The Bestseller She Wrote (27 page)

‘Why won’t she?’

‘She will see through the facade. She is far too smart for this. What if she refuses?’

‘We will see then. Why are you making the decision for her, Sanjay? Let her say she is not interested. We will deal with it at that point in time.’

‘I have given her my word that I will not move her from Aditya’s team. So I will not talk to her about this. You guys can do what you want, without involving me,’ Sanjay said.

‘Even if we do this, how will it serve our purpose in the long run? We can’t go on like this forever.’ Aditya was dismal.

‘We will do this till she gets over you,’ Diana smiled. ‘But from the looks of it, you haven’t got over her yet. Have you, Aditya?’

‘I don’t know, Diana,’ Aditya avoided responding directly. He was scared to confess that he still pined for Shreya. Whether it was guilt at being the one to have called off the relationship or love for Shreya, was difficult to say. ‘I am in a mind-fucked state right now. I can’t even think straight,’ he laboured to explain. ‘When are you meeting Maya? I am hoping she will listen to you guys,’ he added hurriedly, trying to bring the discussion back on track.

‘Next week,’ Diana replied.

Diana and Sanjay were meeting with Maya on the coming Tuesday to try and get her to see sense in accepting Aditya back into her life. Diana had planned to make a passionate plea to help Aditya. Maya was travelling and at Diana’s insistence, Sanjay had spoken with her at length and she had agreed to meet him once she returned.

When they met, Maya refused to hear anything in Aditya’s defence. ‘Loyalty is the least I expect in any relationship, Sanjay. You have heard the conversation between Aditya and that woman. Why are you defending him now?’

‘Doesn’t he deserve another chance, Maya? He is in a pitiable state. You should see him to believe how much he pines for you and Aryan,’ Diana argued.

‘Remember this, Diana: once a cheat, always a cheat. In life it is always about the first time. Anyone who crosses that barrier once can do it, with no scruples, again. He might regret what he has lost and come around, but at the first opportunity he will cheat again. I don’t want to have anything to do with this man. I am only staying away from a divorce for I don’t want to get embroiled in legalities yet.’

The two of them came back disappointed. ‘You could have pushed a little harder. I was doing all the talking,’ Diana said to Sanjay on the way back.

‘Women are more comfortable having these conversations with other women. And you were doing a good job,’ Sanjay responded as he placed his hand over Diana’s.

‘I thought she was gravitating towards agreeing to getting back with Aditya. She just needs a push, some more reassurance. She is hurt, and psychological injuries take time to heal. We just have to wait it out,’ Diana said.

And then,
Bombay Times
happened.

64

17 Missed Calls.

46 SMSs.

188 Tweets.

Aditya jumped out of bed when he saw all the notifications. Something had to be dramatically wrong.

The doorbell rang and rang again. He hurriedly walked to the door and opened it. It was the woman who collected the garbage every morning. He walked to the kitchen, and pulled out the garbage bag from the can and handed it over. The newspaper was lying on the floor outside the apartment door. Sanjay had gone off on his morning jog much before the papers came in. He picked it up and kept it on the dining table. His phone was hanging. Probably the sudden surge in tweets/messages was something it could not handle. The twitter app took some time to open. He cursed himself. He should have checked the SMS’s first.

In the interim he opened the newspaper. He flung the supplements aside and scanned the front page of the main newspaper. Nothing in it interested him. His twitter feed came up. He touched the “notifications” icon to get to the tweets directed at him. He looked at the screen, waiting for it to come up and for a split second glanced at the
Bombay Times
supplement lying on the table. Aditya’s eyes popped out. The twitter notifications too came up on his screen at the exact same moment. He started sweating. His eyes forgot how to blink. His mouth stayed open in shock.

On the front page of the
Bombay Times
supplement was a huge photograph of him. The tweets opened up on his screen. They were all about the
Bombay Times
article.

Next to his photograph was a small inset. In that was another photograph—this one Shreya’s. But it was the headline which disturbed him the most: CASANOVA AUTHOR

Below it was the tagline:
India’s biggest commercial fiction writer’s private life exposed.
In the box that accompanied the article was the text:

At a time when his wife was struggling for life, in isolation, Aditya Kapoor was caught having fun with a young colleague. Read on for a sensational exposé on the double life of banker-author Aditya Kapoor.

‘What the fuck?’ he exclaimed as he hurriedly picked up the paper and started reading the article.

It was all about Aditya’s adulterous relationship with Shreya. It went on to detail their sexual escapades and even carried the transcript of the audio recording, which Shreya had made in Aditya’s house. The most scathing allegation was that when Maya was in hospital, Aditya was sitting outside the room with the love of his life—Shreya. The article even carried a picture of the two of them in the Hyatt coffee shop, the day before Maya came out of the hospital. It was clearly taken off the Hyatt CCTV cameras.

‘This is a disaster,’ Sanjay announced. Aditya looked up; he hadn’t even realised that Sanjay had come in. He was standing right next to him and staring at the same article. ‘How the hell did they get all the details?’

Aditya looked at him with apprehension. ‘Why would she do this? What does she gain?’ He shook his head in despair.

‘I have no idea, Aditya. This is all over the place now. Tim called me while I was jogging. The sad part is that they have linked this to your profession as a banker with National Bank and have drawn the bank into the scandal. Tim is hopping mad. He will come after you. Watch your back. He might want you out,’ Sanjay informed him.

‘Crap. Just because the newspapers say something?’ He got up from his chair and walked around the room, an angry look on his face. ‘What I do in my personal life is my lookout. As long as it is not illegal, the bank has no say.’

‘We have been through this earlier too, Aditya. The bank has a say if the bank gets dragged into it. We need to have a better explanation than that. Living in denial is not going to get you anywhere.’ Sensing Aditya’s confrontational frame of mind, he added, ‘And please do not get into an accusatory discussion with Shreya. It will harm you more than her. She will play the victim card. And she plays that card well.’

‘But . . .’ he was interrupted by the ring of Sanjay’s phone. Sanjay looked at him and then at his phone. ‘Maya,’ he said as he walked away from Aditya and pressed the answer button on his phone.

‘Yes, I saw the article . . . hmm . . . This is rubbish, Maya. It seems like a planted one. Don’t believe everything that it says . . . Yes, yes I know. But it is not true . . . I think you should still give it a chance . . . but Maya . . . okay. I’ll talk to you later,’ Sanjay let out a sigh as he disconnected.

Aditya who was silently looking at him raised his eyebrows. He didn’t even have the strength left in him to say anything. Sanjay came up to him and put his arms around him. ‘Relax. We will figure a way out of this.’

Aditya knew that Sanjay was avoiding the discussion. He pointed to his phone. ‘What did Maya say?’ he asked.

‘She said she had almost convinced herself to give you another chance, but when she read this article she was devastated. When she was in the hospital struggling for her life, you were sitting outside the room with Shreya, taking her out on a coffee date. That is a fact she cannot digest. She knew about the escapades in your house when she was away in the US, but she is hurt by the fact that despite her being seriously ill—almost dead—you still did not stop meeting Shreya,’ Sanjay reported.

‘But that’s a lie. I didn’t do anything when she was in the hospital. Shreya came to the hospital on her own. That’s not my fault. I didn’t call her even once. And you know why I took her to the coffee shop. I told you before I took her there. Shit. How do I even explain it to her?’ Aditya held his head in his hands and collapsed on the chair next to him. He started sobbing like a small child.

*

Sunaina called Shreya a little after ten in the morning. ‘What the fuck is this, Shreya? Have you gone bonkers?’

‘What the fuck is what, Sunaina?’

‘Come on, Shreya. Don’t pretend.’

‘
Bombay Times
?’ Shreya asked her innocently. ‘What is the issue with it? I think it couldn’t have come at a better time. It’ll do me a world of good.’

‘How shameless could you be, Shreya?’ Sunaina looked appalled. She paused as she heard the tone for call waiting. She was getting a call from an unknown number. She ignored it.

‘What is shameless about this, baby? Have you seen the eyeballs it has garnered? I couldn’t have got this kind of visibility even if I had spent lakhs. I am not even saying if it is good or bad, but whatever made TOI carry it, I am happy they did. It’s made me famous even before the book is out,’ Shreya exhaled.

‘Notorious is the word, Shreya, not famous,’ Sunaina reminded her. ‘You are impossible. Some day you will realise how wrong all this is.’

‘Till that day, you don’t be mean to me, Sunaina,’ Shreya chuckled. A frustrated and irritated Sunaina hung up on her.

In around five minutes she got a call from the same number that had called her earlier.

‘Hello,’ she spoke into the phone, her tone curt.

She was met with complete silence.

‘Hello. Who is it?’

‘Sunaina.’

The phone almost slipped out of her hand. Sweat broke out on her forehead. Her heart started beating faster.

‘Sunaina, you there?’

‘Yes . . . Yes. What do you want? Why have you called?’

65

#CASANOVAAUTHOR HAD STARTED
trending on twitter. Aditya opened his twitter feed on his smartphone. The number of trolls on his feed had crossed 500. How on earth would he go about explaining to everyone that it was Shreya who chased him? He was a middle-aged professional caught in his own vanity. He felt like a hunted animal.

For the first time in his life, Aditya walked into office, head hanging low. Shreya had taken the easy way out. She had decided to stay at home.

That afternoon Vaishali called.

‘I told you, didn’t I?’ she mocked him.

Aditya was in no mood for small talk. ‘What?’ he barked.

‘I asked you if there was anything going on between the two of you.’

‘And if you didn’t hear it the last time I said it, I am saying it again, no, no, NO!’ He paused to take a deep breath and continued, ‘Tell me why you called.’

‘I called to tell you that since morning, your book has seen a 450 per cent rise in sales on Flipkart and Amazon. That’s a huge jump given that it is coming on the back of an already huge sales figure.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Aditya was not interested. He was more worried about the rate at which his problems had now mounted and all Vaishali could think of were the rising sales numbers.

‘The article has done you good, Aditya, so stop frowning,’ Vaishali tried to lighten his mood.

‘Really?’ If sarcasm was a dialect, Aditya would have been fluent in it.

‘That’s what the sales team tells me,’ Vaishali retorted.

‘Whatever!’ His tone was abrupt and caught Vaishali off guard. This was the first time she was experiencing Aditya’s mood swings.

‘Aditya, in our internal meeting today, Sales was of the view that we must fast-track Shreya’s book and bring it out in the next four weeks.’

‘Well, it’s your call, isn’t it?’

‘It is, it is,’ she agreed. ‘Cover design of her book will be finalised by end of day. The book goes up for pre-booking on all the ecommerce websites in the next three days. We need to capitalise on this publicity.’

‘Everything is commerce for you guys,’ Aditya was cynical. ‘Others be damned. Sense an opportunity, go for the kill.’

‘New authors struggle to be noticed, Aditya,’ Vaishali was very matter-of-fact. ‘You know that better than I do. This article today has thrust Shreya into the centre stage. Why not leverage and position her appropriately? She will be a sure shot success. Her book will be a definite bestseller.’

‘Your call,’ he snapped back. ‘But why are you telling me this? Shouldn’t you be talking to her about it?’

‘Because you and I had discussed that you will give a quote which will go on the cover of the book. I need that quote today. Simple.’

Aditya remembered. Initially, when he had impressed on Vaishali to publish Shreya’s book he had committed to her that he would lend his name to the book promotion. What better promotion for a new author than the country’s most successful author endorsing the debutant with a quote on the cover. But that was then.