by Leena Nandan
But Tina would have none of it. She’d said politely but firmly to the CEO, ‘Sir, it goes against whatever I believe in. They’ve betrayed trust and tried to take what does not belong to them. They need to learn a lesson for life.’
Raghav had been furious because Tina made him look foolish in front of the CEO. Just thinking about it made his fingers bunch into fists. How sure he’d been of his ability to contain the damage. It was not just credibility as an upcoming team leader. He had a personal stake too. Vijay and Aakash had once said they could hack into any bank account and Raghav had challenged them. Later he had misgivings when he learnt that Vijay had worked in a bank and left under a cloud, escaping prosecution because of Tony’s connections in the local police, but he stayed quiet. And when the cyber theft case happened, it was too late to voice his doubts. It was a quid pro quo in any case, because Tony knew that Raghav had broken management’s cardinal rule of reporting everything, no matter how trivial.
Now Raghav was on tenterhooks, wondering how much Tina knew and what she had shared with the police. He was sure she would be unforgiving from the very fact that the matter unravelled only due to the principled stand she had taken. Vijay committed suicide while Aakash was a washout. It was a terrible shock to everyone and had shaken Tina badly, though no one blamed her. But it would definitely go against Raghav if anyone probed too much. He was very much in the running for the post of senior process manager; the CDs with the cyber crime cell could ruin everything. Nothing should ever come in his way, he thought, as he looked at Tina, his face suddenly grim.
Rita saw the frown on Raghav’s face and sighed. She had been feeling upset ever since her call about interesting new credit card offers had met with a string of abuses from the man at the other end. Though everyone on the work floor in a call centre had this kind of experience some time or the other, obscenity from a call recipient always made her feel degraded. She’d toyed with the idea of speaking to Raghav—he was unfailingly considerate about such matters—but realised all over again that his primary concern was Tina. Not that Rita harboured any resentment towards Tina. A late entrant into the team, she was initially shy and it was Tina who had helped her come out of her shell. In fact, Rita felt terrible whenever Tony bad-mouthed her. But she couldn’t bring herself to say so, because she didn’t want to be at the receiving end of Tony’s sarcasm. That was still not the entire problem. What really depressed Rita was that Raghav seemed to be oblivious of her, and if at all he spoke, it was just a friendly greeting. She knew she shouldn’t be mooning over him like a lovesick teenager. If nothing else, her father would erupt like a volcano.
Just thinking about her father made Rita feel tense. Baba was punctilious about tradition. He had decided long ago that Rita would marry his friend’s son as soon the boy finished his engineering course. Rita found him a callow, immature youth, but dared not say a word, lest Baba fly into a rage, saying once again that her convent education had given her new-fangled notions. He had allowed her to come to Delhi from the hinterland only due to her mother’s pleading, but if Rita harboured any notions of romance, Baba would drag her back and get her married off straightaway. He had got their horoscopes matched and soon the pre-nuptial rituals would start. The boy’s family was vegetarian, so she had changed her food preferences, and since they were rather conservative, her tryst with a career would end soon. She felt despair engulf her ever so often. Why had she come so far away from home, to get a glimpse of an alien world, where people treated life as one big adventure? How was she supposed to settle into a completely different environment? Once, Ma had tentatively tried to point out the differences in their temperaments, but Baba dismissed it with a statement that all marriages were a process of adjustment. If Tony only heard him, Rita would be the butt of all jokes, and Tina banished to the sidelines.
Tony seemed to have read her mind. He turned towards her and said, ‘You’re always quiet as a dormouse. Some of the shine of our golden girl should have rubbed off on you by now.’
Rita gave him what she hoped was a meek and inoffensive smile.
‘Tina and I have exchanged our schedules for today—she’ll be doing the evening shift and I’m off till tomorrow night.’
He snorted in disgust and said, ‘Try to make conversation with you and all you can talk of is Miss Nose-up-in-the-air!’
Rita turned away, her cheeks flaming. She couldn’t be sure, but Raghav seemed to have heard because he smiled at her with a small grimace as if to say, ‘Ignore him. He’s just a pain.’ Rita smiled back, hoping she didn’t look as infatuated as she actually was, and looked around to see Shelly staring at her with an unfathomable expression.
Tony was in a vicious mood. The rest of the team was busy, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything. Any mention of Tina and his head started throbbing with anger. Everyone knew that he had a running feud with Tina but just ridiculing her gave him no satisfaction. He wanted to take revenge, hurt her, cause her pain. Her obsession with the precious rule of law had caused all their problems. People got away with murder. Why should his gang have been singled out for punishment? One friend was dead already and the other in a state of manic depression, thanks to that heartless bitch. His fingers flexed in anger just thinking of her. Vijay, Aakash and he had been close friends for a decade, right from school through college and started their careers in the same company. Vijay was the brightest of the trio but he, Tony, had the guts, the nerve to take risks.
They’d almost got hauled in on their last job in the bank. Only Tony’s police connections had saved all their skins. He’d negotiated hard with the bank to let them off with only one penalty: Not getting any references. His brother was a senior police officer and he forced 24x365, which was struggling to get security clearances for the call centre, to take the trio in. They lay low for a while, but were not going to get deterred by one setback. Tony made a programme after interacting with a new researcher in their sister company, and used it to try and filch small sums of money from many accounts using different computers, when they were on the floor for the graveyard shift. But one bank clerk had spotted it and spoiled the game, calling in the cyber crime division. Even then, they had been clever enough to cover their tracks, but Tina had painstakingly put together all the customer floor schedules, with the result that Vijay and Aakash got caught.
Tony had escaped being entangled only because he had not been present on the crucial day when they had attempted the transfer of money. But it was his software they had used to hack into the bank network. When arrested by the police on the basis of Tina’s information, they had not said anything about who all were involved, even though he was an accomplice in every sense of the word. As a matter of fact, Vijay’s suicide and Aakash’s catatonic state had given him a reprieve but he knew it wouldn’t last forever. He did not fool himself that he was out of the net completely. He had no option now; the situation was a desperate one. He knew what he had to do and it made him hate Tina with a fierce intensity tinged with fear—simply put, she knew too much.
Another bold step and his problems would be over. Now there was no turning back.
EIGHT
5 February
A conscientious mother, Rozy regularly attended Chintu’s parent-teacher meetings but today being the picnic with Vani, Jeet and the others, she wished she could do a bunk. Barun, her otherwise energetic husband, invariably would start having a tummy ache on the eve of a PTM, which then in a feat that defied modern medicine, amazingly became a full-blown migraine by the next morning. As a result, she always did the rounds of the teachers alone, but occasionally it rankled. Today, she was longing for tea, having missed her relaxed cuppa in the hurly-burly of the morning.
Rozy had always been a tea person. Even her favourite nursery rhyme, as a toddler was oriented towards tea—‘I am a little teapot, short and stout…’ which she recited with an appealing lisp. Everyone loved it, especially as she was unable to pronounce the hard ‘T’. Rozy was often to complain that thanks to the
poem, she grew up into a short and what is worse, stout individual. ‘I should have stuck to Twinkle, twinkle, little star,’ she was apt to quote. ‘If nothing else, my world would at least have been full of diamonds!’
She had always been inordinately fond of tea, right from her childhood days. So much so, that while one parent saw off guests, the other’s task was to sweep up the tea-tray and do a fifty-feet dash towards the kitchen, lest the youngster quaff the tea and throw down the cups, while polite farewells were being exchanged by the elders. Mom had once pointed out that the dash towards the teacups was a throwback to her parents’ singular feat of occupying the chairs.
They used to be in a state of high alert in the days just after their marriage, when their scant possessions included six outdoor chairs, of which one was literally on its last legs. On many a tranquil evening, neighbours would drop in for a chat and a cup of tea. So the hosts perfected the drill. While one person went to the gate to welcome the guests with every appearance of warmth, the second one sprinted to take possession of the chair which tended to topple over with an unseemly crash if the person seated on it was not perched at a particular angle. It was Mom who invariably remembered the delicate situation and quickly occupied the chair, seating herself with aplomb while urging the guests to make themselves comfortable.
Mom made the mistake of fondly stating once that her children didn’t fight much, and after that it was almost as if Rozy and Jeet set out determinedly to prove her wrong. They quarrelled over just about anything. Who got the new pen or the new diary or ate the last toffee—everything required a referee. After yet another fight, Jeet decided the best revenge was to hide the book Rozy was reading. Books had a soporific effect on him; he opened one and his eyes glazed over in twenty seconds flat, while Rozy read like a soul possessed. So when one particularly fiery spat between them took place, the next thing was, the book vanished. He had hidden it on the top shelf of the cupboard, which Rozy, with her woeful lack of height, would never be able to find. She kept plotting to get even, but like the best-laid plans of mice and men, hers never fructified.
Their main source of entertainment, apart from books and games, was the radio. They had a venerable old-timer, and all vied for its affections. Effectively that meant Dad listened to News, which Jeet promptly changed to cricket as soon as Dad left for office, while Rozy was forever wailing plaintively in the background that she had missed the latest songs. As soon as a song began playing, they’d try to guess from the opening bars which song it heralded. It was neck and neck between Jeet and Rozy, though he was generally disinclined to concede gracefully when he lost. All four siblings were musically talented—especially Jeet, who could whistle any tune and even play on the back of an upturned bucket. Tina had always envied Rozy’s ability to sing any song, no matter how difficult; Rozy reciprocated by feeling a mite jealous of Tina’s vivacious nature which made her the most popular girl around. Of course, even Rozy could not be resentful for long—Tina’s unaffected, blithe temperament could melt the hardest heart! Or so everyone thought.
The colony where they grew up was a small world in itself, and families lived side by side for decades, sharing bitter-sweet experiences, the children growing up all the while. The evenings were for playing and nothing could get them back before 7 pm, when they trooped home reluctantly, looking by then like something the cat refused to drag in. The older boys played cricket, with an all-consuming passion. Once, a particularly unpopular boy brought along his parents, who demanded to know from Jeet, the captain of his team, why the apple of their eye was never given a chance to bat. Now the specimen in question closely resembled the selfsame apple, being fairly rotund in shape and quite unable to run the proverbial extra mile for his team. But the belligerence of his parents completely put off the captain, who hinted to the opposite team that they could try their hand at bowling bouncers. The umpire was not too charitably inclined towards the chappie in any case. The end result was a bawling batsman and a set of budding mama’s boys who crossed their hearts and swore to die rather than lug along a heavy-handed relative to coerce Jeet.
The spat with the budding batsman didn’t endear Jeet to the youngster’s parents, but he didn’t really bother. Those he didn’t care for were of no consequence to him. Rozy envied this attitude, especially as she was always so worried about what others thought of her. Today was a lovely morning, but she felt quite inadequate. Immediately on arrival at the school, the comparison started—with the beautifully turned out mothers. A look at her own bedraggled persona was enough to trigger an attack of despondency, but she managed to hang on to her cheery mood, thinking about the picnic that was to follow. Busy Barun had miraculously been able to manage a half-day off to give them company.
Rozy was surrounded by enthusiastic parents who, armed with copious notes and missionary zeal, were engaged in profound discussions with the teachers. Her interaction with each mentor was predictable to a fault. She had perfected the routine over months of practice, and went through it on auto mode. Rozy approached each desk with alacrity; sincerity writ large on countenance and notwithstanding the precedents of the earlier parents, stated that parent and child are both happy. The sure-shot formula never failed to work its magic. Each teacher, hugely relieved at this laconic parent as opposed to the other garrulous guardians, also declared that she was truly happy and the discussion was wrapped up in thirty seconds flat. She drew a sigh of relief; she could now whisk Chintu away for the picnic with the gang. Barun would join later but she was on the organising committee—a euphemism if ever there was one, considering that you had only to lug along a couple of games and order pizza.
She was met with an excited wave of the hand by Vani. They chatted about their latest travel travails.
‘I was totally at sea quite like the ancient mariner, but all the lady drivers were happily checking out their make-up. The men, of course, looked ready to shoot everyone dead,’ said Rozy.
Vani agreed. ‘In Delhi, I feel like the original intrepid explorer. But the situation has its merits. I was at a party and had a determined wallflower on one side while my other neighbour was a strong silent gentleman. The hostess cleverly raised the subject of which was the shortest route to her place. You should have seen how they both waxed eloquent on the subject!’
They both burst into peals of laughter, but Rozy noticed that Jeet, who was following them around morosely, was unaffected by their bubbly mood.
Jeet wasn’t enjoying himself. Though Rozy and Vani had taken a fair amount of trouble to make it a great outing with friends, food and fun, he found it difficult to get into the spirit of things. There was a burst of laughter as Vani was dumped with the Black Queen for the nth time and had to don a ridiculous hat as penalty. He joined in the general babble of voices and even went so far as to offer around iced tea, but his heart wasn’t in it.
Since when had Tina stopped being fun? Was it when he had taken Vani over for tea and given the impression that they were going steady when in reality she was only Rozy’s friend? A pretty and lively lass, but nothing more—and certainly no match for Tina’s charm and vivacity, if it boiled down to crass comparison. But Tina had been remarkably cool after that evening. She was not her usual ebullient self with him, though she seemed to be enjoying the company of her colleagues—especially that smooth talker who worked with her. Jeet had met Raghav only once, instantly disliking his looks, his charm and the fact that he appeared to be a really nice, unaffected guy. Did Tina talk about Raghav only to rile him or was he just fooling himself, and she was actually serious about her colleague? For sure their office hours were weird, so romance could easily blossom.
This childish envy was not his style and he felt ashamed, but he was unable to kick off the mood entirely. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand being around the laughing crowd any longer, moping on the fringes and cracking a false smile if anyone glanced his way. He didn’t care for Rozy’s discerning eye either. So he waved to her, making some incomprehensible gestures about an ur
gent task he was forced to attend to, and walked off briskly before she collared him.
What now? Maybe he’d just have a coffee. Or go home and look at the album that held so many pictures of their childhood days and recap old memories. Like the one of her red face, as she tried to surreptitiously put a tomato back on a plant all those years ago. He’d heard the comments of Selvam, their gardener, and seen her go rushing past the window, her eyes filled with tears of mortification. But somehow, no matter how much he teased her on her idiosyncrasies—which he always referred to as idiocies—he had never found it in his heart to rag her about the stolen tomato, because intuition told him the memory would wound her deeply.
He’d eaten nothing at the picnic and felt light-headed. On an impulse, he decided to go to Tina’s office. If she didn’t want his company, she’d tell him straight out, never having been one to beat about the bush and he would then re-consider his options. He felt unaccountably better at just the prospect of meeting her and drove all the way to her office. The guard made as if to stop him, but relented when he showed Tina’s photo with him in lieu of an I-card.
Her office was a modern twenty-first century building. All glass and steel, attempting the elegance of an octagon but ending up looking perplexed on the whole. Nevertheless, it had a character, brittle, slick and over-sharp—in fact, quite like the office environment that she had described to him. Its close companion was a skulking hulk of a building, which looked quite shuttered and surly. Viewed through trees and separated by a high wall, it was a peculiar structure. Tina had mentioned to him that it was their company’s research facility but for the life of him, he couldn’t visualise anyone doing original thinking in such uninspiring surroundings. He resolved to think of more pleasant things like Tina’s gurgling laughter. Whistling his favourite tune, he parked the car and walked up the gravel path, unaware that he was being watched as he made his way from the gate to the building.