The Accidental Apprentice: A Novel

by Vikas Swarup

  ‘And what exactly will I have to do to pass those tests?’

  ‘Nothing that you wouldn’t do in your daily life. I will not ask you to steal or kill or do anything illegal. In fact, you won’t even be aware of the tests.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My tests will come from the textbook of life. Doesn’t life test us every day? Don’t we make choices every day? I will simply evaluate your choices, your responses to life’s daily challenges. That will reveal the stuff you are made of.’

  ‘And what if I fail any of those tests?’

  ‘Well, then I will have to look for someone else. But my gut instinct tells me you won’t fail. It almost seems destined. The biggest lottery ticket of all time will be yours.’

  ‘In that case my decision is quite clear. I’m not interested in your offer.’

  He seems astounded. ‘But why?’

  ‘I don’t believe in lottery tickets.’

  ‘But you believe in God. And sometimes God gives you much more than you ask for.’

  ‘I’m not that greedy,’ I say, rising from the table. ‘Thank you, Mr Acharya. It was nice meeting you, but I really must get back to the showroom now.’

  ‘Sit!’ he orders me. There is steel in his voice. I swallow hard and sit down like an obedient student.

  ‘Listen, Sapna.’ His voice softens. ‘There are only two types of people in the world: winners and losers. I am giving you the chance to be a winner. All I ask in return is for you to sign this consent form.’ He gestures to Rana, who produces a printed sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his tracksuit and lays it in front of me.

  Since Alka’s death, I’ve developed a sixth sense about some things, a little warning bell that goes off in my head whenever a situation is not quite right. That bell is ringing as I pick up the form. It is short, just five sentences:

  1. The signer hereby agrees to be considered for the post of CEO of the ABC Group of Companies.

  2. The signer hereby permits the ABC Group to perform necessary checks and procedures to assess the signer’s suitability for the job.

  3. The signer is not permitted to terminate the agreement mid-way, while the necessary checks and procedures are still being conducted.

  4. The signer agrees to maintain complete confidentiality of this agreement by not discussing it with any third party.

  5. In consideration of the above, the signer has received a non-refundable advance of ₹100,000.

  ‘This only talks of one lakh rupees,’ I observe. ‘Didn’t I hear you mention the figure of ten billion dollars?’

  ‘The one lakh is simply to participate in the tests. If you fail, you get to keep the money. And, if you pass, you get the job. I assure you the CEO’s salary will have many more zeroes.’

  By now the warning bell is clanging like a fire alarm. I know that this is a swindle, and that Acharya has tried this ploy before. ‘Tell me, how many people have you got to sign this form so far?’

  ‘You are candidate number seven.’ Acharya exhales. ‘But I know in my heart that you will be the last one. My quest is over.’

  ‘So is my time.’ I stand up decisively. ‘I have no intention of signing this form or participating in any test.’

  Rana responds by laying a stack of thousand-rupee notes on the table. They look crisp and new, straight from a bank. He is baiting me, but I am not tempted. ‘You think you can buy me with your money?’

  ‘Well, this is a negotiation, after all,’ Acharya insists. ‘Remember, in business as in life, you never get what you deserve: you only get what you negotiate.’

  ‘I don’t negotiate with people I hardly know. What if this is some kind of trap?’

  ‘The only trap is that of low expectations. Look, I understand your reservations,’ Acharya says soothingly, leaning forward on his elbows. ‘But you need to take a less bleak view of human nature, Sapna. I sincerely and genuinely want to make you my CEO.’

  ‘Do you have any idea how ridiculous this conversation sounds? Such things happen only in movies and books, not in real life.’

  ‘Well, I am real and you are real and my offer is real. A man like me does not waste time in tomfoolery.’

  ‘I am sure you can find other candidates who would be more than willing to accept your offer. I am not interested.’

  ‘You are making a big mistake.’ Acharya wags a finger at me. ‘Perhaps the greatest mistake of your life. But I will not pressurise you. Take my card, and, if you change your mind within the next forty-eight hours, call me. The offer will still be valid.’ He pushes a business card across the table, Rana watching me like a hawk.

  I take it, smile tightly at them, and then, without as much as a backward glance, head for the door.

  * * *

  My mind is spinning faster than a CD as I hurry towards B-Block. The overwhelming feeling I have is one of relief, as though I had escaped from some grave danger by the skin of my teeth. I look over my shoulder periodically to make sure the duo are not following me. The more I reflect on what has just transpired, the more convinced I am that Acharya is either a devious shark or a raving lunatic. And I want no truck with either category.

  I breathe easy only once I return to the safety of the showroom, to my air-conditioned world of plasma TVs, frost-free refrigerators and fuzzy-logic washing machines. Banishing Acharya and his crazy offer from my mind, I change back into my work uniform, and begin the habitual hunt for prospective buyers. Afternoons are generally a sluggish period for sales and there aren’t too many customers vying for attention. I try to interest a puzzled-looking shopper with a potbelly in the latest full-HD camcorder from Samsung, but he seems more interested in my legs sticking out of the short red skirt. Whoever designed this risqué costume (and the finger of suspicion has always pointed at Raja Gulati, the owner’s wastrel son) meant to make us salesgirls look like air hostesses. Except, as my colleague Prachi says, ‘We get the propositions, but not the pay.’

  To be honest, I don’t have to contend with as many lecherous advances as the other three salesgirls. They are the ones who look like flight attendants, with their coiffured hair, impeccable makeup and glowing skins. I look like an advertisement for Fair and Lovely cream with my awkward smile and a complexion that is described in matrimonial ads as ‘wheatish’, a polite way of saying ‘not fair’. I was always the ugly duckling of the family. My two younger sisters, Alka and Neha, got their milky white complexions from Ma. I inherited my father’s darker skin. And, in this part of the world, skin colour is destiny.

  Only when I started working at the showroom did I discover that being dark and plain-looking also has its advantages. Wealthy women customers get intimidated by competition and can’t stand it when other beautiful women are around. They feel more comfortable with me. And, since most family purchase decisions are made by women, I invariably reach my monthly sales targets faster than everyone else.

  Another thing I’ve learnt is never to judge customers by their appearance. They come in all shapes, sizes and dresses. Like the middle-aged man who walks into the showroom just after 3 p.m. dressed incongruously in a turban and dhoti. He looks like a bodybuilder, with a huge upper body, thick arms and a handlebar moustache he has teased and twirled into a work of art. He wanders through the aisles like a lost child, overwhelmed by the shop’s glitter. Finding the other salesgirls sniggering at his rustic dress and manners, he latches onto me. Within ten minutes I have extracted his entire life story. His name is Kuldip Singh and he is the patriarch of a prosperous agricultural family from a village called Chandangarh, located in the Karnal district of Haryana, approximately 140 kilometres from Delhi. His eighteen-year-old daughter Babli is getting married next week and he has come to the capital to buy goods for her dowry.

  It is another matter that his knowledge of machines extends only to tractors and tube wells. He has never seen a microwave oven in his life, and thinks the LG, 15-kg, top-loading washer is an ingenious device for churning lassi! He also wants to barg
ain with me for the price of things. I try to explain to him that all items in the showroom have a fixed price, but he refuses to accept it.

  ‘Dekh chhori. Look here, girl,’ he drawls in his homespun vernacular. ‘We have a saying in our Haryana. However stubborn a goat may be, in the end it has to yield milk.’

  He is so insistent that eventually I have to prevail upon the manager to offer him a 5 per cent discount, and he ends up buying a truckload worth of goods, including a 42-inch plasma TV, a three-door fridge, a washing machine, a DVD player and a music system. The other salesgirls look on in hushed awe as he pulls out a thick wad of thousand-rupee notes to pay for his buying spree. Their country bumpkin has turned out to be a shopaholic baron. And I have notched up yet another sales record!

  The rest of the day passes in a blur. I leave the showroom as usual at 8.15 p.m. and board the metro, as always, from Rajiv Chowk station.

  The forty-five-minute journey takes me to Rohini, a sprawling middle-class suburb in northwest Delhi. Reputed to be the second biggest residential colony in Asia, it is a cheap, ugly tentacle of the capital, crammed with dismal, unimaginative concrete apartment blocks and chaotic markets.

  I disembark at Rithala, the last stop on the Red Line. From here it is a twenty-minute walk to the LIG Colony in Pocket B-2, Sector 11, where I live. Of all the housing societies in Rohini, mine is the most melancholy. The name itself – LIG, shorthand for ‘Lower Income Group’ – is like a slap in the face. Built by the Delhi Development Authority in the 1980s, the four red-brick tower blocks look like a clump of brick kiln chimneys, their disfigured exteriors and defaced interiors bearing the telltale signs of shoddy government construction. Nevertheless, I am thankful to be living here. After Papa’s death we wouldn’t have been able to afford even these dreary 2-BHK flats which command rents in excess of twelve thousand a month. Luckily, we don’t have to pay any rent for B-29, our second-floor apartment, because it belongs to Mr Dinesh Sinha, Papa’s well-heeled younger brother. Deenu Uncle took pity on us and has allowed us to reside here for free. Well, it’s not completely free. Once in a while I am obligated to take his moronic sons Rolu and Golu out to a fancy dinner. It beats me why they have to eat out at my expense when their father owns three tandoori restaurants himself.

  The first thing you see on entering our flat is a framed black-and-white photo of Papa in the small foyer where we keep the fridge. Decorated with a garland of brittle roses, it shows him as a young man, not yet burdened by the responsibilities of a teacher with three grown-up daughters. The photographer has been kind to him, smoothing away some of the premature worry lines carved into his forehead. But he couldn’t touch up the forbidding scowl that was fixed permanently around Papa’s mouth.

  Our modest drawing-cum-dining room is dominated by a colour blow-up of Alka on the centre wall. Wearing an outrageous red hat, she is posing like the ladies of Royal Ascot. Her head is tilted back slightly, her dark eyes are opened wide and her lips are puckered in a goofy smile. That is how I will always remember her: beautiful, young and carefree. Every time I see this picture, I can feel the room ringing with her infectious laughter. ‘Didi! Didi! Kamaal ho gaya! Something amazing happened today!’ I can hear her eager voice greeting me, ready to spill the details of yet another silly prank she dreamt up in school.

  Below the photo is a faded green sofa set with embroidered white dust covers, a couple of straight-back bamboo chairs with worn-out cushions, and an old Videocon TV perched on the sideboard where we store crockery and cutlery. To the left of this arrangement is a dining table made of recycled teakwood, which I picked up dirt cheap from an embassy auction, complemented by four matching chairs.

  Going through a bead curtain, you enter the first bedroom, which belongs to Ma. It has a bed, surrounded by two wooden almirahs for clothes and a metal filing cabinet that is nowadays used mainly for storing her medicines. Ma’s health was always frail; the sudden deaths of her youngest daughter and husband devastated her completely. She just withdrew into a shell, becoming distant and quiet, neglecting to eat and no longer caring about her appearance. The more she retreated from the world, the more disease took over her body. She now suffers from chronic diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and asthma, requiring regular trips to the government hospital. Looking at her gaunt body and silver hair, it is hard to believe she is only forty-seven.

  The other bedroom is shared between Neha and myself. My younger sister has only one goal in life: to be famous. She has plastered the walls of our small room with posters of singers, models and film stars. One day she hopes to be as rich and successful as they. Blessed with a pretty face, an hourglass figure and flawless skin, Neha is shrewdly aware of the economic potential of hitting the gene jackpot, and is prepared to exploit her beauty to get what she wants. It helps that she is also a trained singer with a sound base of Indian music and a great natural voice.

  All the boys in the neighbourhood have a crush on Neha, but she wouldn’t give them the time of day. She has already summed up her future in three letters: B-I-G. And it doesn’t include anyone belonging to the L-I-G. She spends her days hanging out with her richie-rich college friends, and her nights writing application letters for participating in reality shows, talent contests and beauty pageants. Neha Sinha is the poster girl for vaulting ambition.

  She also has a penchant for mindless consumerism, blindly aping the fashion of the moment. Half my salary every month goes in meeting her constantly evolving needs: skinny jeans, glossy lipsticks, designer handbags, blingy cell-phones … The list never ends.

  For the last two months she has been pestering me for a laptop. But that is where I have drawn the line. A ₹800 belt is one thing, a ₹30,000 gadget quite another.

  ‘Welcome back, didi,’ Neha greets me the moment I step into the flat. She even manages to raise a smile instead of the sullen pout that is her default setting whenever I deny her something.

  ‘You know that Acer laptop I’ve been dying to get?’ She gives me that puppy-dog look of hers I know quite well. It usually precedes a new demand.

  ‘Yes,’ I respond guardedly.

  ‘Well, they’ve just discounted it. It’s now available for only twenty-two thousand. Surely you can buy it at this price.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s still way too expensive.’

  ‘Please, didi. I’m the only one in my class without a laptop. I promise I won’t ask you for anything after this.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Neha, but we just can’t afford it. As it is, we’re barely making ends meet on my salary.’

  ‘Can’t you take a loan from the company?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘You are being cruel.’

  ‘I’m being realistic. You have to get used to the fact that we are poor, Neha. And life is hard.’

  ‘I’d rather die than live such a life. I’m twenty years old and what have I got to show for it? I’ve never even seen the inside of a plane.’

  ‘Well, neither have I.’

  ‘Then you should. All my friends go to places like Switzerland and Singapore for their summer holidays. And we can’t even afford a hill station in India.’

  ‘We used to live in a hill station, Neha. Anyway, laptops and holidays aren’t important. Your number-one priority should be to get good grades.’

  ‘And what will good grades get me? Look where you landed after topping the university.’

  Neha has always had this uncanny ability to hurt me, both with her silence and with her words. Even though I have got used to her caustic barbs, this one stings me for its brutal honesty, leaves me speechless. That is when my cell phone rings.

  ‘Hello,’ I answer.

  It is Deenu Uncle, sounding very unlike himself. ‘Sapna, beti, I have something important to tell you. I’m afraid it’s bad news.’

  I brace myself for yet another death in the family. Perhaps of some ailing aunt or distant grandmother. But what he says next is nothing short of a bombshell. ‘I need you to vacate
the flat within two weeks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes. I’m very sorry, but my hands are tied. I’ve just invested in a new restaurant and need cash urgently. So I’ve decided to put the Rohini flat out for rent. An agent called me today with a very good offer. In this situation I have no option but to ask you and your family to find another place.’

  ‘But Uncle, how can we find a place so soon?’

  ‘I’ll help you find one. Only thing is, now you’ll have to start paying rent.’

  ‘If we have to pay rent, we might as well continue to stay here.’

  Deenu Uncle thinks about it. ‘I suppose that’s reasonable,’ he agrees reluctantly. ‘But you won’t be able to afford my flat.’

  ‘How much is this new tenant going to pay you?’

  ‘We have agreed on fourteen thousand per month. That’s a full two thousand more than the going rate. And he is to pay me a one-year deposit in advance. If you accept the same terms I have no objection to your continued stay.’

  ‘You mean you want us to pay you an advance of a hundred and sixty-eight thousand?’

  ‘Exactly. Your maths was always quite good.’

  ‘There’s no way we can raise so much money, Chacha-ji.’

  ‘Then look for another apartment.’ His tone hardens. ‘I’ve to think of my family too. I’m not running a charitable dispensary. As it is, I’ve allowed you people to stay for free for sixteen months.’

  ‘Didn’t Papa also do so much for you? Don’t you have any consideration for your deceased brother? You want his family to come on the street? What kind of uncle are you, Chacha-ji?’ I try to prick his conscience.

  The strategy boomerangs. ‘You people are nothing but ungrateful freebooters,’ he says, rounding on me. ‘And listen, let’s cut out all this uncle sweet-talk. From now on, our relationship is strictly that of a landlord and tenant. So either you pay me the full sum within a week, or vacate my flat.’

  ‘At least give us a little more time to arrange the funds,’ I implore.