Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition

  ‘Happy birthday again, bye!’ she said.

  A number of birthday messages popped into my inbox. They came from various contractors, inspectors and government officials I had pleased in the past. The only other personal message was from Shukla-ji, who called me up.

  ‘May you live a thousand years,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks, you remembered?’ I replied.

  ‘You are like my son,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, Shukla-ji, and good night,’ I said.

  I switched off the lights. I tried to sleep before the big day tomorrow.

  39

  ‘Enough, enough,’ I said as the tenth student fed me cake.

  We had assembled in the foyer of the main campus building. The staff and students had come to wish me. The faculty gave me a tea-set as a gift. The students sang a prayer song for my long life.

  ‘Sir, we hope for your next birthday there will be a Mrs Director on campus,’ Suresh, a cheeky first-year student, announced in front of everyone, leading to huge applause. I smiled and checked the time. It was two o’ clock. I thanked everyone with folded hands.

  I left the main building to walk home.

  Happy birthday!: Aarti messaged me.

  Where are you?: I asked.

  Double shift just started. ☹, she sent her response.

  Vinod called me at 2:15. My heart raced.

  ‘Hi,’ I said nervously.

  ‘The girls are in a white Tata Indica. They are on the highway, will reach campus in five minutes.’

  ‘I’ll inform the gate,’ I said.

  ‘You will pay cash?’

  ‘Yes. Why, you take credit cards?’ I said.

  ‘We do, for foreigners. But cash is best,’ Vinod said.

  I asked my maids to go to their quarters and not disturb me for the next four hours. I called the guard-post and instructed them to let the white Indica in. I also told them to inform me if anyone else came to meet me.

  The bell rang all too soon. I opened the front door to find a creepy man. Two girls stood behind him. One wore a cheap nylon leopard-print top and jeans. The other wore a purple lace cardigan and brown pants. I could tell these girls didn’t find western clothes comfortable. Perhaps it helped them fetch a better price.

  The creepy man wore a shiny blue shirt and white trousers.

  ‘These are fine?’ he asked me, man to man.

  I looked at the girls’ faces. They had too much make-up on for early afternoon. However, I had little choice.

  ‘They are okay,’ I said.

  ‘Payment?’

  I had kept the money ready in my pocket. I handed a bundle of notes to him.

  ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ he said.

  ‘Outside the campus, please,’ I said. The creepy man left. I nodded at the girls to follow me. Inside, we sat on the sofas.

  ‘I’m Roshni. You are the client?’ the girl in the leopard print said. She seemed more confident of the two.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘For both of us?’ Roshni said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  Roshni squeezed my shoulder.

  ‘Strong man,’ she said.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I said.

  ‘Pooja,’ the girl in the hideous purple lace said.

  ‘Not your real names, right?’ I said.

  Roshni and Pooja, or the girls who called themselves that, giggled.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said.

  Roshni looked around. ‘Where do we do it?’

  ‘Upstairs, in the bedroom,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s go then,’ Roshni said, very focused on work.

  ‘What’s the hurry?’ I said.

  Pooja was the quieter of the two but wore a fixed smile as she waited for further instructions.

  ‘Why wait?’ Roshni said.

  ‘I have paid for the entire afternoon. We’ll go upstairs when it is time,’ I said.

  ‘What do we do until then?’ Roshni said, a tad too aggressive.

  ‘Sit,’ I said.

  ‘Can we watch TV?’ Pooja asked meekly. She pointed to the screen. I gave them the remote. They put on a local cable channel that was playing Salman Khan’s Maine Pyaar Kiya. We sat and watched the movie in silence. The heroine told the hero that in friendship there is ‘no sorry, no thank you,’ whatever that meant. After a while, the heroine burst into song, asking a pigeon to take a letter to the hero. Roshni started to hum along.

  ‘No singing, please,’ I said.

  Roshni seemed offended. I didn’t care. I hadn’t hired her for her singing skills.

  ‘Do we keep sitting here?’ Roshni said at three-thirty.

  ‘It’s okay, didi,’ Pooja said, who obviously loved Salman too much. I was surprised Pooja called her co-worker sister, considering what they could be doing in a while.

  The movie ended at 4 p.m.

  ‘Now what?’ Roshni said.

  ‘Switch the channel,’ I suggested.

  The landline rang at four-thirty. I ran to pick up the phone.

  ‘Sir, Raju from security gate. A madam is here to see you,’ he said.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I said.

  ‘She is not saying, sir. She has some packets in her hand.’

  ‘Send her in two minutes,’ I said. I calculated she would be here in five minutes.

  ‘Okay, sir,’ he said.

  I rushed out and left the main gate and the front door wide open. I turned to the girls.

  ‘Let’s go up,’ I said.

  ‘What? You in the mood now?’ Roshni giggled.

  ‘Now!’ I snapped my fingers. ‘You too, Pooja, or whoever you are.’

  The girls jumped to their feet, shocked by my tone. The three of us went up the stairs. We came to the bedroom, the bed.

  ‘So, how does this work?’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Roshni said. ‘Is it your first time?’

  ‘Talk less and do more,’ I said. ‘What do you do first?’

  Roshni and Pooja shared a look, mentally laughing at me.

  ‘Remove your clothes,’ Roshni said.

  I took off my shirt.

  ‘You too,’ I said to both of them. They hesitated for a second, as I had left the door slightly ajar.

  ‘Nobody’s home,’ I said.

  The girls took off their clothes. I felt too tense to notice any details. Roshni clearly had the heavier, bustier frame. Pooja’s petite frame made her appear malnourished.

  ‘Get into bed,’ I ordered.

  The two, surprised by my less than amorous tone, crept into bed like scared kittens.

  ‘You want us to do it?’ Roshni asked, trying to grasp the situation. ‘Lesbian scene?’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. I ran to the bedroom window. I saw a white Ambassador car with a red light park outside. Aarti stepped out, and rang the bell once. When nobody answered, she came on to the lawn. She had a large scrapbook in her hand, along with a box from the Ramada bakery. I lost sight of her as she came into the house.

  40

  ‘You are a strange customer,’ Roshni commented.

  ‘Shh!’ I said and slid between the two naked women.

  Roshni quickly began to kiss my neck as Pooja bent to take off my belt.

  I started to count my breaths. On my fiftieth exhale I heard footsteps. By now the girls had taken off my belt most expertly and were trying to undo my jeans. On my sixtieth inhale came the knock on the door. On my sixty-fifth breath I heard three women scream at the same time.

  ‘Happy birt … Oh my God!’ Aarti’s voice filled the room.

  Roshni and Pooja gasped in fear and covered their faces with the bed-sheet. I sat on the bed, looking suitably surprised. Aarti froze. The hired girls, more prepared for such a situation, ran into the bathroom.

  ‘Gopal!’ Aarti said on a high note of disbelief.

  ‘Aarti,’ I said and stepped out of bed. As I re-buttoned my jeans and wore my shirt, Aarti ran out of the room.

  I followed her down the stairs. She ran down fast,
dropping the heavy gifts midway. I navigated past a fallen cake box and scrapbook to reach her. I grabbed her elbow as she almost reached the main door.

  ‘Leave my hand,’ Aarti said, her mouth hardly moving.

  ‘I can explain, Aarti,’ I said.

  ‘I said don’t touch me,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not what you think it is,’ I said.

  ‘What is it then? I came to surprise you and this is how I found you. Who knows what … I haven’t seen anything, anything, more sick in my life,’ Aarti said and stopped. She shook her head. This was beyond words.

  She burst into tears.

  ‘MLA Shukla sent them, as a birthday gift,’ I said.

  She looked at me again, still shaking her head, as if she didn’t believe what she had seen or heard.

  ‘Don’t get worked up. Rich people do this,’ I said.

  Slap!

  She hit me hard across my face. More than the impact of the slap, the disappointed look in her eyes hurt me more.

  ‘Aarti, what are you doing?’ I said.

  She didn’t say anything, just slapped me again. My hand went to my cheek in reflex. In three seconds, she had left the house. In ten, I heard her car door slam shut. In fifteen, her car had left my porch.

  I sank on the sofa, both my knees useless.

  Pooja and Roshni, fully dressed, came down by and by. Pooja picked up the cake box and the scrapbook from the steps. She placed them on the table in front of me.

  ‘You didn’t do anything with us, so why did you call a third girl?’ Roshni demanded to know.

  ‘Just leave,’ I told them, my voice low.

  They called their creepy protector. Within minutes I was alone in my house.

  I sat right there for two hours, till it became dark outside. The maids returned and switched on the lights. They saw me sitting and didn’t disturb me.

  The glitter on the scrapbook cover shone under the lights. I picked it up.

  ‘A tale of a naughty boy and a not so naughty girl,’ said the black cover, which was hand-painted in white. It had a smiley of a boy and a girl, both winking.

  I opened the scrapbook.

  ‘Once upon a time, a naughty boy stole a good girl’s birthday cake,’ it said on the first page. It had a doodle of the teacher scolding me and of herself, Aarti, in tears.

  I turned the page.

  ‘The naughty boy, however, became the good girl’s friend. He came for every birthday party of hers after that,’ said the text. The remaining album had pictures from all her seven birthday parties that I had attended, from her tenth to her sixteenth. I saw how she and I had grown up over the years. In every birthday party, she had at least one picture with just the two of us.

  Apart from this, Aarti had also meticulously assembled silly memorabilia from school. She had the class VII timetable, on which she drew horns above the maths classes. She had tickets from the school fete we had in class IX. She had pasted the restaurant bill from the first time we had gone out in class X. She had torn a page from her own slam book, done in class VIII, in which she had put my name down as her best friend. She ended the scrapbook with the following words:

  ‘Life has been a wonderful journey so far with you. Looking forward to a future with you – my soulmate. Happy birthday, Gopal!’

  I had reached the end. On the back cover, she had calligraphed ‘G & A’ in large letters.

  I wanted to call her, that was my first instinct. I wanted to tell her how amazing I found her present. She must have spent weeks on it …

  I opened the cake box.

  The chocolate cake had squished somewhat, but I could make out the letters:

  ‘Stolen: My cake and then my heart,’ it said in white, sugary icing, with ‘Happy birthday, Gopal’ inscribed beneath it.

  I pushed the cake box away. The clock struck twelve.

  ‘Your birthday is over, Gopal,’ I said loudly to the only person in the room.

  Even though I had promised myself I wouldn’t, I called Aarti the next day. However, she did not pick up.

  I tried several times over the course of the week, but she wouldn’t answer.

  Once she picked up by accident.

  ‘How are you?’ I said.

  ‘Please stop calling me,’ she said.

  ‘I am trying not to,’ I said.

  ‘Try harder,’ she said and hung up.

  I wasn’t lying. I was trying my best to stop thinking of her. Anyway, I had a few things left to execute my plan.

  I called Ashok, the Dainik editor.

  ‘Mr Gopal Mishra?’ he said.

  ‘How’s the paper doing?’ I said.

  ‘Good. I see you advertise a lot with us. So thank you very much.’

  ‘I need to ask for a favour,’ I said to the editor.

  ‘What?’ the editor said, wondering if I would ask to suppress a story.

  ‘I want you to hire someone,’ I said. ‘He’s good.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Raghav Kashyap.’

  ‘The trainee we fired?’ the editor said. ‘Your MLA Shukla made us fire him.’

  ‘Yeah, hire him back.’

  ‘Why? And he started his own paper. He did that big Dimnapura plant story. Sorry, we had to carry it. Everyone did.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Can you re-hire him? Don’t mention my name.’

  The editor thought it over. ‘I can. But he is a firebrand. I don’t want you to be upset again.’

  ‘Keep him away from education. Rather, keep him away from scandals for a while.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ the editor said. ‘Will he join? He has his paper.’

  ‘His paper is almost ruined. He has no job,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, I will call him,’ the editor said.

  ‘I owe you one. Book front page for GangaTech next Sunday,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you, I will let marketing know.’

  A week after my birthday Bedi came to my office with two other consultants. They had a proposal for me to open a Bachelor of Management Studies course. Dean Shrivastava also came in.

  ‘MBA is in huge demand. However, that is after graduation. Why not offer something before?’ Bedi said. The consultant showed me a presentation on their laptop. The slides included a cost-benefit analysis, comparing the fees we could charge, versus the faculty costs.

  ‘Business Management Studies (BMS) is the best. You can charge as much as engineering, but you don’t need facilities like labs,’ one consultant said.

  ‘Faculty is also easy. Take any MCom or CA types, plenty of them available,’ said the other.

  I drifted off. I didn’t care about expansion anymore. I didn’t see the point of the extra crore we could make every year. I didn’t even want to be in office.

  ‘Exciting, isn’t it?’ Bedi said.

  ‘Huh? Yeah, can we do it some other time?’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ Bedi said. Then he saw my morose face.

  ‘Yes, we can come again,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s meet next week. Or whenever you have time.’

  Bedi and his groupies left the room.

  ‘Director Gopal, are you not feeling well?’ the dean said.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I said.

  ‘Sorry to say, but you haven’t looked fine all week. It’s not my business, but I am older. Anything I can help with?’

  ‘It’s personal,’ I said, my voice firm.

  ‘You should get married, sir. The student was right,’ he chuckled.

  ‘Are we done?’ I said.

  That cut his smile short. In an instant, he stood up and left.

  My cellphone beeped. I had an SMS from Sailesh, marketing head of Dainik:

  Raghav accepted the offer. He joins tomorrow.

  Great, thank you very much, I replied.

  Hope our association becomes even stronger. Thank you for booking Sunday, texted Sailesh.

  41

  The arrival of a black Mercedes in the Dainik office caused a minor flutter among the guards. A big car
ensures attention. I stepped out and put on my new sunglasses. I went to the receptionist in the lobby.

  ‘I am here to meet Raghav Kashyap,’ I said, and gave her my business card.

  The receptionist couldn’t locate him. Sailesh saw me from the floor above, and came running down the steps.

  ‘Gopal bhai? You should have informed me. What are you waiting here for?’

  ‘I want to meet Raghav,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ he said, ‘please come with me.’

  We walked up to Raghav’s cubicle. An IT guy crouched under his desk, setting up his computer. Raghav had bent down as well to check the connections.

  ‘You re-joined here?’ I said.

  Raghav turned around. ‘Gopal?’ he said and stood up.

  ‘I had come to the marketing department and saw you.’ I turned to Sailesh. ‘Thank you, Sailesh.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sailesh said. ‘See you, Gopal bhai.’

  After he left, Raghav said, ‘It’s strange. The editor called me himself. I had no money anyway. Thought I will rejoin until I have enough to re-launch Revolution 2020.’

  ‘Can we go for a cup of tea?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  We walked up to the staff canteen on the second floor. Framed copies of old newspaper issues adorned the walls. Dozens of journalists sat with their dictaphones and notebooks, enjoying evening snacks. I could tell Raghav felt out of place.

  ‘I’m used to a small office now, Dainik is huge,’ he said. He bought two plates of samosas and tea. I offered to pay but he declined.

  ‘Cog-in-the-wheel feeling, eh?’ I said.

  ‘Not only that. The stuff we did at Revolution 2020, I can never do that here,’ he said.

  The stuff you did at your paper, I wanted to tell him, led to premature bankruptcy. However, I hadn’t come here to put him down.

  ‘It’s nice to have a job. Plus, you like journalism,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why I took it. A six-month trial for now.’

  ‘Only six months?’

  ‘They want me to edit other people’s stories. It is supposed to be more senior in title, but I like being a reporter. Let’s see.’

  ‘A job pays the bills. Of course, it helps to be employed if you want to get married,’ I said.

  Raghav laughed. We hadn’t talked about personal stuff for years. However, he didn’t doubt my goodwill. That’s the thing with Raghav. He could unearth the biggest scams, but at another level, he trusted people so easily.