by Atul Todi
Sobbing with tears rolling down her face, she was happy that he finally found the courage to tell her that he loved her. However, her happiness was short-lived as the thought of him not being able to come back to the US poured back into her mind. She told him that she too loved him, and she had been in love with him since the first time she saw him in the library, but their time was running out. Her parents were not going to listen to her for too long.
While he had been working hard to make his startup click, he felt helpless. To get things done in India was not simple, and everything took way too long to get done. Giving her hope, he told her to hang-in-there, and he would figure out something soon.
He asked her for time, but time was not on his side.
To make her cheer up that evening, he told her that once his startup clicked, he would kidnap her from the US and take her somewhere far away, a place where they could be with each other forever. He even gave her options: Santorini in Greece, Paris in France or the Maldives; all places she was quite fond off. She laughed and told him that anywhere would be fine, till the time they were together.
After that day, when he finally accepted that he was in love with her, things did not go as expected. While he worked twice as hard to make things go as per his plans, destiny was playing with him and testing his patience. More he tried to control things around him, quicker it was going out of control.
Life was starting to mock him for taking everything for granted. Nothing seemed to be in his control, and he started to slowly lose his sense of peace. Hope started to look like the setting sun and his self-belief started to fizz-out.
On the other hand, against her wishes, Tia was forced to meet other guys her parents had selected for her. Her family members started pinpointing at her, mocking her for not wanting to get married and waiting for a guy she had not even met in years. They told her that he was not good for her; she was a doctor and should find someone more suitable. Clearly, a guy running a startup was not looked upon as a good marriage candidate.
Someone running a startup company had nothing to show for his efforts. With no stable income, or assured future revenue, he was a risky proposition for her parents.
All that took a toll on her smile and there was nothing he could do to bring it back. He was already too burdened with his own set of problems to be of much support to her. Before either of them could realise it, they had started to argue and fight.
He knew she was stressed, and there was nothing he could do about it. He wanted to buy a ticket and just go back to the US and be with her, but he had no money. Every single dollar he had, he had already invested in his company. Even his credit card was maxed out. There was no way for him to leave his startup and start all over again.
She just had to wait and buy him more time until he could make his startup work. She promised she would; she said she would do everything it took for them to be together.
Promising her that he would make everything fine and soon they would be together, he didn't realise that his bad time was just starting. While she was counting days, he had no idea what was in store ahead.
With tears rolling down his eyes, Abhay felt silent. His throat was dry and his limbs felt numb, but he continued to walk with Khushi along the riverbed. He had worked really hard to not think about his past for all those years; he had made a pact with himself he won't. Still, there he was, digging into the grave of his past to tell a little girl about his tragic story.
By that time, Abhay and Khushi had walked quite far and reached an over-bridge running across the river. It was still early in the evening, and they had enough time before they had to head back home.
Abhay asked Khushi if she was scared of heights. He had planned to climb up to the bridge from a hidden staircase that was used by railway construction workers to repair the railway lines. She was up for a little adventure, as she wanted to give Abhay some time to breathe before he continued the story.
While she was eager to know what happened next in his story and how he became the writer, she decided to wait. She knew it was hard for him to let go, but she also knew that it was about time that he came out of the cobweb of his past.
They walked up the narrow staircase that went all the way up to a long metal bridge. More than a fifty meter in height, the bridge had multiple pillars supporting it. Railway lines were laid down on the bridge, and it overlooked the river below. Under the railway tracks, there was a cemented passageway made for railway workers to walk and do repair work.
Reaching the passageway, both Abhay and Khushi walked to the middle of the cemented platform and sat down. With their feet dangling from the bridge, on top of them were railway tracks and below them was a fast flowing river. Even though it was completely illegal and quite scary for Khushi, Abhay made sure they were safe there by tying a rope around Khushi's waist and fastening it to the pillar behind.
He had been there before and knew what he was doing. Khushi on the other hand, looked perplexed. After a few moments of silence, listening to the river crooning below and the wind whistling, Khushi calmed down. Abhay sat with his eyes fixed on the horizon, not realizing that he had tears flowing down his face. He had not cried for a while; he thought his heart had dried up over the years.
Wiping the tears off his face with her fingers, Khushi tried to console him and said, "It's ok, its sometimes good to let go, you know. At least you dared to dream…”
After a few minutes of silence, she continued, “ If it brings back sad memories, you don't have to tell me more. I can just make up the rest of the story if you like."
Khushi was a teenager, but she talked like an adult. Her emotional intelligence was way ahead of people her age.
Hearing Khushi's innocent offer made Abhay smile. He told her: "No you don't have to make up any part of my story, I will tell you the whole story as it happened. If you don't like something in it, maybe you can change it."
She did not say anything, just stared back at him and smiled.
"Sometimes I listen to you and think how much you sound like her; always finding something good in everything. Even the way you look at me, it gives me goosebumps." Abhay told Khushi.
"Ok, stop overthinking Bugsy. If I was Tia, I would be sitting here with you. But letting you go, no chance."
Smiling at her, he told her not to blame Tia. The fault was all his. He was the one who screwed up.
He told Khushi that he had promised to bring Tia to India and show her the country. They were going to do a road-trip all the way from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, north to south of India. Being a big foodie, she wanted to try authentic street-food from all over India. But, before any of that would happen, everything changed.
Having become a doctor, she started practicing in a hospital in Atlanta. Staying at home with her family, they pestered her even more to get married. They kept telling her that she was getting old, and her time was running out. No one was going to marry her, once she got close to her late twenties. They even told her that Abhay was not coming back, and she should stop being stupid waiting for a guy who left her for a startup.
She fought with her parents and bought him some time.
Months went by and not much changed. The harder he tried, the tougher it became. Fighting hard to keep his startup from sinking, he met investors and venture capitalists to take his product to the market. He needed money to reach out to customers and also to file for a patent on their technology.
Even in his time of desperation, he tried to stay confident, but in reality he was on the brink. He had been working for almost thirty months without paying himself a salary. All his savings were gone, and he had borrowed money from everyone who was willing to lend. Still it was not enough. Without money, he could not do anything.
Unlike the US, where it was a lot easier to find funding, India was different. Investors did not value the potential of an idea. All that they wanted to know was how much revenue the company made and how soon could they get an exit with huge profits.
A
round that time, there was a major global financial crisis; all the funding sources dried up. No one was willing to risk money on a startup. All investors were looking for safe-havens to stash their cash. They told him to come back when times were more stable, and his company had significant revenue to show.
His startup had no revenue; what they had was a product that could bring a revolution in the market, something that was worth billions of dollars. With blinders on, no one with money was willing to lend or invest in a risky venture.
Slowly he was sinking, but he did not give up. He could not give up. It was not an option!
CHAPTER 10: THE BETRAYAL
"Be stingy with your trust." Tia always warned Abhay. She knew that he was gullible and at times he had blind faith in people he liked.
While Abhay got everything right with his startup, he made that one fatal mistake. He blindly trusted Vivek.
Vivek was a fifty percent partner in the venture. Abhay let him have complete control over the technical development and the coding of the product. While he focused on the technical design, product development and business strategy, he allowed Vivek to build the product. Never in his dream did he think that his partner would betray him and leave him hanging.
Abhay and Vivek had hoped that within the first two years of getting started, they would be cash positive and money would be flowing in. Being naïve, they did not have a contingency plan. Both of them had risked their careers, betting on the startup to be a grand success.
New ideas take time and they both were well aware of that when they started. While everything was going fine, sixteen months after they both moved back to India and started the venture, Vivek got married.
Married to a girl from a well-to-do family, Vivek suddenly could not handle the down-to-earth lifestyle they were living. His wife needed the luxury that he could not afford. Bootstrapping the startup, wasteful living expenses and extravagant spending on a high-rise apartment and a car was not included in their plan.
Being single, Abhay could live without many needs and extravagant expenses. Vivek was under pressure and started to panic as his wife was not used to the struggle of a startup life. She needed it all and was not willing to compromise. Vivek had no options, and Abhay could only give him moral support.
Few months after the marriage, Vivek was not able to hang in there and was frustrated with the constant balance he had to maintain between his married life and his vision for the venture they had started.
It had been two years and a few months since they started. While Abhay was finding ways to get funding for the startup, Vivek talked about potentially selling the idea to a technology company that had shown interest in what they were building. Abhay ignored Vivek's suggestion, telling him that it was impossible. They had worked too hard to give it all away. He explained to Vivek that they were very close to making it a big success. They would be stupid to let someone else run away with the fruit of their blood and sweat.
One fine day, while Vivek was supposedly on a vacation, Abhay got a shocking news in a technology journal: The company that wanted to buy his product, launched exactly the same product they were building.
Abhay found out that Vivek had sold their code, intellectual property and the blueprint of their business model to their biggest competitor. A whale in the ocean, that company didn't waste any time and had filed for a patent on it. Within days, they even launched the revolutionary product and claimed all credit for having built it.
By the time Abhay found out about it, it was too late. Vivek must have made the deal few days before going on a month-long vacation.
It was all over. His partner had betrayed him and left him hanging. The company that bought the code was too big to fight and take to court. There was nothing Abhay could do. After all it was his partner who had sold the code, taken the money and disappeared.
Shocked and stunned, Abhay didn't know who to fight: the company that took the code, his friend whom he trusted with everything or his destiny. Nothing was in his favour.
Going to court would have meant years of struggle for nothing and it would have taken a lot of money that he did not have. He consulted with lawyers, who wrote off the possibility of him winning the battle, unless Vivek was willing to take the blame in the court.
Vivek had blocked his phone and disconnected every communication channel. There was no way to trace him down. No one knew about him or his wife. Even Vivek’s family members, who were based in Canada, claimed to have no information about his whereabouts.
Abhay filed a missing report with the police, but for weeks he did not hear back from them either. Later Abhay found out that Vivek was not on vacation. He was absconding, trying to stay away from Abhay.
"So what did you do? It was your product; you didn't let them take it from you?" Khushi was fuming. She was angry at Vivek for cheating his friend.
Trying to laugh to hide his pain, Abhay said, "Yes, I fought, and I protested for months. First the company that took the code told me that they had been building that product for years and later they laughed at me and called me a fool for trusting my partner."
Slowly, seeing his life slipping out of his hand, Abhay started to freak out. He was scared and broken. He did not know who to trust and who to blame.
Khushi asked Abhay if Vivek at least gave him half the money share that he got from selling the code; that was the least he should have done.
Knowing that Abhay would have killed him if he ever saw him, Vivek never met him after selling the code and the intellectual property. Not sharing a penny from the money he got, he felt that it was his product, and Abhay had no role in building it.
Vivek had no remorse, he felt justified in what he had done, as Abhay failed to raise the fund that was needed to run the company.
A month later, police found some information about Vivek. He had left India to go to the US. Vivek had used the money from selling the code to enroll at Harvard for an MBA and had bought a house with the rest of the money. He and his wife had been planning the whole thing for months, and Abhay had been a fool to not see through their plans.
For months, after his marriage, Vivek had been studying for GMAT and wanted to join an MBA program. His evil wife had been looking up houses in the US, pretending that it was for her friend. Also, both Vivek and his wife were often curious to know how much their startup venture would be worth if they sold it off to a competitor.
Abhay assumed that it was just a joke. He could have never imagined what was going on in Vivek and his wife’s wicked heads.
Once Vivek betrayed him, Abhay was broken. It was all over for him; his years of effort were lost. He was left directionless with no one to turn to.
Feeling sorry for him, Khushi asked, "So you told Tia this right? I am sure she would have understood and stood by you, no matter what."
Abhay said that after what had happened, he just could not tell Tia what had happened. She had tremendous faith in him; he could not bear to see her give up on him and think of him as a failure. Tia was already fighting her own battles, and he did not have the heart to tell her what had happened. Her parents already criticized her for waiting on Abhay, and if they found out about the debacle that had happened, they would force Tia to get married to someone else.
Abhay pretended that he was still working on the project, and everything was fine.
Days after the betrayal, without him ever saying it, Tia knew something was wrong. She tried many a times to find out, but he did not say a word. He continued to act normal, telling her that everything was ok. In the meanwhile, he tried to fix the mess; giving it one last shot. With no money left and his team of developers gone, he tried to launch the site on his own.
It was just too late; the bigger company has the muscle power to grow the business and left him with no chance. With minimal coding knowledge, it was impossible for him to handle the technical issues and keep the site going.
Abhay got no help from any direction. With no hope left, he wanted revenge.
Abhay put the entire code for his project out on the Internet to cause a hiccup to the technology giant that stole his product. Making it free for anyone to use, he made it an Open Source software: anyone could use the project that he spent more than two years to build, without paying a dime.
With the code out in the open, anyone could clone it and start their own social-commerce site. It was a big blow to the company that stole his code. Their patent filing immediately got rejected and before they could capitalize on the whole business potential, copycat websites with the same design, cropped up all across the world.
Smiling at Khushi, Abhay proudly told her that even after the damage he did, at its peak, the company that stole his code was worth in excess of one billion dollars. Completely built on Abhay's initial code, had he not released the website code in the open, that company could have easily been one of the biggest thing that ever happened in the online e-commerce space. Just the way he had imagined.