Back in the garage, the team rejoiced. They now had something none of their rivals had … access to the bigger, up market, housing societies!
The next three months were hectic for the entire team as they laid overhead cables connecting terrace to terrace. The Rs 500 installation fee per household was a bit steep and gave them a clear 50% margin. But Roy’s contention that since their market segment consisted primarily of people who had colour TVs at home, they could easily afford the installation charge, proved right. Another thing that was working for them was that the cable connection was becoming a prestige symbol amongst the children and wives of Chembur.
FCN made almost 500 subscribers in the first quarter itself and had become the most popular cable network in Chembur.
The entertainment was planned by Roy. FCN would air one Hollywood and one Hindi movie every day. The movies were repeated in the day slot the next day and new flicks were telecast in the evening. On weekends, popular Hollywood
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soaps like Dynasty and sitcoms like Three’s Company and The Benny Hill Show were aired. Shaukat’s smuggling ring connection ensured that pirated copies of new releases were telecast the very next day and at times before the film was released.
Roy would create film festivals with his innovative scheduling. James Bond Festival, Star War Trilogy, Oscar Fever, Ultimate Hitchcock amongst several others were a huge hit with the English speaking, convent educated, Hollywood smitten crème de la crème of Chembur.
Hindi Films too would be compartmentalised into festivals. The Rajesh Khanna Festival, the Amitabh Bachchan Festival, the Dharmendra Festival, and so on.
That apart, every Saturday at 3:00 am, when the kids went to sleep they would air a made in Copenhagen triple x rated film which was tremendously popular amongst the sex starved Bombayites.
FCN was the only cable network in all of Bombay that had ‘scheduling’ as part of the marketing mix.
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Service was excellent. It was Chika’s duty to make calls to and attend calls from subscribers as well as take their feedback and suggestions. It was a chore he enjoyed because most of the calls were answered by ladies during the day and he could use his charm to great effect.
The excellent scheduling and service meant that soon the subscribers of the rival Raju Cable Network started calling FCN and wanted to switch.
That is when the trouble started.
Raju Mhatre, the owner of Raju Cable network was already peeved when Prakash left him to join FCN. But when his own subscribers started switching to FCN, it was the last straw. Since he knew that FCN’s affiliation was with Bhuria’s gang, he approached Shorty to teach them a lesson.
Shorty was also a bit wary of Venkatraman and contacted his cousin in Behrampada slums in Bandra East and organized a few ruthless history sheeters from there to do the job. It cost Raju Rs 10,000 but his hatred for FCN and especially Prakash made it worth the cash.
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One rainy night as Prakash was headed home on his dad’s old Yezdi, he found a hand cart blocking the narrow lane that lead to his chawl. When he stopped and got down from the motorcycle to push the cart away, he was accosted by the four thugs.
Prakash was no match for the armed thugs and he was beaten up brutally in the narrow lane and left for dead.
Fortunately for Prakash he was spotted lying bleeding and unconscious in a dirty puddle by a neighbour and was taken to St. Mary’s Hospital nearby.
Since it was a case of assault, the cops were called in by the hospital staff. Roy and Chika rushed to hospital as soon as they got the news. Zaheer was already there.
Prakash was in Intensive Care with 3 broken ribs, a broken nose, a dislocated jaw, 2 concussions on his head and in all 52 stitches on his body from razor blade slashes.
“We are keeping him under observation in the ICU, mainly because of the concussions on his
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head,” the resident doctor told them, “we have patched the rest of him up.”
“He is lucky to be alive, another hour and he would have bled to death. Luckily, he is a strong boy!” He continued.
Fortunately, Prakash did not have any internal head injuries and was transferred from the ICU to the regular ward after a couple of days.
Since Prakash could not identify any of the assailants, nobody was arrested. Raju even visited Prakash in the hospital to sympathise.
A few days later, one of Chika’s bar waiter contacts told him that he had heard Raju bragging under the influence of alcohol, how he had taught the traitor Prakash a lesson.
The next night, Mhatre Chawl, the disputed, ancestral property of the Mhatres where Raju lived and RCN had their office and godown was gutted by a raging fire.
Though there were no human casualties, Raju lost his home, his office and all his equipment.
The chawl had a long standing legal dispute with other members of the Mhatre family also
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claiming ownership, hence was not insured. And the media attention on the disputed property led to the Bombay High Court to place the property under a Court Receiver, till the dispute was resolved.
Raju Mhatre was reduced from a landlord and successful businessman to a pauper in just one night.
After a month of rehabilitation, Prakash returned to FCN. A small welcome home party was organised at the garage. In the party Roy announced that the company had hired 2 ex- military Gurkhas as security guards and had purchased a mini-van from the newly launched Indo-Japanese company Maruti-Suzuki. He also said that all employees of FCN would travel at night with security.
The initiative cost FCN all the profit they had accrued thus far, but Roy figured that regaining the confidence of his team was more important.
In the next few months, FCN took over most of the subscribers of the defunct Raju Cable Network and their subscription base grew to almost a thousand.
One of their satisfied customers was an Assistant Editor in the Daily Times, Bombay’s leading newspaper. He wrote an article on FCN and the young entrepreneurs who ran the company
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along with a smiling photograph of the trio. It is another matter that Chika had to take the journo to the bar and buy him drinks and dinner a couple of times under the pretext of researching for the article. In the end he had sealed the deal with 6 months of free cable subscription. Nothing was free in this city.
The article gave them their 15 seconds of fame and recognition, but more than that it established them as credible entrepreneurs.
It was during this time that the FCN office started getting phone calls from a mysterious lady asking for Roy. Chika spoke to her and used all his charm, but the lady insisted on speaking only to Roy. After being teased incessantly by Chika about his mysterious admirer who refused to divulge her identity, Roy finally spoke to her on the phone.
Her voice was vaguely familiar, as she enquired…
“Roy, it’s been a long time! How are you?”
“I’m fine, but who’s this?” Roy asked warily.
Pat came the reply “I’ll give you a kiss if you can guess who I am…”
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Roy could think of scores of women, but he wasn’t stupid enough to fall in that trap.
“I’m sorry madam, though you sound familiar, I don’t think I can place you.” Replied Roy in his most professional tone, but his heart was racing.
“I’ll let you think over it,” the husky voice said, “and I will call you again, same time tomorrow.” And hung up.
That evening as they got drunk, Roy was the butt of all jokes. Roy himself could not get the coquettish voice out of his head.
“I don’t understand this woman…” he confided to Chika.
“Women don’t want to be understood, they want to be loved. It is men who want to be understood.” Chika assured him with a smile.
The calls went on for a week and dro
ve Roy crazy. By the end of the week, he had dropped his tough guy charade and literally pleaded with her to divulge her identity. In the end she relented and told him that she would be happy to have a cable connection installed in her house, but only if Roy himself supervised it.
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Installation was part of Zaheer’s portfolio but both Zaheer and Chika had a hearty laugh and teased Roy to go ahead and fulfil his fantasy with the sexy, mysterious admirer.
“I am sure she is married,” Chika’s voice of experience spoke, “intelligent, good looking and very unsatisfied!”
“Her husband probably has a mistress or another wife stashed away, and she is getting back at him,” theorised Zaheer.
“Polygamy is a wife too many. But coming to think of it, so is monogamy,” Chika replied with a wicked grin.
The next day, she called exactly at the same time and gave Roy an address and asked him to come immediately giving Roy no time to do any ground work to identify the mysterious admirer.
Though he was desperate to meet her, Roy took no chances and drove down with a teen technician and a security guard to the address given.
It was a posh housing society called Maitri Park in Chembur, a cluster of high rise, high
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cost apartment buildings. Her address was in a 7 storey building with an elevator. They had to show their ID cards at the gate, before they were allowed into the complex.
Before he rang the doorbell of Flat no. 702, Roy looked at the name plate. “Sunil Thakkar” it said and it wasn’t familiar… so, with an expression that married confusion and anticipation, he pressed the doorbell.
The door was opened by a young maid, who welcomed them into a lavish, well-decorated living room and made them sit in an ornate teak wood sofa set.
“Madam will be out in a minute,” she said as she served them refrigerated water, “would you prefer tea or coffee?”
“Just water is good,” replied Roy, and it was true, his throat was parched. He glanced around the well furnished room and the 33 inch Sony Trinitron with no cable connection was the first thing that caught his eye.
As he was gazing at the expensive TV set, he was startled by the now familiar, husky voice.
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“Hi Roy, remember me?”
Roy swung around. It was Rita! Rita Godse, Mark’s girlfriend and his Head Mistress’ daughter.
She had put on a little weight, but all in the right places and looked even more stunning than he remembered her in a printed georgette sari.
“Rita…” gasped Roy, “I haven’t seen you in what … six years? Where’ve you been?”
“It’s a long story Roy,” replied Rita, “hope you have the time to hear it.”
Life hadn’t been kind to Rita after Mark’s death. Just as she was healing from the tragedy, Mr Mehra, the Head Trustee had his fourth and fatal heart attack.
Mehra’s death wasn’t so bad; what was bad was the fact that he died in a hotel room while he was having sex with her mother.
It was a terrible scandal and Mr Mehra’s wife and kids went all out to destroy Mrs Godse. She was disgraced and thrown out of the school and the scandal ensured that she could never get a teaching job in any other school either. People sniggered behind her back so much that she became a recluse and a drunk and finally overdosed on sleeping pills to end her life. All she could leave behind for Rita was a note…
“My Dearest Rita,
After your father passed away, I tried my level best to be both father and mother to you, but I have failed you. Please try and forgive me if you can.
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I wish you all the best with your life and hope you don’t repeat the mistakes I made!
Love… Mummy”
Rita knew what her mother had gone through and in a strange way understood why she did what she did.
Though some of her relatives invited her to stay with them, Rita refused their sympathy and lived alone for some time.
Mark had once told her “If you are looking for sympathy, you will find it in the dictionary … right between Shit and Syphilis!”
She missed Mark more than ever. It was during that time that her aunt brought her a marriage proposal from Sunil Thakkar, a rich 38-year old widower with a 10-year old son; she relented and accepted her fate.
Sunil had lost his wife to malaria and needed a mother for his son and an arm candy for himself. Rita needed sanity. It was a compromise that worked for both of them.
Though Sunil treated her well, there was a clear generation gap between them. He could only
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talk of Stocks, Sensex, PE Ratios and Return of Investment whereas Rita loved fashion, films, discotheques, philosophical conversations and passionate sex.
Sunil was a failure in all these aspects.
He would leave home every weekday exactly at 7:45 am to catch the 8:15 am Chembur local train to Victoria Terminus and walk down to the Bombay Stock Exchange as it opened.
He would be at the BSE till it closed at 3:30 pm, then proceed to his investment consultancy office in the nearby Perin Nariman Street and reach home only at 10:00 pm.
He had low sex drive and the puny little tool that he had would last only a few strokes if he could get it up at all. Rita did not mind it because she had never been attracted to her older, balding, paunchy husband anyway.
Sunil’s son Rohan was even more boring. Even at his age, he was overweight like his father, had no love for sports or any outdoor activity and was a geek before the word geek was invented.
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The only time he would speak to Rita was when he was hungry. His school bus would pick him up from the apartment complex gate exactly at 8:30 am, take him to the nearby Our Lady Convent School and drop him back at 3:30 pm.
Rita was bored. The few friends that Sunil had were much older than her and their wives, fat, stupid, horny and openly bragged of their ‘lovers’.
They were wary of Rita’s beauty and kept her at a distance.
For Sunil, Rita was a prized pet. She had all the luxuries she wanted but no freedom. When she told him that she needed to join a gym, the thought of all the able bodied young men at the gym, made him spend Rs 25,000 and install a home gym in the guest room and hire a female instructor to train her. Yes, Sunil was well aware of his wife’s youth and beauty as well as his own ‘short’ comings.
Occasionally, he would take her out for parties in 5 star hotels, thrown by his clients and investment bankers. But it was the same boring
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conversations, middle-aged men with greed in their eyes and fat women showing off their designer jewellery.
So when Rita had seen Roy’s photograph and read the article in the Daily Times, she was immediately flooded with nostalgia. It was in that moment of nostalgia that she had picked up the phone and called FCN.
FCN installed a cable connection in the Thakkar household the very next day. Roy and Rita would talk to each other on phone for hours every day and meet once in a while on the pretext of fixing a bug in the connection.
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