The Accidental Apprentice: A Novel

by Vikas Swarup

  And I know then that he is the same old Karan. The Karan who hides his true feelings behind trite banalities. He remains as frustratingly inscrutable as before. Plus, now he has left me yet another riddle to solve. Is a single red rose worth more than a dozen yellow carnations?

  * * *

  Vinay Mohan Acharya summons me in the evening of the same day.

  When I reach his front office on the fifteenth floor, I find a homely-looking South Indian girl sitting on the secretary’s desk. ‘Hello, Miss Sapna. I’m Revathi Balasubramaniam,’ she greets me. Her cheeks dimple as she gives me a timid smile. Before I can even greet her back, the buzzer on her desk rings and I am ushered into the industrialist’s presence.

  ‘What happened to Jennifer?’ I ask Acharya.

  ‘I fired her,’ he grimaces.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She was the snake in our midst, passing on sensitive company information to the Premier Group.’

  ‘My God!’

  ‘It was Rana who exposed her. He managed to obtain the call records from her personal cell phone. We found plenty of calls to the private number of Ajay Krishna Acharya, the head of Premier Industries. It was especially intriguing to see calls made to my brother on the same night we finalised our quote for the national ID-card software tender.’

  ‘So did you confront her?’

  ‘She denied it, of course. Said someone must have forged the call records to frame her. But every thief denies being a thief.’ He gazes pensively out of the bay window at the fading pink sky. ‘An enemy I can forgive, but not a traitor,’ he resumes in a hollow voice, as though in the grip of a powerful emotion. ‘A mistake can be corrected, but, once trust is betrayed, it’s gone for ever.’

  I nod in silent assent.

  ‘Anyway, I didn’t call you here to complain about Jennifer, but to compliment you. You have passed the fourth test with flying colours.’

  ‘And what test was that?’

  ‘The test of foresight.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What did I do to show foresight?’

  He taps the pile of newspapers lying on his desk. Almost all of them carry the exposé of Raoji on the front page. ‘It took a blind man to reveal your strategic foresight. You had an inkling that something was not quite right about Raoji and you made an ingenious plan to unmask that charlatan. Bravo.’

  ‘But how did you know of my role in the matter? None of the papers I have read mentions my name.’

  ‘But they do mention a certain Mercy Fernandez. I got the full story from her. She told me how you were suspicious of Raoji from the beginning. And what you did to save your sister from his clutches.’

  ‘How do you know Mercy?’

  ‘We’ve just hired her as a voice-dubbing artist in our films division.’

  ‘She’ll do very well. She has the voice of an angel.’

  ‘But does she have the vision of a seer? I believe that the only way to prepare for the future is to plan for it. Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. Foresight is the art of reading a situation astutely and anticipating events. It is critical to an organisation’s success. Thirty-five years ago I saw my first computer, the Commodore PET, and I knew instinctively that this machine would change the way we do things in our everyday life. That is when I made my initial foray into the computer business. Today ABC Computers controls 32 per cent of the PC hardware market in India.’

  He drones on for another fifteen minutes on his favourite topic – himself – but I’ve already tuned out. His childish vanity does not make me wince as much as his misplaced belief in my abilities. How I wish I had foresight. Then I would never have let Alka take her life.

  The world is full of godmen and astrologers who claim to know the future. But no one really does. The future is a mystery that is never revealed to us completely; it can only be glimpsed dimly in our dreams and imagination. Foresight is just a glorified name given to the process of drawing lessons from yesterday’s failures and successes to plan for a better tomorrow. It’s a process humans have been pursuing since the dawn of history. And it’s called survival.

  The Fifth Test

  The Atlas of Revolution

  It seems like a cross between Diwali and Independence Day. There are fireworks going off all over the city and the streets are jammed with slow-moving cars honking in approval, trucks full of boisterous tricolour-waving fans and crowds of pedestrians dancing and shouting ‘Long Live India!’ and ‘Jai Ho!’

  Even though it is close to midnight, no one in our colony wants to sleep. Neha and I are also caught up in the excitement of India’s victory over Pakistan in the semifinal of the Cricket World Cup, billed as ‘the mother of all matches’ by the hyperbolic media. All through the evening we were glued to the TV set, on edge until the last over, and then, as the final Pakistani wicket fell, the entire colony erupted in a thunderous celebration of earsplitting whistles, deafening cheers and riotous applause. Mr J. P. Aggarwal, a cricket-crazy hardware dealer in apartment B-27, immediately trotted off to the market and returned with a big bowl of rasagullas for distribution among his neighbours on the second floor. Even Ma, who finds cricket about as much fun as waxing one’s legs, joined in the revelry, unobtrusively slipping a juicy rasagulla into her mouth, ignoring her chronic diabetes and the stern warning of her physician, Dr Mittal, to avoid all sweets.

  There is one neighbour, though, who remains entirely aloof from all the hoopla. That is Nirmala Ben in B-25, our resident Gandhian. I find her sitting all alone in her room with a book of Bapu’s quotes in her lap, gazing at the wall like a prophet awaiting a revelation.

  ‘Nirmala Ben, what are you doing here when the entire colony is celebrating India’s victory?’

  ‘Spare me this madness,’ she replies tersely.

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be such a spoilsport. We’re all going to the roof to watch the fireworks.’

  She reacts as though I have touched a raw nerve. ‘Do you have any idea how many crores we waste in these firecrackers? When millions go to sleep on empty stomachs, when thousands of children die for want of medicines, when entire families live on footpaths because they cannot afford a house, it is the height of folly to blow up money in smoke. And this World Cup, what will it get us? Will it remove poverty and illiteracy from our country? Will it stop farmers from committing suicide? The other day Kalawati’s son Suresh was telling me he prays every day for India’s victory in the World Cup. I pray for good sense to prevail on my countrymen. Sabko Sanmati De Bhagwan.’

  Taken aback by her outburst, I struggle for a response. ‘What is happening in our country these days is truly frightening,’ she continues. ‘Scam after scam is taking place, all masterminded by Atlas, and no one seems to have any clue as to the identity of the man behind this company. Arrey, did this Atlas come from the moon or some other world? Is he invisible like God?’

  ‘They say Atlas is also behind the fake housing-loan scam that the CBI unearthed last week,’ I add, recalling the lead item in today’s news.

  ‘Bahut thaigyoo. Enough is enough,’ she declares. ‘I cannot just sit back and watch this loot and plunder of national wealth. This isn’t what Bapu fought and died for.’

  ‘And what do you propose to do?’

  ‘I was still searching for a way, till a seer from Rishikesh came to see me and illuminated my path.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘“Shake the world gently”, he told me.’

  ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘I will launch a people’s revolution. That is the only way of stamping out the cancer of corruption and exposing the forces behind Atlas.’

  ‘So are you going to take out a rally or something?’

  ‘No. I will sit on a fast unto death till the government concedes my demand for a thorough probe into Atlas Investments.’

  The alarm bell in my head begins ringing instantly. I try to dissuade her. ‘Don’t do this, Nirmala Ben. A fast unto death is not a one-day token agitation.’ />
  ‘Who said it was?’ she replies, surprised at my remark. ‘There are only two results possible when a satyagrahi resorts to a fast unto death. Either the government will have to bend, or it will have to remove my dead body. A revolution, after all, demands a martyr.’

  ‘A revolution also needs followers, and an organisation. You have neither.’

  ‘But I have myself.’ She smiles as though emphasising the self-evident nature of her statement. ‘And if you have yourself you don’t need anyone else. It takes just one person to make a difference.’ In a soft mellow voice she begins singing, ‘Jodi tor dak shune keu na ashe tobe ekla cholo re’ (‘If they answer not to thy call, walk alone’), from a Bengali song by Rabindranath Tagore, which was a favourite of Gandhi’s.

  As her soulful voice fills the room, I am left hoping she will not carry out her pledge to walk alone. Because, however good a singer Mrs Nirmala Mukherjee Shah may be, her lone voice will not be sufficient to shake the world gently.

  * * *

  Friday, 1 April, begins like a normal day of work. My first customer of the morning is an overly polite Sikh businessman with a well-kept beard and moustache. He has almost decided on buying a Panasonic Viera 50-inch plasma TV. ‘It’s for my son Randeep,’ he tells me. ‘The boy insists he will watch tomorrow’s World Cup final only on a big-screen TV.’ I nod sympathetically and begin explaining the merits of an extended warranty to him, when my Indus cell phone buzzes.

  I pull the phone out of my skirt pocket and frown at the screen. These days, 70 per cent of calls on my cell are by unsolicited telemarketers and when I see a number I don’t recognise I usually don’t even bother to answer. The caller ID displays a landline number starting with +22, the code for Mumbai. Intrigued, I press the talk button. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, can I speak to Miss Sapna Sinha?’ says a familiar-sounding voice on the other end.

  ‘This is Sapna.’

  ‘Sapna-ji, I am Salim Ilyasi, calling you from Mumbai.’

  Of course! How could I forget that deep, masculine voice, which has seduced millions of filmgoers. Salim Ilyasi is the reigning King of Bollywood and the heartthrob of practically every young girl in India. That the superstar would deign to speak to me out of the blue sounds strange, but so many strange things have been happening to me lately that nothing truly surprises me any longer.

  ‘Congratulations! You have been selected as Indus Mobile’s lucky customer of the month. Which means you will be having an exclusive dinner with me on Sunday, the tenth of April, at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi. Do we have a date?’

  Salim Ilyasi wants to have dinner with me. Me? A tidal wave of euphoria surges through my body, sweeping away every rational thought in my head. I have always fancied myself as a hardboiled realist, immune to the cult of celebrity. But in that extravagant moment my brain collapses into a quivering mass of jelly. Which contest was Indus running? How did I manage to win it? All such mundane considerations go out of the window as I regress into adolescent schoolgirl fantasies of hero worship. ‘Y-yes,’ I blabber, feeling a flush spreading over my skin. ‘I … I … would love that.’

  ‘Now that’s what I call funtaastik,’ he exults, repeating an expression he made famous in Love in Bangkok. ‘But there is one problem. How will I recognise you?’

  ‘I … I will wear something distinctive.’

  ‘Yes. Do that. My favourite colour is yellow. Do you have something in yellow?’

  I think quickly, rotating through my meagre salvar suit collection in my head. ‘Er … I don’t think I have a yellow outfit, but I can buy one.’

  ‘No need to do that. I’ll tell you what. You wear whatever you want. Just attach a little yellow Post-it at the top.’

  ‘Post-it?’

  ‘Yes, with the letters A-P-R-I-L-F-O-O-L imprinted on it. You got that?’

  It is only then that I get it. ‘Karan Kant, it is you, isn’t it?’

  A hearty chuckle emanates from the other end of the line. ‘Fooled you, didn’t I?’

  I can almost picture him rolling on the floor, clutching his belly with laughter. My own naïveté, my utter credulousness, makes me cringe.

  ‘I’m going to kill you!’ I scream at Karan.

  ‘Now that won’t be so funtaastik,’ he says by way of a parting repartee before ending the call.

  As I stash away my cell phone, I find my first customer of the day scurrying towards the exit. ‘Hey, Mr Singh! Where are you off to?’ I call out to him.

  He pauses momentarily and gives me the derisive, pitying look that a sane person gives a lunatic. Then he bolts out the door.

  * * *

  Karan has a twinkle in his eyes when I encounter him in the colony’s courtyard later that evening.

  ‘You cheat!’ I punch him playfully in the ribs. ‘Your impersonation of Salim Ilyasi was so spot on, I didn’t think for a second it could be someone else.’

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation to you, I tried the same prank with ten other Indus customers. They didn’t catch on either. We had a good laugh in the call centre over my April Fool joke.’

  ‘But how could you fake the Mumbai number? That’s what made me believe the call was genuine.’

  ‘It’s called spoofing. Since we control the network, we can make any number appear on our customers’ caller IDs.’

  Just then Neha wanders in. ‘What are you doing here?’ she addresses Karan. ‘They are looking for you all over the place.’

  ‘Who?’ asks Karan.

  ‘The police. There’s an inspector with two constables.’

  ‘What?’ he croaks, his face tight with worry.

  ‘Why would the police be looking for you?’ I wonder, my voice dripping with concern.

  ‘I have no idea. There … there is bound to be some kind of mistake.’

  ‘Anyway, you better go and sort it out,’ says Neha. ‘They are banging on your door, about to break it down.’

  ‘No!’ Karan lets out an anguished scream. ‘Don’t allow them to enter my room.’ He charges up the stairs, two at a time, loping with an athlete’s long strides. Neha and I follow him in hot pursuit.

  I am completely exhausted by the time we wheeze onto the tiny landing of the third floor. Karan turns the corner, beyond which lies apartment B-35, and freezes. There is no one in the corridor.

  ‘Looks like the police have already gone inside,’ says Neha.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Karan murmurs, stepping back into the shadows, and pressing his back against the wall.

  ‘Don’t you want to check?’ I ask, prodding him.

  With uncertain steps he approaches his door. Only then does he see the poster stuck just below the peephole. It shows a jester holding up a placard which reads, ‘HAPPY APRIL FOOLS’ DAY!’

  ‘Gotcha!’ Neha lets out a triumphant whoop as Karan begins scratching his head in embarrassed chagrin. ‘Two can play at a game.’ She gives him a meaningful glance before hurrying down the stairs.

  ‘Neha Sinha, you’ll pay for this,’ Karan growls in the voice of Prakash Puri, the famous villain, and scrambles behind her, giving chase.

  I watch this little byplay in amused, tolerant silence. Karan must have called Neha as well, pretending to be Salim Ilyasi, I realise. She has now got her own back. Then why does it feel as if the April Fool joke was on me?

  * * *

  The sun that rises on 2 April is a special one, carrying with it the hopes of a billion Indians. India is playing Sri Lanka in tonight’s Cricket World Cup final, and the entire country is praying for the team’s victory.

  Cricket is the only subject of conversation in the showroom. There is a feeling of surging excitement and expectation in the air. Such is the craze for the match that half the staff have taken leave to watch it.

  Just after lunch, Madan summons me to his cubicle. ‘I need a favour,’ he says with a grin.

  ‘What is it now?’ I ask. ‘Are you planning to send me to yet another village?’

  ‘No, no, nothing like that. Some
one has just ordered a Sony KDL-65. I need you to do an urgent HVD.’

  HVD is store code for high-value delivery. It is the policy of Gulati & Sons that for any delivery above ₹200,000, a sales employee has to personally accompany the item to ensure that it has been delivered safely and obtain the customer’s signature on a pre-installation checklist.

  ‘You know I don’t do deliveries,’ I grumble. ‘Why don’t you send one of the boys?’

  ‘Two of them are out and the remaining are on leave. Please, it’ll take you just thirty minutes, and I can throw in a bonus.’

  ‘What bonus?’

  ‘After the delivery you can go home, watch the final.’

  The offer is certainly tempting. ‘What’s the delivery address?’

  He consults the order sheet. ‘It says Plot Number 133-C, Poorvi Marg, Vasant Vihar.’

  ‘What’s the name of the customer?’

  ‘That’s not been told to me. Apparently it’s a birthday gift for someone and they want to keep it hush-hush.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘I’ll do it.’

  * * *

  Ten minutes later I am sitting in the front seat of the delivery vehicle, a battered Bajaj Tempo, driven by Sharad, one of our oldest drivers. The forty-minute ride to the delivery address is bumpy, noisy and hot, the vehicle’s air conditioning having long since conked out.

  Vasant Vihar, in southwest Delhi, is reputed to be one of the most expensive residential areas in the world, and only millionaires can afford to live there. When we reach the delivery address, however, we discover that we have arrived at the residence of a billionaire.

  A team of guards in blazers and sunglasses, equipped with walkie-talkies and earpiece microphones, stop us outside high automated gates bristling with security-camera systems. Our order sheet is carefully examined before we are allowed to proceed to the guard post, where there are further checks. The Tempo is scanned for hidden bombs and Sharad has to open his bonnet and boot for inspection. Finally, the gates are opened and we enter the grounds.