by Dhiraj Singh
Get One Bye Two
DHIRAJ SINGH
Notion Press
Old No. 38, New No. 6
McNichols Road, Chetpet
Chennai - 600 031
First Published by Notion Press 2016
Copyright © Dhiraj Singh 2016
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 978-1-945400-67-4
This book has been published with all efforts taken to make the material error-free after the consent of the author. However, the author and the publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.
No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, a big thanks to my wife Rashmi for managing everything and giving me all the time to write. Thanks to my extended family—my dearest mother, my brother Niraj, my sisters and brothers-in-law, my two handsome sons, parents in-law, Miki mama and Amitabh Mundhra—who supported me in their own little ways. Thanks also to my karmic friend Rituraj who will hopefully read this book.
A special mention of Anil Dias and Shankar who constantly inspired me to write. Special thanks to Ajit, Deb, Nimish, Loyola and RV mates, the Dhinchak gang (especially Venky, Sharma, Jigi, KC, Pills, Anadi, Gups, Shuks), SIS colleagues, Belmonte friends, Rashmi’s friends and all the other friends and relatives who tirelessly promoted my first book. I have to exclusively thank a few special people—Manish Sinha, Ojha ji, Sandeep Vishnoi and Rajiv Anand—for all their support.
I can always count on Atul, Deepak, Piyush, Sunil, Dinesh. Thank you for being there. Nipun and Jayant, thank you for your kind gestures last year.
My heartfelt thanks to Rahul Mittra – a genuinely great person who never ceases to amaze, and reinforces my belief in “good souls”; and of course, Jackie Shroff who is indeed a real life “hero!” My sincere thanks and appreciation also to Randeep Hooda and Gulshan Grover who were kind enough to review this current book. Also appreciate the encouragement earlier for my first book from Prakash Jha and Imtiaz Ali.
Cheers also to my beedu friend Amit Dixit for being there when it matters.
And last, but not the least, a special thanks to the high-energy entrepreneur, Naveen, who is more my friend than my publisher.
PART I
DIVINE PHYSICS
1
The early morning Air India flight from Delhi to Patna was hovering in the skies high above the crowded streets of Patna on Sunday. The plane had already made a couple of attempts to descend but the air traffic control room had still not given it clearance to land. The chief minister was about to board the helicopter to visit his home constituency in a remote village in Bihar, and the short runway was barred from accepting incoming flights. The pilot of the Air India flight was getting desperate. He had to return to Delhi on time to attend his daughter’s birthday.
As soon as the chief minister’s helicopter took off from the runway and gained height before swerving towards the opposite direction from where the Air India flight was approaching, the pilot heaved a sigh of relief. He instructed his crew to prepare for landing. There was a strong wind behind him, prompting a stronger urgency to land fast. The pilot landed on the runway with a speed greater than the usual speed at touchdown. He applied the brakes hard, but it was too late and the runway was too short. The red and white aircraft skidded off the runway and crashed into a jeep parked near the boundary walls of the airport. The jeep burst into flames immediately and the fire engulfed the aircraft in no time. There were cries of pain all around, but they quickly faded into oblivion, even before the fire extinguishers started to spray water on the aircraft.
Anil Saha felt a spray of water on this face. He woke up with a startle and wiped the water and perspiration from his face with a cotton bedsheet. He saw his wife, Romi, standing in front of the bed with a glass of water in her hand.
“Do you want me to throw more water at you? Do you know the time? It’s 10 o’clock already!” Romi chided her husband, with a tinge of affection.
Anil enjoyed his Sunday morning sleep. This was the only day (if Romi allowed) he could sleep as long as he wanted. Anil was a professor of general management at IIM-Ahmedabad. He loved his work, and the students loved him more. Anil spent long hours in his office, even after work hours, doing research, preparing case studies or mentoring his students. So he was always short on sleep and looked forward to making up for the lost hours on Sunday mornings.
“Good morning Romi. You know, I had a very weird dream. It seemed so real. It was as though I was in a plane crash myself.”
“Well, the way you crash on your bed on Sunday mornings, snoring loudly, I witness nothing less than what you dreamt about. Every Sunday!” Romi loved teasing her academician husband.
Anil had grown up in Kanpur. He had always been a brilliant student. After completing his MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad, he got many attractive scholarships from Ivy League universities in the USA to do his doctorate in general management. He had almost made up his mind to join the doctorate programme at the prestigious University of Chicago when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a very difficult period for Anil. In fact, it was the worst period of his life and a very difficult choice lay ahead. Finally, Anil chose to be nearer to his mother in his motherland. He accepted the offer to do a PhD at IIM-Ahmedabad and declined the attractive offer from the University of Chicago.
Earlier this year, on a visit to IIM-Bangalore for a guest lecture, Anil had met Romi Gosain, a young girl from the hilly state of Uttaranchal. Romi, an administrative assistant at IIM-Bangalore, had taken care of Anil’s travel and lodging arrangements. After his lecture, Anil invited Romi for a cup of coffee. After that, they both kept in touch. Within a couple of months, after two visits by Romi to Ahmedabad and one more visit by Anil to Bangalore, they decided to get married. Anil’s mother breathed her last just a week after Anil and Romi were married.
“Your coffee is ready Anil,” Romi shouted from the living room. Coffee had a special place in their hearts.
“Yes, yes. Just coming.”
Anil dragged himself to the living room in his pyjamas and T-shirt and plonked himself on the cushy sofa in front of the TV. He reached for the cup of coffee with his left hand and the TV remote with his right. As he switched on the TV, his fingers started to tremble. He quickly placed the cup of coffee on a side table.
BREAKING NEWS! Air India flight from Delhi to Patna just crashed at Patna airport. All aboard dead.
2
Umar Kaif was born and brought up in an upmarket locality of Delhi’s Vasant Vihar. His father was a senior executive in a multinational company; he had inherited a bungalow in Vasant Vihar from Umar’s grandfather who had moved to Delhi from Uttar Pradesh in the early Sixties. As a child, Umar was obese, but he completely transformed his personality when he entered his teens. Fortunately for him, he too had inherited something from his grandfather – good height and striking good looks. The genes came to his aid when Umar desperately tried to gain a winsome personality in his awkward teenage years. At a birthday party of a neighbour, the pretty, slender girls of Vasant Vihar refused to dance with Umar. That day, Umar decided that he would never walk up to any girl and ask her for a dance; the girls would walk up to him thereafter. He started jogging for ten miles every day, followed by rigorous sit-ups and push-ups. He shunned the rich and oily parathas and biryani that were a staple in his house and had only fruits, vegetables and fish for six months. By the end of the sixth month, Umar looked like a mo
del.
Umar was an average student at school. But he was very popular, especially among the girls, thanks to his good looks and physique. Umar focussed all his efforts on what got him the maximum attention: his looks and his body. A small pimple or a blackhead was given the kind of attention and care that even a terminal illness would not get. He packed his bags for the gym more than his bags for school. He barely managed to get into Delhi University, and just about managed to complete his degree in commerce.
But Umar was a natural model. Very soon, he started getting various modelling assignments. Apart from devoting time to gym classes and modelling assignments, Umar also managed to get a commercial pilot licence. Umar loved two things in life – walking on the ramp and flying in the skies. But somehow he did not look forward to flying to Kullu to shoot an advertisement for a mountain bike launched by a large corporate group. But this was his first major assignment after university, and the compensation was attractive too. So he signed up for it.
Waiting for the announcement for the Kullu flight, he looked at the brightly lit shops at the Delhi airport. Umar thought about what he would buy with the money from the shoot.
Far away in the Garden City of Bangalore, Niraj Roy had just signed a million-rupee contract with a leading timeshare resort owner, Reddy. Niraj was in the business of providing personalised and professional security services to the rich and famous of India. The business was growing more rapidly than he had ever imagined. The rich needed protection of their wealth first, themselves second and then their families, while the famous needed protection of themselves first and then their families and their wealth.
Niraj’s business provided all kinds of security to all kinds of insecurity, including emotional insecurity. Niraj had a master’s degree in psychology from Pune University. He loved talking to people, understanding them, manipulating them and then counselling them. This helped him get more and more business from the insecure rich people and even more from the insecure famous people.
Niraj was brought up in a broken home in the Orange City of Nagpur. His parents, as much as he could he remember of his childhood, were always fighting with each other, shouting at each other or complaining about each other. Niraj was often a mute witness to their fights. He always wanted to get inside the heads of his parents and find out what feelings they had for each other. He wanted to somehow rewire their brain neurons so that he could finally have normal, loving parents.
He would often close his eyes and put his hands to his ears when the fights got ugly—when his parents started throwing slippers and other household objects at each other. During these times, he wanted somebody to weave a cocoon around him and protect him from the unhealthy and violent environment his parents had created at home.
Though Niraj could not get into his parents’ brains or save their marriage, he managed to learn about human behaviour in his psychology classes later. Niraj could never protect himself from the mental scars he had suffered as a child, but he did manage to build a flourishing business protecting others from scars.
Niraj was to fly with Reddy to Kullu and then drive down to Manali, where Reddy was planning to build another resort. Niraj did not want to send anyone else from his team with Reddy on this trip. He was sure that if he spent a couple of days with Reddy, he would understand him enough to seal a deal with him for the protection of his family members and the senior executives of his company. The flight to Kullu was via Delhi. Reddy and Niraj were in the renovated lounge of the Delhi airport waiting for the flight announcement.
Anil had promised his close friends from his MBA programme at IIM-Ahmedabad that he would not miss their annual get-together this year. He could not make it last year due to his mother’s illness, but he was looking forward to the road trip from Manali to Leh this year with his friends.
He had still not gotten over his dream of the Air India flight crash in Patna last month. He was, however, relieved, when he read in the papers about another plane crash in Indonesia a couple of weeks ago.
In one of his personal research projects during his doctorate programme, Anil had statistically shown that there was a much higher probability of a plane crash if there had already been a crash in the past month. His theory was the earlier plane crash subconsciously lingered in the mind of the pilot, making him slightly less attentive, enough to cause the second crash, even if the chances were one in a million. Anil had also proven that after two such accidents within a month, there was a far lower probability of another plane crash in the subsequent month. His theory that after two plane crashes, the pilots became more attentive, preventing another crash (again a one-in-a-million chance). Anil was sure his pilots on the flight to Kullu would be much more attentive than they would normally be. He waited anxiously at the lounge, tapping his feet a bit nervously. Past statistics may be the best indicators of the future, but the dreams of the past are a stronger predictor of the future in some cases.
“This is the last and final call for all passengers on the Fagsun Airlines flight to Kullu.”
Umar, Anil, Niraj and Reddy heard the announcement and walked towards the boarding gate. From here, they were ferried in a bus to where the aircraft was parked. There were not more than thirty passengers that day, and most of them were families on a holiday. It was a small ATF-52 turbo prop aircraft and the passengers had to climb a short foldable staircase to enter the low aircraft. There was no reserved seating and the passengers could sit where they wanted. Anil took the aisle seat at the extreme rear end so that he could go to the restroom as soon as the plane took off. In the row ahead of him sat Niraj and Reddy. Umar was among the last to board the plane. He decided to sit in the rear aisle seat, opposite to the aisle where Anil was sitting.
“Hi, I am Umar,” Umar introduced himself to Anil.
“Anil.”
Anil overheard Niraj speaking in a soft tone to Reddy. “Mr Reddy, flights can be very scary if you don’t have a reliable partner sitting next to you. Just like the journey of life.”
Within minutes, the Fagsun aircraft was in the air. A loud noise emanated from its engines as it ascended above Delhi. For the last time.
3
“Mr Reddy, you look very tired nowadays. Everything okay at home?”
“Eh…Eh… Yes… Yes. Of course, Niraj. But very difficult to satisfy the wife nowadays.”
“Well, one can satisfy others only if one is satisfied with oneself. Are you satisfied with yourself?” Niraj was trying hard to reach the inner layers of Reddy’s big head.
“One should never be fully satisfied. I am never satisfied. I want more growth, more money, but more peace too.”
“I know! You just take care of your growth and money. I will take care of your peace, Mr Reddy.”
“I know I can rely on you with my life, Niraj.”
The flight to Kullu was a short one. Niraj decided to catch a few winks before the landing. Anil and Umar were half-asleep already. There was not much to see outside the window. It was raining heavily, clouding the view from the window.
“Please put on your seat belts. We are experiencing a bit of turbulence. And we will prepare to land now.” The pilot announced over the public address system.
Anil looked outside. He could see high mountains between the clouds. He knew the Bhuntar runway was in a valley surrounded by hills on all sides. The Beas river ran very close to the airport. In fact, it had even flooded the runway once. As the turbulence increased, Anil sat in an upright position, his hands clenched, his eyes closed and his mind vacillating between God and his dream last month.
But Umar was enjoying the ride. He had spent too many hours in the sky to be disturbed by turbulence. Niraj too was wide awake now, after his brief nap. Reddy’s belly was shaking in the turbulence and his teeth were shivering from fear. He held Niraj’s hands tight.
The pilot soon steadied the plane and guided it through a low cloud area. He was preparing to ascend again and rise above the mountain ahead, at some distance. Suddenly, there was a
loud noise, and Niraj shouted, “Fire! Fire!”
The left side engine was on fire.
Umar knew what had happened. It was a bird strike. And the bird had been sucked into the engine at the lower height. He knew the pilot could still manoeuvre and land the plane at the airport nearby. He thought of going to the cockpit to assist the pilot. What Umar did not know was there was a tall mountain just a few miles ahead and the pilot would not be able to get the thrust required to lift the plane above the mountain with just one engine.
Anil knew something was not right. He braced himself to face his nightmare for real this time.
In that brief moment, Niraj felt grateful to his parents for the first time. He was happy they had fought so much and lived so unhappily. It helped him decide that he would never get married and never have any children. If he were to die today, Niraj was relieved there was no one to cry for him.
There was a loud crash, which drowned the shrieks and screams of all the passengers. The plane grazed the side of mountain as the pilot desperately tried to steer it away from a direct collision. The pilot almost made it, but for the rear part. The rear part where Niraj, Reddy, Anil, and Umar were seated. The plane broke into two. The small part of the rear scraped the mountain and the large front part nosedived into the wild forests below, before hitting the ground and getting engulfed in a ball of fire.
Umar was holding Anil’s hand and Reddy was holding Niraj’s hand, as they tumbled down the mountain slope at a rapid pace, faces facing down. The gush of icy cool wind hit their faces like a million small swords. Reddy’s seatbelt could not hold up against the heavy mass of his belly or sustain the heavy jolts when the plane hit the side of the mountain. It broke open. Reddy’s face turned white, from the cold and the fear. The fear of death. He held on to Niraj’s hand frantically. This was his last and final hope.