The Accidental Apprentice (34 page)

‘That's ridiculous!'

‘No, it's not. Which shop in Delhi gives you your money back, tell me? We are also a commercial establishment. Once you've made a deal, you can't just back out of it without any penalty.'

‘I'll file a complaint against you if you don't return the money.'

‘We'll deny that we ever received it. In fact, we never did receive it, did we?' He shares a glance with Dr Nath. Then he takes out the receipt from his pocket and proceeds to tear it into bits before my horrified eyes.

‘You can't do this. I'm going to the police right now.'

‘You are welcome. Who do you think they will choose to believe, a respectable politician like me or a two-bit sales clerk like you? So take my advice: go bring your mother and we'll resolve this amicably.'

Behind his slick smile, I understand the cold menace in his words. He has drawn a line in the sand and is challenging me to cross it at my own peril. ‘I'll think about it,' I say and leave the room, feeling disgusted, cheated, and totally pissed off.

Once outside the hospital I take out my cell and make two phone calls. The first is to Dr Mittal. ‘I'm sorry, Doctor, for having misled you. There never was a friend donating his kidney. I will be the living donor. When can you perform the transplant operation?'

‘As early as the day after tomorrow,' he replies, clearly pleased at this turn of events.

The second call is to Shalini Grover, the investigative reporter for Sunlight TV. ‘I have a story for you,' I begin.

*   *   *

The wall clock shows the time as 4 p.m. I am in the standard hospital garb of shapeless blue gown, about to be wheeled into the operating theatre. Dr Mittal bustles about the preparation room, asking questions of the nurses, checking to see that everything is in order before the anaesthesiologist comes in to inject me. ‘It will all be over before you know it.' He pats my shoulder gently. ‘You are a really brave girl.'

I feel no anxiety, no fear, just a deep, heightened sense of being alive. Of having purpose. Now is when Ma gets a new lease of life. And I get a new lease of respect, renewing my credentials as the eldest of the family.

Neha is also in the room with me. She has reconciled herself to the loss of the two lakhs, but she is still not reconciled to the idea of my being a living donor. ‘Why do you have to insist on being a martyr?' she cries, clutching my hand.

‘I'm not being a martyr,' I reply. ‘I'm just being the elder daughter.'

‘I wish I had your courage.'

‘Dr Mittal assures me the operation is perfectly safe. Think of it as removing a hundred and fifty grams of redundancy from the body.'

‘Karan wanted to come, too, but Dr Mittal did not allow him. Only family members are permitted inside the ICU.'

‘How's Ma?' I try to sound nonchalant, hoping Neha does not notice the blood rushing to my cheeks at the mention of Karan's name. I haven't seen him in over a week, and I'm suffering from an acute deficiency of Vitamin K.

‘Still singing your praises to all and sundry,' says Neha. Ma almost put the entire plan in jeopardy, refusing point blank to accept my kidney donation. Dr Mittal told me she went into the preparation room kicking and screaming. It took all his effort to convince her of the medical miracle of organ transplantation.

‘Time to leave now,' Dr Mittal gently reminds Neha.

With a pensive look and a consolatory pat on my arm, she gets up and then quickly exits the room.

A minute later the anaesthetist troops in, a stethoscope dangling from the collar of his white smock. He is a youngish-looking man with thick, dark hair and wandering eyes.

He stretches out my arm and then pricks it with a needle. For a while I drift in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of sounds within the room, the movement of nurses around me, the antiseptic smell of the hospital, till a comfortable weightlessness envelops me and I finally fall into the synthetic sleep.

*   *   *

When I wake up, the astringent antiseptic smell of the hospital ward is still there, but the numbness in my body has gone. Instead, there is the itchy feeling of ants crawling all over my skin. I open my eyes, groggy with anaesthetic, to discover a man in a white dress leaning over my bed. I imagine him to be Dr Mittal, but, as the image gradually comes into focus I emit a gasp of surprise, immediately recognising the aquiline nose and the mane of silvery hair. It is industrialist Vinay Mohan Acharya, wearing an off-white silk kurta pyjama, with a white pashmina shawl draped across his shoulders. Though he is dressed exactly as he was the day I first met him at the Hanuman Temple, he looks different. His face is gaunter and paler, his eyes hollower and his body appears to have thinned out, lost some of its bulk.

‘Congratulations,' he says, smiling, as he eases himself into the chair next to my bed. ‘You've just passed the sixth test.'

I groan, cursing the day I accepted his offer. Ever since, my life has become one long exam, with God testing me on one side and the industrialist testing me on the other.

‘This was the test of decisiveness,' he continues. ‘Decisiveness is the willingness to make decisions, even in the face of complexity or uncertainty. A CEO is required to make tough calls, and then live with the consequences. You showed this ability by your brave decision to donate your kidney. Not only was it a courageous move, it was also the right one. There's nothing more selfless than being a living donor.'

‘But how did you come to know about my kidney donation?'

‘Through Dr Mittal. He now works for me, you see.'

‘He works for you?' The unexpected twist makes me sit up in bed. I look around for a nurse, but there is no one else in the room. ‘What about … what about the operation to remove my kidney? Did it go well?'

‘There was no operation. Both your kidneys are still intact.'

My hand immediately flies to my side, feeling for the dressing covering the sutures, but my fingers encounter only smooth flesh. There is no cut along my abdomen.

‘Then what about Ma? How will she get a kidney transplant?'

‘Your mother is fine. She never needed a kidney transplant. That's because she doesn't have kidney disease.'

I feel faint, the blackness seeping into my brain again. ‘So all this was…'

‘A setup. I'm surprised you didn't cotton onto it faster.'

‘Since when has this been going on?' I demand weakly.

‘Ever since the day your uncle Dinesh threatened to evict you from your flat. It was I who asked him to do so. Isn't it amazing what people will do for money?'

My brow wrinkles in confusion.

‘I also arranged to get your purse snatched in Connaught Place, the one containing your mother's gold bangles.'

‘No!' I gasp. ‘I don't believe you! You're just making all this up.'

‘Well, then, you might want to take a look at these,' he says and takes out two sets of gold bangles from his kurta pocket. They glint under the tube light, their ornate patterns of embellishment clearly visible. I don't have to handle them to know that they are Ma's.

‘This is insane! Why would you do something like that?'

‘Because I was desperate for you to participate in my seven tests. I wanted to be sure that you have the mettle to survive in the rough and tumble of the business world.'

‘So were
all
the tests fixed?'

‘Nothing was fixed. All I did was create the conditions for your natural instincts to come into play. Take the first test, for instance. My task was limited to ensuring your arrival in Chandangarh village, that hotbed of honour killings. Once we knew about Babli and Sunil, it was relatively easy to persuade Kuldip Singh to visit the showroom for his dowry shopping.'

‘But what if Babli had not handed me that note?'

‘Then I would have found some other way to involve you. I had a five-member team deployed in Chandangarh since September. Though I must say, you surprised everyone by taking on the
khap panchayat
like you did.'

‘And the second test? Did you also mastermind Priya Capoorr's visit to the showroom?'

‘Well, isn't she an actor for hire? Nevertheless, it took all my persuasive powers to get her to agree to plant her engagement ring on you. She wanted to use a cheap imitation. The one week you did not return the ring was hell for her. She complained bitterly to me every day, convinced she would never get it back.'

‘If you could get Priya Capoorr to plant a ring, then it must have been child's play to set up the lock factory and fill it with child labour?'

‘No, I had no hand in that factory. I would rather die than exploit innocent children. But, yes, it was Rana who tipped off your friend Lauren Lockwood about Mirza Metal Works.'

‘And the goons who threatened me, were they Mirza's men or yours?'

‘They were hired by me,' he admits sheepishly. ‘Their job was simply to scare you. They wouldn't have hurt you.'

‘I suppose being threatened with rape inside the Japanese Park does not fall within your definition of hurt?'

‘Rape? Japanese Park? What are you talking about?'

‘Don't pretend that you don't know. You did the same with Neha.'

‘I had nothing to do with your sister. I simply fixed her entry into that singing contest and arranged for her to be put in Raoji's team. It was common knowledge in the industry that Raoji has a weakness for women, but no one knew that he was pretending to be blind.'

‘Do you know Raoji almost succeeded in molesting Neha?'

‘You saved her just in time. I concede, though, that on occasion it is difficult to avoid collateral damage.'

‘And, if Nirmala Ben had died, that would also have been collateral damage, right?'

‘Ah, Nirmala Ben. I must say the Gandhian presented a unique challenge. My role was restricted to planting the seed of the idea in her head, you know, about shaking the world gently. The rest just fell into place beautifully.' He rubs his hands and grins at me. ‘You'll have to admit that no real harm has come to anyone as a result of my tests.'

The glib manner in which he dismisses the six tests makes my jaw clench. What a sucker I had been, living in a universe of illusions till now, trapped in a world where everything was smoke and mirrors. Acharya was the puppeteer and I was the puppet, dancing to his strings.

A cold, murderous rage takes hold of me. ‘Who do you think you are? God?' I demand.

‘I cannot claim to be God,' he says. ‘But, like God, I created your world, and then left you to fend for yourself. I engineered the process, not the outcomes. You created them out of your own free will.'

‘You're mad, you know that, don't you?'

‘I'm not mad, just different.'

‘Karan was right about you. I should never have agreed to participate in your twisted plan.'

‘Oh, so you did discuss our arrangement with a third party?' He frowns in disapproval. ‘You know that was not allowed under the terms of the contract.'

‘To hell with you and your contract. I don't want to ever see your face again. You are a sick person who deserves to be locked up in a mental asylum.'

‘I expected such a reaction from you. But believe me, everything that I did was necessary.'

‘Necessary for what? Your sadistic fantasies?'

‘For your apprenticeship. The true test of a CEO is how he or she faces a crisis. It reveals what the CEO is really made of. I created six crises for you and you emerged triumphant from all of them. Through these six tests, you've learnt more in five months than what Harvard Business School couldn't have taught you in five years. And, once you pass the seventh test, you will be ready to take over the CEO-ship of the ABC Group.'

‘I have no intention of taking any more tests. I'm quitting right now.'

‘Sorry, you can't quit midway under the terms of the contract. Failure is an option, but quitting isn't. And why would you want to quit now, when heading a ten-billion-dollar company is within your grasp?'

‘For God's sake stop selling me that line. You've been leading me up the garden path all this while.'

‘You are being unfair. The only person who has been leading you up the garden path is Karan Kant, your so-called boyfriend.'

I glance sharply at him. ‘And what do you mean by that?'

‘Have a look at these,' he says, and produces a brown envelope. He opens it over my bed and six large colour glossies tumble into my lap. I can feel my chest tightening up as I gaze at the photos.

It is said you don't always recognise the moment when love begins, but you always know when it ends. My love for Karan ended at 6.35 a.m. on Friday, 6 May.

Nothing that Acharya could have said or done would have shaken my faith in Karan, but a camera doesn't lie and the half a dozen freeze-frames on my bed are a nauseating documentation of betrayal and duplicity. They show a couple embracing each other in what looks like the bedroom of my Rohini flat. The pictures appear to have been taken during daytime, from a telephoto lens, every frame zooming in closer. My heart sinks with each and is completely crushed by the final one showing a grainy lip lock between my sister and my best friend.

I fall back on the bed, whimpering like a crippled animal. ‘Take them, take them away,' I cry. ‘I can't bear to look at them.'

‘He's a deep one, that Karan,' Acharya says as he gathers the glossies and puts them back in the envelope. ‘Something's not right about him. He beat the pulp out of the detective who was tailing him on my instructions.'

I am barely listening, my mind still trying to cope with the shock of discovery. Why is it that those who are closest to us hurt us the most? And, of all the people in the world, why did Karan have to choose Neha? Acharya's deception was minor, compared with Karan's monumental treachery and Neha's sickening disloyalty.