” he said again, made dumb by disbelief.
Priya took a long breath, and then she began.
“She’s the only authority who can help you. She’s Central Bureau of Investigation. She can get you out of anything. You have to go to her and beg. You beg. You tell her about anything you did wrong, and I know you’ve done something wrong, the two of you, it’s just that you’re both too cowardly to tell me. You tell her that whatever you did is way less important than getting Oberoi. He arranged your kidnapping. He stole the ransom money for the Brain of Bharat! That’s huge. It’ll be the biggest scandal in years. And she’ll get all the credit.”
I thought she had finished, but she went on, teasing out the words from her mind.
“And she won’t be annoying the rich and the powerful. It’ll just be one man, one crazy rich man who wanted more money and wanted to fuck over the most loved kid in the country, the one who every mother wishes was their son. Don’t you see? He’s the perfect criminal. And she gets to catch him. So we go to her, and you boys, you stupid, prideful, idiot boys, you beg Anjali Bhatnagar to help you.”
I was impressed.
Rudi was not.
“Beg? Beg?” he shouted. “I know where begging gets you. I begged the whole world. I begged girls. I begged my parents. I begged my friends to be my friends. And no one cared.”
“She’s our only chance,” said Priya.
“My worst fucking enemy, the investigator from the Central Bureau of Investigation, is the only person who can help? She’s out for my fucking life. I’m fucked! What a pair of geniuses I’m stuck with. ‘Let’s go to Priya, she’ll know what to do,’” Rudi said, doing the universal uneducated Uttar Pradesh voice, and it was obviously meant to be me, and we all knew, and that was more insulting than the voice itself. “‘Oh, I’m in love with her, oh, she’s the perfect woman, oh, I want to marry her and have a million retard kids, and then somehow nobody will ever find out what we did and we’ll magically avoid prison.’ You fucking idiots, no wonder you love each other. I’m going to sleep.” Rudi marched off, continuing his tirade as he headed toward the bedroom.
You don’t suddenly become a better person. He needed some time. He was a teenager after all.
And I was what? A twenty-four year-old saint? I had no right to judge him.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. I tried not to think about the prison part. I willed her not to ask.
“Did you actually say all that?”
“Not exactly.”
“Did you mean it?”
“I like you. You know I do,” I said.
I went for it.
Hang the world. Hang danger.
“I love you,” I said, and it was worse actually saying the words and having her looking into my eyes just then than this whole situation—not the finger thing, granted, that was quite bad, but worse than being kidnapped and on the run, for sure.
“I love you too,” she said, and God, my heart nearly exploded, like a Punjabi at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I thought she was going to lean over and kiss me, but she pulled back and said, “Is there something you want to tell me? Something about you and Rudi?”
I looked away quickly. That was a mistake. When I looked back, I could see her earrings catching the light.
“About what?”
“How you know each other,” she said, and touched my hand. “You know exactly what I mean.”
So there it was. Finally. The moment of truth.
I had a choice. A final choice. I could stay silent, as I’d been doing since the day I was born, hiding away from the world. Or I could be honest. I could tell the truth. I could take a risk and trust someone else, trust this person with my secrets, with the truth, with my life.
I chose the second option.
“I ran a business,” I said, looking down at my lap, “where I fixed the examinations of rich children and got them into top universities. I did it for Rudi, and then I came top. I don’t know how I did, but I did, then I blackmailed his family to make money, and then I got kidnapped and so here we are.”
“Oh,” she said.
I carried on talking. There was nothing else I could do. I wanted to explain. I wanted her to understand. “I just wanted to make money out of all this, as much as I could. But then you came along. And then everything changed. I wanted more. I wanted you. But I knew if you ever found out, you’d leave, because that,” and my voice, very pathetically, cracked, but just for a moment, “that’s what everyone does.” I was surprised to hear myself say it.
“Oh,” she said.
“If you say oh again, Priya, I think I will be sick,” I said, and looked up at her face.
She seemed disappointed. “I want you to promise me one thing,” she said.
“Anything.”
“You always tell me the truth from now on, understand? One more lie, Ramesh, and we are done. I will not stand for lies.” There was a wildness in her eyes.
I nodded dumbly.
“Honestly, I figured it was something like that. And now that we can tell each other the truth, I can do this.”
And then she moved forward and put her hand on the side of my face, and I knew exactly what she was going to do. My heart was beating like crazy.
She kissed me. Full on the lips.
Our faces moved apart.
“You knew?” I said.
“I knew there was something going on. I just wanted you to say it. I want you to trust me.”
“But I’m corrupt,” I said. “I’m crooked to the core. I’m a miscreant. I’m trouble.”
“Yes,” she said. “But you’re not going to be doing any of that from now on, are you?”
I shook my head. “So you can only be with me if I’m totally pure and honest?”
She laughed. “No one is pure anymore. And that’s not why I like you. I just do.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Ha, now you’re doing it,” she tutted. “You bloody men, you think you’re all geniuses, all God’s gift to womankind. My parents, I love them, but my God, all the time, ‘marry, marry, marry, you can’t be single when you’re thirty,’ as if that is the solution to all my problems. You fucking men, each one thinks he’s Hrithik Roshan. I cannot stand you sometimes. You are weak and foolish!” She winked, then reached over and pinched my arm playfully.
“We are,” I said, and put my hand on hers again. I was getting used to it. “Especially me.” The stump of my pinkie finger throbbed, and I winced from the pain.
Priya looked at me with concern.
“Now that we’re together, you’d better not get any other parts cut off. I need you whole.”
I began to blush.
“So what exactly do we do now?” I exhaled.
“We need to make a plan,” she said. “Step by step. What were you thinking?”
“Er,” I said.
“You haven’t had a plan up to this point?”
“Only in our heads. It changes from minute to minute.”
“Not written and pinned down? That doesn’t sound like the Ramesh I know. He’s always so in control. Contracts, social media, errand-running.” Priya smiled. “Come on then,” she said. She grabbed my good hand and led me to her spare room.
We messed around. On her laptop, she made a PowerPoint, and conjured up slide after slide of swooping transitions and GIFs and headings in Comic Sans. We laughed like children. We were drunk on intimacy. We sat close together. She rubbed my hands, held my wrists, kis
sed me, looked deep into my eyes, laughed at every stupid joke.
Then finally she tied her hair back in a scrunchy, put her glasses on, and stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in concentration. “We need to get serious. God, this is just like when I was studying for my BComm,” she said.
“Exactly the same. I’ll wake the master,” I said. He deserved as much of a say as I did.
I crept into the bedroom. I shook him awake, first slowly, then harder.
Rudi slept like my papa had, all angles and legs, poking into me from every way, kicking at me in the night, even when he was unconscious. It was only after whoring nights, when I’d been allowed back down from the roof, that Papa slept like a dead man, long and straight, like the girls at posture lessons at Sacred Heart, books on heads, catwalk-steady, always in control.
“Aargh, I’m awake, I’m awake,” Rudi said, spluttering to life.
“Rudi,” I said gently, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for getting angry with you.” Priya had made me very free and open with my emotions.
He held my arm. He was groggy.
“I’m sorry for shouting at you, Ramesh.”
“I pushed you too hard,” I said. “I didn’t think enough about you. We can get away after all this is done. We have enough money. We can do what we want.”
I could see his pupils glimmering in the dark.
“All is forgiven,” he said.
“Let’s go, we have a plan to make,” I said.
Rudi was full of ideas. It was amazing what food and rest and the assurance of friendship could do. We all had a laugh. For the first time in days, the two of us were entirely carefree.
Our first step? We were decided. Contact Bhatnagar.
But how exactly?
“We’ll kidnap her,” said Rudi. I was so proud of him.
“Boys,” said Priya quickly. “No. I’ll do it. I’ll tell her I want to be a whistleblower.”
“Priya!” I said.
“No,” said Rudi. “This is our mess. We’ll solve it.”
She gave us both a pitying look. “Why would Bhatnagar ever agree to go along with you? And, boys, your track record in kidnapping has not been so strong. I feel guilty. Oberoi was doing this under my nose and I didn’t know. I want to help.”
“But this is your career, your life,” I said. “I can’t do that to you. Rudi’s right. We have to keep you out of it. There’s a risk you could never work again.”
“Then I’ll just have to be a kept woman.” She smiled and elbowed me in the ribs.
That shut me up.
On we went with the plan.
Get Abhi back. Get Oberoi back. Avoid prison.
We had a good night’s sleep. Priya in her bedroom, Rudi and me fighting over the blanket in the study.
Early the next morning, Priya rang Bhatnagar.
She was so convincing on the phone. “They’re cruel men, Ms. Bhatnagar. And only I can bring them down. They told me everything. I have documents, tapes, USBs. We have to meet soon, today, now,” she said, pacing around the flat, her hair whipping from side to side, her feet dancing across the floor. What an actress. I was a little worried then that she was pretending to like me. But what idiot would do that?
They arranged to meet in a coffee shop in a mall, nice and anonymous. She pumped her fist as she hung up.
As we prepared to leave Priya’s apartment, Rudi finished his cup of tea and began to laugh. I asked him what was going on, and he said, “When I was young, my darling mother would appear and give me a spoonful of sugar for good luck. That’s the reason I’m so fat, a spoon of sugar every time I left the house. Your mother ever did that to you, Ramesh?”
“For the hundredth time, Rudraksh, I did not have a mother.”
“Ah shit, dude,” he said. “Sorry.” Then, as if to make up, “How’s the hand?”
“Never better,” I said, and out he went into the corridor.
“I want to thank you,” I told Priya as she locked up the apartment. We didn’t know when, or if, we would be back. She held a little duffel bag in her hands.
“For what?” she said.
“For all of this. You could have walked away. If Bhatnagar says no, that’s it, you’re an accomplice. You’re sacrificing yourself for me.”
“Wouldn’t you?” she said.
I nodded.
It was true. After so long, I had someone to destroy myself for. Her.
And Rudi, I supposed. He was growing on me.
She handed me the bag. “The moment I open this, you start taking pictures. Understand?”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Insurance,” she said, and smiled.
I kissed her. What else do you do in those situations? I kissed my girlfriend, tossed my backpack over my shoulder, and then we stepped back into the world of knives and kidnappings and long-lost missing fingers.
Fifteen
When I was younger, the rich kids at school got a whole new wardrobe for Diwali, the poor ones fresh socks or shirts. I got nothing. Diwali annoyed my father. It meant spending money, on clothes, on sparklers, on whizz-bangs, on presents for ungrateful children, but more important he hated the idea of it. Diwali was far too optimistic for him. Victory for light over darkness, what a load of bullshit! His life had never gotten better. He prayed every morning, yes, but to gods who promised fire and destruction, retribution, heads chopped off.
I was thinking about the prick a lot more recently. It was the kidnapping and the beating up. You think your parents are just a source of shelter and slaps, and then you grow up and find out that you become them, not a perfect copy, but one of those pirated films where you can see people in the theater stand up and go to the toilet. If only I’d had a mother, I wouldn’t be like this. I would have been half good, half bad; half monstrous psychopath villain, half educated boring man. An accountant, then.
We booked a cab for the three of us, Rudi, Priya, and myself, the strange family unit we had formed. The driver was being extra attentive, almost pleasant. He and his colleagues were slaves to the algorithm now. He asked no questions, had installed a tablet in the back, and applied the horn with added verve, as if to say, Don’t you know what high-class fellows I’ve got in my cab? Priya saluted every light-bedecked temple, every church, every golden gurdwara as we went past. Very promising.
The mall where we were meeting Bhatnagar was a super-premium flagship affair on the Noida border. Most of the malls, opened in the early 2000s, had become a breeding ground for discount sari stores and cleaners who idly pushed around buckets of disinfectant, but the newest ones, like this one, were still the places to wave hello to the Sharmas from the country club. Portofino Galleria was one of the biggest in Delhi, populated at midday by diabetic retirees shopping for Diwali-discount Ray-Bans and graphite golf clubs.
Priya had arranged to meet Bhatnagar in the food court. Rudi and I followed on, a hundred meters behind.
Bhatnagar was dressed in jeans and a white shirt. She had waves of black hair with amber undertones. She looked like one of our actresses when they are photographed incognito on their summer holidays in London.
Priya sat down at her table and they began to talk. Rudi and I stood, partially hidden by a pillar, as close as we dared.
Bhatnagar listened, then stood up, then shook her head. I ducked farther back in case she saw us, and almost pushed Rudi into a potted plant.
Priya took the duffel bag, laid it on the table, and opened the zip.
I grabbed the phone from Rudi’s hand, had a miniature scuffle with that silly screen-addicted millennial, and started taking as many photos as I could.
Priya was holding out a brick of cash. Bhatnagar looked betrayed. Priya said something, and Bhatnagar sat down. Priya began to point back in our direction. That was our cue. We moved forward. Bhatnagar stiffened as we approached, her back straight and still, her eyes watchful for further trouble.
“Rudi!” I hissed under my breath as we approached. “Remember to be humble!�
��
Rudi shoved past a table full of Romeos with hungry faces sharing a family dosa and scanning the food court for single women. They all smelled of Paco Rabanne, of course. He walked over to Bhatnagar and sat across from her. She did a quick double-take at his dress, but otherwise gave nothing away. Perhaps it was a normal situation for Central Bureau investigators to find themselves in.
I looked down at the cash. I flipped through it. The note at the top was real, but the ones below were demonetized, useless. Not that that would show up in the pictures. Any newspaper would kill for them. Anjali Bhatnagar, Queen of Clean, secretly corrupt. I nodded at Priya. Maybe she wasn’t as innocent as I’d thought.
Rudi played his part. He started to beg.
“Ma’am,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “You must save us. Our producer arranged our kidnapping. Then he stole the ransom. He would have got us killed.”
“Please, ma’am,” I added, in a sort of waiter voice. “Only hope. Please save.”
Priya gave me a kick under the table.
She explained the whole sorry situation. “Oberoi did everything he could to get Rudraksh Saxena out of the way. He arranged for an innocent young boy to be humiliated on national television just to set his plot in motion. He is directly responsible for Ramesh getting hurt.” I waved my maimed hand.
“I also got hurt, yaar,” said Rudi. “I am the number one target of a vast criminal conspiracy. Why does everyone keep forget—” He had to swallow his words as a server approached.
We ordered as if we were out on a shopping day trip, the three girls, and me, their peon. I had filter coffee. The others had ginger mochas, a Western invention with a glaze of Ayurveda that our middle classes had fallen for—what better way to show you were at once modern but also in touch with your roots, your culture? That was the business I should go into when all this was done, I thought.
“Why should I help you?” said Bhatnagar. “You bring me here on false pretenses. Priya here confesses straight out that you have committed academic fraud. You blackmail me. And I should help you?”
“People love to hate people like Oberoi,” said Priya. “We’ve read the news stories about your career. You’ve made too many enemies. Oberoi is the perfect target. A corrupt, evil rich man trying to harm the Topper. A man you will apprehend single-handed. It’ll get the country on your side, don’t you see? Then you can get as many rich people for academic corruption as you like. But just not these two. Please. They’re good people who made bad decisions.”
