Digital God

by Nikhilkumar Singh

  Kanu glanced at Darshu. He could tell she was fighting to hold back her tears. He turned off the television and reached for her, his left arm draping around her shoulder. ‘I know all this sounds so terrible, but trust me, this will be over soon.’

  ‘Is it because of me you always get into trouble?’ she asked, as tears started rolling down her cheeks. ‘Last time, when I wrote that piece in DC, you were forced out of Hyderabad. Now, in Mumbai again …’

  ‘Don’t worry. It will be okay. Remember what I said. We have to be safe for a few days. That’s all. Are we okay with this arrangement?’

  She nodded, though she realized with some discomfort that she didn’t have much choice. Strangely, she also found herself grappling with the fear of losing him again.

  ‘I get anxious when I think of the people who are targeting you. They –’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Kanu smiled. ‘I was born on Janmashtami. That’s why my name is Kanha. In short, Kanu. My mom always said I am her hero – and a hero always wins.’

  She turned to look at him again. Finally, she smiled.

  Seven hours after leaving Sathyamev’s guest house, a battered vehicle rolled into the underground parking area of the building. There was no indication that the vehicle had been without a driver or that it had remained parked behind several abandoned vehicles not far away.

  ‘Ambulance is back in its base,’ said Kapu.

  The vehicle could be seen in a surveillance video of the hotel that Pankaj monitored. He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face.

  ‘That’s one part of the story. Now let’s make sure that the drone is also back before it’s too late,’ Pankaj said.

  Pankaj had employed drones for surveillance purposes before. But this was his first experiment with two different vehicles, controlled and operated from a remote location to strike off an enemy.

  ‘I think the battery died. There’s no GPS signal,’ said Kapu.

  Pankaj was not pleased. He punched a few commands on the keyboard with no success. He knew there was little he could do to regain control of the lost device.

  Kanu was focused on this laptop, studying the satellite map of Joggers’ Park. He sat in a padded fabric chair, a few feet away from the bed where Darshu was curled up asleep. There were practical problems he had to resolve before he could consider rest.

  Kanu remembered being followed by some kind of metal device that spun in circles, but it had disappeared suddenly near a lamp post in the Evershine Dream Park. Did the metal bird crash into one of those light poles? Google Maps calculated the distance between Joggers’ Park and Evershine Dream Park, where they hid during the attack.

  Kanu smiled. He had connected the missing dots of the puzzle.

  An hour later, Kanu drove past Viceroy Park that surrounded the Joggers’ Park campus and headed towards Evershine Dream Park. He stopped at a garbage dump, far away from the busy street, and tried to determine where the drone might have crashed.

  After a while, he stepped out of the car and strolled some distance away to another dark green dumpster. It was here that he saw the crumpled metal piece on the ground, just beneath the lamp post. He collected the pieces and calmly walked back to his parked vehicle.

  On the way back, he stopped at a hardware store to get himself the tools required to realign the unit. He bought batteries, solar panels, blades, an adjustable-ratchet, screwdrivers and other essential equipment.

  Kanu carried two big shopping bags in his hands when he reached the hotel room. When he stepped in, he saw Darshu had a water bottle in her hand and was looking through the newspaper laid out on the table.

  ‘Look what I’ve for you! A new phone with a new number,’ Kanu said as he pulled out a box and handed it to her.

  ‘Where have you been? I was worried,’ she said. ‘What’s that, the other bag in your hand?’

  ‘It’s a drone. The same thing that chased us in the park.’

  ‘What are you doing with it?’

  ‘It’s broken. So I’ll fix it.’

  ‘Fix it? Why would you do that?’

  ‘Coz I am taking back the control of this technology,’ he replied.

  The next morning at the control centre of Sathyamev’s guest house, Kapu could see a shaky image on console trying to light up the black screen.

  ‘The drone is coming back to life,’ he informed Pankaj. ‘The batteries must have realigned. I have seen drones bounce back after collisions before.’

  ‘Who is that kid holding it?’ Pankaj asked, looking at the image carefully.

  ‘Must be some street kid. He must think it’s a toy.’

  ‘Can it fly? Can you bring it in?’

  ‘Yes, it’s in flying condition.’

  ‘Great, bring it in!’

  Somewhere in Viceroy Park, a kid in a soiled, unbuttoned shirt was playing with his new toy helicopter. Suddenly, it slipped from his hand with a jerk and, instead of falling on the ground, started to manoeuvre its way up in the sky. The kid looked on surprised as the toy disappeared from the horizon.

  Moments later, the same kid ran towards Kanu, who was observing the drone’s flight on his laptop.

  ‘I let the toy fly in the sky, like you told me,’ beamed the kid.

  ‘Here’s 500,’ smiled Kanu, as slipped the money into the kid’s hand.

  A pixelated image of browns and grays escaping the tall buildings of the city could be seen on Kanu’s laptop screen. Minutes passed, and the flying object inched closer to a five-storeyed building in Malad. It circled for a while before landing on the terrace of the same building.

  The images showed a man pick up the device and carry it to a room, where Pankaj could be seen sitting at a computer. Kanu watched as his enemy picked up the device and tried to inspect the camera.

  ‘Happy birthday, Pankaj,’ said Kanu as he pressed the Enter key.

  A white flash of flame blossomed on the screen.

  At the control centre at Sathyamev’s guest house, a deafening explosion tore through the fourth-floor room. A huge fireball blew out of the windows, shattering the panes, as shards of glass and bone fell to the street below.

  SIXTEEN

  5–12 July 2008

  I

  n a dimly-lit conference room, a middle-aged presenter stood staring silently at a screen that displayed a slide outlining Sathyamev’s financial performance in the North American market. The graph showed a 20.6 per cent growth in the last quarter.

  There were six executive board members seated around a conference table. A bespectacled man in a dark-blue business suit leaned forward, nodding, and then he gently tapped the table in appreciation. The other members followed suit, happy with the company’s performance.

  But Rana, as the leader of the group, wasn’t impressed with the figures. He sighed and shifted his gaze from the cheery board members to look at the presenter.

  ‘Yes, yes. That’s all very good. What’s your name again?’

  ‘Subhramanium Swamy, sir. I’m the head of the North American market,’ came the reply.

  ‘That’s all very good, Subhram Mani. But do you know how the stock market works?’ This was, as usual, a rhetorical question. The boss wasn’t expecting an answer.

  Rana then glanced over at the group of three sitting at one side of the conference table and repeated the question.

  ‘Does anyone here know or understand how the stock market really works?’

  The board members glanced at each other nervously, troubled by Rana’s displeasure.

  As was expected, none replied.

  ‘Raise your hand if you’ve heard the latest gossip of a hostile takeover of Sathyamev by IBMM,’ said Rana.

  This time, everyone present in the room sheepishly raised their hands.

  ‘If everyone here knows about it,’ Rana continued, ‘maybe it’s not a rumour. It’s news, then. Isn’t it? If you must know, our stock price rose more than 12 per cent in the first week of November based on that rumour. Yes, you heard it right
– 12 per cent. But more surprising is the fact that it came down by about 36 per cent – 36 per cent – the very next day after we issued a statement denying this rumour. What does that mean?’

  There was dead silence in the room.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Rana persisted, but nobody was willing to reply.

  ‘Last year, Sathyamev’s stock price has shed more than a quarter of its value, 38 per cent to be precise, despite coming good with the numbers. How do you justify losing 38 per cent of our market value? I am asking you, mister,’ Rana looked at the presenter, ‘whoever you are, how do you justify that?’

  The presenter lowered his head and remained silent. By now the fear of Rana was beginning to spread through the group. The board members had seen Rana lose his cool before and had known things to quickly turn nasty.

  Luckily for them, Samba, sitting next to Rana, stood up and whispered something into Rana’s ear.

  Rana nodded, then swung his feet up on the conference table, leaning back in his chair. The bespectacled board member in the dark-blue business suit looked on passively, trying hard not to stare at Rana’s shiny shoes.

  Rana looked around at the board members, and then eyed the same bespectacled board member in the dark-blue suit.

  ‘Gentlemen, the stock market doesn’t give a shit about what you do. Or what your friend here does. All they care about are the numbers. And that’s what we’ll be doing. Giving them the numbers. Now, coming to the previous question, did IBMM try to buy us out? If you must know, it could have been a rumour. But one thing is sure: we survived only because of our big-time investment in our own infrastructure company, VEMAYHTAS. That was like a poison-pill for IBMM to swallow.’

  VEMAYHTAS was a privately-held construction and infrastructure development company, its name was Sathyamev spelled backwards in capital letters. It was Rana’s pet project and was widely accepted as Sathyamev’s twin company.

  ‘You will learn all about our strategy for the expansion of VEMAYHTAS in the dossier on your desk. We’ve also prepared a press release about our decision to invest a part of our surplus cash in acquiring lands in Hyderabad under our subsidiary VEMAYHTAS.’

  The board members looked at each other in astonishment. But as was the tradition at Sathyamev’s board meetings, all decisions were based on what Rana wanted as opposed to the company’s mission statement of what business demanded.

  Rana stood up finally. ‘You guys can carry on with the presentations. The software business, as you can see, is doing just fine. The press release is drafted and will be issued to the media on your behalf.’

  Turning to Samba, who was sitting next to him, Rana said, ‘Samba, come, let’s go. The board has plenty of presentations to take care of.’

  The board members looked on – a few of them rising from their seats to show their respect – as Rana and Samba left the room.

  ‘What’s happening, Samba? Why am I feeling so low?’ said Rana as he flipped the lever under his office chair to raise himself. Rana was in his penthouse office occupying his usual seat while Samba sat opposite him.

  Samba had seen his brother make some weird moves, change his decision in a matter of minutes, act like an eccentric dictator. But on this day, he was sounding defeated. Perhaps it had to do with the news trickling in from Mumbai.

  ‘Pankaj was an idiot. He could have asked for our support but he didn’t. He paid the price for being overconfident,’ said Samba.

  Rana was deep in his own thoughts, too engrossed to hear his brother. ‘Last night I woke up to the sound of beeping monitors laid out in a hospital. It was as if the prophetic voice of that fortune teller was coming true. I was in a hospital bed, fighting for life,’ said Rana.

  ‘The voice? That was ages ago. You still remember the words of that fake fortune teller?’

  ‘His words have remained with me forever. Strange, I can still recall them so vividly.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry. We are combing each and every hotel in Mumbai. I phoned the chief minister’s secretary, Jagjivan Reddy, yesterday. He said he’s assigning Kanu’s case to a special wing of the CID. There will be no slip up this time.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have let him escape when we first found out about him. Look at the damage he has done to our business. All these years, he’s been at our neck, hurting us. First it was Allsify. Now it’s Sathyamev. Look at this report sent by Ghoshal. Last week, I asked Ghoshal to prepare an in-depth report on the BizzareBazzar.com business model. This is what he has mailed me.’

  Rana slid his laptop towards Samba. ‘Read it aloud, and I will help you understand what it means.’

  Samba carefully studied the screen and then began reading:

  Dear Sir,

  There exists an elite group of stock market analysts who can raise the market or make it drop, simply on the basis of their move or recommendations. As you must have observed, BizzareBazzar.com is one such financial entity. Its mailing list includes no less than 2000-odd big-time traders. The website’s recommendations hold value and acceptance among the subscribers, mostly because of the novelty and accuracy of its recommendations. They seem to know beforehand about almost every move that the stock market will make hours, sometimes days, in advance. In fact, a number of subscribed traders said that based on the mailing group recommendations, their stock picks have returned 158.6 per cent (as of 20 December 2007) since they first started at the end of January 2007. The stock market mid-cap index, by comparison, gained just 15 per cent. Now the question is, what’s the secret to these market-disruptive recommendations? On their website they say that they make recommendations after much deliberation, in-depth research and testing it across multiple algorithm models –

  Rana interrupted Samba. ‘Hacking. He hacks into the system and steals information that no one else is aware of. He can get direct access to the CEO’s e-mail. He knows what’s going on, what’s going to happen next. Okay, read on.’

  Samba continued:

  In reality, it’s all insiders’ information. In our tumultuous times, they seem to know what’s about to happen. Or perhaps, they understand the stock market so well that they can manipulate the market before it takes corrective action. They know how to create greed and how to instil fear, just by passing on the information –

  ‘Yes, it’s all about information. Now, imagine who in this world could have authorized or paid for this ridiculous study, Implications for future growth if IBMM were to buy out Sathyamev by JPM consultants? Imagine JPM being part of the rumour machine. This kid is playing some real pied-piper tunes.’

  ‘So this suggests that Kanu is hacking to dig gold from the stock market? Perhaps, devalue Sathyamev’s stock?’

  ‘What more evidence do you need? Look at the money I lost because of the pressure on margin call? It’s more than 6 per cent of my Sathyamev’s shareholdings.’

  What bothered Rana was the disparity between the price at which he pledged a major portion of his shares as collateral with banks (at a weighted average price of Rs 420) and the current stock price level of Sathyamev, which was trading at Rs 322. It was agreed that if the closing price of Sathyamev’s share price were to fall below Rs 420, such an event would trigger a margin call and Rana would have to provide cash, or cash equivalent top-ups, to compensate. Rana had tried every trick in the book to ensure that the share price did not drop below Rs 420. But still Sathyamev’s prices kept sliding, trading at Rs 310–340. As the share fell below Rs 420, banks started placing increasing demands on Rana to cover margin calls. The only avenue left for him was to pledge additional Sathyamev shares. The margin call trigger had left Rana with less than 6 per cent of Sathyamev’s equity.

  Samba rose from his chair. ‘This explains a lot of things. Could we –’

  ‘Sit down. There’s nothing we must do in a hurry. The damage is already done. And our investment in VEMAYHTAS is not half as bad. The only money that’s hurting is the cash we raised to pay to the chief minster’s son to start his media empire.’
/>
  ‘Yeah, I agree.’

  ‘But on a positive note, the bribe money and official support bagged us all government infrastructure projects for VEMAYHTAS. Today our landholding is worth thousands of crores. It’s better than Sathyamev at this point. I think even after bribing politicians, we are making a killing in real estate.’

  ‘What about the Sathyamev shares that are already pledged?’

  ‘Do you know what “intangible” means?’

  ‘You mean “intangible”, the word?’

  ‘Yes, the word.’

  ‘Intangible means not real or something that you can’t feel.’

  ‘Exactly. Sathyamev is in the business of intangibles. It’s all in zeros and ones. They call it software development; I call it zeros and ones. My Allsify was valued at four billion dollars at one point. Then it became zero. VEMAYHTAS is in the business of realty. It’s real. They call it real estate; I call it our future opportunity.’

  Samba looked at his brother. ‘What about Kanu? We can’t have him do more damage.’

  ‘He cannot. We have hedged our bets by acquiring more land. The stock market may go down; realty never will.’ This time Rana rose from his chair and walked to the edge of the glass window overlooking the Sathyamev campus. ‘There’s this three-day NASSO IT conference in Pune. All we have to do is ensure my keynote is well-publicized all over the country, including Mumbai. Kanu will come flying like a honeybee.’

  ‘You bet!’ Samba smiled.

  ‘But this is not just any desk – it’s the desk on which I, Kanu, Kanha, um, I’m working on. This desk will go down in history as the desk that was used for 38 hours by Kanha. There will be auctions for this desk in years to come,’ said Kanu. He had been on his laptop for hours, which had not gone down very well with Darshu.