The Accidental Apprentice: A Novel

by Vikas Swarup

  The PR lady is not amused. ‘You have some nerve calling me after the way you behaved with Priya,’ she admonishes, before adding, ‘Who’s heard of this Nirmala Ben? We never associate ourselves with unknown brands.’

  Undeterred, I switch to Plan B, and turn to Karan. ‘If Priya Capoorr won’t support Nirmala Ben’s fast, then Salim Ilyasi will.’

  ‘But how do we get in touch with him? I don’t have his secretary’s number.’

  ‘You are Salim Ilyasi. Remember the prank you pulled on me on April Fools’ Day? I want you to do the same for Nirmala Ben.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘I want you to record a message in the voice of Salim Ilyasi, asking people to come to Nirmala Ben’s fast, and send it out to Indus customers as an MMS message.’

  ‘Hold on! You want me to go to jail? What if Salim sues me?’

  ‘We’ll not use Salim Ilyasi’s name. If someone’s voice sounds just like his, it’s not our fault, is it?’

  ‘And what about the company? If my boss finds out I’ve sent this bulk MMS for free, I’ll get fired.’

  ‘I know there is a risk, but this is our only chance. Otherwise, Nirmala Ben dies.’

  Karan takes a little convincing, but, once he’s on board, he gives it his all. I have already prepared a text, and Karan records it perfectly, his voice an exact clone of Salim Ilyasi’s. Even he is impressed at his uncanny mimicry. ‘The hundred million subscribers of Indus are in for a real surprise,’ he grins.

  Three hours later, my cell phone beeps with an incoming message from a Mumbai number. I click it open to be instantly captivated by Salim Ilyasi’s deep baritone. ‘Friends, our country is going through trying times,’ the superstar says. ‘Scam after scam has shaken the confidence of the people. We cannot remain helpless bystanders any more. I have therefore decided to join Nirmala Ben’s courageous fight against corruption. I will be there to support her at Jantar Mantar on Saturday, the ninth of April. So should you. Together we can make India a better place. So do come. It will be funtaastik.’

  I call up Karan. ‘It’s superb! But I am just a little bit worried about the Mumbai number you used. Is it Salim Ilyasi’s actual phone?’

  ‘Are you nuts? I’d be arrested if I did that.’

  ‘Then whose number is it?’

  ‘It’s a nonexistent number, but, if you change the last digit from zero to one, you will get connected.’

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘The Andheri Mental Hospital!’

  * * *

  The plan works better than I could ever imagine. The fake Salim Ilyasi MMS goes viral. Details of Nirmala Ben’s fast are conveyed through blogs, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, till some kind of critical mass is reached. People start streaming into the fast venue from early in the morning of Saturday. They come looking for Salim Ilyasi but then something curious happens. They see Nirmala Ben, this frail old lady carrying on without food for a week, and they stay on, drawn as much to her sheer doggedness as to the prospect of meeting a Bollywood superstar.

  By afternoon the crowd has swelled to eight thousand people, maybe more. That is when another interesting thing happens. Almost on its own, a force of active volunteers forms. They begin constructing a proper stage. Somebody sets up a collection bucket and donations start pouring in spontaneously. The owner of a tent house loans us a huge shamiana, providing much-needed protection from the harsh sun. Someone brings in a portable generator, another a PA system. A group of local singers and musicians joins Nirmala Ben on stage and the air begins resonating with bhajans and patriotic songs.

  Nothing revives a fasting protester more than the sight of cheering throngs. Nirmala Ben is filled with new energy and fresh zeal. She even manages to stand up and give an impassioned speech, calling upon the multitude to launch a new revolution to cleanse the country of corruption. ‘You unmask Atlas, and you strike a body blow against corporate collusion,’ she declares to sustained applause, her voice pulsating with moral fervour and motherly authority.

  After this, it doesn’t take long for the media news cycle to begin. Reporters, photographers and TV news crews converge on Jantar Mantar like sharks to fresh blood in the sea.

  Once news of the fast gets on primetime television, the rush of people becomes a tide. Within a few hours, Nirmala Ben starts dominating the airwaves, even bettering the cricket carnival of the Indian Premier League, which started a day earlier. Panel discussions are hastily brought together on the subject and everyone who’s anyone is airing their views on the fast and decrying corruption in general and Atlas in particular.

  Come Sunday, the protest snowballs into an avalanche. Jantar Mantar Road is completely jammed with demonstrators waving the tricolour and singing and dancing to the rhythm of drums, creating a carnival-like atmosphere. More than a hundred people decide to emulate Nirmala Ben’s fast unto death, including a ninety-two-year-old veteran freedom fighter willing to forfeit his life if the government doesn’t give in. Strangers hug each other and shout slogans hailing Nirmala Ben as a new Gandhi.

  The stream of people continues unabated throughout the day. They come by train and bus, on cycles and on foot. They come from distant villages and dusty townships, from swanky shopping malls and air-conditioned offices. There are Gujjar farmers from Haryana, unemployed youths from Noida, school students from RK Puram, housewives from Chittaranjan Park, dairy workers from Jind, clerics from a madrasa in Nangloi, tailors from Ghaziabad, eunuchs from Yusuf Sarai, and call-centre executives from Gurgaon. It’s hard to imagine a more disparate and amorphous group, united only by its outrage over the culture of graft and patronage. Each and every one of them has faced corruption in his or her everyday life, from the father forced to make a ‘donation’ to a private school to gain admission for his son, to the construction worker who has had to bribe a clerk to obtain a ration card. It is a spontaneous coalition of the disaffected and the dispossessed. Nirmala Ben has become the rallying point for their daily frustrations and unfulfilled aspirations. And ‘Unmask Atlas’ has become the rallying cry of an angry nation finally expressing itself.

  As I watch the sea of fists pumping in unison, as I hear the full-throated cries of ‘Nirmala Ben zindabad!’ (‘Long live Nirmala Ben!’) from the stage, I turn to Karan, standing beside me in a relatively less crowded corner. ‘Thank you.’ I squeeze his hand in gratitude. ‘Could you have imagined this spectacle when you sent out that voice clip?’

  ‘You mean to say I caused all this mayhem?’ Karan looks bemusedly at the jostling multitudes surging to catch a glimpse of Nirmala Ben.

  From the direction of the stage comes the sound of live drumming followed by high-pitched shrieks.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ exclaims Karan. ‘Looks like Desi Nirvana are here.’

  ‘Yes. They are supporting Nirmala Ben by giving a free concert.’

  ‘Spending a Sunday with the unwashed masses of India grooving to a rock band is not my idea of fun. But, then, I might never get this chance again,’ he says as he wades into the milling throng. ‘Come, join me.’

  ‘You go,’ I tell him. ‘Hard rock is not my cup of tea. Besides, I’m waiting for Dr Motwani of Apollo Hospital. He’s India’s most expensive cardiologist. And he’s offered to monitor Nirmala Ben’s health condition for free.’

  News of the swelling support for the fast even draws Lauren’s boyfriend James Atlee, the brand specialist, to Jantar Mantar. ‘I need to get tips from you,’ the Englishman says in quiet amazement. ‘You’ve achieved something that I could not. You’ve turned a complete nobody into an international icon.’

  ‘With a little bit of help from Salim Ilyasi.’ I wink at him.

  ‘Half my office seems to have come here to lend support to the protest. I even spotted my boss’s son a while ago in the crowd.’

  ‘Your boss’s son? You mean the owner of Indus Mobile?’

  ‘Yeah. Karak Junior. He’s only nineteen or twenty, but a right royal mess, I tell you. He’s a complete weirdo, probably
on drugs.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘That’s easy to guess. Everybody’s trying to figure out how that Salim Ilyasi MMS got broadcast on the network.’

  The alarm bell in my head goes off instantly. I start searching frantically for Karan. It takes me twenty minutes to find him, enjoying an ice lolly from an ice-cream stand.

  ‘Want one?’ He grins.

  ‘I just met Lauren’s boyfriend James,’ I inform him. ‘He said he saw your owner’s son, Karak Junior, in the crowd.’

  ‘What?’ His face turns ashen and his smile evaporates. He dumps the ice lolly in a trash can and wrings his hands in a nervous tic. ‘I’m sunk,’ he mumbles. ‘It means Salim Ilyasi has complained and the company’s launched an investigation. Shit!’

  ‘Maybe your boss’s son just came to check out the protest.’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ says Karan. ‘He’s a crazy sonofabitch. When he gets after someone, he never lets go.’

  ‘You think you might lose your job?’

  ‘I’ve covered my tracks pretty well. I just hope my friends in the call centre who know about my mimicry don’t spill the beans. I better vamoose now.’ He spins around on his heels and takes off without even bothering to say goodbye.

  I return to the dais, where Ma is tending to a supine Nirmala Ben. She has turned weaker and painfully thin. Dr Motwani, after examining her, has prohibited her from speaking and exerting herself. He says she won’t be able to carry on for more than two days without food. ‘All the mass adulation in the world cannot be a substitute for nutrition,’ as he put it.

  Late in the evening, the government finally sends an emissary to meet Nirmala Ben. He is a lowly deputy secretary from the Ministry of Company Affairs. ‘We are making every effort to trace the people behind Atlas,’ he says. ‘The process is a complicated one. We need some time.’

  Nirmala Ben hears him out and then holds up two fingers.

  ‘What does this mean?’ the bureaucrat asks, turning to Ma who, willy-nilly, has become Nirmala Ben’s unofficial spokesperson.

  ‘It means she can give you two months, that’s sixty days,’ says mother.

  ‘That won’t be sufficient.’ The official shakes his head. ‘We require minimum eight months to a year.’

  Nirmala Ben waves dismissively. ‘Then go,’ Ma translates. ‘We don’t have a deal.’

  * * *

  Monday arrives and the crowds refuse to go away from Jantar Mantar, throwing the entire traffic in Connaught Place into chaos.

  Beyond its political overtones, the fast becomes a cultural phenomenon as well. Gandhi caps disappear from Khadi Bhandar outlets. Nirmala Ben’s white sari acquires the status of a fashion statement, featuring in glitzy catwalks. Rohit Kalra, the Bollywood lyricist, launches a bawdy remix with the catchphrase ‘My wife’s not kissing, because Atlas is still missing’, which quickly becomes a rage on YouTube. Citizens’ groups all over India begin organising bonfires in which they symbolically burn copies of school atlases.

  By the end of Tuesday, there is only one show in the country: the Nirmala Ben show. The Gandhian’s face is everywhere: in newspapers, on TV, on billboards, T-shirts, caps and ladies’ nails. Just as Amitabh Bachchan is fondly called ‘Big B’, Nirmala Ben is quickly dubbed ‘Big Ben’. Even Priya Capoorr jumps onto the bandwagon. I derive a certain malicious satisfaction in seeing her on Star News, expressing platitudes on how she has always admired Nirmala Ben and wants to join her fast but for the fact that she is presently in Istanbul busy shooting her next film.

  Caught up in the heady togetherness of the people’s revolution, I find Dr Motwani’s latest health bulletin a complete bombshell. Around midnight the cardiologist announces grimly that Nirmala Ben’s health has deteriorated considerably and she could even die if not placed on a drip immediately.

  Predictably, Nirmala Ben refuses to break her fast or accept a drip. ‘If my son can give his life for his country, then so can I,’ she declares gaspingly, struggling for every breath. In a city where life can end too abruptly and too anonymously to be memorialised, the spectacle of a public martyrdom holds a dangerously seductive appeal for her.

  News of Nirmala Ben’s impending death spreads like wildfire. The movement, which was entirely peaceful till now, turns violent. Irate mobs set fire to buses and government vehicles. Protesters clash with police all over the country. Opposition parties give a call for a nationwide strike.

  Faced with an increasingly hostile electorate, and sensing the popular mood, the government tries to seize the initiative, with the Minister for Company Affairs himself giving a written assurance to Nirmala Ben that he will get Atlas investigated and its true identity revealed within sixty days. ‘It is not a capitulation,’ he declares to the assembled reporters. ‘It is pragmatism based on a clear sense of the nation’s interest.’

  At 12.01 p.m. on Wednesday, 13 April, Nirmala Ben ends her fast on live television by accepting a glass of juice from a schoolgirl, and a loud cheer goes up all around the country.

  She is taken to Apollo Hospital immediately, trailed by a legion of devoted followers and a small army of doctors. Ma and I are saddled with the task of winding up the protest and taking her personal belongings back to the LIG Colony.

  That evening, while rearranging her things in B-25, I open her battered suitcase, the one she took to Jantar Mantar. It contains the bed sheet she used for her banner and a couple of her plain sarees, but lurking underneath the clothes are plenty of handkerchiefs, spoons, plates, glasses, hair bands, bangles, lighters and pens. There’s even a doctor’s stethoscope and a men’s Titan watch. Stuff that couldn’t conceivably belong to her.

  I can only shake my head at the discovery. It tells me her kleptomania has not been cured by her fast.

  Big Ben has become a new national icon. But she still has her old habits.

  * * *

  When Acharya calls me to his office on Thursday evening, I’m almost expecting it.

  ‘It’s something to do with Nirmala Ben’s fast, isn’t it?’ I blurt out the moment Revathi ushers me into his private office.

  ‘Correct. You’ve passed the fifth test, the test of resourcefulness, by showing you can be a good problem solver. To make Nirmala Ben’s fast succeed you even navigated the messy terrain of mass politics. That’s no mean achievement.’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t easy.’

  ‘That’s precisely the point. Resourcefulness is the ability to act effectively and imaginatively, especially in difficult situations. A CEO is above all a master strategist. A chess player who has mastered all the moves of his opponent. Leaders who are resourceful make things happen when the chips are down and the situation looks bleak. They are able to operate in the most lean conditions. They never give up. If the wall is too high to scale, they find a way around it.’

  ‘Whatever I did, I did for Nirmala Ben. I just couldn’t allow her to die.’

  ‘You also had the foresight to know that Nirmala Ben was channelling public anger against corruption into its most visible symbol, Atlas. And you made people believe that what Nirmala Ben was doing was worth supporting. The same strategy you used today to build an obscure Gandhian into a popular hero, you can use tomorrow to build a product into a brand. It could be your most valuable business secret when you become CEO of the ABC Group.’

  ‘Well, I guess I got lucky.’ I smile.

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it. You even managed to persuade Salim Ilyasi to endorse Nirmala Ben’s fast. I received a voice message from the actor on my phone. How on earth did you engineer that?’

  ‘Now that’s a business secret I dare not reveal!’

  * * *

  Karan has been avoiding me for the last three days. Whenever I see him he has the preoccupied look of a student cramming for his final exam, with no idle moments to lose. So, when he saunters into the garden that evening, I do not know what to expect.

  First, I tell him about my meeting with Acharya.

  ‘F
ive down, two to go, eh?’ he remarks.

  ‘Look, you know and I know Acharya is leading me up the garden path. I have as much chance of running a ten-billion-dollar company as I have of winning the Miss World crown.’

  ‘I would take issue with the Miss World part, but that’s not important. What’s important is that you must remain one step ahead of Acharya.’

  ‘And what about you? Is the company still conducting an investigation into the Salim Ilyasi MMS?’

  ‘That was the number-one item on the agenda of Mr Swapan Karak, the owner of Indus,’ he responds gravely.

  ‘Did he find out about you?’ I ask with my heart thudding.

  ‘I escaped!’ he grins. ‘Mr Swapan Karak has no inkling I was behind the MMS. The investigation ended today. It has come to the conclusion that the MMS was “a socially useful prank” perpetrated by a group of rogue hackers.’

  I let out a sigh of relief. ‘Phew! That was a close call. You’ve no idea how guilty I felt these last four days.’

  He pats me gently on the back. ‘I can imagine. That’s why I was sorely tempted to send you another MMS, this time in the voice of Aamir Khan in Three Idiots.’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘Just three words. All izz well.’

  The Sixth Test

  150 Grams of Sacrifice

  The LIG Colony runs, like the rest of middle-class India, on an intricate web of ties, relationships, obligations and favours. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Mr Gupta, in A-49, for instance, is friends with a computer expert who meets the entire IT needs of the residents. Mr J. P. Aggarwal, in B-27, is the go-to man for all hardware-related requirements. Mrs Lalita, in C-18, is the busybody with a unique talent for spotting bargains, especially on clothes. Nirmala Ben, in B-25, is everyone’s elder sister (since upgraded to universal leader). And Dr Dheeraj Mittal, in D-58, acts as the colony’s resident physician.

  Every three months we use our connection with Dr Mittal to get Ma’s checkup done in the MCD government hospital in Sector 17, where Dr Mittal works as a nephrologist. He can easily afford to live in a much swankier apartment building but he prefers the LIG Colony because of its convenience. In his Ford Fiesta he can zip across to the hospital in less than ten minutes.