Rajan looked at his watch.
‘Are you getting late?’ Abhishek asked.
‘No, brother. In our business, you don’t get late – you are always late. I have a meeting with the boss. But our conversation isn’t over. Let’s meet soon.’
T
he villages of Mehrauli sat for decades, unnoticed, on the edges of south Delhi’s affluence. They were sprawling agricultural lands, scattered with mud huts and shanties where old men, sporting white turbans, kurtas and dhotis, smoked hookahs on scorching summer afternoons in the dappled shade of some aged tree that once did a good job of providing relief, but now was just disease-ridden and tired.
Via Mehrauli’s pock-marked tarmac, as Delhi’s old money started travelling towards the up and coming Gurgaon, such sights were a piquant distraction, a sort of Disney Land version of an Indian village for city kids and their indulgent parents to gawp at.
In the final decade of the twentieth century, as the economy was being liberalized, these agricultural lands were set free. There was a price to be paid, of course. Indian expats sent the money, and their parents, remembering those suburban dream homes they had so ardently admired on that visit to the US, bought up acres of farmland. Or perhaps the money came from Canada, Australia or New Zealand, the nationalities of currency being irrelevant once exchanged for this soil. The rates were good and everyone benefited; poor farmers learnt about tax evasion, and in foreign lands, sons and daughters could sleep with less guilt about their desertion.
Mehrauli quickly transformed into a fenced-off network of farmhouses animated by the antics of Bollywood stars at the weddings of the fortunate five hundred. But it remained disfigured by a few village hamlets, where old men unrepentantly gurgled at their hookahs and goggled at the fancy women in their fancy cars. From the safety of their vehicles, the women giggled and goggled back.
These were the pockets of resistance. Some villages and their communities refused to give up their lands, preferring the security of tradition to the lure of cash. Others held on for the more lucrative deal they heard had been offered to their distant cousins; astronomical sums that would release them forever from the bondage of farming and its miserly rewards.
It was in one such neighbourhood that Babloo Shankar had taken up residence. Although his men in Delhi had secured a year’s lease on a farmhouse barely three kilometres away, he preferred the crowded obscurity of the village. It was a stronghold of the local Gujjar community and three of its elders had once worked with his brother. In such places old loyalties were gilded protection, particularly when backed up with hard cash. Babloo employed both to secure listening outposts, figure out police networks and ensure a blanket of invisibility.
That morning he had made his second run to the farmhouse and his first extended visit. Archana arrived late in the afternoon and by nightfall they were sitting together on the sofa, slightly inebriated, satiated, plotting the next few months.
A kidnapping that was not for ransom – the concept was alien to Archana. But Babloo explained that if it went the way he wanted, money would flow. The perception of threat, dehshat, was their retirement plan, their ticket to stardom, politics.
‘One kidnapping that stuns the world and then you are made; the media will make you. Think of Dawood bhai. He hasn’t done a thing in twenty years. The Mumbai blasts were enough. Think of Charles Sobhraj. Nothing to him, but he is a star. He gets book contracts, film deals. What do I get? Who remembers me but for some old, one-foot-in-the-grave gangsters and retired policemen.’
To Archana, this was a surprising change in her cautious mentor, who since 9/11 had refused to engage in anything remotely risky, preferring to work on his front as a diamond merchant in Singapore.
Now finally she was being allowed to put her talents back to use, but she wanted the basics clear. ‘How will the money come, Babloo?’
‘After the attacks on Parliament, India has gone in for US-style data sharing. Twenty-one different agencies, including police, income tax, banks, the various intelligence agencies and border security forces – all of them have access to the country’s secrets. It’s called NATGRID. All the information in one place. In a country as corrupt as ours, that is never a good idea.’ Babloo smiled. ‘Too many officials know too much. One greased palm and you have all the data.’
From here, the plan was dazzlingly simple. A kidnapping which hits the headlines, lets people know Babloo Shankar is back, and then simply a few phone calls to the millionaires and billionaires whose details are stored in NATGRID. Babloo showed Archana the income-tax returns of India’s top seventy industrialists. They laughed at the treasure trove of phone numbers and personal details.
‘The only thing they need to know is fear – fear of Babloo Shankar. The rest is easy.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before? Didn’t you trust me?’ Archana asked.
‘If I didn’t, I would not tell you even now,’ he replied. ‘I just wanted you to focus on the boy, get his attention. That’s done; now you need to know more.’
‘And what happens to me?’ she asked, staring out into the darkness beyond the balcony.
‘Not much will change on the ground. You’ll continue to control the Singapore business along with Rohit. I’ve eliminated two of your Nepali threats since you left. Verma will make a hit on the last one any day now. All you have to do is make sure the cash flows through the usual channels into India. Rohit will iron out any other wrinkles.’
‘How long have you been planning this?’ Archana asked after a long silence.
‘Since the day I was forced to leave, darling,’ Babloo said before raising himself to get back into the wheelchair. Archana made to help but he waved her away. He wheeled himself towards the toilet, then paused at the door. ‘If the plan works, in five years you will be back too. Think about that.’
She thought about it, looking for a loophole, a flaw.
‘What follows from the act is much more difficult to control,’ Babloo had explained to her several years ago, when an operation had gone wrong. ‘Until the kidnapping, everything is in your hands. After that, you scramble to control the situation while everyone will work to take it away from you. The thing you have got in your favour is preparation. Remember, they are unprepared, while you have planned everything.’
Babloo came back into the room, ‘It will take two months before we can act,’ he warned her, gently. The Mahajans will be back in January, but he still needed to finalize the end game.
‘Are you sure this will work?’ Archana asked.
‘The only thing I am sure of is that another bullet will kill me. I have to remove that possibility and then yes, it will work.’
16
K
aruna Joseph was already at her desk at 7 a.m., the sole person on the entire corporate floor. She grimaced at Abhishek as he walked in. ‘I’m just going through the numbers. Afraid it’s going to be one of those really, really bad days. There is a dip in our ratings this week.’
It was Friday, and Abhishek had been instructed to spend the morning understanding the complex science of television ratings; the most crucial training session yet, he’d been told. His eyes itched with tiredness. He had passed an uncomfortable night on the office couch, having thought it preferable to the forty-kilometre commute through the paralysing morning fog.
‘Shall I get coffee,’ he offered.
‘Yes, please. And would you order breakfast too?’
The canteen, to Abhishek’s surprise, was already bustling with activity. He recognized several people from the news desk as he joined the queue to the food counter. Two girls, the interns he’d met yesterday, waved at him. He asked for Karuna’s food to be sent to her desk, deciding to have his up here, amid the morning buzz.
The room was broad and spacious with a high ceiling. Sunlight streamed in through a large glass façade, lending it a cheery brightness. Abhishek took a table in the corner, the Gurgaon skyline before him. Below, despite the early hour, laboure
rs were already at work in the construction sites, clearing roads, laying cables, bringing in bricks while two monstrous excavators disembowelled the earth. Other workers sat in a row, drinking tea and feeding their babies.
‘Mind if I join you?’ It was Dilip, the night editor who had just finished his shift. ‘It’s ratings for you this morning, isn’t it?’
Abhishek nodded.
‘Very important. In fact it’s the most important thing in our whole goddamned universe. You’ll soon realize that good stories, bad stories don’t matter as long as ratings are high. But they mean nothing. We all know that. It’s completely compromised, the entire system.’
‘How is it compromised?’ Abhishek let the man talk as he tucked into his breakfast.
‘You know Reeta Kapoor, right? Big Bollywood player, owns Desraj Films, one of India’s largest production companies. They produce perhaps the highest number of television serials. Recently, we learnt that Kapoor’s company was paying off every surveyed household in south Mumbai. The whole bloody thing was doctored. It went on for a year and no one said a word.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean why?’ Dilip was impatient. ‘Because the entire system rests on credibility. Billions are involved. If we expose the fraud, the advertising industry which is based on this rating bullshit collapses like a pack of cards. That’s why.’
Abhishek wanted to ask more but Dilip had noticed the interns. He beckoned to them to join their table. ‘Fresh meat,’ he said, winking at Abhishek, who left quickly, leaving him to entertain his new breakfast companions.
At the lifts, he met Sandeep Ghoshal, the head of the sales division, whose presentation the previous day had lasted over an hour.
‘Good morning, er …’
‘Abhishek. Good morning.’
‘Yes, of course. How are you? Ratings morning for you, isn’t it? I hear the news is not the best. Rajan and I have a crisis meeting upstairs with the CEO. See you later,’ Sandeep said, hurrying off.
Yesterday’s session had been taxing. Unlike easy-going Rajan, the sales head had been stiff and officious and came prepared with the dreaded slide show and presentation. ‘Please do take notes. Nothing your editors tell you will be as important,’ he’d said seriously, smothering the new recruit’s attempt at a smile. Amir would have taken this guy to pieces, Abhishek had thought.
‘You need to know this. The more effectively a journalist can match the needs of a client, the happier we all are. I’ll give you an example,’ Sandeep had lectured. ‘If one of our year-round partners, say ICICI bank, is planning a surge in ad spend, our sales team will have to offer them incentives.’ He’d paused to check if Abhishek was writing this down. ‘Incentives could be regular stories on credit cards, reports on housing or car loans, or advice on the best fixed-deposit returns. We inform the editorial bosses of these drives, and reporters like you are instructed accordingly.’ The sales head had kept on tirelessly … ‘The principle of selling remains the same for our seasonal clients. We offer a woollengarment manufacturer stories on how cold it will be this season; or we’ll offer a story on the dangers of old-style air conditioners to a supplier of a new model. Legitimate stories. So we get their money, you guys go do the stories.’
Karuna’s breakfast tray was still untouched when Abhishek joined her.
‘Alarm bells are going off. We’ve dipped in almost every analysis,’ she said, looking weary. ‘I mean, a year back, no one would have bothered with a less than one-point dip, but now … Ah, look who is here. Hello, Lata.’
Abhishek looked up to see an anxious-looking middle-aged lady approach the desk. ‘Tell me,’ she said, gripping the edge of the table as Karuna squinted at the screen.
‘15.1,’ Karuna said, and Lata dramatically slumped to the floor.
‘Oh, hell,’ she wailed, staring at the carpet.
Karuna caught Abhishek’s eye and suppressed a giggle.
A reed-thin young man about Abhishek’s age sloped into the office. ‘Lata,’ he laughed. ‘Fucked again? You should look for another job. Karuna, hit me darling.’
‘You’re the one who is fucked, Gopal Manwani. Two-point dip in your show.’ Karuna was evidently delighted at the man’s arrival.
‘And who might you be?’ Gopal asked, flopping down beside Abhishek.
Karuna did the introductions.
‘Welcome, welcome; more the merrier. Now, Karuna, tell me about the other programmes. Are we on a collective decline, which will spare my individual ass, or is it just me and dear old Lata here? Lata-ji, get your bum off the floor.’
‘It’s not funny, Gopal.’ Lata said, winching herself up.
‘Right, get out, both of you. I have to finish this,’ Karuna told them.
‘You kill me, darling, but all right. I must take Lata for coffee. She’s getting a bit skinny without nourishment.’
He put an arm around her and they walked off.
‘That guy is our most talented producer,’ Karuna told Abhishek. ‘Quite a riot too,’ she added, grinning at the computer screen. ‘Listen, this report is going to take forever. Can I meet you some other time to explain what these guys are getting so worked up about?’
Abhishek walked downstairs to the newsroom and sat down on a sofa by the wall. He felt exhausted and lonely. No one knew him here. In the midst of this hectic activity – reporters and input editors, producers, ‘weather girls’, cameramen dashing about, librarians, assistants – Abhishek was struggling to find his place.
Maya had been right – he had no special talent. The quite extraordinary happenings of the recent months had been a combination of luck and help from the people he had come to depend on and think of as friends. He hadn’t met Vivek ever since joining News Today. His predecessor at the Express had contracted dengue fever while on a story in rural Bihar and was in hospital, though he was expected back next week. It would be nice to see a familiar face.
‘D
id you see that arse!’ Rajiv spoke phlegmatically into Abhishek’s ear over the blare of the music.
‘She reads the weather, doesn’t she?’ Abhishek flinched.
‘Yeah.’ Rajiv grinned. ‘Boy, inside those pants, it must be as warm and wet as Kerala in August.’
Abhishek smiled weakly. It was not that he was unfamiliar with sexual jokes. Yet, Rajiv’s blatant leeriness made him uncomfortable.
Abhishek’s only experience of romance had been a lingering affair that had lasted two summers. He had fallen in love with a classmate during rehearsals for a school play and then, for six months, had spoken his heart out to her on a mobile phone plan that allowed cheap calls after 11 p.m. A year passed before he’d dared to hold her hand in a restaurant where he courageously consumed beer while she drank hot chocolate. That’s how far his hands ever got. She broke up with him soon after, telling him he had ‘no future’.
‘You have a girlfriend?’ Rajiv asked.
Abhishek shook his head.
‘Don’t worry. Our office is the most promiscuous place you will ever find. Everyone fucks everyone. The bosses encourage it, I think. No need to go anywhere – eat, shit and fuck in office. Want another drink?’
Their whiskies were served, and Rajiv went on. ‘Journalism as a whole is a slutty profession.’
‘Yes, I have heard that but,’ Abhishek smiled at his mildly drunk new friend, ‘no experience.’
‘That’s because you hang out at the Press Club. Who will you bang there? Those old geezers? Do you see that guy?’ Rajiv pointed at a fastidious-looking man drinking by himself. ‘Gautam. He’s in the production team. That fucker has slept with more women in the office than he can count on both hands. By the time he leaves here tonight, he’ll have two babes begging to suck him off. Fuck, here comes the party spoiler.’
‘What are you guys celebrating? Don’t you know the ratings are down,’ Gopal said, sliding his skinny frame onto their sofa.
‘Not my show ratings,’ Rajiv said promptly. ‘I’ve got better ratings than ev
en Samir.’
‘You are God, Rajiv,’ Gopal said, his face solemn. ‘Now if only God would buy this poor disciple a drink …’
‘Fuck off. I’m going to grab some of that booty.’ Rajiv advanced towards the dance floor.
‘What are you having? Whisky?’ Gopal asked Abhishek, who nodded.
‘Too manly for me. I need a pink drink with loads of ice cream.’
It was midnight and Airwaves was filled to capacity. The DJ had ceased his attempts to get people on the dance floor with house and grunge and reverted to Bollywood remixes. Abhishek was enjoying the spectacle of swaying hips and short clothes. His brushes with this buzzing and busty India were rare. He smiled at the prospect of things to come.
‘I’m glad to see you’re enjoying yourself,’ Gopal remarked.
‘This is new for me,’ he muttered, acutely embarrassed for some reason. ‘My usual haunt was the Press Club and before that, drinking out of stainless-steel glasses in friends’ houses.’
‘Ah, rags-to-riches story.’ Gopal laughed. ‘Are you not somebody’s son? Did you not go to St Stephen’s?’
‘No. Hindu College, actually. But I am somebody’s son.’ Abhishek grinned. ‘My father teaches at the Benares Hindu University.’
Gopal looked surprised. ‘Ah, you are from the reserved quota. Here that means being exceptionally talented. Are you?’
Before Abhishek could reply, Rajiv rushed over. ‘News break,’ he told Gopal, who nodded. ‘Come,’ he said to Abhishek and the two pushed their way out of the club, reaching the car park at a run.
‘Get in,’ Rajiv said as he opened the car door. ‘A plane has crashed; an MiG 21 or something. Not quite sure. I’m getting into office to go on air. We have to start live broadcast and I’m the only anchor around. Do you want to go to the spot?’
The Price You Pay Page 21