

## Watch It Turn

## by

## Vidyut Kapur

Watch It Turn

by

Vidyut Kapur

Copyright © 2017 Vidyut Kapur

All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Distributed by Smashwords

Cover photograph courtesy Patrick Fore

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorised retailer. Thank you for your support.

To Sonia, who makes all things like this book possible.

#  Note On Spelling

This book is written using word spellings as prevalent in British English. For several words, these are different from the spellings prevalent in American English.

Examples of the differences in the two sets of spellings are:

  * humour vs. humor and colour vs. color

  * realise vs. realize and analyse vs. analyze

  * defence vs. defense and pretence vs. pretense

  * dialogue vs. dialog and prologue vs. prolog

I have used the British English versions of the words simply because these are the ones I am more familiar with, by virtue of the fact that these are the spellings that were drilled into me by my teachers at school, back when I still had the capacity to learn something new.

Vidyut Kapur

Table Of Contents

Watch It Turn

by

Vidyut Kapur

Note On Spelling

Acknowledgements

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part 2

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Part 3

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

About The Author

#  Acknowledgements

The biggest thank you must go to Ravi. He may not have written a single word but he's read these words as many times as I have. From unfinished chapters to the umpteenth draft, his inputs and encouragement have always been critical in getting me through to the next step.

Thanks also to GP, who read the book twice in quick succession and gave invaluable feedback on it. And finally to Santosh for reviewing it.

# Part 1

Brahmachârya

# Chapter 1

By his own definition, Gautam Singh started thinking at the age of fourteen and a half, when he picked up "Galpaguchchha" by Rabindranath Tagore and whacked the dust off its cover with his hands. Till then, that volume had lain on the bookshelf in the guest room, waiting patiently for him to graduate to it, its pages becoming a little yellower every year.

It had been bought by his father in nineteen sixty seven, the year Gautam was born. In those days Mr. Singh's disposable income from his job as a civil servant in Delhi was not very high but he still made sure he bought exactly one good book every month, to read and to preserve. Mrs. Singh too placed great value on reading as a habit. She was firm in her view that reading was "the best sanctuary from boredom". So she bought Gautam his first picture book well before he started walking. As soon as he started talking, she started reading stories to him for at least two hours a day.

By the time he was five, Gautam was reading animal stories and folk tales on his own. He read one in which a slow but industrious tortoise raced a fast but lazy rabbit and won. He remembered vaguely that he had once seen a tortoise ambling along at its usual unhurried pace in a zoo and, on a visit to an uncle's farm the previous year, he had seen some rabbits running about too. When he read the story, he couldn't help but ask his mother, "How can a tortoise beat a rabbit?"

He wasn't fully satisfied with her reply that "The lazy person always loses." Somehow, the events in the story did not match the reality of the world his little mind had assimilated so far and that off-hand response from his mother did nothing to resolve the discrepancy.

But as he became more used to books, he grew more adept at accepting the moral of the story. A year later he read about the greedy crocodile who tried to trap the trusting monkey in a web of lies in order to eat him. The crocodile was finally outwitted by the monkey. This time Gautam was told that "Telling lies never gets you what you want," and he readily believed it.

By age nine, he was quite conversant with the patterns of justice and heroism which the world was supposed to adhere to. He read a book about a cunning enemy spy who wanted to steal the gullible, good scientist's secrets. With only five helpless children suspecting that evil was afoot, the spy was sure to win. But Gautam was certain from the beginning that the five brave children would ultimately uncover his nefarious plans and catch him in a thrilling climax.

As the years went by, Gautam read all the story books he could lay his hands on and enjoyed every one of them. Whenever he started a new book, the words would begin to cast a spell on him from the first page itself. As the characters developed and the narrative unfolded, the book would beckon to him, enticing him to come closer, to get in deeper. The words would peel off the paper and dance in front of his eyes. In time, the real world would blur and only the words would remain in focus. Mesmerised, he would step over the threshold and enter the story world, shrugging off reality as casually as a piece of clothing. The distance between him and the protagonist would vanish. Gautam would experience the protagonist's hardships and feel his sorrows, knowing fully well that they were temporary. He would share his victories and his pleasures knowing that they were permanent. This was a wonderful make-believe world in which everything bad was ephemeral and everything good was everlasting, in which the battles that good and evil fought ended as they inevitably should.

By the time he was fourteen and a half, Gautam could identify the noble and the immoral in any real world situation just as neatly as his books did. In any new setting, he would look to quickly ascertain where virtue lay and align himself with it. He knew for a fact that justice always prevailed and that the righteous would ultimately inherit the earth.

But "Galpaguchchha" by Rabindranath Tagore was a bit of a shock. Many years later, Gautam would jokingly call the act of reading it his first enlightenment. This book – and other similar ones he read after it - showed him a different world altogether. A bewildering world whose rules he struggled to understand. Gone was the clear light of certainty which lit up everything in stark black and white. In this world, human beings lived out their lives in dimly lit areas which were full of moral greyness. Everything that was meant to be separate was jumbled up together. Everything that he already understood was shown in a different light.

One by one these stories, and the books he subsequently read, questioned all his premises. He read about the child who lived in a rough, poor neighbourhood and liked studying but started spending all his time with a street gang to avoid being friendless. Very reluctantly, Gautam reconciled to the fact that sometimes people decide that righteousness requires more hardship than they can bear.

Next he read a novel about a ruthless, murderous gangster who died an old and satisfied man with his children finally owning legitimate corporations set up with his ill-gotten gains. And Gautam had to question his assumption that retribution is guaranteed simply because it is deserved.

After every such book Gautam finished, he spent a couple of hours walking in the park, talking to himself, trying to figure out where virtue and immorality lay in a given situation, or whether a certain character was good or bad. These stories often lacked the moral undertones which nudge a reader to think this or that and left him to his own devices in trying to discover the message of the story.

The best writers are the ones who take their exceptional insight into the human situation and blend it with their gift for story-telling. For an unsophisticated boy, still short of adulthood, these learned minds can be overwhelming. But Gautam did not let this deter him. Whenever he did not understand what he had just read, he tossed and turned the words in his mind, looked at them from every side, and industriously worked his way through to some semblance of an understanding. To him, it was imperative that he disentangle all the things the writer was trying to say, label them and neatly stack them up in their designated cubbyholes. He didn't always succeed though. Try as he might, a few stray insights always stayed outside of whatever elegant and complex structure he created to house all of them.

Despite the odd loose thread, as the volume of fine literature Gautam voraciously consumed grew, his understanding of how every adult mind wove both reality and delusion into its own unique fabric steadily deepened.

  1. #  Chapter 2

"Watch out!"

When he heard the loudly shouted warning, Gautam was crouched on the ground in the middle of a long row of bicycles parked outside school, examining the tyre of his own bicycle. He looked up and saw another bicycle coming fast towards him. The rider desperately tried to stop in time and his arm grazed another parked bicycle as he fought for control. Before Gautam could react, the wheel came skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust, inches from his nose. Gautam got up and speculatively eyed the rider. He was a tall, slim boy around the same age as Gautam, with a relieved but unapologetic grin on his face.

"Sorry, didn't see you down there in between all these cycles," the boy said.

Gautam decided to let it go, instead of acting the aggrieved party. "Thanks for stopping in time," he responded, as he moved away a few steps to let the boy park.

When he was done locking his bike, the boy introduced himself. "Tapan Ghosh."

"I'm Gautam. And you've torn your shirt," Gautam added, pointing to Tapan's elbow.

Tapan examined the tear. "Shit. First day in a new school and I've already torn my uniform. Anyway, maybe no one will notice," he said dismissively, as he unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to hide the tear.

"It's my first day here too. I've shifted from another school," Gautam said.

"My dad just got transferred from Calcutta to Delhi. I'm in class eleven. What about you?" Tapan asked.

"Me too," replied Gautam, as the two sixteen year olds walked into their new school, discussing the details of their tenth grade exam results. At the school notice board, they discovered they had been allotted the same classroom. They made their way to it and sat next to each other in the middle of the last row. As they continued to do every day for the next two years.

***

Gautam had studied in a strict, all boys, missionary school for ten years. Run by Jesuit priests and nuns, it was an environment focussed on discipline. When classes were on, the corridors were deserted. All movement to and from the playing field and the morning assembly area to the classrooms was in neat lines, formed in the correct height order. Student monitors were a constant presence, watching out for mischief, and their threat of a trip to the Principal's office elicited quick compliance. The atmosphere was so thick with regimentation that at lunch time, when the students were free to roam the school grounds, few ventured far from the building which housed their own classroom. Even when they had a long rope, they preferred to stay close to the one place they were legitimately allowed to occupy.

By comparison, Gautam's new school was chaos and pandemonium itself. Every time the bell rang and the teacher left, the classroom would empty out into the corridor till the next teacher came, as if the students were entitled to a few minutes of freedom for every half-hour in the cage. If a teacher saw a student committing a minor transgression somewhere in the school, he or she usually looked the other way. Very few teachers thought of themselves as the guardians of authority whose job was to challenge a misdeed in progress. Most of them just came to the classroom, taught their subject and went away. Perhaps they were intimidated by the thought of stepping out of the safe zone of their prescribed responsibilities.

In Gautam's old school, the corridors and the play-fields had been owned by the teachers. Here, they belonged to the students. The teachers were masters only of the classrooms and, outside of those walls, they avoided confrontations they didn't have to face up to. Gautam realised that in his shift from one temple of learning to another, the balance of power had also shifted a little from the teacher to the student.

The result was an atmosphere of hustle and bustle - a feeling that you could be a little bit naughty without getting caught. In the constant tussle between student and authority, this new equilibrium state was a breath of fresh air for Gautam. For the first few days, he just stood still and felt that charged air flow around him, leaving him with a tingling anticipation everywhere it touched his skin. When he added to this mix the fact that this was a school in which girls and boys studied together, there was certainly something to be looked forward to around every corner.

***

Gautam Singh and Tapan Ghosh were not the only new students in their classroom. In a class of forty four, there were five more apart from them. The other thirty seven students had known each other for years. Within a couple of days, the seven fresh students had all banded together, as newcomers tend to do when faced with a mass of incumbents. Later, they would mingle with the older students who already knew each other and form friendships which were based on more than just shared newness.

As Gautam and Tapan got familiar with the new environment and befriended new people, they also gravitated closer to each other. When one struck up a conversation with a classmate, the other joined in. They paired up for Chemistry experiments. During lunch break, if one of them looked like he was becoming friendly with a member of the fairer sex, then an opening had to be found to include the other one too. The combination of Tapan's friendly charisma and Gautam's quick wit also made them somewhat popular. To Gautam's surprise, he and his new friend slowly emerged as the centre around which a substantial population of the classroom revolved.

Gautam saw that while he took his own time before becoming sure of himself in any new situation, Tapan possessed an easy confidence which was never diminished by self-doubt. As a result, Tapan always knew what to do next in this new environment and Gautam was happy to have him lead the way. When making new friends, Tapan would initially break the ice while Gautam waited a few moments before participating in the conversation. Every day, in lunch break, Gautam let Tapan suggest whom they would spend time with or which part of the school they would explore. Two months into the school term, it was Tapan who first thought of playing truant and skipping a class. When one class ended and before the next teacher came in, they simply made their way up the staircase to the deserted and dusty terrace of the building and stayed there till the period ended. That was all there was to it. While the feat itself was very simply accomplished, Gautam could not help but feel that by bunking a class he had just crossed a line which had seemed very distant in his previous school. He quietly stuck a mental Post-it labelled "Noteworthy Event" against this incident.

Gautam had always had just one or two friends, all as diffident and bashful as him. Always content in their company alone, he had never aspired to anything more than occupying his own little corner of the world. But in this new environment, as the months progressed, he found himself being led from that corner to the centre of the stage. He became friends with the popular guys, the bullies, the school football team. Tapan approached them in the school playground with a demeanour which, while acknowledging their established standing and his own newcomer status, nevertheless demanded acceptance as an equal. Gautam watched in amazement as they responded favourably to his overtures and let him into their world. And where Tapan was let in, Gautam walked in behind him.

Life with Tapan was a progression of lines crossed and milestones left behind. Gautam was not sure who mentioned the possibility of smoking first but it was Tapan who went and bought the cigarettes. He brought them to school and showed them to Gautam in the lunch break, "Shall we bunk class and smoke them today? The football field is usually empty during the last period and when school is over we can go straight back home from there. No chance of any teacher smelling the tobacco on our breath that way." The temptation of crossing another milestone was too much for Gautam to resist.

The football field was a rectangular ground in one corner of the school. It was a hot summer afternoon and Tapan looked for a shaded spot, finally settling on one which was not easily seen unless someone was actually in the field. They made sure they were alone and lit up a cigarette each. Neither of them inhaled the first few drags, they were content to pull smoke into their mouths and let out white clouds that swirled around.

Then Gautam inhaled, felt his chest catch fire and violently coughed the smoke back out. He coughed long and loud, attracting the attention of Mrs. Chopra, the twelfth grade Mathematics teacher who was standing near the field. Since the field was supposed to be empty, Mrs. Chopra entered to investigate. She saw the two boys and shouted, "Hey, what are you up to?" as she immediately realised the answer and started walking fast towards them. Tapan had a sinking feeling in his heart. He had visions of being marched off to the Principal's office and his parents being called to school. But then, quite uncharacteristically, Gautam took decisive action.

"Run!" he yelled, and started sprinting towards the far boundary wall adjoining the road. Tapan took off behind him. Mrs. Chopra had perhaps expected them to be intimidated into immobility and was surprised at the speed of their reaction. She had been too far to see their faces clearly and - with her unwieldy _sari_ and her heeled sandals - wasn't able to run after them.

Racing across the field, within seconds Tapan and Gautam were just a few steps away from the boundary wall. Still running at full speed, they looked at each other, uncertain of whether to jump over or not. But this wasn't the moment for second thoughts. To get caught now, after running away from a teacher, would bring the full wrath of authority down upon them. Reaching the wall, they vaulted over without breaking stride and landed on the road outside the school, stumbling as their knees gave way. Luckily there was no traffic on that lazy afternoon. They got up and ran farther away from school, panting and laughing at the same time, as they realised that they had gotten away with it. At a safe distance from school, they sat down by the side of the road to get their breath back.

As he waited for his heaving chest to slow down, Gautam looked at Tapan. He felt flush with exhilaration and was savouring the adrenaline still flowing through his veins. He knew that these were experiences he would not have had on his own and that he would always owe Tapan a debt, whether he outwardly acknowledged it or not.

***

Gautam experienced Tapan as an elemental force of nature, possessing an intensity he had never experienced before. Tapan had a vitality which was instantly likeable. He was always in good humour, was approachable and lacked any airs. His mannerisms conveyed a distinctively middle class modesty but Gautam quickly realised that any impression of ordinariness was nothing more than a thin, brittle covering. Lurking just below the surface was a mild madness, a recklessness easily unleashed.

Tapan recognised very few conventional boundaries and felt very little fear venturing across the ones he did recognise. He seemed to believe that he could dodge any danger and recover from any accident. As far as Gautam could make out, Tapan lived life as if it was a well-designed roller coaster ride. He could let go of caution at every twist and turn and enjoy every heart-stopping thrill because the creator of the ride had engineered survival into the design itself.

Gautam himself, on the other hand, had led a comparatively staid life. Born in a family where constant admonishment was considered the most basic parental responsibility, he was never really sure he was doing the right thing unless he was walking the straight path. Stepping so far away from it, as he was now doing, was a thrilling experiment for him. In fact, he was mildly surprised that some heavenly force did not rain down instant retribution upon his head for deviating from the path of virtue. But often what we consider a transgression on our part, deserving of punishment, is merely an instance of us crossing a line which exists in our minds alone. So while Gautam may have been apprehensive at every step he took, the Gods in their heavens went about their business without considering his actions especially noteworthy.

As Tapan raced his imaginary motorcycle in his own private race against the rest of the world, Gautam firmly occupied the pillion seat. He leant out from behind Tapan, silently enjoying the speed and the danger as the wind beat against his face and stretched his skin back. The confidence with which Tapan embraced life's experiences fascinated him and he was determined to hang on for as long as the ride lasted. It did not matter that he was not the driver. Just being there was exhilarating and made his monochrome life psychedelic.

This pairing of apparent unequals was not without its benefits for Tapan either. He was from a traditional Bengali family and had spent his life in Calcutta. Delhi youngsters were cosmopolitan and westernised in comparison. In the upper social echelons of one of the city's premier schools, he was a little unsure of what he was doing.

Tapan subconsciously realised that if he let go of all his moorings, he could get lost. So he firmly tethered himself to this intelligent and unassuming friend. He instinctively recognised Gautam as someone who would go along for the ride, but would start pulling back if things got too alarming. Tapan knew that if he ventured too far out, he could always rely on Gautam to reel him back in. His friendship with Gautam became his place of comfort, a dependable base from which he could sally forth and be brash in episodes. This symmetry of mutual benefit provided a solid foundation for the friendship between the two boys.

  1. #  Chapter 3

It was late one Friday evening when Tapan and Gautam came back from their game of cricket in the neighbourhood park. The park was near Tapan's home and Gautam had cycled there to spend the evening with his friend. Now he was straddling his bicycle again, making plans for the weekend with Tapan before heading home.

"So I'll see you tomorrow morning then?" Gautam asked.

"Yes, I'll come to your place by eleven and we can walk it from there," Tapan responded.

"Walk it to where, Tapan?"

Gautam turned towards the unfamiliar voice. It belonged to a girl with long black hair and glowing brown skin. She was wearing an inexpensive cotton _salwaar-kameez_ and was carrying a cloth bag slung from her shoulder. Attractive face, Gautam judged, but too old for them. She was in her early twenties, probably a post-graduate student, or maybe working somewhere.

Gautam looked at Tapan quizzically, who in turn performed the introductions. "Sandhya, Gautam Singh. He's a friend from school," said Tapan. "Gautam, Sandhya Mishra. She works at Doordarshan as a producer of TV serials. Stays in our spare room."

Tapan's family lived in a set of multi-storeyed apartment blocks. Although their apartment was on the second floor, it came with a garage on the ground floor and a spare room next to the garage. The latter was an independent eight feet by ten feet room with an attached bathroom. It was not connected to the main flat in any way and was meant for a live-in maid to stay in but most owners rented it out to augment their income. The tenants were usually bachelors doing their first jobs. But in this case it was a comely bachelorette.

"I'm a scriptwriter, not a producer," corrected Sandhya. "Anyway, how are your studies going?" She knew Tapan was in the twelfth grade, hoping to gain admission into a good engineering college after school. So was Gautam but neither boy was studying enough to clear the entrance examinations. Though that didn't bother them too much.

Instead of replying to her question, they just grinned in response. Sandhya smiled in return, acknowledging the impudent carefreeness. "Okay guys, enjoy yourselves," she said, as she unlocked the door to her room and disappeared into it.

"I should also get going now," said Gautam.

"Sure. See you tomorrow," Tapan replied.

The next morning, they met at Gautam's house and set off for their destination. It was a winter afternoon and the warm sun felt nice on their backs. "How are things between you and Pallavi?" asked Gautam.

"Good. We're meeting tomorrow," replied Tapan. "She's telling her parents she's going out for a movie with her friend Maya. They're both coming to my place at around eleven. Can you take Maya out for a few hours?"

"Sure. What time do you want us to come back?"

"My mom will be home by three. So Pallavi and I will leave home by two. Meet you guys for lunch at Nirula's?"

"Okay. Anyway I want to see a movie which was released yesterday. Maya and I can go for that and then we can meet you and Pallavi for lunch," said Gautam, as he paused to watch the traffic on the road before crossing over to the other side.

"Man, don't just see movies, do something," exhorted his friend. "Pallavi and I keep lining them up for you and you don't do anything. Pallavi tells me some of her friends really like you. Last month you spent four hours discussing some French writer with Varsha but you didn't call her even once after that. I don't know what's going on in your head."

Pallavi was their classmate and Tapan's girlfriend. Their affair had begun about a year back and had been conducted under the indulgent gaze of the entire school population. Each of their intimate moments had been lived out under the scrutiny of a crowd. When Tapan was wooing Pallavi, forty two other students in the classroom had watched his exertions every day. When Pallavi finally accepted his advances, seven bystanders saw what was meant to be a secret look pass between them in the corridor. When they exchanged their first kiss in a secluded corner of the playground, half the school football team practising there averted their eyes.

Tapan and Pallavi were like two people stuck on a raft, slowly floating downstream on a river. As the river flowed through busy towns and villages, the people on both banks became casual witnesses to their lives, mute spectators watching their story unfold in plain sight as the two of them floated by. And there was nothing Tapan and Pallavi could do to hide.

They met every day at school. But their spending several hours together every day could not make up for the fact that they had no privacy whatsoever. So once in a while, on a school holiday, when Tapan's parents were not going to be home, Pallavi and Tapan went to his house.

Pallavi was a seventeen year old girl from a traditional family and she had dared to consummate her first love. That too in middle class Delhi in the early eighties, a place and a time in which Bollywood heroines were still more pure than hot, where mothers were not meant to be financially independent and where high school girls were supposed to be virginal beings who caused much tension and discord in the family if they were caught having an affair. Indian mind-sets were one generation away from accepting the sexuality of young women as something natural, so of course she lied to her parents about whom she was meeting and told them that she was going out with a girlfriend. To establish credibility, she did leave home with a friend and return with the same friend.

While the opportunity to meet may have been created using lies and deceit, the time they spent together felt anything but sordid to Tapan and Pallavi. These few hours of physical intimacy at Tapan's house sustained their affair. These were the moments of privacy they stole from under the world's nose.

Whenever Gautam met Tapan and Pallavi after one of these clandestine meetings, he found them both to be uncharacteristically subdued. There would be a lacklustre laziness about all their actions. As if what you saw were just their physical bodies with a feeble, residual life force flowing through them and their real selves had escaped to another world, reluctant to return. At such times, there was a bubble of silence surrounding the two lovers. They had enclosed themselves in a cocoon which required not just an absence of words but an absence of all action. Gautam could sense the flow of energy between them, a flow which would get disrupted if the stillness surrounding them was disturbed.

And while Tapan and Pallavi drifted on their magic cloud, Gautam was the accomplice who took care of Pallavi's supporting evidence. It was a welcome task which involved giving company to Pallavi's friend of the day. And she had a plethora of them, many of whom Gautam already knew from school. Over the past year, he had seen movies with Asha, Gita and Kavya. He had lunched with Priyanka and Pamela. He had sat talking with Kamna atop a hillock in Nehru Park, surrounded by acres of shaded, bushy alcoves in which couples got to know each other a lot better than he and Kamna did. Once he had spent four hours in Deer Park with Varsha. They had sat on a paved path around a small man made pond, their feet dangling over the edge in the water, conversing animatedly about their favourite books.

Gautam had enjoyed each and every one of these opportunities to flirt with the opposite sex. But while he played these games of hypothetical intimacy with varying degrees of intelligence and realism, depending upon the receptiveness of his partner of the day, he was careful never to cross the line into reality. Tapan and Pallavi wanted him to have a steady girlfriend but Gautam held back.

As a five year old, he had once got it into his head that he wanted to jump off the boundary wall of his house. He had repeatedly climbed up the metal lattice gate to sit on the wall next to it. Every day, as he climbed, he wondered "Will today be the day I succeed in jumping off?" But what looked like an accessible height when his feet were firmly on the ground was a dizzyingly lofty perch when he was looking down from above. Every day he climbed up, looked down and decided that today was not the day. It took him two months of patiently testing his readiness before he decided that the time had come. When he did jump, the inevitable rush of excitement during the half second of free fall and the sense of achievement at having finally done it were all there. But that did not make him view the two months of non-attempts with regret. While the climax was what he had been working towards, he had found the build-up and the anticipation enjoyable in its own way.

This time too he was not in a hurry. Well, maybe that wasn't entirely true because a part of him was eager to get swept into his first romance. Sometimes he did wonder what the curves of a girl's body pressed against his would feel like when he embraced her. Or what her lips would taste like when he kissed her. Often his head swelled as he imagined himself walking with a swagger among his schoolmates.

But while his heart felt the tug of all these emotions and the allure of romantic conquest, at the same time his introspective nature made him a spectator to these very same thoughts. It made him gently mock his own desire to swagger and made him doubt the need for urgency. Seeing himself from this detached, outsider's perspective dampened his agitation and made him hesitate a little, though he didn't fully understand why.

Gautam knew that these brief attempts at self-mockery would eventually die away. As a young adult, he wanted to give himself fully to all of his emotions rather than mock them. And why not? The tug of first love, the allure of teenage rebellion, the camaraderie of young friends – immersing himself in these would provide him with the best years of his life. It would be foolish to try and experience them in a detached manner.

While its ultimate demise was a given, for now at least Gautam's hesitation in the face of Tapan and Pallavi's encouragement was like a glass wall between himself and his destiny. Because of the time he had spent with Tapan and Pallavi, he could see what waited for him across that glass wall. The form and essence of what lay on the other side was clearly visible to him and he was willing to just stand there and stare at it, letting his mind absorb it, instead of stretching his hand out to grab at it. No, he would not make any heroic attempts to shatter the glass and crash through it like a daredevil. It would happen much more quietly. One day, the glass would simply melt and he would finally surrender to the sad-sweet emotions he could already sense stored up inside him. Till then, he would enjoy watching and anticipating.

So when Tapan exhorted him to "do something, man" he just smiled a private little smile and did not respond. What neither of them could anticipate was that when consummation finally did come for Gautam, it would come from a source they had already encountered and dismissed.

  1. #  Chapter 4

Around two years after his "first enlightenment" with Tagore, Gautam's readings and ruminations had finally worked their way into a mass of roughly consistent insights. Using these, he could tentatively start analysing the world of grown-ups. Another year later, by eighteen, he had become an accomplished critic of adult behaviour. Based on what he saw and understood, he came to the conclusion that for all humans other than children and the elderly, nothing is as it appears on the surface.

When his Social Sciences teacher, Mr. Das, wearing as always his well-polished shoes with their worn out soles, proudly claimed that "the middle class is the guardian of society's moral values", Gautam could sense that those words were meant to hide his disappointment that he would never attain upper class affluence. When Gautam saw a plump and bejewelled Asha Aunty lavishly celebrating every religious festival, he understood that what lay behind it was not simple devoutness but her own need for social acceptance and her husband's need for ostentation.

At a Sunday afternoon gathering of neighbours, when two middle aged ladies compared the merits of a dead-end government job versus a back-breaking sales job, Gautam saw that it was really a subtle tussle between them about whose husband had made the right decision twenty years back. It seemed that even when two people whole-heartedly agreed on something, it usually had more to do with a mutual salving of egos than the issue under debate.

To Gautam it was clear that human beings had multi-layered minds, starting with the outwardly projected persona and ending with the innermost layers which a person was not even conscious of. As he lived out his transition into adulthood, Gautam acquired the ability to often see into that inner core of the people around him. He saw how people took their fears, their dreams, their prejudices, their vanities and transformed them into forms which were more agreeable, which they could face up to more easily. He saw through all the small little lies which people tell themselves and their children to make their lives more palatable.

This new found understanding of people's inner worlds gave Gautam the power to see truths that most people successfully hid from themselves. But though he had grown unusually observant and penetrative, Gautam was not yet ready to react with acceptance and understanding to what he saw. Eighty year-olds view the world through a filter of graceful compassion, often forgiving human frailties as attempts to make the harshness of life bearable, whereas eighteen year-olds zealously condemn every deviation from their emerging ethical code.

The belief system which was gradually crystallising in Gautam's mind was a subtle, extensive, well-articulated framework which had been constructed with careful deliberation. But for all that, it still had the polished shine of a freshly minted coin which has no inkling of the years of rough use it still has to go through in the real world before it settles down into its final durable form.

As he read his books, analysed his people and assimilated his experiences, Gautam saw clearly that, deep down in each person, there was a core which remained pure and untouched, but there were many layers surrounding it. In some layer close to that core, human beings inevitably began to weaken, to compromise, to lie. And every additional layer that they accumulated with the passage of time made it more difficult for them to discern their own essence. Curiously, everyone seemed scared of looking inwards and penetrating all the way back to that untouched core. As if some calamity would befall them if they came face to face with their own undiluted purity.

Gautam, on the other hand, was resolute that he would never lose sight of his core, that part of him which always showed him the truth. Little did he know at that time, but the waxing and waning of that resolve of his was to determine the ups and downs of his entire life.

Usually an adolescent's quest for identity proceeds from the premise that his or her own goodness is infallible. But seeing all this, Gautam began to doubt whether his goodness was automatically assured. Perhaps it was not perpetually guaranteed by divine decree. Perhaps he would have to periodically question it and then work at renewing it if he came up short. His salvation could only lie in self-scrutiny, in an inward looking eye which continuously probed and never blinked. He was convinced that this inward looking eye was all that could keep him honest and he swore to never let it go to sleep.

Over the next few years, Gautam regularly exercised this inward looking eye. Whenever he felt something suspicious, something ulterior, lurking about in some dim recess of his mind, he would direct his gaze towards it. He would keep looking at it till he clearly understood the content and the cause of that thought. And every time that understanding came, it did so with a fresh sense of wonder and delight, perhaps even pride. It was clear to him that if you were honest with yourself, if there was no ulterior agenda to your introspection and if you did not fear what you might discover, then there was a wealth of understanding about people to be gained by looking inside yourself. He vowed to always look at himself with this newly gained power of sight which revealed such wonderful riches.

If books had started Gautam off on the road to truly understanding others, then his inward looking eye sustained him on that journey. The more he practiced his own brand of introspective scrutiny, the more he developed his ability to analyse other human beings. In fact, his ability to look through others was merely the flip side of his willingness to look inside himself.

  1. #  Chapter 5

Gautam was late on his first day of college. He knew which public transport bus to catch from home but didn't know its exact timing or frequency. As a result, by the time he reached his classroom, the class had already begun. He mumbled an apology to the teacher and quickly sat in an empty seat in the first row. The next period was a free period and he ran off to the administrative office, to give them some documents he was supposed to submit. When he returned fifteen minutes later, the students, who had been sitting in their individual seats when he had left, had coalesced into tentative groups and were busy getting to know each other. The front-benchers had seen Gautam sitting with them and looked at him as he entered, their body language suggesting that he join them. But Gautam bypassed them and made his way towards a bunch of boys congregated in the back of the room.

"Hi guys, how's it going?" he said, as he stood at the edge of the group. For a second, they all sized up this relative newcomer, until a tall one, who had been leaning nonchalantly against the wall, straightened up and offered Gautam his hand. Gautam returned his handshake and there were introductions all round, as a couple of the boys stepped aside and made room for him to join in.

The next day, Gautam was late again. He was about to sit in the first empty seat he spotted when one of the boys in the last row caught his eye. They had kept a seat vacant for him and the boy was gesturing to him to come sit with them. Gautam nodded his head and made his way to the back.

Over the next week or so, Gautam smoothly fitted into this group. He missed not having Tapan around but that couldn't be helped. Gautam was here, in Delhi, pursuing a Mathematics degree at a college in Delhi University, whereas Tapan had gone off to an engineering college in far-off Calcutta.

But while Gautam missed Tapan, he no longer needed him to create his own space in this new environment. He had watched Tapan play the game often enough in the last two years and had learnt it well. Even though this was a fresh scenario, the rules of the game and the arrangement of the pieces were similar. And because he had naturally gravitated towards the group of boys who were going to own the college corridors, even the players were interacting with each other in the old, familiar ways. So Gautam donned the required mannerisms and was accepted as one of the gang. As the days went by, he and his friends spent more and more time together outside the classroom, indulging in casual banter and becoming familiar with each other.

There was an excitement that Gautam could sense amongst all the first year students at college. They all felt that they had crossed a significant threshold and had begun a new, grown up phase of their lives. To many of them, this was a fresh beginning, replete with possibilities to which old constraints did not necessarily apply. Like any other freshness though, this one did not last forever either.

Slowly, the new stimuli were assimilated, the new environment became commonplace and the routines settled down. As the excitement receded, Gautam could sense something else take its place, something more subtle, more disquieting.

With the passage of time, he and his new friends had all officially become adults. They were aware that soon they would have to start dealing with the world on their own strengths. They wanted to believe, and they wanted everyone else to believe, that they were ready. But most of them would have no real opportunity to show that they really were until they graduated.

If the time of going forth into the world and proving their mettle had been upon them, they would have stopped worrying about it and gotten busy dealing with it. But that challenge had not yet arrived. And you can't start a heroic fistfight with a distant enemy.

In the meantime, what they had to deal with was not the real challenge itself but waiting for it. Deep down, there was uncertainty about their future, a niggling fear that they might not prove to be worthy. So while they waited for the moment of reckoning to arrive, Gautam's new friends needed to reassure themselves that they would measure up when the need arose. Because there was no easy way to find that reassurance, they accepted a mechanism which would merely cover up their fears instead. Because they could not drum up a genuine confidence in their future, they constructed an illusion of mastery over their immediate environment.

As the weeks turned into months, Gautam's new friends acquired a causal cockiness behind which they hid all their doubts. There grew an air of edgy, put-on belligerence about them. They cultivated a callousness which derided everything that appeared to be a weakness. Any behaviour not consistent with their own brand of bravado was a vulnerability worthy of disdain. This was the shortest route to the escape they sought.

Gautam instinctively rejected this counterfeit bravery. Every time he affected an air of bravado with his friends, his inward looking eye made sure that he couldn't do it whole-heartedly. He really did want to fit in and, because of that, it took him time to realise that the mould he was trying to fit into had not been designed for him. After days of feeling there was something wrong, but not fully articulating what it was, this realisation finally dawned on him one evening towards the end of the first term of college.

A few days before the end-term exams he was in the college library, not one of his usual haunts. It was late evening and he should have been getting home but he was studying from a reference book he wasn't allowed to take out of the library. He really did want to finish with it today, so he stayed. When he finally left, it was almost night and he made his way along the dimly lit academic block. He was headed for the campus gate when, on a whim, he turned down one of the side corridors and made his way towards his own classroom.

Gautam was very familiar with the daytime ambience of this corridor – flooded with bright sunlight and bustling with the commotion of students inside and outside its classrooms. It felt strange to walk through the same space after dark, with the surroundings empty of all people and the echo of his own footsteps the only audible sound. When he reached his classroom and turned the handle of the door, he found it to be unlocked. The room itself was unlit but there was just enough light coming in from the corridor for the silhouettes of the chairs and tables to be dimly visible in the dark.

He spent a few moments standing in the doorway, looking into that dark room, before walking up to his seat in the last row and sitting down. He expected to feel strange and he did, sitting in his daily surroundings in such an unfamiliar ambience. But in a few seconds he also began to feel comfortable with the silence and the darkness. Not only had the noise, the light and the people disappeared, it was as if all the forces which made this world turn had stopped exerting their influence too. The daytime world was so far away from this moment that it was easy to sever all links with it and turn inwards. He spent a long time in his chair, leaning back, gazing at nothing in particular. Then he gave a nod of his head, as if he had finally understood something, and left.

From the next day onwards, Gautam's demeanour towards his friends changed. He still spent time with them but he was quieter. As the days went by, he found he was reluctant to give himself whole heartedly to the group. His friends had a swagger in their walk which he could not imitate and, when he walked without that swagger, he was a trespasser in the very corridors he had originally wanted to own. Slow though this process was, it's final result was inevitable. The more he held himself back, the more he was pushed to the periphery. Plans were made without him, fun was had without him and, slowly but surely, the circle of inclusion closed, leaving him outside it

Perhaps it was all as well, he thought. Perhaps this was the natural order of things. If this was what was demanded of a socially competent young adult, then perhaps he was better suited to the solitude of the library than the camaraderie of the corridor. And the library is where he spent most of his time in college from then on.

  1. #  Chapter 6

It was a sunny October afternoon when Gautam went to a bookshop near Tapan's house to buy a textbook. Winter was late that year and it was quite hot in the afternoons. Gautam had a few hours to kill, so after making his purchase he went to Tapan's house. It had been a year and a half since Tapan had gone off to Calcutta. Gautam had visited his house like this, when Tapan was not in town, a few times since then - usually just before Tapan's vacations to find out the exact date of his arrival. This time, like most other times, it was only Tapan's mother who was home and she wasn't surprised to see Gautam. They exchanged pleasantries as he sat down.

"When is Tapan coming for the Durga Pooja holidays?" he asked Mrs. Ghosh.

"He's decided to stay in Calcutta," Mrs. Ghosh informed him, her disappointment quite apparent. "The college lost a few days due to a teachers' strike last month and they've shortened the holidays. He's only going to get a week," she explained. "And the train journey itself is forty two hours each way, you know. No point making that long trip for just three days."

"Oh, that's too bad. He won't be here till December then," Gautam said in dismay.

That ended their information exchange. Gautam could have said his goodbyes and left then but he stayed another ten minutes. There was not much to say and they filled that time with long silences interspersed with talk of Gautam's own plans after graduation. It was a sparse, half-hearted conversation and the long gaps in it should have been awkward. But they weren't because they were filled with an unspoken emotion shared between this friendless college student and this mother whose child had recently flown her nest. Gautam stayed because he needed to spend a few minutes with a kindred spirit who was missing the same thing he was. There really was no need to talk in those ten minutes and silently sitting in that house would have served his purpose. But since a long silence is socially impolite, they occasionally broke it with the ritual of inconsequential chatter.

Finally, Gautam left. As he climbed down the steps from the second floor apartment, he felt disappointed. The structure of college life – the bus journeys to and fro, the classes, the hours he spent in the library - filled the early part of his day but he had no friends to interact with in the evening hours. He enjoyed spending time with himself but even so, two more months of evenings alone was not an enticing prospect. He reached the ground floor of Tapan's building and turned towards home – too busy feeling morose to see the girl till he almost bumped into her. It was Sandhya, bending down to unlock the door to the room she lived in. In the days when he had visited Tapan almost every day he had met her a few times but those casual encounters had not extended beyond the obligatory exchanged greetings.

Sandhya was struggling with several bags full of groceries while trying to unlock the door at the same time. "Need any help?" he asked. She looked up, recognised him and smiled. He took the bags off her so that she could use both hands on the padlock. As she finally opened the door and Gautam stepped into her room, he found the cool, brown shade inside a pleasant sanctuary from the bright sunlight outside. It was a dimly lit room and Gautam liked its soothing brownness. He walked across it and deposited the bags on a stone slab which served as the kitchen.

"Thanks," said Sandhya, as she got busy sorting out the contents. "Why don't you sit please. I'm going to make coffee for myself. You want some?"

Gautam was a little surprised at the invitation to spend time. He was under the impression that Sandhya was guarded in her interactions, something to be expected from a young, attractive woman living alone in Delhi. "Sure," he said, as he shut the door and sat down on the only chair in the room.

He looked around the eight feet by ten feet room. Next to the entrance door, there was a window on the front wall. A sheet of thick brown paper, the kind used to cover school text books, had been stuck over the window pane to keep out the glare and provide privacy from passers-by on the road outside. Below the window, along the length of the adjacent wall, Sandhya had placed a mattress on the floor. It was covered with an inexpensive cotton bed sheet. A sheaf of papers stapled together and titled "Script of Serial _TALES OF A FATHER AND DAUGHTER_ – First Draft" was lying on it. Above the mattress, halfway up the wall, was a poster of Shakespeare with his familiar high forehead and long side locks. Next to the poster was a wooden shelf with a small cassette player on it. The rear wall, where the mattress ended, had a door which led to a bathroom. By the side of the bathroom was a small alcove which served as the kitchen area. It had a five feet long stone slab with a cooking stove on it. Above it were two small overhead cupboards for storing utensils and provisions. This was the corner of the room where Sandhya was standing, with her back to Gautam, and making coffee.

Gautam was sitting in a sturdy chair which appeared to be a hand-me-down but still had a few good years left in it. It had been placed next to a full size cupboard. On the cupboard door was stuck a sheet of handwritten lines. Gautam got up to read them.

Sometimes

When I find myself alone

When silence becomes my friend

When my eyes strike up a conversation with darkness

The poem went on for a few more stanzas, describing the mood of a person revelling in loneliness. Gautam thought it was beautiful and read it again. There was no title or poet's name on the sheet. Maybe Sandhya had written it herself.

He looked around the room again. It had a pensive yet soothing feel to it. The owner's personality had been stamped on this space with a firmness which did not allow any confusion. The overwhelming impression was of being surrounded by a space which you knew belonged to one person and that person alone. There was an air of unapologetic frankness to the room. It said, "This is what I am. Take it or leave it." Gautam instinctively concluded that this room belonged to a person who was comfortable with herself and who had survived in this world on her own terms.

Gautam thought of his own home, or rather, of his parents' home which he lived in. It was a three-bedroom house in which he had a room to himself. But that room certainly didn't bear his imprint the way this one bore its owner's. Over the past few years he had put up posters of his choice, rearranged the furniture and forced a change of curtains. But it was still not his room the way Sandhya's was and he did not know why. Try as he might, he could not infuse it with his moods. He could not isolate his room and block the flow of air between it and the rest of the house. And with that air, in came the same vacuous brightness which permeated the rest of the house. He envied Sandhya the fact that, instead of living in a house with other people as he did, she lived in a space which was completely hers.

"Coffee's ready." The words brought him out of his reverie. Sandhya gave him his mug and sat down on the mattress opposite him.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing to the sheaf of typewritten papers lying next to her.

"I work as a scriptwriter in Doordarshan," she said. "It's the script of a TV series I've been writing for some time now. I'm hoping it'll actually get made one day."

Doordarshan was the only TV channel in the country. It was run by the government and, till recently, was known for its drab programming. Three years back, in 1984, it had started producing dramas telecast in weekly episodes. The first family soap operas telecast on Doordarshan had actually seen their viewership go as high as fifty million people for some episodes. Sandhya had been assisting in writing the dialogues and scripts of one or the other of these serials for the past two years.

"That's an interesting choice of career," he said. "How come you got into writing TV serials?" Gautam asked.

"I love films and I used to dabble in writing as a teenager. After I finished my graduation in Hindi Literature, I did a course in screenplay writing at the Film and Television Institute in Poona," Sandhya replied.

Sandhya's profession appeared very exotic to Gautam. He imagined her in a large studio filled with activity – spot boys hurrying about, lights being set up for the next shot, actors getting a quick coat of make-up and cameramen finalising their angles. He imagined her sitting alone in one corner, untouched by the hustle and bustle of activity around her, quietly thinking about her characters and creating interesting lives for them.

In his family, his own academic choices and professional prospects had been a matter of much agonised debate. But it had never occurred to Gautam, or his parents, to look beyond the conventional paths open to urban, educated Indians. As a result it was a process of elimination rather than passion which dictated his choices. Right from childhood, he had not been interested in becoming a doctor. Engineering had been ruled out when, much to his parents' disappointment, he didn't secure admission to any of the better engineering colleges in the country. He was now basically waiting to graduate and hoping he would then gain admission to one of the MBA schools in the country. Somehow, he had never seriously considered a fourth or a fifth option.

As the music that was playing ended, Sandhya got up to put on another cassette. The box she took it out of had the picture of a glass prism with white light entering the prism from the left and a rainbow exiting it to the right. Gautam had heard these songs once earlier at a friend's place and had been fascinated by the lyrics.

"Can I borrow that?" he asked when the first song ended. Not only did he want to listen to the songs, he also wanted to come back here again to return the borrowed cassette. Even though Sandhya was a few years - four years, he later found out – older than him, he felt an easy comfort between them and wanted to meet her again.

"Sure," she said. "But return it fast. I listen to it a lot." She took it out and gave the cassette and the box to him.

He noticed that the box had a sticker with "Music House, Colaba, Bombay" written on it.

"How come you studied scriptwriting and came to Delhi," he asked. "I would have thought Bombay with its film industry would have been a better choice."

"Maybe. But my father knew someone who works in Doordarshan. So he got me a job there. If I had gone to Bombay, I probably would have struggled to get a break in movies," she replied.

Gautam marvelled at the liberalism of a family which not only allowed its daughter to study scriptwriting but also allowed her to live alone in a city far away. He imagined them encouraging her to explore professional avenues, to pursue a career based on her interests and to take risks. He did not realise that, in his eagerness to make the grass on the other side of the fence appear greener, he had quickly jumped to conclusions.

  1. #  Chapter 7

Sandhya Mishra had been born and brought up in a dusty town in the heart of the North Indian plains. Once upon a time, her home town had been a hotbed of pre-independence politics and a major cultural centre. The city was also the home of several stalwarts of Hindi literature - whose stories and novels even Gautam had studied in school – and its university was once the most respected centre of learning between Delhi and Calcutta. But by the early eighties, the city's heyday had passed. The political centre of the region had shifted to other, more populated cities. The generation of writers which made the town famous had all died or retired. The planned industrialisation of post-independence India had pretty much bypassed it. The factories had been built in other cities of the region, leaving her town not only free of grime and pollution but also devoid of jobs. In fact, most of Sandhya's generation only thought of ultimately leaving the town and settling down elsewhere, usually Delhi.

Sandhya's father was a retired lawyer who had been fairly successful in his profession and the family was financially comfortable. Unlike most fathers of his generation, he had not been distant from his children and had not treated a daughter as a burden. In fact, he had doted on Sandhya almost as much as he had worried about her elder brother's future. When Sandhya had had her first poem published at the age of sixteen, he had been happy to see her gleeful face. At nineteen, he had encouraged her to become editor of the college magazine. Of course, his real pride in his children had been when his son had got admission into the Government Law College at Bombay University. Sure, daughters were capable of intelligence and deserving of encouragement, but ultimately sons' careers had to be taken more seriously.

Sandhya and her father had fought when she had finished graduation. Sandhya had secretly wanted a career in letters and a conversation with a cousin from Mumbai had made her consider scriptwriting as an option. She had gone to the university library and read the relevant sections of the few books she could find on film-making. The more she learnt about it, the surer she became that this was the right choice for her. She had spoken to the student counsellor at her university and found out that the best academic qualification to acquire was a one year course in scriptwriting from the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune. She had even saved her pocket money and ordered a brochure cum admission form from the institute. As she read and re-read the booklet to the point of remembering every word in it, she became certain that this was the profession she wanted to pursue.

But her father wanted her to get married instead. Sending his daughter off to a college far away from home and embarking her on a career in the disreputable film industry in Mumbai was not something he could give his blessings to. From his perspective, all her life he had given her more than she could reasonably expect and it was now time for her to return the favour and settle down.

He argued with her on this issue almost every day for the next three months, but he did not realise how much steely determination his daughter possessed. She may have grown up in a sleepy, aimless town whose very air was redolent with demure fatalism, but she had also grown up quietly believing that she was an intelligent, capable girl meant to do something in this world other than living out the script of matrimony and maternity. While trying to convince her father to let her attend the course, she secretly applied to the institute in Pune for a scholarship and, courtesy her exemplary academic record and her recent stint as editor of the college magazine, had no problems securing one. That took care of the tuition fee and, having quietly tied up that loose end, she decided it was time to end the strife which had gripped their home almost every day for the past three months.

One evening, she confronted her father with a _fait accompli_. She made him a cup of tea, settled him down in his favourite armchair and made the situation clear to him. It took one hour for her to tell him, "There's been enough discussion and I have made up my mind. I love you and I am grateful to you. But I am going to do this, with or without your blessings." By the end of that one hour, Mr. Mishra finally comprehended that he could not stop his daughter.

In that one hour she saw him age several years. As he heard the determination in her tone and saw the firm resolve in her eyes, he felt the illusion of a perfect family crumbling around him. An illusion which had taken more than a decade to build had been blown away by one single act of a wilful child. In a few seconds she saw many different emotions in his eyes – anger at her open rebellion, pride in her determination, concern for her future, frustration at his powerlessness to prevent this and, very fleetingly, a flicker of the realisation that perhaps his daughter was as far ahead of the times as he was behind them.

Finally, having been left with no other option, he relented. A compromise formula was worked out. Sandhya would go study her scriptwriting course. But after that, instead of going to Mumbai and trying to find work in the film industry, he would get her a job in Doordarshan through a friend. From his point of view, he was making the best of a bad situation. Working in Doordarshan would be a steady, regular job in an environment devoid of the glitz and glamour which can easily lead a young girl astray. And Sandhya would be in Delhi, which was a city much closer than Mumbai and full of relatives and friends who could be called upon to help if needed.

So Sandhya managed to fight her way to Pune and, when her year there was over, her father spoke to his friend in Doordarshan. The state owned TV channel had just started broadcasting serials a year back. It was a new experience for them and they were looking for good scriptwriters to help not only write scripts for in-house productions but also to review scripts submitted by independent producers. All the experienced, successful scriptwriters were working in the more lucrative film industry in Mumbai and all the fresh graduates also wanted to head there. As it turned out, someone of Sandhya's qualifications was welcome at the government operated channel.

So Sandhya shifted to Delhi and got busy with her work. She began to enjoy honing her skill to fit the nuances of television. For two years she focussed on her work to the exclusion of everything else and had no time for making friends in her new city. Starting as an apprentice and moving on to junior script writer, she had slowly gained more and more independence in her work till the point that she was now ready to write her own series.

For the last two years in Delhi, her life had moved so fast that she barely had time to understand and assimilate one new experience before the next one was upon her. She had been busy just coping with life at work, with life in the big city and with life in her companion-less room. Only recently had she begun to feel that she was coming through to the other side of this storm she had been living in, that she was beginning to gather the reins of her life back in her own hands and relax a little.

***

Four days after Gautam had borrowed Sandhya's cassette, he visited her again to return it. This time he borrowed a thick book which took him three weeks to finish. The next book he borrowed was thankfully much thinner and he could go back after just a week. By this time, Sandhya had understood that he was borrowing things only to have an excuse to come back but she didn't say anything. The next time they met, she was making coffee and had her back to him when he asked her if he could borrow a novel he picked up from the window sill.

"Sure," she responded. Then, continuing to look down at the water boiling in the vessel, she added, "That's the last book I have, you know. So there aren't any left for next time. But you can still come here whenever you want."

Gautam got up from his chair and put the book back. "That's a relief," he said, "because I've already read this one." They both laughed.

Sitting there in that room the first few times they met, they both felt the effortless fluidity of their interactions. By all surface logic, no affinity should have existed between them, the differences of age and background were only too obvious. But despite that, they felt an instinctive kinship which made spending time in each other's company a pleasant experience. That in itself would have been enough for them but this innocuous friendship held the promise of something even more. When they were together, they felt the air in that room suffused with a possibility. A possibility which could be sensed but not seen or touched. A possibility which might grow to have a recognisable shape and texture in the future but which, in transporting itself back to the present, had become nothing more than a vague feeling of anticipation at the back of their minds. Gautam kept coming back to meet Sandhya because he could not allow that possibility to wither away. He felt the need to nurture it, give it the time and effort it needed to become the substantial thing it was meant to be.

Sandhya kept welcoming him back because she saw in him a guileless, grown boy who took life as seriously as she had a few years ago. A quiet, brooding young man who, even though he was living in his own prison altogether different from hers, needed to escape from it just as she had managed to escape hers a few years back. Gautam was clearly at home in this big, busy city which was still a little alien to her, but she saw something in him which she wanted to reach out to and link with.

After that day, Gautam started meeting Sandhya more frequently. Throughout that winter, he visited her in her room in the evenings or dropped by on weekend afternoons. He usually went by bicycle and it took him just ten minutes. One evening in January he found the door locked and guessed that she was not yet back from work. He strolled around the area for half an hour and then checked again but she was still not back. Finally, after an hour of waiting in the cold, he left. When he met her the next day he mentioned it to her.

In the late eighties, telephones were still uncommon in the country, with a waiting line of a few years. Sandhya didn't have one and, before starting out from his house, Gautam couldn't call her to check whether she was home or not. So neither of them took note of having missed each other the previous day because there was nothing to be done about it. A few weeks later, one evening he found the door locked again. From afar, he could see the large padlock Sandhya normally used hanging from the bolt. As he went closer he found a piece of white paper stuck on the door. "Will be back late tonight" it said. So it had occurred to her that he might come and she had stuck a note asking him not to wait. Gautam was pleasantly surprised.

When they did meet, Gautam and Sandhya sat in her room and talked most of the time. They talked about the lyrics of the song that was playing, some book either of them had just read, their parents, their hopes for their respective futures. As one random topic ran out, the next one would magically appear to fill up the conversation. In keeping with the ease with which the words came, their mood was also cheerful. Sometimes, depending on what they were discussing, they would get a little wistful. But gloominess never entered that room.

The only really solemn conversation they had was the day Sandhya asked him, "So, Gautam, you said you weren't a studious guy at all in school. How come you topped your class in your college first year exams? What changed?"

"I didn't have anything to fill my time with," he laughed and said. Then he added, "Like Tapan, most of my other school friends too went to colleges outside Delhi and I haven't made any new friends in college. Then I discovered the library and found out that Maths is actually quite interesting." He shrugged his shoulders and concluded dismissively, "Anyway, it's not as if I had anything better to do with my time."

Gautam's eyes fell on a sheaf of papers stapled together lying on the window sill. It was the final draft of the same script he had seen the first day he had come to her room. Sandhya had mentioned to him a couple of times that she had written her own script and was trying to convince her bosses at Doordarshan to produce it. He asked her if her seniors had agreed yet.

"Not yet, but almost," she replied. "Mr. Khanna, my boss, wants to work with me and refine some of the dialogues."

"What's it about anyway?" Gautam asked.

"It's about a girl who grows up with her father," Sandhya replied. "Her mother passes away when she's nine years old and the story describes how the relationship between the two of them develops. The first few episodes are sad, the middle episodes start to get a bit of humour injected into them and finally it's about the girl growing up and moving on."

"Did you write it from personal experience?" Gautam asked hesitatingly, knowing that he was venturing into a part of her life which she had been reluctant to speak of so far. He knew the bare facts of her situation and nothing more.

Clearly, she felt comfortable enough with him now because she began to talk about it. For several minutes, she continued speaking without looking even once at Gautam. She looked down at her hands fidgeting around in her lap as she let him in on the only aspect of her life she had so far withheld from him. As she spoke, Gautam listened and felt overawed by her circumstance and her strength. He was also glad that she had opened up to him and knew that it could only augur well for them.

When Sandhya finished, Gautam went and sat next to her but did not saying anything. After several minutes, he got up and opened the door. The outside light flooded the room. The sun had changed its angle in the sky and the incandescent, white-yellow light of the afternoon had become the pleasant blue of the evening. It was March, that time of the year when the Delhi winter had faded into spring. "Come on, let's go for a walk," he said and held out his hand.

For the first few minutes they walked in silence. Then Gautam pointed out a funny billboard by the side of the road. Sandhya looked at it and made a comment. They both laughed a little and the effortless flow between them started again.

  1. #  Chapter 8

Two months later, in the beginning of May, Gautam's second year results came out. It was vacation time, but he went to college to see his marks. There was a crowd in front of the notice board. The bodies were packed solid and it took him a few minutes to jostle and squeeze his way through to the front. He struggled to hold his position against the incessant shoving from behind, long enough to find his name and quickly write down his marks in each of the five papers. When he was done, he allowed his body to be pushed towards the edge of the throng. He finally stumbled out and made his way to a bench nearby.

When he sat down, he looked at the piece of paper clutched in his hand and felt the excitement surge in him. With these marks, he realised, he must have stood first again. He would know for sure when college re-opened after summer vacations and the detailed report cards were distributed. But he already knew that no one else in his class would have done as well as this.

Throughout school Gautam had been a reasonably good student but he had never come close to topping his class. To do it two years in a row in college was exhilarating for him. He got up and made his way to the bus stop just outside college and waited for a bus headed home. The next bus to come was not the one he was waiting for. Instead, it was going to the road on which the Doordarshan production studios were located. On a whim, he got on.

All through the bus ride he wondered whether he was doing the right thing and what he was going to say once he got there. Until now, he and Sandhya had only met when he had gone to her room. At most, they had gone walking on the roads around her house. But at noon time that day, he was actually standing in front of a bored, fat lady at the Doordarshan reception counter and asking for Sandhya Mishra. The receptionist looked him over a couple of times and finally sent a peon in a brown uniform scurrying off to look for Sandhya Madam.

Gautam waited patiently for fifteen minutes before Sandhya came. As soon as Gautam saw her, he got up and went to her. Everything he had to say came out in a rush.

He couldn't hide his grin as he said, "Sandhya, my results came out today. I've probably topped my class again."

"Hey, that's great," she said.

He took her hand and started pulling. "Come on. Let's go celebrate."

Sandhya felt a little above celebrating anything to do with exams and studying. She had left that world behind almost three years back. Sometimes she forgot that Gautam still lived most of his life in that world with a much younger person's concerns. It seemed so distant and remote to her now that she resisted his pull. Then she saw the happiness on Gautam's face and his desire to share his little victory with her. She immediately relented and said, "Okay, where are we going?"

As he pulled her towards the exit, she felt a twinge of guilt thinking of Mr. Khanna waiting for her to come back and finish discussing the dialogue of the first day at college scene. But then she tossed that thought aside and ran out laughing with Gautam.

***

The next Saturday, Gautam went to her place early. When he knocked on her door, no one answered. He was impatient to get out of the summer sun and knocked again, much louder this time. "Wait a minute," he heard a muffled voice shout from inside. After a few minutes, Sandhya opened the door and Gautam realised that she had been bathing when he had first knocked. She was wearing a sleeveless blouse and an ankle length skirt and her hair was still uncombed. Gautam sat on the only chair in the room, relaxing in the dim coolness, as Sandhya stood in front of the mirror with her back to him. He watched her take a brush through her hair in long, deliberate strokes from the top of her forehead to the middle of her back. There was a lazy hypnotism in the rhythmic movement of her bare arms. When she was done, she moved the whole mass of shiny black hair in front of her shoulder. The sleeveless, cotton blouse she was wearing had a single button at the back which was still undone. Sandhya bent forward, trying to reach up behind her back but her arms weren't long enough.

"Here, let me help you with that," Gautam said and in one swift movement he was standing behind her. As he moved in closer, she lowered her arms and straightened up. He felt the back of her thigh touching the front of his. The button was done in one second but he continued to stand where he was. He noticed a damp patch on her blouse where her wet hair had rested against it. He saw the thick hair falling from her head to the front of her shoulders in one long sweep. He looked at the glowing brown skin of her bare arms. He felt her back rising and falling lightly against his chest with every breath she took. He looked up at the mirror and saw her looking at him with a steady gaze.

The room they were in expanded to fill the whole world. There was no sound, no movement. Anywhere. Because the world was standing still. For several seconds, they stood looking at each other in the mirror.

Gautam's hand was still at the base of Sandhya's neck and his fingers twisted and undid the button they had just fastened. Sandhya continued to hold his gaze in the mirror without acknowledging this act. Finally, she turned and faced him. She looked searchingly into his eyes. He did not flinch or look away. Then she made up her mind, took his hand in hers and sat on the bed, pulling him down with her.

Later, both of them lay next to each other. Their energies spent, their limbs lazily entwined, their heartbeats almost back to normal. With all tension dissipated, Gautam was immersed in the delicious languor which comes after. He was lost in his own thoughts when Sandhya suddenly hugged him. It was not the gentle, tender embrace of two people who had just been joined but the hard, fierce clinging of someone who feared separation. Gautam wondered why she was holding him so hard that his skin hurt where her hands were pressing his body. He did not understand that she was merely trying to preserve this moment forever, not wanting it to pass as it inevitably must. She was directing all her will to fight the laws of the universe as she intuitively understood them, the same laws which ordained that two human beings will remain, inevitably, two separate human beings.

Gautam held her close, not saying anything. When she relaxed again, he looked questioningly at her. She smiled back at him, dispelling his concern with a shake of her head. Then she turned on her side, with her back to him. She needed a moment to herself, reordering her private world to assimilate this new turn in the road she was travelling.

Gautam too lay on his side, his body nestled against hers, his head resting in the palm of his hand, raised a few inches by the support of his elbow on the bed. He placed the back of his free hand on Sandhya's cheek for a few moments and then ran his fingers down her body. Tracing the curve of her breasts, brushing them against the skin of her bare stomach, dipping gently through her navel, he brought his fingertips to the side of her waist, then over her hips and down the side of her thigh to her knee.

He watched his hand slowly make its way back over her brown glowing skin, back to her shoulder which was resting lightly against his chest. Every time the two bodies breathed, his stomach pressed against her back. The length of his thigh hugged the line from her haunches to the back of her knee. He marvelled at how both of them fitted each other to the millimetre, as if they had been designed to fit. Maybe nature itself had conspired to bring about this union. Maybe when he had been born, some four years after Sandhya and six hundred kilometres away from her, the strands of his DNA had been encoded so that every muscle and curve of his body would precisely dovetail with hers in this moment, twenty years later.

  1. #  Chapter 9

Even though entrance exams to the MBA colleges were to be held in October, Gautam had started studying for them in April, giving himself a good six months. He was usually not a confident exam taker but this time there was a quiet certainty to his preparatory effort. He went about it methodically, knowing he had enough time to not have to rush things.

Tapan came home in June that year for his summer vacation. Gautam visited him almost every evening and was happy to have his old friend back. Late one Friday evening, Gautam and Tapan were standing outside Tapan's apartment when Sandhya came home from work.

"Hi Tapan," she said. "Good to see you back. How's college going?"

"Oh, it's quite boring," Tapan replied. "Actually, I'm enjoying being in Calcutta more than the college itself."

"Anyway, half over now," he added with a grin, referring to the fact that he had finished two years and only had two more to go.

Even though the course content didn't excite him, that didn't prevent Tapan from doing well in his exams. Like most Indians of his generation, handling exams came easy to him. There was a simple technique to ignoring studies for most of the term but still getting good marks. As the exams approached, you analysed the complexity of the course content and the pattern of questions in the previous years to find out which areas would get you the most marks – the maximum return on your investment, so to speak. Then you spent the last few days before an exam slogging with a single-minded devotion, concentrating on the content you had carefully selected and pretty much ignoring the rest of the syllabus. The objective was to learn the critical bits well. And wherever quick understanding eluded you, rote memorisation was as effective a substitute. If you did this every term for four years, you were unlikely to gain much in-depth knowledge of your subject. You would, however, attain your primary objective of graduating with a respectable grade sheet. And you could feel gleeful pride at having extracted an acceptable end result from the system in the most efficient manner possible.

"How's your job?" Tapan asked Sandhya.

"Going well. I've just started work on the first serial based on my own script," she replied.

"Finished the dialogues yet?" Gautam interjected.

"Not yet," Sandhya smiled at Gautam. "Mr. Khanna's still disagreeing with my approach to a couple of scenes. I'm hoping we can finish it this week." Then she touched Gautam's arm and said, "I'm a little tired guys, so I'll catch up with you later."

Tapan was surprised at the familiarity of the exchange between Gautam and Sandhya. He raised a questioning eyebrow behind Sandhya's back as she got busy unlocking the door to her room. Once she had gone in, he asked Gautam, "How long has this been going on?"

"For some time," Gautam replied. "About six months or so."

Tapan wanted to talk some more about it. But he saw that Gautam didn't and kept quiet. The next day was a holiday and when Gautam went to Tapan's house in the evening, Tapan said, "Let's go see what Sandhya's doing. I checked with her in the morning and she said she'll join us for a couple of hours." So they picked her up and went to the nearby market.

Sitting in a coffee shop, Gautam and Sandhya did most of the talking. Which was just as well because Tapan, uncharacteristically for him, seemed to be in a mood to just watch. He had some questions on his mind and was hoping that watching this twenty year old student laughing and chatting with this twenty four year old script writer would give him the answers.

But at the end of two hours Tapan still didn't have his answers. Sandhya clearly brought out a relaxed confidence in Gautam which he had never seen before. In that sense Gautam seemed to have found something precious and he was happy for his friend. But what brought Gautam and Sandhya together was still an enigma to him.

The oddity of their coupling, while visible to people like Tapan, was not bothersome to Gautam and Sandhya. When an outsider looked for commonality between them, he did not find anything fundamental enough to explain the depth of their relationship. But that was because he was possibly looking in the wrong place to begin with. The connection between them was not one of shared interests or history. They were not exactly at the same stage of life and their demographic backgrounds were not common either. What was common between them was something else altogether. It was that these two people were aliens in the lands they physically occupied. They ate, slept and worked in the world they lived in but there was a hesitation, an unease to all their interactions with that world. As if not this, but some other land was their true home.

Sandhya had left the environment she was familiar with since her childhood. Even though she had struck out on her own with single minded determination, it was uncharted territory she had headed for. A territory whose layout she was still not familiar with, whose rules she was still not at ease with. It would take more time and effort before she became its master.

Gautam, in his own mind, had already left his parents' home and their way of looking at things far behind. He knew what his rightful future was. He knew what tribe he wanted to belong to but he had not yet gained entry to it. It would take more time and effort before he earned it.

In their own different ways, both these people were living as exiles in a no-man's-land. Stuck in an empty zone behind which was the kingdom they had renounced, now left too far behind to go back to and beyond which lay the promised land which was still some distance away. Only the passage of time could complete their journey across this arid, unpopulated region in which they had stumbled upon each other.

  1. #  Chapter 10

Gautam was thrilled when he opened the letter which told him that he had successfully gained admission to the Indian Institute of Management. The institute had the most sought after MBA program in the country and its graduates got the highest paid and most glamorous corporate jobs. In an era when landing a steady, dead-end job in the government was itself an occasion for parents to distribute sweets to the neighbours, Gautam felt he had earned himself entry into an exclusive club. A club which he deserved to be a part of, of course.

Gautam felt that he had spent years in the shadows, knowing all the time that his rightful place was in the sun. It had taken time for events to align themselves but finally justice had been done. There was vindication coursing through his veins and he wanted it to cleanse him of any residue of self-doubt that still remained.

Gautam was not just feeling relief at having guaranteed a prosperous future for himself, equally he felt that the world had done some vague injustice to him in the past and this was his reply. But where the relief was a well articulated thought, the latter was just a dim emotion at the back of his mind and that was where it stayed. Gautam did not ask himself why he was desperate to belong to an exclusive club. He did not question his need to be recognised as successful. He did not examine when that need first arose and took hold of him. All he knew was that he finally belonged to the tribe of the privileged. He was too busy basking in the glow of his success to waste his time asking himself irrelevant questions.

Gautam had been using his inward looking eye for a few years now but in all that time, there was one curious thing about it that he had forgotten to take note of. When it showed you things it was clear that you were seeing the world through it, but when it was shut, you couldn't just keep reminding yourself that something was missing. After all, the natural human condition is just two outward looking eyes.

***

In his first few weeks at the institute, Gautam was consistently overwhelmed by almost everything about his new environment. He was dazzled by the way the professors plunged into subjects he had never studied before - accounting, economics, marketing, statistics, psychology... the list of new subjects was long. He was left breathless by the volume of work and the pressure to do it well. Most of all he was amazed at the students' drive to win. To win a good rank, to win the professor's favour, to win an argument, to win everything.

At first he was taken aback by their behaviour but then he reasoned his way into accepting it. "If this is what the institute demands," he told himself, "then so be it. After all, aren't the students here the educational elite of the country?"

Later, when he mentioned this to Sandhya, she didn't agree with him, but certainly the students themselves believed it and the professors never tired of reinforcing that belief either. Maybe this was the system's way of working its magic. The amount of work and the stress on being the best made Gautam feel like he was being cooked in a pressure cooker but he didn't react against the situation. He trusted the system to get the recipe right and in exchange gave it what it demanded from him as the prime ingredient of that recipe. He knew that if he did that, then in two years he would be a dish so tempting that the corporate world would be dying to eat him up.

***

The first break that Gautam got from the frenzied race was two months into the academic year. The day the first mid-term exams ended he felt as if the lid had finally been taken off the pressure cooker. That night in hostel was a noisy indulgence of drunken revelry for several groups of students. But by one a.m. Gautam and his friends had spent themselves into a state of wistful quietude. Several of them had retired for the night and the remaining had an impromptu bonfire going. It was that time of night when the conversation was not so frenzied and the exchanges between them were more coherent than the earlier ribaldry of drunken young men had allowed.

Three young men sat around the small fire, looking into the flames, busy with their private thoughts. Gautam was the first to break the silence. "So, it all starts again on Monday," he said.

"How am I going to survive two years of this," Narayan groaned. "Maybe I'll take it easy a little. What's the difference whether I'm at the top of the class or in the middle? Almost everyone here gets good jobs, anyway. And we're all going to be the best managers in the country by the time we pass out."

Ashok sniggered in response and Narayan looked at him quizzically. "You actually believe all that?" Ashok asked.

"Of course I do," Narayan responded. "The whole world does."

"It's just brainwashing," Ashok replied. "Do you really think a bunch of us are going to walk into the real world tomorrow and start running it. All we're going to be running in is a race. We are going to be egged on to run faster and cheered from the sidelines when we do. That will keep us blundering ahead in our belief that we're the best. Actually, there is no such thing as the best. But those cheers from the sidelines will make us feel good and we won't want to let go of that feeling."

In the two months that all of them had been together, Ashok had already acquired the reputation of being a bit of a maverick on campus. He drank like a fish every weekend, yet seemed to turn in his assignments with hardly any effort. The rumour was that his grades during the first three years of his Aeronautical Engineering course were unbelievably good. But then he had been suspended during the final year because of misbehaviour with a professor and had finally graduated a year late. He had wanted to pursue a post-graduation in Aeronautical Engineering at an American university, but his blemished record had put paid to that. So he had worked as Senior Maintenance Engineer at Indian Airlines for three years. He was the only one of them who had actually worked a job before coming here.

"If that's what you think then why did you join this place?" Gautam asked him.

"Because I was tightening nuts in a maintenance hangar when I should have been designing aircraft and the only way I could get out was to start afresh at something else altogether," he answered. Then he laughed and added, "Or maybe I wanted to break free of my negative labels and become the best." The way he said it, Gautam wasn't very sure whom Ashok was mocking – Narayan or himself.

"So what then?" Gautam asked Ashok. "All of us, all the professors are wrong? All the press articles about this place are wrong? It's entire reputation is unjustified? All the employers coming here to recruit the best management talent are wrong?"

"You're the best today," Ashok replied quietly. "Later, in the real world, many people will do better than you. Will you then tell yourself that they and not you are the best? No you won't. You will have a list of reasons why they were just lucky and you're still the best. And what happens if after a few years you decide that your definition of the best was wrong all along? What if you some day decide you've been running the wrong race? I'm telling you there are no people who are really the best. Only arrogant people who believe they are and bystanders whose interest is served by reinforcing that belief."

"So according to you I'm talking bullshit," Narayan asked.

"Only when you talk about being the best. The part where you said it didn't make any difference whether you're at the top of the class or in the middle was smart. Much smarter than all your smart class mates who are busy running a race which will never end."

Something inside Gautam stirred. His inward looking eye drowsily opened but then he closed it shut. He had just worn his cloak of distinction a few months back and had not yet finished admiring himself in the mirror. He certainly didn't want to start mocking it as misguided vanity.

"Come on guys," he said aloud. "There's no point arguing over this. I'm going to sleep."

Years earlier, Gautam had decided that his inward looking eye would be his emotional and intellectual touchstone, the driving force of his life. But it wasn't the only force which defined who he was. Equally powerful was his need to succeed. And he didn't want success just because he wanted to enjoy the prosperity it brought. No, deep down in our hearts the pursuit of success is really about occupying our rightful place in the world. For Gautam too, success was something he simply deserved, something he was going to continue striving for because he was meant to have it. And he didn't want his inward looking eye raising doubts which would only serve as a distraction.

  1. #  Chapter 11

It was in his second term at IIM that Gautam finally discovered his means of livelihood.

The course was innocuously titled "Data Processing" and was intended to teach students the basics of computers and software programming. Gautam had not even seen a computer before, leave alone ever having worked with one. Since learning how to program one had never been one of his objectives, he had been dismissive of this course from the beginning, considering it an irrelevant distraction from the business related courses he was _really_ here to study. He wanted to learn where the red flags in a corporate balance sheet were, why a consumer's mind responded to one advertisement and not to another and what kinds of complex financial instruments were traded by an international bank. He wanted to wrap his mind around the strategic problems of productive economic activity, not break his head mugging the dry prescriptions of a computer programming language.

In the first few classes Professor Chandra covered introductory concepts like the structure and components of a computer and the different types of software. Gautam had found the information quite fascinating but had stopped attending the course when it was announced that programming lessons would start from the next class. As a result, he had not done the mid-term exam well.

An assignment Professor Chandra had given them at the beginning of the term contained twenty programming problems and, by the end of the term, students had to submit the twenty programs which solved those problems. Since this problem sheet constituted twenty percent of the grade, Gautam had decided to use the week long mid-term break to catch up. Most of the students whose homes were less than a day's train journey away had gone home for the week but Gautam had stayed. Tonight, armed with an introductory text on the programming language, Gautam was all set to sit in front of a terminal at the Computer Centre and make a start.

He went to the hostel dining room early, as soon as dinner was ready. He had almost finished eating when Ashok slid into the chair opposite.

"You're having dinner unusually early today," Ashok said.

"Yes, I thought I'd finish early and go to the Computer Centre for an hour or so," replied Gautam.

"What time will you be back?"

"Probably by nine," Gautam said. "I'll see you when I return."

He was right in as much as it would be nine o'clock when he returned but he had no inkling that it would be next morning instead of that night.

At the Computer Centre, Gautam put aside Professor Chandra's problem sheet and opened the text book he had purchased. The first program in it was a trivial one, a simple task of printing out the words "Hello World" on the screen and he got it working in five minutes. The second one required him to read and understand some concepts before he could do it and took about half an hour. The third program in the text book was more complicated and he made a few erroneous attempts before he got it right. Then another half hour of reading and understanding the next set of concepts explained in the book. When he looked up for the first time, it was already nine thirty and there were only two other students in the Computer Centre, everyone else had left. But he had just finished the first chapter and wanted to do the next one too, so he stayed.

That night, Gautam immersed himself in the world of variable declarations, assignment statements and if _-_ conditions. Sitting there, his concentration alternating between the book, the keyboard and the letters glowing green on the screen, he forgot the passage of time. It was after midnight when he finished the exercises of the third chapter of the text book but he just turned the page and carried on. By the end of the fourth chapter, he reckoned he had learnt the basics well enough to attempt the first problem on Professor Chandra's problem sheet. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his body. He was alone now and it was almost two o'clock, so he decided to take a break.

He got out of the Computer Centre and sat alone in the dark, on the steps going down to the road, letting his eyes and his mind roam aimlessly for a few minutes. The long road leading up to the Computer Centre stretched out in front of him, its grey top merging with the blackness of the night in the distance. The unlit silhouette of the academic block was on the left, the main courtyard next to it and the administrative offices were on the right. These were all familiar sights from his daily trips to the classrooms. Everything in the scene was recognisable but also eerily different when seen at this hour. Except for the Computer Centre, there were no lights behind any of the windows in the buildings around.

There was not another soul to be seen from where he was sitting, not even the security _chowkidaar_ doing his rounds. He knew now why they sometimes called this hour the dead of the night. This was a moonless, windless, soundless moment in which all the creatures of the world other than himself appeared to be dead.

Gautam was no stranger to the night. He had always thought of it as his friend, as that time which allowed him to own everything he surveyed without others intruding. But these classrooms and these pathways he was seeing tonight were somehow different. They were the setting for his new tribe to conduct its business. Every day, when Gautam lived out his daily student routine in these spaces, he was filled with a satisfaction deeper than pride. Somehow, the brightness of the daytime, the backslapping conversations with classmates, the pre-occupation with the quiz in the next class – these were all an integral part of this scene, they were its essence. Without those ingredients, viewed through the eyes of the last survivor of the day, the buildings and the trees were incomplete and unsatisfactory. Gautam had spent the past few months imbuing these empty forms with meaning and the night had stripped them of that meaning.

Sitting alone like this under the open night sky was perhaps a setting meant for a contemplative mood, a mood in which to recall a moment of loneliness or perhaps anticipate meeting Sandhya in the next holidays. But Gautam's mind was racing, gripped by the play of bits and bytes in the innards of man-made circuits. Far from turning towards lazy contemplation, he couldn't stop thinking of the first problem in Professor Chandra's sheet. He was searching for the appropriate arrangement of programming constructs which would get the terminal screen to glow with the desired output.

He went back in and re-read the problem. Yes, it was pretty clear how he had to approach it. He started typing on the keyboard, pecking at the unfamiliar layout with his two forefingers. He was done with his first attempt in about twenty minutes but when he ran the program, it gave him the wrong output. So he brought it up on the screen to review it, looking at the lines he had written, trying to understand where he had gone wrong. With his finger on the screen he traced the path which the computer would take through his program.

"Oh yes, there it is. So that's the problem," he thought as he made the change and ran the program again. Once again, he got the wrong output. "Hmm, something else wrong this time. Let's see now." With his finger back on the screen, he was at it again.

At eight forty five in the morning, Gautam tore himself away from the screen and rushed back to hostel because he did not want to miss breakfast. When Ashok saw him, his red eyes and the text book in his hand betrayed how he had spent the night. Ashok was initially incredulous, but then he gave his friend an appraising look and asked, "Was it that interesting for you?" Gautam just grinned sheepishly and said, "I think I need to sleep for a few hours. I'll see you in the evening."

For the entire week of the mid-term break, this became Gautam's routine. Sleeping through the day, waking up in the early evening, being done with his morning chores by dinner and then off to the Computer Centre immediately after a hearty meal, to finally return to hostel just in time for breakfast.

All night he would labour on Professor Chandra's problem sheet, working his way through it one program at a time. By midnight, he was usually alone in the Computer Centre. For the next seven hours or so it would be just him, pecking away at his keyboard or staring at the green characters flashing on the screen or standing by the noisy high speed printer as it spewed out the printout he had directed. Every couple of hours he would take a short break, sitting on the steps leading down to the road. As he sat there, he only half noticed his dark surroundings because his mind was pre-occupied with whatever problem he had to solve when he went back in.

But however busy your mind is, it is difficult to sit outdoors by yourself in the middle of the night and not notice that you are alone in this world. That sensation might bother some, making them hurry on their way to a more familiar ambience, but it left Gautam unperturbed. He was utterly absorbed in composing his purely theoretical creations with no worldly touch points. And that seemed to him like a perfectly logical use of those desolate hours.

***

Towards the end of the first year the buzz amongst the students was all about choosing their specialisation. So far, all the students had studied the same academic content but in the second year each one would have to select the field of management he or she would specialise in.

One Friday night, Gautam and two of his friends were sitting in his room when the conversation veered round to that topic.

"I don't know about you guys," Narayan declared, "but I'm going to specialise in marketing."

"Really?" asked Ashok. "I didn't realise you liked that subject."

"Oh, it's not a question of liking it," Narayan explained. "I met this cousin of mine who's an alumnus of this institute. According to her the marketing folks always set the direction for a company and the finance guys decide how the company is run. Do well in one of these two and you will rule the world."

"I find all that accounting stuff too dry," he continued. "So I guess I'll go for marketing."

"Well, I don't find it too dry," said Ashok. "In fact I've liked every finance class I've attended so far. I've already made up my mind that I'll specialise in finance."

Gautam had not volunteered an opinion yet, so Ashok turned to him and asked, "What about you?"

"I'm going to major in information systems," Gautam replied.

Narayan winced. "That's a dead end career option, my friend. I hope you're joking."

"No, I'm not," said Gautam. "In fact, I'm quite certain."

"Well, you're not going to shake up the world but if you join the IT department of a foreign bank you should still have a reasonably good career," Narayan commiserated with him.

"Actually, I'm considering joining a software development company," replied Gautam.

"But that's idiotic," exclaimed Narayan. "It's professional suicide. And it's a waste of such a prestigious degree. Why would you want to graduate from this place and then take a job which an engineer from any two-bit, state level engineering college can get? These companies don't even pay well."

The Indian software industry was not yet the glamorous, high profile employment avenue which it later became. The dotcom boom and corporate outsourcing were still a few years away from catapulting the industry to global recognition. For IIM graduates, choosing computer systems as their specialisation relegated them to the periphery of the action in the corporate world.

Ashok was looking at Gautam's face while he and Narayan discussed their futures. He too was surprised at Gautam's decision. On the other hand, he had also seen Gautam spend more and more time at the Computer Centre the past few weeks.

"Are you sure?" he asked his friend.

"I'm absolutely sure," Gautam responded with assurance.

  1. # Part 2

  2. Grihastha

  3. #  Chapter 12

Some people are driven by a hunger so strong that it defines their entire lives. For years they persevere through success and failure, so fixed upon their ultimate destination that they cannot allow themselves to relax or feel contented. They are not interested in enjoying the journey or watching the scenery. In fact, the only aspect of their surroundings they are interested in is the passing milestones which confirm their progress. Gautam had seen this kind of hunger around him at various times in his life and always thought of it as something distant from himself.

But often what we think is non-existent is merely invisible, present right in front of us but in a form too subtle to be recognised. Gautam never realised when that hunger he thought he did not possess crept up and became a part of him. Without a purpose to fix upon, it was just a vague, niggling urge to achieve something as yet undefined. It waited for a concrete, real-world setting in which it could take its natural form and be seen.

That setting eventually arrived when Gautam started working at Exigon. He had never let anyone, perhaps not even himself, see that he was itching to demonstrate his worthiness to the world. Nevertheless, he did very much want to prove a thing or two and it felt as if Exigon was the battleground he had been waiting for on which to prove it. He was excited that the battle was finally beginning for him and he looked forward to his success.

Much to his disappointment though, Gautam did not do well at all. When Rajeev, his team leader, explained his first assignment to him, Gautam listened keenly and wanted to begin enthusiastically. But when he went back to his seat and sat in front of his computer, he realised he didn't even know where to start.

His college experience of software development was of a world in which you sat alone for hours, studied text books which were designed for novices and then created small little set pieces as close to perfection as you could. But the real world's mechanisms were much more complex. It seemed that for every little bit of work he was given to do, there was a whole lot of pre-existing paraphernalia he had to first learn and understand.

In the chaotic melting pot that was Exigon, there was no assistance available to help him – no training and no expert who could spare time from his own overworked schedule. Even the relevant manuals were so dauntingly thick that there was no way he was going to be able to study them and still meet his deadlines. He found all this too overwhelming and his progress on any new assignment was tortuously slow.

Three months into the start of his working life, Gautam was worried because he hadn't yet completed even a single assignment within the time allotted to him. At six months, his peers had begun to be really productive but he was still being handed out the easier assignments. A year into his career Gautam was beginning to have some doubts about whether he had it within him at all to succeed in the real world.

The enthusiasm and confidence with which he had approached his new job was almost gone now, replaced by a feeling of dread. Seeing his despair, Sandhya tried her best to encourage him, but she was ineffective because all she had for him were words. If only there was an insider from his professional world who could explain to him where and why he was failing.

When the time for Gautam's annual appraisal came, his worst fears were confirmed. The pages in front of him did not judge him to be totally useless; instead they decreed him to be mediocre and consigned him to the heap of faceless people who would be used as foot soldiers in the battle for corporate growth.

When Gautam thought of the year just gone by, he saw clearly that this decisive period, which his life had been building up to for so long, had gone horribly wrong. He had anticipated a glorious battle against the world in which he would declare himself the victor in just a few days. But a year had passed and that victory had receded farther and farther away, till it was now lost from sight. Instead defeat seemed so close, waiting for him, reaching out to touch him as he was inexorably pushed towards it.

That he was saved from its final embrace was due in large part to the efforts of his team leader Rajeev. In the year that they had worked together, Gautam had grown to really like Rajeev. Despite the fact that like all Exigon team leaders he was overworked and understaffed, Gautam had never once seen Rajeev lose his cool. To him every bad situation was just a problem which had, if not an ideal, then at least a best feasible solution.

Rajeev's technical skills seemed like wizardry to Gautam. When one of his team members got stuck, Rajeev could identify exactly what the problem was with one glance at the program and suggest solutions to try out. If any of them questioned him too much at that time, he would just wave dismissively.

"We're perpetually on a tight deadline," he would say. "Don't waste your time learning things which will help you next time. Just solve your current problem and move on."

About the only thing Rajeev could not do was spend time mentoring and training his team. Despite that, he had become something of a role model for Gautam because he possessed every skill for success which Gautam himself aspired to but felt he lacked.

If at that time someone had told Gautam that in just another year events would align themselves very differently and that he would be Rajeev's peer, he would have been thrilled. He would also have been incredulous, because it was just not possible for him to think that he would be considered Rajeev's equal some day.

While briefing Gautam on his annual appraisal, Rajeev had seen Gautam's despondency at the bad rating and tried to encourage him. "Don't lose hope so quickly," he had said. "There are flashes of brilliance in some of the programs you've written."

To Gautam's dismal shake of the head, Rajeev had responded with the offer, "I'll tell you what, for the next few days I'll try and take some time out. You and I will sit for half an hour every evening and sort out the areas that troubled you."

And that's exactly what they did from then on. Every evening Gautam would tell Rajeev where he had reached in his current assignment and where, if at all, he had got stuck. Rajeev in turn would point out exactly what Gautam needed to do. Over a month of doing this, Gautam's recurring pattern of mistakes became apparent to both of them and the process of correcting them began. With Rajeev actively guiding him, Gautam found that it became less and less difficult to make headway in his work. He didn't find his assignments as tiresome as he had earlier and he wasn't as late with them as he had been either. His skill and his interest increased to the point where he actually began to look forward to coming to work every day.

It had taken first a year of failure and then three months of intensive attention from Rajeev for Gautam to settle into the rhythm of productivity which our professional environments cherish and reward. But settle down he finally did. So much so that he felt as if the barrier which had been holding him back was now broken and he could actually run free as he had originally hoped he would. Over the next few months, his despair receded and some of his initial confidence returned.

Rajeev might have continued these sessions longer than three months had it not been for the British Mercantile Bank project. The BMB project was the largest project which Exigon had ever bagged. In addition, the British Mercantile Bank was also the most prestigious client the Banking Software Division had ever worked with. None other than Venkat Aiyer, the most reliable project manager in Exigon, was going to be heading it and he was moving to London with a sizeable on-site team in tow.

Given the importance of the project for Exigon, Venkat was given a free hand in choosing his team and for a few days the entire Division was abuzz with speculation about who would be selected. As the team was announced, it became a kind of a measure of one's worth among the junior developers to be asked to travel to BMB. Gautam knew that he had no chance whatsoever of being selected and he watched all the excitement with the forlorn envy of a bystander who so badly wanted to be a participant.

Gautam wasn't surprised when Venkat picked Rajeev as one of the team leaders he would take with him to London. Gautam was sorry to watch Rajeev go but there was nothing to be done about it. And anyway, he couldn't expect Rajeev to do any more for him than he already had. Rajeev had undone the knot which was tying Gautam down and it was up to Gautam himself to do the rest.

As Rajeev worked in London, building the most critical and urgent part of the software which BMB wanted, Gautam found himself assigned to the Bangalore team which was developing the software which BMB needed in the second phase of the project. At the end of this development, one developer would be selected from this team to take this second phase software to BMB and join the Exigon team already there. Gautam set about making sure that when the time came, he would be that person.

He requested the toughest assignments and turned them in on time, sometimes even before the deadline. This wasn't easy and where earlier he had avoided spending too much time in office, he now began to stay till odd hours of the night. Once again, he began to enjoy the aloneness of the late hours, often making his way home through a city in which everyone else was already sleeping away the tiredness of yesterday.

As the days and nights flew by in a blur of work, a new purposeful Gautam began to emerge and the hapless beginner, having left his permanent mark, receded into the background. This new Gautam also began to crowd out the adolescent day-dreamer whose mind had been engaged in a relentless pursuit of self-discovery. There were fewer nights of endless introspection now because his mind had an all new focus.

His inward focus had been a pursuit of pure understanding, with no purpose other than a hunger to explore, comprehend and go wherever the path led. His new found outward focus, on the other hand, was not an end in itself. It had a clear purpose, and that was to solve the problems which his workplace presented him with. These problems were real, they were important to many people and they were not endless. Each of them was solvable by operating the world's levers to achieve a concrete objective.

Every time he used the power of his intellect to move a little bit of the outside world in the direction he wanted, it filled him with a very deep sense of satisfaction about his own efficacy. Little did he know that what he was satisfying was not something unique to him but a universal human need - to not just be an observer of his world but its master, to be able to bend it to his will, even if just a little.

As he became better and better at solving the problems his workplace presented to him, Gautam felt the weight of a miserable first year lifting off his shoulders. He felt lighter than he had ever felt before and with that lightness, all his missteps disappeared. He was running now – smooth, sure and fast.

These were early days of running the race for Gautam and it was still as much about the joy of running as it was about the satisfaction of winning. The race would eventually lose its innocence but he hadn't got there yet. He did feel a little insecure though, which was only natural given the faltering start he had had to his career.

This insecurity made him look for periodic affirmation that he was gaining ground and, when running a race in which you're behind, the most obvious way to find that affirmation is to keep overtaking the people in front of you. As a result, every event that made it clear he was doing better than someone else in the team gave him a satisfaction whose power he felt but did not fully understand.

Over the next few months, his superiors noticed that Gautam Singh was turning out better results than most of his peers. They were appreciative of the fact that Gautam could make headway with almost any software development problem. In fact, as the project entered its critical phase, it was Gautam his new team leader relied upon to give it one final push towards success. But the real victory came to Gautam at the end of the project, when he was finally informed that he had been selected to travel to BMB with this latest release of the software.

Had this first victory come earlier to Gautam, he would have greeted its arrival with a celebration and it would have reaffirmed his faith in his invincibility. But because he had spent a year dreading defeat instead, this very same victory brought with it a sense of overwhelming relief. Paradoxically, this relief exercised a much stronger hold on him than the glory of a triumph could ever have done.

Glory demands that we step back for a moment to savour it. It has a finality which allows the adrenaline to dissipate from our blood stream and leaves only exhaustion in its aftermath. Relief on the other hand, often makes us more energetic. It makes us want to hold on to what we almost didn't get. This victory strengthened Gautam's resolve because he knew how close he had been to defeat. And he knew now that there is nothing inevitable about a happy ending. He would have to continue to be on his guard, remembering that he was running not just for the heck of it but to get somewhere, preferably ahead of everyone else.

  1. #  Chapter 13

Once, when Gautam was seven years old, a distant cousin of his had shown off his latest toy, a battery operated car bought in London. When Gautam had held that car in his hands, he had marvelled at its attractiveness and its workmanship. The smooth shiny red plastic body, the miniature chrome door handles, the aerodynamic curve of the fitted windscreen, even the realism of the small black rubber tyres with grooves in their surface – all of these drew his eyes like a magnet.

It was difficult to believe that his own prized possession - a tin-bodied, wind-me-up with peeling paint – was supposed to give as much pleasure as this object of envy which he briefly held in his hand. Gautam's young mind had boggled at the thought that there were places in the world where such objects were not the coveted possessions of a few but were casually accessible to everyone.

Gautam had grown up in the seventies, hearing about cities like New York and London from the few relatives who had been there. In his mind they were distant, alien places, so rich and powerful that they deserved to be capitals of the whole world. Every scene in the Hollywood movies he sometimes watched confirmed that this was true. The buildings, the cars, the household equipment, the clothes – all the mundane objects of their everyday lives which those people took for granted \- were so much better than what he saw in India. Even the articles and pictures in the odd imported magazine he could get his hands on reinforced that notion.

By the time he left his parents' house, Gautam had a firm belief that the richness of life in these Western cities was so great that it alone must be sufficient to banish all cares and guarantee happiness. Going to live in London for a year was his chance to taste a slice of that happiness for himself.

Gautam and Sandhya reached London in October of nineteen ninety three and behaved exactly like what they were, a young couple who had stepped outside their country for the first time and were fascinated by everything from the white skin of the natives to the means of transportation of the public. Every time they rode on the London tube or used an unfamiliar household appliance in their apartment, they felt a twinge of the thrill which they had looked forward to when coming here.

It was towards the beginning of January, almost three months after they had landed, that Sandhya remarked, "You know, this is our first trip out of Bangalore. I feel like we're on the honeymoon we never had when we got married."

"Where was the money then? We spent all your savings on setting up house and my starting salary barely covered our living expenses," Gautam reminded her as they exited Madame Tussaud's Museum of Waxworks and strolled towards the Baker Street underground station. Then he added, "But the money from this year in London should make a difference to our financial situation." The thought brought a smile to his face. "We'll actually have some savings by the time we go back."

Then he laughed and added, "I just need to make sure I do well enough at work not to get sent back early. A few more repeats of yesterday and Chris might actually have me replaced."

***

They had landed in London early one Sunday evening in mid-October, without having slept much on the flight. By the time they reached the small, single bedroom apartment which Exigon had rented for them, not much of the day was left. They spent some time unpacking and washing up and then set off to explore the neighbourhood. A couple of hours later they were back, having eaten a dinner of sandwiches and picked up some essentials to get their kitchen going.

The next morning Gautam was off to work. After about an hour's journey, his train turned a corner around some decrepit old buildings and he watched with excitement as the dazzling steel and glass towers of the Canary Wharf financial district came into view. He got off at his station and followed the directions he had been given to a tall obelisk of a building dressed from top to bottom in green glass. The twenty-sixth floor was occupied by the Operations and Information Technology teams of the British Mercantile Bank and Gautam informed the aloof, elegantly dressed receptionist that he was here to meet Venkat Aiyer of Exigon Software.

"Who in the bank does he work for?" the lady asked, looking at him circumspectly from head to toe.

"Chris Anderson in the back-office applications team," he informed her.

"Take a seat," she said and got busy on the phone.

Gautam walked to the far side of the expansive lobby, his footsteps echoing in that large, silent space. He sat alone on the plush leather sofa and looked around, taking in the expensive wood-panelled walls, the muted designer lights and the dark green marble floor which shone as if it was freshly polished. He was intimidated by this opulent and genteel lobby. The silence made him feel that any sound he made would be interpreted as crassness. This space was a far cry from the brightly lit, slightly dusty and very busy reception area of the Exigon office in Bangalore.

The elegantly dressed receptionist was done with her phone call and stole a curious look at this awkward young man who had walked into her space. His polyester tie hung loose from his neck, the ends of his well worn trousers were riding high enough for his sagging socks to be visible and his scuffed shoes contrasted with the shiny marble floor they were resting on. Not only did the empty vastness of that space make him look small, the sheer richness of its ambience actually belittled him. Perched on the edge of the sofa, awkwardly hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his palms, he looked like an unwelcome intruder who was waiting for someone to come and reassure him that he legitimately belonged here.

"Hi Gautam, welcome to London," Venkat Aiyer's voice cut through the silence as he strode across the floor. Gautam smiled in relief at the sight of a familiar face and stood up to greet Venkat. They shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries before Venkat put a friendly arm around Gautam's shoulders and said, "Come, I'll take you in and introduce you to the rest of the team."

He led Gautam through a large hall seating roughly two hundred BMB employees in cubicles made of chest high partitions, then through a corridor and finally into a smaller room with seating for less than twenty people. As he entered, Gautam's eyes quickly took in the open four-seater bays similar to the bays in the larger hall he had just walked through, only these were more cramped. One of the bays was more spacious than the rest because it had just two seats, clearly marking it out as premium real estate for more senior people. On the far side were two rooms, one was a meeting room with a whiteboard, a table and some chairs and the other was a private cabin for a single occupant.

"This is where the Exigon team sits," Venkat told him as they entered. Gautam's first impression was that it was cramped but cosy, a separate space of their own.

"Everyone, this is Gautam," Venkat Aiyer said loudly as all eyes turned towards them. "Gautam, wasn't Rajeev your first boss at Exigon?" he asked pointing to the young man in the two-seater bay.

"Yes he was," Gautam said as they both smiled at each other and shook hands.

"Varsha is the second team leader here," Venkat said, referring to the other person occupying the two-seater bay. "You're going to be in Rajeev's team once again."

"For those of you who don't know Gautam," he continued, addressing everyone, "he's been working on this project as part of the offshore team in Bangalore for the past few months. He's joining our on-site team from today so please introduce yourselves and show him around the office."

Then he led Gautam into the cabin on the far side. "Let's go into my office. You can meet up with those people a little later, they're all quite busy since we're starting an important phase of the project today," he said, shutting the door behind him.

"Is that the whole team or is there anyone else I need to meet?" Gautam asked when they were seated.

"That's the entire Exigon team. The only other person you should probably meet is Chris Anderson. He heads the Back Office Applications team at BMB and manages this project for the bank. You'll probably meet him in January, when we're starting the next phase of this project," Venkat informed Gautam. "Let me warn you though," he continued, "You probably won't enjoy meeting him."

"Why? Doesn't he like us?" Gautam asked.

"It doesn't really have to do with like and dislike," Venkat replied. "It's just that he finds it very frustrating to interact with us. He's used to dealing with his regular British software vendors, people who talk and think like him. Unlike us, they're not just technically skilled, they understand banking too and that makes his job easier."

"Not a single week goes by," Venkat continued, "when he does not pressure his seniors to once again contract the same British vendors they used to instead of us. Thankfully we're very inexpensive in comparison and the economics is overwhelmingly in our favour. So they pressure him right back."

"Are we really so far behind their expectations?" Gautam asked. "My impression was that the whole world was beginning to recognise our technical skills?"

"Yes, it is beginning to," Venkat agreed. "But technical stuff is all we're supposed to be good at. My dream is that some day banks like BMB will trust us to understand the details of their business too and give us work accordingly. Exigon is still far away from being able to do that and it will take us time."

"Right now," said Venkat, dismissing the conversation so far with a wave, "the important thing is to succeed with the current project and I can't stress enough how important the next couple of months are. So don't worry about all these issues and concentrate on your programming and error fixing."

And for the next few weeks, up until Christmas, Gautam did exactly that. He had come to London to work and to prove himself. This was an assignment he had looked forward to, so he gritted his teeth and set about doing what he had come here to do.

Gautam did not know it but Rajeev, his first boss, was the one who had recommended to Venkat that Gautam be added to the on-site team. Venkat himself had not interacted much with Gautam till now. He watched Gautam closely for the next few weeks and found Gautam's performance to be everything that Rajeev had promised him it would be - which was good because it solved a problem which Venkat had been worrying about for some time.

Varsha, the second team leader in the Exigon team at BMB, was scheduled to return to Bangalore at the start of the Christmas break and Venkat needed a replacement for her. He had requested Exigon to send someone from Bangalore who could play that role but head office had thrown up their hands. New projects were coming in fast and their cupboard was bare of potential team leaders, they said. It was towards the middle of December, two months after Gautam had arrived at BMB, that Venkat decided to promote Gautam into the slot which was about to be vacated by Varsha. He discussed his thoughts with Rajeev who enthusiastically endorsed the idea – partly because he was relieved that he wouldn't have to carry an unmanageable load in Varsha's absence and partly because he felt he was Gautam's mentor and was glad to see him promoted.

On the afternoon of twenty-fourth December, Varsha said her goodbye's to the team and left to catch her flight back to India. Venkat had given the entire Exigon team the next eight days off. Gautam and Sandhya hadn't seen much of London so far and a week off from work was a welcome opportunity to do so. Gautam had sensed the festive air which had permeated more and more of the city each day as Christmas had drawn closer. Sandhya had told him that Oxford Street was festooned with more lights than the markets of Delhi during Diwali and he was eager to be in the middle of it all.

Gautam had finished his work for the day but waited for Rajeev to finish his meeting with Venkat so that he could take his permission and leave early. When Rajeev finally came out of his meeting he made his way straight to Gautam.

"Is there anything else or can I leave now?" Gautam asked him.

"Yes, there is one more thing," Rajeev replied. "You know Varsha's going back to Bangalore?"

"Gone back already, I think. She just left," replied Gautam. "By the way, who's going to be leading her team?"

"That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about. You are. When we resume work in January, your boss will be Venkat and not me."

It took a second for Gautam to register what Rajeev had said. He tried to respond in a coolly professional manner but couldn't help grinning from ear to ear.

"I take it you're pleased with our decision," Rajeev smiled as he saw Gautam's joy on receiving the news. "Now go home and enjoy your holiday."

On his way out, Gautam glanced back at Rajeev. He was at his seat in the two-seater cubicle, giving the finishing touches to a status report. Gautam watched him for a few seconds, recollecting how Rajeev's patience after that miserable first year had helped him turn things around. Even now, it must have been Rajeev's endorsement which had got him this promotion. Yes, his ex-boss was certainly someone he liked and respected.

Then he saw the empty chair which Varsha had occupied till a few minutes back. "And my own place from now on is right there, next to him instead of below him," he thought.

  1. #  Chapter 14

Gautam was still basking in the self-congratulatory afterglow of his promotion when he first met Chris Anderson. If you were an Exigon employee working at BMB and were going through a phase of feeling pleased with yourself, then an encounter with Chris was sure to bring you back to ground reality with a jarring thud.

In the first week of January, the entire Exigon team gathered for a meeting to formally kick off the next phase of the project – another six month long cycle of understanding what software BMB wanted, writing the software and supporting BMB as they tested it and then began using it. Once the Exigon team had settled down in the conference room, Chris began the meeting.

"My name is Chris Anderson and, for those of you who don't know me, I am the Vice President for Back-Office Applications at the British Mercantile Bank. I am also the manager of this project and will continue to be so for the next few months while we develop the Commercial Lending application."

"I know none of you understand Commercial Lending, even though you will be writing software to cater to it, and over the next few days I will hold training sessions to try and correct that deficiency."

Gautam was admiring the speaker's elegantly cut, navy blue suit - wondering if it was time he discarded his own worn out trousers and bought some from the stores these Londoners frequented - when a long pause made him look up and pay attention to the speaker himself. Chris was standing at the head of the conference table, looking one by one at each of the Exigon employees seated in front of him, making sure he had their attention before continuing.

"Unfortunately, most of you will not understand the content of these sessions because you are happy to be mere technical coolies. That is why Exigon was not my first choice as the vendor for this project. But then," he sighed with an exaggerated air of frustration as he added, "who listens to me when you fit into everyone's budget."

"Anyway, it doesn't really matter because I will give you a specification document detailing everything I explain today and you can blindly follow that to do your programming."

When Chris had first begun speaking, Gautam had been impressed with his clipped British accent and his assuredness but he was startled by the derogatory statement with which Chris had ended. Even so, he was not as stung by the rebuke as his new boss was. Venkat looked a little angry but seemed to be keeping his mouth shut despite his anger because he knew that what Chris had said was true.

Chris himself was unconcerned with the effect he had had on his audience. He had already turned to the white-board and started writing, speaking in a monotone without turning around to face the Exigon team. Half an hour into the session, he had the board fully covered with calculations and accounting entries which didn't make any sense to his audience.

Venkat Aiyer looked around the table and saw that all the Exigon employees were in various states of inattention. One of them was doodling in his notebook, another was staring out of the window and yet another had actually dozed off and was being nudged awake by her neighbour. Rajeev was looking vacantly at the board, trying to understand but helplessly unable to do so. Gautam looked like he was intently following Chris' monologue but the open notebook in front of him was blank, so Venkat wasn't sure if he was faring any better than the rest. Venkat finally looked down in dismay, trying to reconcile himself to the situation.

"Excuse me," a voice suddenly cut through Chris's droning and the surprised Exigon team members had to quickly straighten in their seats in anticipation of Chris turning around and facing them. Without waiting for Chris, Gautam continued his question, "Didn't you get that last accounting entry wrong? Shouldn't we debit the Interest Receivable account during accrual because it's an asset and credit the..."

Chris turned around and cut Gautam short. "I did say I don't expect you people to understand this, but I do expect you to not interrupt when I'm talking of something you know nothing about," he said in an acerbic tone.

He was clearly irritated as he turned to the white-board and resumed. "Anyway, to continue to the last event in the loan life-cycle..."

Gautam opened his mouth to protest but then he caught sight of Venkat motioning to him to keep shut and complied.

After the meeting, Venkat asked Gautam, "I don't understand accounting but when you interrupted Chris, did you have any idea what you were talking about?"

Gautam shrugged his shoulders, "I think he got that one accounting entry wrong."

"How sure are you?"

"Not very," replied Gautam. "I last studied accounting four years ago and I haven't used it since."

"You know," said Venkat, "Chris is already frustrated with us and I don't want to give him anything more to hold against us, so next time don't open your mouth unless you're sure of what you're saying. Now that you're a team leader you need to be setting the right example for your team."

Gautam left it at that but he couldn't forget the incident. That weekend, when he and Sandhya went sightseeing to Madame Tussaud's Museum, Gautam mentioned the altercation with Chris to Sandhya and joked about getting sent back to India.

"I hope not," said Sandhya. "Remember, last week I was telling you about the London College of Drama? I went and met the Admissions Counsellor. It turns out that they have a one year Diploma in Theatrical Production and with my FTII qualification I'm eligible to enrol in it. She also told me they have a scholarship for Commonwealth students which I can try for and, if I get it, we won't have to pay anything. I really want to do this course so do me a favour, keep this Chris character happy and don't get sent back."

When Gautam got back to work on Monday, he put his misgivings about Chris's last session away into the background and concentrated on the work which Venkat had assigned him. Soon he was lost in the intricacies of the program he was writing and forgot about Chris. Until a couple of days later that is, when the Exigon team trooped into the conference room for their next training session with Chris. Chris was already waiting for them and there was a pile of spiral bound documents on the table. As Gautam picked up his copy, he saw that it was the specification for Commercial Lending accounting.

"Everyone, today we're going to get into the variations a Commercial Loan can have in its..." and Chris was off again in his monotone.

Within a few quick minutes, most of the Exigon team had lost track of what he was saying and their body language expressed their boredom quite obviously. Suddenly there was a startled sound, between a snort and a grunt, which came out involuntarily loud before it was stifled. The entire Exigon team was surprised and Venkat looked at Gautam in disapproval.

Chris turned around, clearly quite irritated at this interruption. Then he saw that Gautam had the specifications document open to a page full of accounting entries and his expression softened imperceptibly.

"Yes Mr. Singh, you were right the last time we met," he said, for once addressing an Exigon team member without an irritated edge to his voice. "And while you are justified in feeling whatever combination of emotions elicited that strange vocal utterance you just made, I would like to get back to the business at hand. I need you, especially you, to pay attention in this session, for reasons that will become clearer at the end. So if you could conclude the process of expressing your reaction, it might turn out to be useful for everyone concerned."

He waited till Gautam grinned sheepishly and nodded his head, before turning back to the white-board and continuing with his monologue.

Gautam was too flush with vindication to notice anything, but the rest of the Exigon team sensed a slight change in the atmosphere in the room. Over the past year, every time Chris had walked into a room with Exigon employees in it, an invisible air of disdain had trailed in behind him and settled on everyone's shoulders, making them sag in defeat even before the team had a chance to understand what the battle was about. But now a little bit of that disdain had been replaced with a hint of acceptance.

At the end of the session, when everyone was about to leave, Chris said, "Venkat, someone needs to take everything we've discussed today and make a software specification out of it. I want your team to make the first draft of that document."

Venkat hesitated. He wasn't sure how to respond to this.

"Come on," Chris said. "I thought you wanted Exigon to be a company which does more than just programming. You're the one who's been after BMB to give Exigon more responsibility in the project. Well, here's your chance."

The entire Exigon team looked at Venkat, waiting to see how he would respond. Venkat looked like he was desperate to find a way to say yes but just wasn't confident enough that his team could do what was being asked. He looked at Gautam uncertainly.

Gautam in turn asked Chris. "What kind of specification are you expecting? Can we base it on this document you've given us today?" he said, pointing at the spiral bound booklet lying in front of him.

"You should," Chris said amiably. "I want the same structure and the same level of detail. The content needs to change in line with everything we've discussed today."

Gautam looked at Venkat and nodded his head. Venkat immediately told Chris, "Sure, we'll do it."

***

From the day the project had begun, Venkat Aiyer had shielded the Exigon team from the scrutiny of the BMB managers, making sure he was present whenever any interaction between the two sets of people took place. Over the next few weeks however, he relaxed that behaviour, allowing both his team leaders to interact directly with Chris Anderson and the rest of the BMB staff. Neither Rajeev nor Gautam knew why Venkat did this and, frankly, they were too busy dealing with the consequences of this change to think about its causes.

Gautam had never managed a team or interacted with a client before. As a result he was all at sea in the first few meetings with Chris and needed Rajeev's help to prepare for them. By the time Gautam had learnt enough to manage on his own, Rajeev was the one who was beginning to run into trouble on a different front altogether. Just as Venkat had changed the rules of the game in one area, Chris had done so in another.

Ever since Gautam had prepared that draft specification on accounting for Chris, the specifications which Chris himself wrote had become less detailed and increasingly difficult for the Exigon team to understand. Gautam was the only one who could make sense of the banking jargon they contained and he ended up spending a lot of time explaining them to his colleagues in language a software programmer could understand.

Initially this arrangement worked well but as the project picked up pace, Gautam began to do this only for the work assigned to his own team and whenever Rajeev asked for help, he was too busy. Rajeev was surprised at and a little dismayed by this behaviour.

It was the norm in Exigon for colleagues to take time out to help each other and Rajeev wasn't sure whether Gautam was just too busy or deliberately deviating from that norm to gain some sort of advantage. Like a person who, half-way through a game, suddenly realises that the other player is playing by a different set of rules, he complained to the referee. But curiously, Venkat was non-committal in his response, leaving Rajeev even more confused.

This sequence of events finally came to its logical conclusion one warm afternoon in July. Seven months after he had first made Gautam a team leader, Venkat called him into his cabin for a meeting. As Gautam took a seat, Venkat shut the door and asked him whether he and Sandhya were finding their stay in London comfortable. Gautam assured him that they indeed were and wondered what Venkat really wanted.

"Well Gautam, I wanted to check with you if you're willing to extend your stay here," Venkat asked. "What I had in mind was that instead of leaving in a couple of months as is currently planned, you stay here for another year."

"Why? Is this project going to take longer than planned?"

"A lot longer, actually. Based on our performance up to now, BMB has contracted us to build several of its software applications over the next few years, so our engagement isn't going to end in September. They will soon be our largest client and I need a team I can rely on to keep things running smoothly here in London."

"That's great," said Gautam, happy that he had participated in a project which had led to bigger things for his company. "And sure, I can stay for another year. Sandhya's joined a course at the London College of Drama and extending our stay here means that she can do an internship with the College when her course ends. As for me, I'd be happy to work with you for another year."

"Actually, I'll be going back next month. Our division head is leaving Exigon and I've been asked to replace him as head of the Banking Software Division. I'll still oversee the BMB project since they are our most important client but I will not manage the day to day activities of the on-site team."

"Congratulations!" Gautam immediately said. He was genuinely happy for Venkat. Then his mind went to the impact this would have on the BMB team and he said, "So Rajeev is going to head the on-site team then? Sounds like it'll be an important role in the scheme of things."

"No, he's going back with me." Venkat looked carefully at Gautam as he said that. Then he added, "Actually, I was thinking you could take on that role."

"Me!?" Gautam exclaimed. It took him a few seconds before he could think of a coherent response. More than anything else, he was surprised at the offer. "Even if you're going back, isn't Rajeev better qualified than me for this role?" he asked Venkat.

"In many ways yes," Venkat agreed. "But there are two reasons I want you to take this position. Firstly, because Chris Anderson would rather have you leading the on-site team. He says he doesn't want someone who can't understand his language. And I'd rather leave someone in-charge whom Chris is comfortable with."

Gautam felt a slight twinge somewhere deep in his heart. He was the only one who could have helped Rajeev when Chris had turned on the pressure but he hadn't done so.

"Aren't we being a little unfair to Rajeev?" he blurted out, not realising that he had included himself in that question.

"Situations change," Venkat said with a hard look in his eyes. "Organisations need to evolve and everyone must adapt."

These were clichés which didn't really explain anything. But then Gautam had a feeling that even though Venkat knew exactly what he wanted to say, he didn't want to make it very clear to Gautam. Gautam looked down at nothing in particular, struggling with his own thoughts.

"Anyway," Venkat said decisively, making Gautam snap out of his reverie. "Are you ready for this?"

"Yes, of course," said Gautam, as he shrugged off his transitory remorse. As the full import of what Venkat was offering sank in and the elation finally took over, he forgot to ask Venkat what the second reason was. Venkat would finally tell him but only after Gautam had spent another decade in this world of incessant forward momentum, allowing the changes he was slowly undergoing to proceed undetected.

For now, all Venkat said was, "Great, then I'll seal this with Chris. You and I can talk to the team tomorrow. Meanwhile, there is one other important thing I have to attend to before I leave London."

"What's that?" asked Gautam.

"I want to recruit someone who will manage our European sales effort," Venkat replied. "We have our own sales team in North America but so far we've been selling our services through local partners in London. I think it's time to set up our own small sales office here. Now that I'm taking over the division, that's one of the changes I want to make."

Gautam's interest immediately perked up. "What kind of person are we looking for?"

"Someone who can liaise locally with our distributors and represent us to prospective customers. Preferably an Indian who is familiar with our software industry but he should be based in London."

"I know just the person," Gautam responded. "He's an old friend of mine who heads the UK sales team of our biggest competitor. He's based out of their European headquarters here in London; he just shifted here last month. If you want to meet him I can set it up for later this week."

Venkat was a little wary of Gautam recommending a friend. "I need a person who can open doors, not just someone who understands technology."

Gautam grinned. "Trust me, he can open doors where you and I just see walls. You're going to love Tapan. Just meet him once."

# Chapter 15

Gautam's second year in London was probably the best year of his life since he had left school. Initially he was intimidated by having to deal with Chris's high expectations in the absence of Venkat's reassuring presence, but that was what the situation was and there was nothing to be done about it. So he somehow held his apprehensions at bay, put his nose to the grindstone and spent the hours learning whatever he had to and delivering whatever he needed to in order to keep the project moving forward smoothly.

This modest approach and the attendant hard work came naturally to Gautam. What was alien to him was the role of the masterful leader. Nevertheless, over time he did learn to lead his team with a firm but deft touch. Whenever he could solve a team member's problem, he was helpful and whenever he could not, he was encouraging, allowing that person time to work her way through it.

He learnt how to become his team's protective shield. Whenever he thought they needed a break, he would negotiate hard with Chris to buy them more time. And whenever they needed to pick up their pace of work, he made sure it was he and not someone else who put pressure on them.

Usually our innate nature dictates our actions. But sometimes we do things which are unnatural to us because we deem them to be necessary. Then, in a quiet reversal of the normal flow of causality, the performance of those actions begins to affect our nature. Over time, as we repeatedly do what originally felt odd, it begins to feel less and less awkward. Until one day we find that we have not only accepted that behaviour as a natural part of us, we have even begun to like how it makes us feel.

As Gautam performed his role of the team's leader, initially more out of necessity than any innate desire, he gradually began to feel like the chieftain of his own little tribe. He got used to their deference and, if not literally then at least figuratively, his chest puffed up a little and his spine stiffened into erectness.

Venkat kept a watchful eye on Gautam, getting an update over the phone every week and having a fortnightly call with Chris to gauge how the client was reacting. Within a couple of months he noticed that Gautam's initial uneasiness had changed to assuredness and Chris's initial tolerance had changed into a matter of fact confidence. Venkat was thrilled to see this. Not only had his gamble in entrusting this crucial assignment to Gautam paid off, he now also knew what kind of skills he needed to add to the mix to take his division's capabilities to the next level.

***

Other than his professional success, there was one more factor which made that year great for Gautam. Before Venkat returned to Bangalore he met Tapan several times and convinced him to join Exigon as the Banking Software Division's sales head for Europe. Tapan had just shifted to London at that time and had not even fully settled down when he started working for Exigon.

It did not take him long though, to begin meeting the relevant managers in both British and mainland European banks to try and sell Exigon's software services. Many of these managers expressed doubts about Exigon's ability to handle a large project and, to counter their misgivings, Tapan pointed to Exigon's success with BMB. He often found it necessary to take Gautam to meet some of these prospective customers.

The two boys from Exigon made a study in contrasts – one outgoing and likeable, a natural at breaking the ice, the other much more soft spoken and reserved but nevertheless very sure of his words. Any seasoned IT manager who met the two of them could not but be impressed, not just by them but also by the prospects of the Indian software industry, which was beginning to attract attention in the Western world. They were two young men at the top of their game, exuding a confidence which not only demanded credibility but cheekily assumed that it had already been granted.

Halfway through the year and Tapan had already bagged three deals for Exigon. These were small projects, yet Tapan's name now began to be mentioned as one of the promising youngsters in Exigon. Venkat Aiyer was delighted. The bulk of the division's business had so far come from North America and Exigon's expansion in Europe was going to be his initiative as the new division head.

Tapan spent a lot of his free time that year with Sandhya and Gautam and they included him in all of their weekend activities. They saw all of the sights of the city together and, when they were done with London itself, they started making weekend trips to nearby places. It was on one such trip to Oxford that Sandhya mentioned something that had been on her mind for the past few weeks.

Having done the sightseeing rounds of all the colleges during the day, the three of them settled down for the evening at a pub in Cornmarket Street when Sandhya asked, "Tapan, I hope you don't think I'm prying but I'm curious about one thing. When did you and Pallavi break up?"

"A couple of years back," Tapan replied.

"What happened," Sandhya asked again. "When I knew you in Delhi, you two seemed very much in love with each other."

Tapan took his time before he answered, "Yes, you're right, we were in love when we were seventeen years old. I'm not sure what changed but something did when both of us started working and focussing on our careers. Maybe the importance of love decreased in our lives. Possibly we thought that if it couldn't coexist with our new priorities then it was dispensable."

"Sometimes I think that as adolescents we were at an age that is meant for magic and when we started making our own way in the real world, we lost our ability to feel that magic, to immerse ourselves totally and utterly in a love that is centred on another individual."

All three of them spent a few moments following the tangents Tapan's comment had triggered off in their minds. Then Sandhya broke the silence.

"Makes you wonder, doesn't it," she said, "how much of what we think and do is purely our individuality and how much is dictated by the stage of life we are in?"

Tapan shrugged his shoulders in response. "Enough of this gloom and doom," he said. "Actually, when we get back to London I'd like you two to meet a friend of mine. Maybe I can get her to your home next weekend?"

So next Saturday Gautam and Sandhya met Tapan's girlfriend. Born in London of Indian parents, she had graduated from the London School of Economics and joined Anglia Bank, which is where Tapan had met her while on a sales call. For the next few weeks, the four of them met often and Gautam thought that Tapan and the young lady were a well matched couple. Despite this, their relationship didn't last very long and four months later, Gautam and Sandhya were meeting his next girlfriend for dinner.

They didn't know how long this new relationship lasted because soon it was time for them to return to India. The BMB project was running steadily now and Venkat Aiyer wanted Gautam back in Bangalore to help manage the growing project portfolio of the Banking Software Division. Tapan however stayed on in London.

His job was to be the one man sales army for the division in Europe and it was a job he had performed admirably in his first year. It was in his second year though, that he really came into his own. Whether it was winning the confidence of banks who had never done business with Exigon before or keeping Exigon in the good books of its existing customers, Tapan was there with his charming smile and his confident handshake. It was close to the end of his second year at Exigon that he signed a deal which was huge by not just Exigon's but by any standards. It was the largest order any Indian software company had received to date from a bank.

With that one deal, Tapan's name began to be regarded with respect by the entire senior management of Exigon. A few months later, when the head of North American sales for the Banking Software Division defected to a competing company, the Exigon senior council was unanimous in its view that the job should go to Tapan.

It was a time of growth, a time which valued nimble ambition over methodical circumspection. In such a time, the elders of Exigon preferred to bet on the young and promising Tapan Ghosh rather than rely on someone whose greater experience may only subconsciously hold him back.

  1. #  Chapter 16

In nineteen eighty eight, four mid-level managers and their mentor broke away from the company they worked for when they were bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. They set up Exigon. Three American customers - two banks and a car manufacturer – promised them their first software development projects even before the company had been registered. Despite the small size of these projects, the difference between the US dollar billing rate which Exigon charged its customers and the Indian rupee salary which it paid its employees was sufficient to get the company started off.

In the first dozen years of its existence, Exigon went through three distinct stages of its evolution. The first three years were a time of tense desperation for the company, a time in which its CEO Tejas Shankar and his team could see that the survival of the company was not yet guaranteed. It was a constant race to get the next project so that the company's bank balance could stay positive and Exigon could remain a "going concern" - an elegantly understated objective which hid behind it a fear of bankruptcy and failure.

The founders constantly lived with the worry that once a particular project was completed, there might not be another one to ensure gainful employment for that team. But somehow Tejas Shankar, who had direct charge of Exigon's sales efforts, managed to get the next project in the nick of time and employees continued to be paid their salaries.

It took two years before an American bank gave Exigon its first project large enough to sustain a team comfortably for several months. It was after this, in nineteen ninety, that Tejas Shankar consolidated all of the banking software projects together into the Banking Software Division under the leadership of one of the founders. Venkat Aiyer, the rising star of Exigon's younger lot, was the senior project leader in this division. In another year the rest of the company too started getting some large orders and Exigon began to look like an eminently sustainable business. By the time the company was three years old, its first phase marked by uncertainty had ended.

The same hectic pace of activity which had characterised Exigon's first three years continued in its next phase too but the atmosphere within which it was conducted changed. By the time Gautam joined Exigon in nineteen ninety one, hope had replaced uncertainty as the underlying emotion which defined the company. There was an eager anticipation to see what the future held - and the next few years of unfolding reality did not belie that hope. Exigon's business grew and the company learnt how to adapt to growth and success.

Aided by the twin forces of globalisation and outsourcing, the Indian software industry was just beginning to come into its own and Exigon was part of that process. The industry may have started off as a source of low cost labour to the technology creators of the West but by the mid-nineties it was beginning to slowly acquire an identity of its own.

Customers began to take Exigon and its peer organisations more seriously, demanding more from them. They demanded not just more work but more diverse capabilities and Exigon had to adapt to those demands. Chris Anderson's frustration with Exigon was an early symptom of those demands and Venkat's decision to let Gautam race ahead of Rajeev was Exigon's way of adapting to those same demands. At that time, the three protagonists from Exigon had felt the pressure of their situation in a very personal way. They had been too close to the picture to see that their little drama was actually embedded in the push and pull of forces shaping the global economy.

Through the first half of the decade, as Exigon raced to acquire new customers and satisfy their increasing needs, the organisation didn't just expand in size, it also acquired more well-rounded capabilities. By nineteen ninety five, a year after Gautam returned from the BMB project, the company had a very robust and solid feel to it. The fact that young recruits like Gautam and Tapan were by then seasoned professionals was a major source of that solidity.

If uncertainty was the feeling with which Exigon began its life and hope was what it felt next, the emotion which defined it as it began its third phase in nineteen ninety five was confidence. By the middle of nineties, Exigon's management realised that their aspirations had been too modest and finally began to make plans which were much more ambitious in nature.

But the next five years were a strange and unreal time for the entire Indian software industry. Its grand moment in history had finally arrived. From a backwater in the Indian business landscape, the industry quickly thrust itself into the forefront of global consciousness, changing India's image from a land of snake charmers and yogis to a land of technically proficient people.

In the last five years of the twentieth century, Exigon's revenue grew ten times and so did its reputation and image with its customers. It was a pace of growth which surprised Tejas Shankar and his team, leaving them no time to congratulate themselves on their achievements and good fortune. This was not a dream come true which could be savoured by the dreamer, it was a delirium which left its participants no opportunity to fathom its mad logic.

However ambitious the plans the Exigon management made, the reality which played itself out exceeded even those. Embedded into that reality were Gautam and Tapan, two young stars of Exigon, one gaining a reputation as a dependable project manager and the other striking deals with a Midas touch. Over the last half decade of the millennium, their respective career paths were like the two upward spiralling strands of a double helix, intricately woven into Exigon's DNA.

In that third phase, it was not just Exigon the company which came into its own, the change in its people was equally perceptible. The more seasoned people in its sales force began to lose their instinctive deference to white skinned IT managers. A few Exigon project managers now and then pushed back when their customers pushed them a little too hard. Once in a while, an Exigon technical expert would argue on how to design a particular piece of software, at the end of which his view prevailed and the client experts were silenced. Over these five years, such incidents grew in frequency and gradually a feeling of equality with its western customers permeated the organisation.

Gautam and Tapan were at the forefront of this change. Tapan had anyway been an outgoing man and the finesse with which he plied his trade across the globe only grew in these years. If his overt bravado initially annoyed anyone expecting deference, then his innate charm helped him ultimately win them over. Similarly Gautam, true to his own basic nature, remained reserved as he always had been but with an ever-growing reservoir of confidence under his surface quietness. It would take any new person who interacted with him just a few minutes to realise that here was a man who was confident of delivering what he was promising. While their personalities continued to be different, both Gautam and Tapan excelled at their work, learning from their experiences and growing in stature with their organisation.

And as they both built successful careers in the context of Exigon's growth, Exigon in turn built its business in the context of a global boom in information technology.

  1. #  Chapter 17

Gautam had gone to London as an uncertain boy who was not yet rid of his self-doubt. After two years, he returned from there a young man confident of his abilities and ready to take on the world. Which was just as well, because as soon as he returned, he was sucked into a whirlwind of steadily increasing demands without respite. Five years before the end of the millennium, Exigon was just beginning a phase of delirious growth - growth which needed people like Gautam to tackle it with energy and bravado.

In those five years, the projects came in thick and fast and the situations Gautam found himself in had so much potential for chaos that they called for all his resourcefulness. He would barely manage one situation successfully when the next one would be upon him, yet he remained unfazed, starting once again the cycle of judging the situation, assessing his forces and deciding what play to make.

Every new project which Venkat gave him was either more complex, or much bigger in size, or in some other way totally different from anything he had done before. Gautam could never rush in with the surety that he had seen this before and that he knew exactly what to do.

He began every new project by instinctively trying to gauge the lay of the land – the skills of his team members, the corporate resources at his disposal, the client's disposition towards Exigon. He took tentative steps, keeping the team busy with several small activities which would be useful regardless of how the big picture ultimately shaped up in his mind. To an onlooker it might look like Gautam was clueless on how to proceed but that impression would change quickly.

Once Gautam was confident he had understood the factors at play and he was clear what direction he wanted to take, he would always act decisively, his moves fast and sure, concentrating all his sensitivities on the ebb and flow of the battle and staying focused till the situation had been successfully tamed.

In that second half decade of his career, Gautam became so busy trying to resolve every new situation to a satisfactory conclusion that he forgot to identify professional rivals to race ahead of. His tussle was not with any specific person any more. But there was still an adversary he was fighting. It was a nameless, faceless adversary whose existence permeated everything in the world which stood between himself and the goals he was striving for. He may have had no clear opponent in these five years, but he was still winning, still surging ahead.

In all this, not only was the unsure novice of a few years back left behind but, along with him, the adolescent who had subjected himself to the unrelenting scrutiny of his inward looking eye was also lost from sight. Gautam was now living in a grown-up world which demanded that he embrace its objectives as his own and he did so whole-heartedly. Like Arjun at Draupadi's swayamvar, he did not see the distractions around him, he did not even see the water the fish was reflected in, he only saw the eye of the fish he was aiming at.

Gautam devoted all his energies towards achieving the results his work demanded. He never stopped to question why he was doing so and it was lucky that he didn't. Because when you are pursuing victory in the midst of battle, you need unadulterated self-belief and moral righteousness coursing through your veins. No one ever got his adrenaline flowing by injecting a dose of self-doubt.

By the turn of the century, Gautam emerged as the most reliable project manager Exigon had. Whatever problem Venkat Aiyer threw at him, Gautam handled it better than expected. Whatever the situation called for, Gautam could be relied upon to deliver. He was no longer focused on getting ahead of others but his strengths ensured that others got left behind anyway. By the time the clocks of all the computers in the world showed the year 2000, Gautam was the foremost project manager in Exigon, managing all of the largest and the most critical of its projects.

With every project that progressed well, it wasn't just Gautam's reputation within Exigon which grew. As successive actions of his came off right, his belief in his own efficacy grew too. How could it not? Every time he pushed the world in the right way, the world seemed to respond by moving in the direction he wanted it to go. The thought of having brought about a desired result solely through his own efforts was so attractive that he chose to ignore all the ways in which his situation had conspired to his benefit.

Sitting at his desk with his spreadsheets and his project plans, his emails and his conference calls, he conducted the daily business of his profession. He negotiated with clients, moved people in his team from one role to another and made business plans with his bosses. Every action of his had an immediate purpose and all of his immediate purposes fitted into a grand scheme.

It would not be wrong to say that Gautam was now engrossed in bending the world to his will. Every moment of his professional life was spent figuring out which direction he should push the world in and then using all of his might - his will power, his intelligence, his sensitivity - to push it in that direction.

What Gautam did not see was that the whole world was moving anyway, pushed inexorably by all human beings who, like him, wanted something from it. They all thought they were pushing it in the direction which suited their purpose but did the world ever do more than simply turn on its axis?

Every caveman who aspired to be respected by his tribe, every ancient farmer who prayed to the Gods for a good harvest, every medieval tradesman who wanted more wealth and every modern executive who tried to grow his business – they all made the world go round when they strained to reach their goals. All the people who were living and striving, they were all giving the world the momentum it needed to go round and round. It may have appeared to Gautam that his effort was moving the world, but in the grandest scheme of all, it was merely turning on its axis as it had always done and always would.

  1. #  Chapter 18

A boat has to be full of holes to not be lifted by a rising tide and Tapan was certainly not a boat with holes. If anything, he was one of the sleekest, smoothest models which the rise of the Indian software industry lifted to success.

He joined Exigon in nineteen ninety three to head the European sales of the Banking Software Division. Two years later he moved to New York to take additional charge of the much larger North American market. Just as he had been adept at patiently making the Europeans trust him to the point of drawing them out of their reserve, he was equally adept at approaching the Americans with a back-slapping bonhomie which made them instantly feel he understood them.

When the American banks went into a frenzy of spending to cleanse their software systems of the Year 2000 bug, he was there shaking the right hands to make sure that Exigon got its share of the pie. A lot of the credit for Exigon's unbridled business expansion in the last five years of the century went to Tapan.

By nineteen ninety seven, Tapan was one of four Vice Presidents of Sales within Exigon. In reality, he was the first among equals because he was generating the highest amount of revenue for the company. More importantly, he was well on his way to becoming Venkat Aiyer's most trusted lieutenant.

When Venkat Aiyer took over the operations of the Banking Software Division, he knew that he was stepping out of his comfort zone. He knew very well how to build software systems and manage technical projects but he had no clue how to sell these very same services to customers and grow the business. He was thankful for Gautam's presence in his team because it enabled him to delegate his own strength area, one which he could steer with very little attention. It was Tapan's presence in his team however, that really enabled him to come into his own as a business leader.

By watching Tejas Shankar in the early days of Exigon, Venkat had learnt that the primary function of a corporate business leader is to grow his business. In his first five years as head of the Banking Software Division, he had done a stellar job of delivering that growth, largely due to Tapan's efforts. While Gautam's presence kept the Division from collapsing under the weight of its own fast growth, that fast growth would not have been possible in the first place without Tapan.

In the year two thousand, exactly a dozen years after Exigon was first set up, Tejas Shankar announced his resignation as Chief Executive Officer of Exigon. In those dozen years, he had steered Exigon from its uncertain beginnings to its current status as a celebrated star in the Indian business universe. From the initial five founders, its employee strength had grown to five thousand. Its software engineers worked in seventeen different development centres spread across seven cities in four different countries. Most importantly, Exigon had just finished a year in which its revenues had topped two hundred million dollars and its profits had more than doubled. Exigon had succeeded beyond everyone's wildest dreams and Tejas Shankar was happy and tired. He had seen his baby start from humble beginnings and grow into great success and he was as contented as any father could be. He was ready to hand over the baton and let the next generation run with it – his chosen successor being Venkat Aiyer.

Venkat himself was delighted with his promotion to the top spot and immediately announced that henceforth Gautam Singh would head all the software projects in the Banking Software Division. This wasn't much of a promotion for Gautam as he already managed most of the projects of the division and two-thirds of its work force already reported to him. In a way, it was merely a formalisation of the role he had been playing. His new title put him at par with Tapan, who was already the sales head of the division. There were two other divisions which Venkat was unfamiliar with and the organisational structure in these divisions he left untouched for now.

He began his new role with a burning desire to show the world that he was no less than his legendary predecessor. Tejas Shankar had been fairly consummate at sales and when Venkat took over as CEO of Exigon, this was the one part of his new responsibilities he was most uncomfortable with. Dealing with several Vice Presidents of sales, all of whom were used to getting a lot of help from the CEO, was not his cup of tea. Within three months of becoming CEO Venkat realised that he needed someone he trusted to take charge of his weak area. As a result, one of his first major acts as CEO was to elevate Tapan to the position of Head of Sales and Marketing - not just of the Banking Software Division but of Exigon.

Tapan was in his office in New York, just about to leave for the day, when he picked up Venkat's call. Even though the conversation lasted only five minutes, by the time he put the phone down Tapan was already bursting with pent up excitement. On the drive back home, he couldn't think of anything else. His limbs maneuvered the car through the traffic automatically and his fingers automatically tapped out a rhythm he didn't even realise was playing on the stereo. All he knew was the thrill he felt in his mind. All his earlier promotions had not felt like this. Head of sales of a major Indian company! Yes, it was something, wasn't it. His mind didn't go over how much ground he had covered in the past few years and it didn't go over where he was headed in the future. It just kept savouring where he had reached.

As soon as he got home, he booked his tickets to India. He looked forward to meeting Venkat in a couple days, to being in Bangalore, to walking into head office and getting congratulated by his peers. That was when he thought of Gautam and felt a sudden twinge.

Will Gautam mind? Will he feel that I have upstaged him? After all, he was here before me. In fact, he brought me in and now I'm moving ahead of him. He longed to share his excitement with Gautam but hesitated to call him. I'll meet him in a couple of days anyway, he thought.

As soon as Tapan reached Exigon, he found himself closeted with Venkat Aiyer and ended up spending the entire day with him. It was quite late in the evening when he finally walked into Gautam's office.

Gautam eagerly got up to greet him. "I've been waiting for you all day, my friend. Congratulations," he said with a smile on his face as he shook Tapan's hand. Tapan felt that the handshake was a little extra firm, as if trying to compensate for a little adulteration in the sentiment it was meant to express.

"You okay with this?" he asked.

"Of course I'm okay with this," Gautam replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, I don't know. You've done as much or more for Exigon as I've done. Why shouldn't you become Head of Operations the same time as I'm becoming Head of Sales?"

"You mean I might feel that Venkat is being unjust to me by recognizing you before me?" Although Gautam's smile had widened into a dismissive grin as he said this, Tapan thought he sensed a hint of bitterness in Gautam's voice.

"Well, I thought you might feel something like that," Tapan responded, a little uneasy.

For the past few years things had been going so well that Gautam had forgotten about rivals and races. But now, try as he might, he couldn't help but feel that his life was a race once again – and this time, his best friend was the rival who had raced ahead.

In one part of Gautam's mind, a monster had reared its head and Tapan had glimpsed it. If Gautam's inward looking eye had been awake it would have held that monster in its gaze till its dispassionate scrutiny burnt the beast into nothingness. After all, our most potent defence against our jealousies is our realization of their pettiness. But his inward looking eye wasn't awake and his mind quickly pushed that monster back into the depths it had come from. Banished for now, alive and ready to come back even stronger some day.

"No, of course not," Gautam replied, choosing to deny the conflict. "All I'm thinking right now is that I'm happy for you."

Tapan scrutinised Gautam's face and realised that whatever else Gautam may be feeling, he was also genuinely happy for Tapan. Tapan was relieved because for once he was quite proud of his achievement and wanted to share a moment of undiluted exultation with his friend.

"Well, in that case, let's get out of here and celebrate," he said, dragging Gautam out of his office without even giving him time to shut down his computer.

Gautam laughed when he saw how excited Tapan really was. "That's what I've been looking forward to all day," he responded, as they both hurried towards the elevator. "Let's go and pick up Sandhya too, she's waiting for us."

  1. #  Chapter 19

In two thousand and one, a year after Tapan's elevation, the global information technology industry went into a recession and Exigon was hit hard by the slowdown. In the two years after the recession began, Exigon did not grow at all. In a way this was a blessing in disguise, since it allowed everyone a breather from the breakneck pace which had been forced upon them for several years.

But the _dharma_ of a corporate entity is to grow and to keep on growing relentlessly. It must grow faster than it did last quarter, faster than the targets that it had set for itself and faster than the news media expected it to. The humans who comprise that corporate may tire and burn out but the company must grow. The people who create that growth may make mistakes but the company must not falter. In a culture where two quarters of falling profits are enough to make heads roll, two years of stagnation were certainly enough to get Venkat Aiyer and the Board of Directors worried.

In April two thousand and three, Venkat shepherded his senior management team into a series of meetings and encouraged them to think of drastic changes to counter the slump. Tapan was struggling to increase sales and he needed new stories to tell his customers. In a recession, not too many customers were buying the services which Exigon currently offered.

Despite that, whenever Venkat came up with an idea for a new service to launch or a new productivity enhancing initiative, it was somehow not acceptable to his erstwhile peers who now comprised the senior management of Exigon. Gautam was the only one who would take up the idea and immediately start considering how the software development teams could be reconfigured to implement it. In fact, he had one idea of his own which Venkat thought was very promising and could give Exigon's growth new impetus.

Venkat was desperate to remodel Exigon and the old guard's resistance to change was frustrating for him. It was clear to him that he needed people with more nimble minds and, three years after he made his first major organisational move by making Tapan the Chief Marketing Officer of Exigon, he finally made his second.

When Venkat summoned Gautam to his office, one August morning in two thousand and three, he didn't waste any time in making his intentions clear.

"Entire industries are getting created and destroyed in just a matter of a few years. Our customers are demanding a different mind-set from us and Exigon has to change," he told Gautam. "We have to react to this recession not just by tightening our belts, we have to use it to move ahead of our competitors while they're busy just surviving. I want us to totally rethink the kinds of technology solutions we offer to our clients and you're the only person I know who can adapt his thinking to the changed situation."

These were flattering words and they had their desired effect. Gautam's heart welled with pride. He felt as if every action, every achievement of his since the beginning had been vindicated by Venkat's words. And Venkat wasn't even finished yet.

"Gautam, I want you to take over the operations of the other two divisions as well. I want you to oversee all the software projects and all the client relationships at Exigon. I want to announce that you're the Chief Operations Officer of Exigon."

Gautam was thrilled to hear this. This more or less made him the second in command at Exigon. He and Tapan would now be the two people who helped Venkat run the company. Yes, this pretty much was the pinnacle of his professional life.

"So you want me to shake things up around here," he said.

"Yes," Venkat replied. "I want one person looking at the market, one person dealing with the internal running of projects and both these people together taking the company in the direction I want. You and Tapan trust each other and can co-ordinate well. I need that."

"I want you to help me revamp the whole company," Venkat added. "It won't be easy. Are you willing to take that on?"

"Yes, finally!" Gautam grinned. "Let's have some fun."

"Great. Give me a couple of days to inform some other people and then I'll set up the meetings where you can start taking over your new teams."

Gautam nodded his head. His mind was already thinking of what he would do to handle this new challenge. He got up to leave but stopped when he saw that Venkat wanted to say something more. But Venkat just shook his head, as if he had decided to not say it.

When Venkat had chosen Gautam to lead the crucial BMB project in London, he had not mentioned one of the major reasons for his choice. He now had the same reason in mind but, once again, he saw that Gautam was already enthused by the events themselves and didn't need any more encouragement. So Venkat stayed silent.

If he had told Gautam what he was thinking, it might have prompted Gautam to introspect a little. But then again, it might not have. After all, Gautam's inward looking eye had been asleep for several years now and questioning himself was not something he did naturally anymore. As it happened, for the second time Venkat kept his thoughts to himself and Gautam continued on his path undeterred.

After the meeting with Venkat, Gautam returned to his office and sat quietly in his seat for a long time. Initially, his mind raced with thoughts of how he would take charge of these new divisions, how he would transform them into paragons of efficiency and expertise, how he would hone Exigon's armies into formidable forces capable of achieving anything for their clients. Then slowly, all these fantasies dropped away and a tired quietness took their place. All that was left was one vague emotion, nothing more than a sense that a lot of time had passed and a lot of ground had been covered. And a feeling that despite this being a joyous occasion, he should find a way to get outside of himself and think of not just what had been gained but also what had been lost.

He got up and walked to the edge of his cabin, resting his forehead against the glass wall which separated his office from the rest of the floor. A large hall stretched out in front of him, the opposite wall a hundred feet away. Seated in that crowded hall were about four hundred people, each of whom was engaged in some project or the other. He remembered the time when he had been like one of those people outside, a mere foot-soldier. But now they all worked for him and this was his domain. This and another four floors below it and several more in other offices too, making a total of roughly ten thousand people whose careers were henceforth going to be made and unmade by his decisions. All of these people were busy meeting the needs of clients, two hundred million dollars worth of clients who would henceforth be satisfied or disappointed based on his decisions.

He turned around and looked at his cabin. The spaciousness, the thick carpet, the large desk... the entire space reminded him of how far he had come. He walked across to the opposite side and looked out at the world. Ten floors below him the citizens of this city were living out their lives in the dust and the grime of a world which kept on turning on its axis relentlessly. Each of them was trying to participate in its turning in a way that met their objectives – bare survival for some and the pursuit of success for others.

Standing there, Gautam felt that he too was participating in the world's turning. Not just turning with it but actively helping it along. He had this vague feeling that billions of people like him together tried to push the world around on its axis and that their efforts were required to prevent it from slowing down. And not one of them stopped pushing. Perhaps they were fearful of what they would do if it stopped turning. Gautam felt that the meeting he had just concluded was the world's way of conforming that his efforts over the past decade had helped maintain the momentum of the earth's turning.

But these were not even half-formed thoughts, just vague notions which were too nebulous to grasp while his life was so fully engrossed in more worthwhile pursuits. He shook his head free of these obscure feelings and turned around. Gazing once again at the sea of employees in the large hall, he remembered his own journey over the past dozen years. He had managed it well, he thought. No more races left to run, no more rivals to beat. They had all been left behind.

# Chapter 20

In the few months that followed his anointment as Exigon's Chief Operations Officer, Gautam focused not only on streamlining Exigon's existing operations – a large enough task in itself – but also on setting up the capability to provide more clients with a different kind of service. Instead of just writing the software applications which Exigon's clients used, he wanted Exigon to take over the day to day running of those applications too. He persuaded Tapan to set up meetings with some of Exigon's largest customers and used their reaction to his initial proposal to fine tune the offering.

"You can cut your spending on software operations by as much as forty percent," he would tell them - and then proceed to provide details which changed their sceptical looks into interested smiles. He also convinced Exigon's Board of Directors to make a substantial investment in this new business offering.

"This is exactly the kind of business we should be getting into to complement our current software development business. It's different since we get annual cash flows from a customer once he signs on, unlike our current model where we do one project and then the revenue ends," he told the members of the Exigon board. "But its key ingredient is still software skills, which we are good at." While he argued from the operational and financial side, Tapan helped by vouching for the fact that this idea was generating interest among clients and that he could successfully sell such an offering.

Once they had the Board's approval, Gautam and Tapan put together tailor-made proposals for Exigon's ten largest existing clients and spent several weeks jointly visiting them. Whenever they visited a prospect to sell this new service, Venkat Aiyer kept close tabs on their progress. If Gautam and Tapan's words were to be taken at face value, then the customers were responding well and the first few big deals were not too far away. Every time he put the phone down after completing a status call with the two of them, Venkat was not only happy with the progress they were making, he was also thankful that he had the two of them to help him run Exigon.

Several times Venkat found himself smiling at the playful banter between his two right hand men. He could easily have ended up with two people who vied with each other for credit when things went well and blamed each other when they did not – but not these two. No, they never played those games with each other and their relative strengths balanced each other out. This was going better than he had hoped when he had moved his chess pieces into place.

And it continued to go well for another few years. The Indian IT industry slowly came out of recession and Exigon too returned to its old ways of growth, though not at the same breakneck pace that it had followed in the nineties. This time round it managed its growth in a much more organised manner and even focused on new businesses, like the one whose take-off Gautam had spearheaded.

In those years of Exigon's resurgence, Tapan and Gautam represented two opposing ways of approaching the pressures of business, just as they had symbolised opposing ways of approaching the world in their adolescence. Tapan was the quintessential pirate, always ready to go out and conquer new worlds, always impatient to try out new things, always ready to disrupt the company to give the customer what he wanted. Gautam on the other hand was always trying to create order where chaos existed, trying to break up disruption into manageable doses, trying to maintain the smooth functioning of his vast empire.

Throughout the mid-two-thousands Tapan and Gautam continued to push and pull each other gently in different directions and it was their continuously shifting equilibrium which moved Exigon forward. They would often argue vehemently over business issues and Venkat always watched this give and take carefully. In every such situation he stayed aware of the unfolding dynamic between his two lieutenants, keeping things on an even keel with deft touches here and there but largely letting them balance each other out. Usually, the two friends worked their differences out and came to an agreement which made logical sense for Exigon. Venkat rarely intervened forcibly, reminding himself that he had deliberately put these two opposing forces into play. He knew he had a good thing going and he saw no reason to end it before it ended itself.

He also knew that what he was seeing was one facet of a much deeper relationship between these two. Soon after becoming Sales and Marketing head, Tapan had shifted base to Bangalore and the two friends met informally quite often. As they had in London, Sandhya, Gautam and Tapan often took vacations together.

While Sandhya found Tapan great company, her only grouse with him was that he refused to settle into one long term romantic relationship. "Don't you get tired of adjusting to one person after another?" she would ask him every time his girlfriend changed. And every time his response was "Don't you get tired of living with one person all the time?" Then he would get a roguish smile on his face and continue, "You should try a change, you know. You just might find a respite from Gautam refreshing."

Gautam, on the other hand, had no problems with Tapan's profligacy. He did not think it wrong in any way. Tapan's girl friends were neither very young nor very naive and none were led to believe anything but the bare truth about him. "Where do you find all these attractive, smart and willing women your age from?" Gautam would ask in amazement. "I didn't even know Bangalore had so many of them." The only time he did have a problem was when one of Tapan's flings hit a little too close to home.

Independence Day of two thousand and six fell on a Thursday and the three of them decided to take Friday off and experience Goa in the monsoon. "I'll book the tickets and the hotel," Tapan had said. "You guys just make sure you pick me up on the way to the airport."

As soon as he climbed into the taxi, Tapan informed them that he had asked someone to come along as the fourth person on this holiday. Gautam and Sandhya were both curious about Tapan's new girlfriend and badgered him with questions about her but he refused to answer them.

"Come on, Tapan. Tell us something at least," they persisted.

"You'll meet her at the airport," was all he said.

When the taxi drove in to the airport, Tapan leaned out of the window and waved to a tall, smartly dressed lady in her mid-thirties. As she waved back, Gautam thought he recognised her.

"Doesn't she work at Exigon?" he asked. "I've seen her before."

"Yes, she does. Her name is Radha Seth and she's the customer relationship manager for a couple of your clients in Singapore."

"You idiot," said Gautam in an exasperated tone. "She's not just from Exigon, she's in my team! You'll get me into trouble if you you're not careful."

Tapan grinned at Gautam. "Hey, I can't help it if eighty percent of Exigon is in your team. Anyway, don't worry; nothing is going to go wrong. Radha's a big girl," he said as the taxi came to a stop and he got out to greet her.

Gautam looked at Sandhya but she just smiled and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, "What can you do with him? Just ride along with it."

In the flight, Sandhya sat with Radha as Gautam and Tapan wanted to fine tune Exigon's entry strategy into the African market. After they reached Goa and settled down into their rooms, all of them wanted to hit the private stretch of beach which fronted the hotel. They played in the water, no less exuberant than the children around them, till finally their bodies were too tired to continue. A few minutes later, they were relaxing in the deck chairs along the beach, watching the sun set into the Arabian Sea. Some time later, Radha excused herself and the three of them were left alone.

Gautam still had doubts that this could blow up in his face at office some day. "Tapan, are you sure you know what you're doing?" he asked his friend

"Relax. I told you, Radha's a big girl. There are no mismatched expectations here," his friend replied.

Gautam was about to say something when Sandhya interrupted, "I agree with him, Gautam. I spent the whole flight getting to know her and frankly, I like her. She's mature, she's very pragmatic and she's quite capable of taking care of herself. She's emotionally hard as nails."

Tapan nodded his head in agreement.

"She's quite career minded too," finished Sandhya. "You wait and see, she's going to do well at Exigon."

Gautam relaxed a little but he wasn't fully reassured. He had to wait until next morning for that. All four of them were at the beach, splashing around in the sea when Gautam decided to get out of the water and take some photographs. He took a few intimate ones of Tapan and Radha playing with each other in the water. After some time, Radha came and joined him, watching him click photos of Tapan and Sandhya battling the waves.

"I think some of them are going to turn out really nice," she remarked.

"Yes, I think they are. Tell you what, I'll select the best ones and email them to you when we get back."

"Oh, there's no need. Even if you do, I'll just delete them."

Gautam was a little startled at that statement. "You don't like collecting memories, I take it," he said, half jocularly.

"You're right," Radha responded. "I don't look for things to take away forever from such encounters."

Gautam watched her face as she continued, "Tapan tells me you're concerned about the fact that I work at Exigon. You know, I don't expect anything permanent from my romantic relationships, not since my divorce a few years ago. Tapan's a great guy to be around and I'm just having fun... in exactly the same way he is."

She shrugged her shoulders and said, "This will last till it lasts and then it will be over. You may have to adjust to my presence as Tapan's friend but you're never going to have to deal with this as Exigon's COO."

Then she looked directly at Gautam and said, "So stop worrying, enjoy your holiday and let me also relax and have a good time."

"Okay, I get it," Gautam smiled.

A year later Radha was proved right. He didn't have to deal with it as Exigon's COO but it turned out that he did have to deal with it as Tapan's friend.

Tapan and Radha's relationship ended a year after it began – a little bitterly because Tapan, quite uncharacteristically, wanted it to continue whereas Radha wanted to move on. In fact, Tapan had made several attempts to revive the affair, only to be refused every time. One such attempt was even witnessed by several Exigon employees in the cafeteria.

Finally, Gautam had to counsel his friend to let it go. Tapan insisted that he had to pursue it, that he hadn't felt this way about anyone since Pallavi. But he finally relented when Gautam reminded him that after he himself had had so many casual affairs, he couldn't suddenly turn around and expect the woman to become serious.

That was where the matter lay, until the day when Gautam did have to deal with it at work once more... but not exactly in the way that Radha had meant.

# Chapter 21

Soon after Gautam became the Chief Operations Officer of Exigon, the Indian information technology industry began to recover from the slump with which it had started the new millennium. A couple of years into this resurgence all the stalwart companies of the industry were growing at a healthy pace and new technology companies were once again beginning to make waves. Good times were back for all - not as heady as the nineties had been but good nevertheless.

In the ensuing few years, the industry extended its scope beyond just developing software for its clients, including in its ambit all kinds of business operations which had a heavy information technology component. The Indian press devoted reams of paper to documenting the second coming of the industry and the American media did numerous stories deploring the outsourcing of American jobs to Bangalore.

Amongst all this, Exigon continued to move steadily ahead on its course under the leadership of Venkat Aiyer. It grew faster than its peers, emerging by two thousand and six as the largest Indian company in that particular business sector. Soon after it got that title, BizWeek, America's leading business magazine, decided to do a cover feature not just on the Indian IT industry in general but on Exigon in particular.

BizWeek sent Venkat a brief on what ground the magazine wanted to cover and a write-up on Lucy Powell, the feature writer who had been assigned to do the story. Venkat in turn forwarded the information to Tapan and asked him to show her around, making sure she got the access she needed within Exigon.

Gautam took one look at Lucy's photograph and immediately commented, "Tapan, she's just your type."

Tapan rolled his eyes in mock irritation and ignored his friend's attempt to needle him. "I'm more worried about whom she should meet."

Gautam just smiled and replied, "You wait and see, by the end of the week you two will have a thing going."

As it turned out, Tapan accompanied Lucy everywhere when she was shown around the Exigon campus and sat in on every meeting that she attended, trying to ensure that she saw the good side of Exigon. On her last evening there she wanted to do a photo shoot of the three musketeers of Exigon, as she called them, together in Venkat's office.

When Gautam joined Tapan and Venkat in the latter's office the photographer had set up the scene as an informal meeting. Venkat sat on his side of the table, with a large Exigon logo on the wall behind him and Gautam and Tapan sat in front of him on the other side. He shot a few different angles but he wasn't very satisfied with the feel the scene conveyed. That was when Venkat said, "I have an idea we can try."

Venkat moved Gautam and Tapan to his side of the table and seated them in chairs while he stood behind them. "Oh, that's a nice one," the photographer said, as he crouched on the floor to get the Exigon logo in the background and clicked away.

"Venkat, can you lean forward a little?" he requested. Venkat bent down and put his arms around the shoulders of the two men seated in front of him as all three of them looked into the camera and beamed. The photographer clicked that pose from several angles.

"That's a wrap," he said finally, straightening up and nodding to Lucy.

Then he stretched his tired body and added, "I'm going to have an early dinner tonight and catch some sleep. I was up quite late yesterday, shooting your office under the night lights."

"That reminds me," Lucy said, "Tapan, what time are we meeting for dinner tonight?"

"Around eight," said Tapan and then looked sheepishly at Gautam. Gautam looked back at him with raised eyebrows and suddenly both of them burst out laughing. Venkat looked down at them and smiled with a mixture of amusement and indulgence. No one noticed that the photographer had quietly brought his camera up and shot off a few snaps.

Lucy looked a little bewildered and asked, "Was it something I said?"

She was about to get irritated because the two of them wouldn't stop laughing when Venkat noticed the look on her face and quickly came round the table.

"Oh, forget about these two," he said as he led her out of his office. "No one can understand them when they go off on a tangent like this. I assure you it has nothing to do with you."

When the issue of BizWeek finally came out, the cover featured that very same photograph, the one of Gautam and Tapan sitting at Venkat's desk, looking at each other and enjoying a moment of shared gaiety, while Venkat stood behind, looking down upon them with avuncular indulgence. In one instant, the photographer had captured the confidence and the intimacy which the trio had built over a dozen years. Below the photograph was the title "Leaders Of The Pack : How Exigon is leading the second coming of the Indian IT industry."

The article inside highlighted Exigon's recent successes in new markets and praised its operational excellence. It detailed how Exigon had started new businesses smoothly while continuing to run a tight ship with the old ones. The editorial write-up was interspersed with individual interviews with Venkat, Gautam and Tapan. An additional story covered the resurgence in the software industry in general and spoke of the growth which Bengaluru as a city had seen in the past few years.

***

When Venkat Aiyer read the BizWeek story, he first felt pride and a sense of accomplishment. If he had left it at that he wouldn't have done what he did next. But he didn't just leave it at that.

He looked back on his entire career, starting at the beginning when he was fresh out of college, spending time on every achievement and every major event over two decades, till he caught up with the present. He was overwhelmed by the thought of just how much time had passed and how much had happened in that time.

For those of us who are in the second half of our careers and have reached as high up the corporate ladder as we will go, such wistful reflection can be dangerous. It is best to quickly dismiss such thoughts with an amused shake of the head and immediately return to the most pressing office issue at hand. Otherwise we might end up feeling very detached from the nitty gritty substance of our daily work and start searching instead for the meaningful essence it is supposed to contain but rarely does.

The cover story in BizWeek made Venkat Aiyer realise that he had begun to take things easy, coasting along in smug self-assurance rather than worrying about where his next success was coming from. In other words, he was probably at the peak of his career and he should decide whether he was going to stay there and enjoy it for some time or whether it was time to shake up his life a little bit. The only person he could think of confiding in was his mentor and boss, the Chairman of Exigon's Board of Directors, Tejas Shankar.

"But you're doing so well as the CEO, why in the world would you consider leaving?" was Tejas Shankar's instantaneous reaction. As Venkat responded to that question, as he found words which communicated the answer, he himself became more certain that this was what he had to do. Tejas listened to Venkat without interrupting and, by the time Venkat finished, he too was sure.

Tejas smiled wryly, "If your mind is made up, then go ahead. All said and done, what you're thinking of doing is exactly what I did, leaving at the top. The only difference is that in my case I was clear I wanted you to take over from me. Who do you think should run things after you?"

"There are a couple of candidates," Venkat answered with a contemplative look on his face. "But I don't know how to decide between them."

"Tapan and Gautam?" Tejas guessed. "Do you have a preference?"

"I can't make up my mind. Tapan is very popular in the company and under that jovial exterior he has a real hunger. He wants to make himself and the company much bigger," Venkat reasoned. "But Gautam is well respected too and in many ways he's better qualified than Tapan. The only question is, does he have the drive to occupy the hot seat? I'm not sure he's hungry enough."

"How are you going to decide?" asked Tejas.

"I'll think of something. Give it a month or two and it'll be clear in my mind. Do you trust me on this?"

"When you make your choice, I'll back you with the Board," Tejas Shankar reassured him. "I am curious about one thing though, what happens to the other one?"

"You know how the game is played," Venkat responded. "Once we announce the decision, there will be awkwardness between them, neither of them will want to be the other's direct subordinate. The situation will force them to think of one as the winner and the other as a loser."

Venkat's expression hardened as he added, "The loser will have to make his own way in the world. It's not our concern."

# Chapter 22

A week later, Venkat had made up his mind how he wanted to approach the matter of his succession. He met Tapan and Gautam one after the other and informed them of his decision to leave. Although they met him separately, they both had the same response – disbelief and sadness at seeing their mentor go.

Venkat was genuinely touched by their reaction and wanted to respond in kind but he stopped himself from getting swayed by sentiment. This succession was going to be his last significant act as CEO of Exigon and he wanted to make sure he took the right decision. It did not occur to him that in order to take tough decisions, he need not harden himself and manipulate people. That was just what he had always done.

"One of you will lead Exigon after me," he told them in separate meetings. "I don't know which one, the Board will decide that in about six weeks. During the Board meeting on twentieth October, to be precise."

Tapan did not have a strong visible reaction to that statement. He just looked thoughtful, thinking ahead and for the first time seeing a career situation as a play of political variables. Gautam, on the other hand, had some questions.

"Is that final?" he asked Venkat. "That there's no CEO search as such, the Board will just decide between me and Tapan?"

"Yes, it will be one of you."

"So you think I have the capability to be a successful CEO?"

"Oh yes," Venkat responded instantaneously, "there's no question about that."

Then he added, "But capability alone is not enough. There is another quality you had that has always impressed me, it was why I always chose you over your peers. From the BMB project in London all those years back till your last promotion to COO, I've always been sure you were the man because of that quality in you."

"What's that?" Gautam finally asked Venkat, a dozen years after he first should have in London.

"Your hunger," Venkat responded. "It is more important than any skill, any ability. All the successful business leaders have an insatiable hunger. Sure they have ability but after some time, everyone is very capable in their own way. The one with the greater hunger always wins. This is one of the open secrets of the corporate world."

"Skills, education, capability – there is a limit to how far up these can take you. To break through beyond that you need to have the hunger. We can call it drive, passion, initiative and all other kinds of euphemisms but what we really mean is pure, naked hunger. And why not? If you're not hungry to get ahead in the system you're participating in, then why should the system give you its rewards?"

Venkat paused to let what he had said sink in before he continued.

"When I left you in-charge of the BMB project in London, one of the major reasons was that I saw that hunger in you. Every time I decided to promote you over your peers, it was because I saw the hunger in you. Even when I made you COO, you had that hunger. But since then, some of that drive seems to have left you. That's my only doubt. This is the biggest moment of them all. I don't need to see that you're capable enough, show me that you're still hungry enough. I don't care how, if you want to win this particular race bad enough, you'll have to find a way."

***

Gautam was in an unusually silent mood after that meeting and it didn't take Sandhya long to figure out that something had happened at work.

"Venkat's leaving," Gautam informed her when she asked him.

"Really? That's surprising, I thought things were going well for him?"

"They are, it's just that he thinks he needs to leave when he's at the top."

"Okay..." said Sandhya, still not very clear she knew everything there was to know. "I can understand you're sad to see him go but why is it making you so grim?"

"He says that the Board is going to choose either me or Tapan to be the next CEO."

Sandhya was a little surprised. "And he told you both this? That's strange. I thought such things were kept confidential till the end."

"Not just that," added Gautam, "I get the feeling there is something he wants me to do to help them make up their minds."

"You mean something like executing a large project or getting a client to appreciate Exigon's contribution to their business? What can you do in the next one month which you haven't done throughout your career?"

"Exactly, they know all that already. It has to be something else altogether. Maybe instead of thinking up ways of making myself appear the better candidate, I need to do something which will make this a one horse race. It is, after all, the last race."

Sandhya's eyebrows shot up in alarm. "So that's what he's trying to do! He can't make up his own mind so he wants one of you two to execute some kind of corporate coup. I hope you're not thinking of doing something stupid?"

"No, no, of course not," said Gautam absent-mindedly, only half listening to what Sandhya was saying. But a thought had just entered his head, a thought which he tried to brush away immediately but which stayed and festered over the next few days. The more he tried to tell himself that it was absurd, the bigger it became in his mind. Well, the first step was something he should be doing anyway, he reasoned with himself, so he could take that step without committing himself to anything.

A fortnight after Venkat first told Gautam he was leaving, Gautam called Radha Seth for a meeting and offered her the position of Exigon's Head of Africa Operations. Radha was surprised at the offer. "Are you sure? This is quite a jump for me."

"Yes," Gautam replied, really meaning what he said. "I'm sure you'll do well. The question is, are you game for this? You'd be based in Nairobi and many people don't want to go live in Africa."

Radha didn't have to wait before answering. "Maybe they don't but this is a great opportunity for my career so yes, I'm interested."

"I was hoping you'd say that. Why don't you make a week's exploratory trip to the region, I'll set up meetings with our largest customers. When you're back, let's discuss what your agenda for the next year should be."

The same evening Gautam told Venkat of his decision to appoint Radha as head of African operation. "Spunky lady but does she want to go live in Africa?" was his reaction.

"Oh, she's okay with it, quite happy with the career jump in fact," Gautam told him.

"I'm glad," responded Venkat. "But still, I'm a little surprised."

"She told me last month that she wanted to be out of head office for some time. A year or two in Africa should suit that purpose at least."

Venkat raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Why does she want to be outside head office? Anything we should worry about?" he asked.

"I don't think so and I hope not," was Gautam's response. Gautam had chosen his words carefully. Now he could either make this explode in the near future or never refer to it again.

The next day Gautam completed a chore which had been long pending. For several months he hadn't backed up the photographs from his camera's memory to his laptop and as he did so now, he went through the photos he had taken during their Goa trip a year ago. It was an innocuous activity in itself but he now knew which ones could be useful if needed.

It was a week later that Gautam actually crossed the line into forbidden territory, taking an action which could have only one purpose. He went through the Goa photographs once more, selected two of them and copied them to a separate folder. Then he set up a brand new email account in the name of exigonlady30 at a free email web site and composed an email from that id to Venkat Aiyer. The email claimed to be from an anonymous female employee in the Bangalore office, an employee who had nothing to do with the events she was mentioning but nevertheless believed that such harassment needed to be brought to the attention of the CEO and that, if not punished, the man in question should at least be reprimanded. Attached were two photographs as evidence of the relationship. Gautam did not send the email, he just saved it in the drafts folder.

When Radha came back from her scouting trip to Africa, she was full of enthusiasm for the region. On the flight back she had drawn up a six point plan and she discussed it with Gautam at the first opportunity. Gautam suggested a few changes but nevertheless was quite impressed by the quickness with which she had grasped the ground realities of the region. Radha was walking out at the end of the meeting when Gautam popped the question.

"I wanted to check one thing with you. I know you don't want to talk about it but if someone else were to inquire on the issue of your affair with Tapan, what would your reaction be?"

Radha looked confused. "But why would anyone..." she started to ask when realisation suddenly dawned on her. Like the rest of Exigon, she too had heard that Venkat was leaving and the Board had not yet decided who the next CEO was going to be. For a brief instant her cheeks flushed with anger but then, almost immediately, she calmed herself.

"Then I would tell that person that my relationship with Tapan is over, its details are private and I don't wish to discuss them."

Yes, that would be ideal, thought Gautam. Sufficient to cast a doubt but not enough to take official action on. No careers would be ruined but confirmation of an office affair gone bad would make Venkat think twice, even if it was not followed by a formal harassment complaint. Gautam just nodded his head and Radha took that as a signal that the meeting had ended.

As she was leaving, she turned back, looked directly at Gautam and said, "I can leave for Nairobi in a week. I'd prefer to be far away from here when Venkat's successor is announced."

Gautam nodded his agreement.

  1. #  Chapter 23

Twentieth October, two thousand and six was a big day in Exigon. In the morning, the Board meeting at which Venkat's successor would be decided was to be held at the company's brand new campus in Mysore, followed by a private lunch for the Board of Directors and a few senior employees. After that, a short inauguration ceremony for the new office was planned in which Venkat himself was to cut the ribbon.

By evening, bus-loads of Exigon employees were to arrive at the Mysore office and Venkat Aiyer was scheduled to address the gathering at five o'clock. While the whole company had been rife with the rumour for the past few weeks that Venkat was leaving, this was the occasion on which he would formally announce his decision and also let Exigon know who his successor was. Gautam and Tapan, of course, would already know the decision when they had lunch with the Board earlier that day.

At five thirty, right after Venkat's address, the company planned to throw a Diwali party for all its employees. The revelries were expected to last a few hours and buses were scheduled to return back to Bangalore at ten p.m. and midnight.

The day before the party, Gautam had still not sent the email from exigonlady30 to Venkat. By lunch time he had read that email about a dozen times. By evening he couldn't concentrate on anything at office and he sat through his last meeting of the day with minimal awareness of his surroundings. When the meeting ended, he walked back to his office and logged into the exigonlady30 account once more. He stared at the email, reading it again and again till finally he was not reading it at all, just staring at the screen instead. He didn't notice as the office slowly emptied out and the lights in the various seating areas were switched off one by one.

The ring of his cellphone jolted him out of his reverie. It was Sandhya asking him when he was coming home.

"There's a problem at one of the Canadian client sites and it might take some time," he told her. "Why don't you eat dinner and go to sleep, I'll order something at office."

Sandhya was no stranger to Gautam working late but she could make out from the tone of his voice that there was more to it than just trouble with a client. She was well aware that the crucial Board meeting was tomorrow and on an impulse she said, "Are you all right? Do you want me to come over?"

"No, of course not," Gautam replied. "What will you do here?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe get some dinner and some coffee over. I'm going to stay up late tonight and review a script anyway, I can do that in your office."

"No, I can manage this," said Gautam.

Sandhya hesitated but then realised that however much she wanted to be there for Gautam, he clearly wanted to get through this on his own.

"Okay," she finally said. "Try and come home as early as you can."

It was ten p.m. when Gautam decided to get something to eat from the all night cafeteria which Exigon ran inside its office. He was soon back with a sandwich which he didn't really feel like eating anymore. Concentrating on his laptop instead, he started reading a status update of the major North European projects which Exigon's Amsterdam office had sent him. He gave up when he realised that an hour had passed and he was still on the first page of the report.

Finally he gave up his attempts to distract himself and logged into exigonlady30's email account once again. He clicked on the attachments and stared at the two photographs. Then closing them, he read the email for the umpteenth time and changed nothing.

After some time he realised that he had been reading the email again and again for the past several minutes but none of its contents had registered in his brain. Somehow, the words didn't have any meaning anymore. He was just a bundle of nervous tension whose eyes were perceiving letters on the screen without his brain combining them into a comprehensible sentence.

The bottom right of his screen showed the time as just past midnight. He decided that sitting at his desk wasn't doing him much good so he got up, not really sure where he was going.

As befitted India's largest software company, the Exigon head office was really a sprawling campus spread over a city block and housing twenty thousand employees. It had started with one building, then three more had been constructed and now there were a total of eight. Gautam walked out of the plush lobby of the Executive Block into the night. The pathway in front was empty and he turned left. A hundred meters farther on and he was at the entrance to the first building which had been constructed on this campus, a ten-storey glass tower which overlooked the main road alongside which the entire campus was situated. Once this building had housed the entire Banking Software Division and his office had been on the tenth floor, before the Executive Block had been constructed and he had moved to it.

On a whim he went in and took the elevator to the tenth floor. He entered a large hall which he remembered as bustling with activity. It was empty now with no people, no lights, no hustle and bustle. Just the night glow of the city coming in through the glass walls. He made his way through the dark aisles to what had been his cabin. He didn't even know who occupied it now but the door was unlocked and he went in.

He could make out the silhouettes of the desk, the chair and the storage cupboards. Everything was in the same place as it had been four years back. The darkness hid the changes that must have inevitably come over this workplace. He walked to the glass wall which overlooked the main Hosur Road.

From this height he could see the street lights extending into the distance till they finally disappeared as the road curved out of sight behind some buildings. He remembered standing at this spot and gazing at this very road often, except that it had always been in the daytime, when the road was owned by busy vehicles and preoccupied pedestrians. Whenever he needed to switch off for a few seconds, his favourite pastime had been watching the flow of purposeful humanity going from one place to another through the dust and grime.

The scene looked very different at midnight, its unnatural stillness provided an eerie contrast to its daytime frenzy. Gautam stood there for a long time, gazing at the sight. The road itself was empty but the night time denizens of the footpath had come out. A homeless man was sleeping on the pavement, covered with a blue plastic sheet. The torn newspaper which had contained his meagre dinner had been carelessly discarded. A stray dog sniffed at it, trying to trap it under a paw to lick the last scraps of food off it.

The bright street lights reflecting off the smooth tarmac reminded one of the real purpose of the road though, and of the fact that the homeless and the stray only had temporary use of it. Once the workday began, the road's rightful owners would reclaim their property and these intruders would have to slink away out of sight while the world went about its real business.

Gautam flicked the light switch and suddenly everything felt very different. The scene outside vanished and instead the glass wall reflected the inside of the cabin. There were the chairs for the regular occupant and his visitors, his desk with papers piled up in one corner, the storage cupboards lining one wall, their top forming a shelf on which a family photograph and a "Meritorious Service" award were proudly displayed. There was also a photograph of a man, presumably the current owner of this office, posing in ski gear, complete with a bulky skiing jacket and snow goggles, his face flush with the novelty of his experience. The photograph had been put there no doubt to highlight a novel moment in his life, but to Gautam its presence in such a mundane setting only served to highlight the opposite, the commonplace nature of the life the man in the photograph led.

Like most of us who acquire a certain amount of success, Gautam had always thought of his own life as remarkable... and he often felt that the people around him led such unremarkable lives. But standing here now he wondered if someone walking into his empty office, without his presence to imbue it with life, would also feel that Gautam's life was commonplace and unremarkable, just as he was feeling now.

Do this man's achievements make him feel as special as mine make me feel? If that is so, how often has my life been merely ordinary and how often has it really touched the sublime?

But Gautam's mind had been dealing exclusively with the outer world for so long now that it was out of practice in answering such internally focused questions. It did not contain any clear answers, all it contained was a feeling of unease. The uneasiness stemmed not from the loneliness of the night or from the prospect of what would happen tomorrow but from this vague, unformed belief that something was missing from his life, lost so far back in the past that he could no longer touch or feel its memory even.

Gautam left his old office and caught the lift back to the ground floor. Getting out of that building, he walked the dimly lit pathways of the Exigon campus. In the night the buildings were mere silhouettes yet they were all familiar to him. He had seen each of them being constructed, he knew which teams they had housed over the years and how those teams and their businesses had grown. Finally, standing all alone in the central square of the campus, surrounded by the steel and glass manifestation of a business he had helped create, he was acutely aware of the passage of time. He recalled his first days at Exigon when he had struggled to learn, the BMB project, his elevation to COO, the striking difference his leadership had made to Exigon in the last four years. Strangely enough, there was no pride in this recollection, only a melancholic wistfulness.

Sometimes, when we look back over the progression of a long, busy phase of our lives, we are suddenly gifted with a perspective which halts our momentum and makes us feel as if we are detached beings, watching our histories and futures laid out in front of us with the clarity of a still photograph. That perspective lasts only a fleeting moment but that one moment was enough for Gautam to see how this had to end. It was enough for all his confusion and doubts to disappear. He knew for certain now, not only what he had to do next but also what its consequences would be.

Gautam made his way back to the Executive Block, caught the lift and emerged onto his floor. At his desk, the email written by exigonlady30 was still open and this time he did not just stare at it, he clicked the Delete button without any hesitation.

***

Dawn was breaking when Gautam reached home. Sandhya was sleeping on the living room couch and he made coffee for both of them before waking her up.

"Are you all right?" was the first thing Sandhya asked when she sat up.

Gautam smiled at her. "Yes, I am," he answered.

Sandhya's eyes searched his face to make out how much truth there was in that answer. She was relieved with what she saw and suddenly she smiled, as if hours of tension had suddenly dissipated. "So the Canadian problem is solved?" she asked in jest.

Gautam grinned back at her. "Yes, it most certainly is."

Even though he had stayed up all night, Gautam did not feel tired. He chatted with Sandhya as she told him about the script she was reviewing and the upcoming collaboration she was considering with a theatre company from Mumbai.

"They have some very nice actors," she told him. "Even the director's very good, what they're missing is a regular producer. Thespians Corner has put up four shows in the past three years and each one has been done by a different guest producer. They want me to produce their next one."

"So will you?" Gautam asked.

"I don't know," Sandhya replied. "They're a very good team and I will enjoy working with them. The only problem is I will have to spend a lot of time in Mumbai. In fact, I may have to shift there for a few weeks."

"Don't let that stop you if you're otherwise keen on this," Gautam told her. "You can come home every two weeks or so and I can come to Mumbai on some of the weekends. Your time there will be over before we know it."

Gautam reached out and tousled Sandhya's hair, something he used to love doing in their early years together but hadn't done for quite some time now. "For years now I've been hearing you mention that you want to work in Mumbai, now that you've got the opportunity, don't miss it."

With that Gautam finally got up and stretched. "I'm going for a bath. I really need one."

Last night's lack of sleep, a leisurely bath and a hearty breakfast made Gautam feel drowsy. But when he spoke of sleeping for a few hours, Sandhya reminded him, "I thought you had to be in Mysore for lunch. Hasn't the office arranged a van for some of you to get there?"

Gautam looked at his watch. "I think the van would have already left, I'll drive instead."

"You'll drive all the way after having stayed awake all night? You'll be exhausted by the time you reach" Sandhya said.

"Maybe," Gautam replied. "But I'm not much in the mood for company either. If I leave in another fifteen minutes, I'll make it before the end of the lunch."

Gautam enjoyed his drive, especially one long stretch where the road snaked in-between some picturesque, rocky hills. He didn't see any sign of human habitation in that stretch till he finally passed a highway restaurant followed by a small town.

By the time he reached the Exigon office and entered the lunch room, the others were already half-way through their meal. There were only about twenty people, milling around and randomly joining and leaving small groups. Despite his four hour drive Gautam wasn't really hungry but he filled up a plate anyway and joined three of the Board members. They discussed the weather, the traffic and the upcoming Dussera celebrations, everything except Exigon. Venkat noticed that Gautam had arrived and excused himself from the people he was with.

When Venkat took Gautam aside gave him the news, Gautam smiled. The wait was finally over. Maybe the disappointment would come later but right now he felt quite at ease with the situation. It must have shown on his face because Venkat seemed relieved at his reaction.

As soon as he finished with Venkat, Gautam went straight to the group Tapan was in and congratulated him. While the others finished their lunch Gautam's own plate remained untouched. He was, however, the epitome of graciousness, circulating freely amongst the gathering, chatting with Tejas Shankar and the other Board members and putting the other Exigon seniors at ease. In fact, the next day the entire Board noted how well Gautam had taken the news and how he had behaved with remarkable poise.

The only person who didn't get to spend much time with Gautam that afternoon was Tapan. During the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new office, Gautam stayed towards the back while Tapan was right up front with Venkat. After the inauguration, Gautam checked on the administrative staff setting up the bar and the food counters as the buses with the hordes of Exigon employees began to arrive. By the time he was done with that, everyone had gathered in front of the temporary stage to listen to Venkat give his farewell speech.

Tapan, Gautam and the entire Board of Directors sat on the stage in a show of solidarity, listening as Venkat first reminisced about his years at Exigon and then announced Tapan's elevation. By the time Tapan had spoken a few words as Exigon's new CEO and ended that formal ceremony, the evening had progressed to the point where the party could begin in earnest.

Tapan was immediately lost in a crowd of people wanting to congratulate him while Gautam poured himself a strong drink and joined some of the project managers from the Banking Software Division. They were a little awkward at first but in a few minutes the alcohol began to take effect and everyone was talking freely. Some of them had been mentored by Gautam himself when he had headed their division and they were all glad to have him to themselves once more, talking more and more as he outdid the fastest of them in consuming liquor at a rapid pace.

By the time Tapan was finally able to tear himself away from all the people who wanted to shake his hand and tell him how he should lead Exigon forward, evening had turned to night and Gautam was in the middle of a set of very drunk people, sprawled out on the freshly laid lawn.

"Shouldn't you be eating something? When was the last time you ate?" Tapan asked Gautam within minutes of joining him, thinking that he had never seen Gautam so drunk.

"Breakfast," said Gautam, in a voice so slurred that Tapan knew he had to get some food into him.

"But before I eat, I want another drink," Gautam continued. He pointed at his surroundings with his hand. "You see all this?" he asked, including all the people and all the buildings in one sweeping arc. "I'm tired of all this. Today I want all of this to disappear. So be a good boy and get me another one."

Tapan looked at his friend and sighed. "Tell you what," he said. "I'm tired of all this too so why don't I get both of us one drink but after that we'll eat."

Little did Tapan realise that while he had used the word tired to mean that he needed a short break from everything around him, Gautam had used the same word to mean that he was ready to be entirely rid of those same things.

When Tapan returned with the drinks, the two of them moved a little away from the rest of the group. They sat silently for a few moments on the grass and then Gautam suddenly said, "I am a mean man, you know."

Tapan was a little taken aback. "How so?" he asked.

Gautam knew that he should not tell Tapan what he was about to but he wanted to get it out his system. And anyway, alcohol dissolves all of the filters of discretion that exist between our brain and our mouth, making us blurt out whatever comes to our mind without heed to appropriateness or consequences.

"I almost got you thrown out of Exigon. All I had to do was press Send on an email."

"Finally did you or did you not press that button?" was what Tapan wanted to know first.

"No, I did not. I thought about it for a very very long time but finally I did not."

Suddenly Gautam's behaviour over the past fortnight became clear to Tapan and he slapped his forehead with his palm, "So, that's what's been bothering you these past few days," he guessed. Then putting both hands on his friend's shoulders and looking him straight in the eyes, he said, "Look at me Gautam. It does not matter what you were planning to do. What matters most is that you finally did not do it, that you stopped yourself."

"No, no, I almost betrayed everything. I was this close to actually doing it. How could I take it that far?"

"And you think I didn't try to influence this decision in my favour? I went behind your back and had a discussion with Venkat to convince him I was the right choice. I threatened him that if I wasn't the Board's choice I would leave Exigon and start poaching all the customers."

Tapan believed that he had confessed to a crime greater than Gautam's but Gautam was perhaps too drunk to understand the full import of what he had just heard. He merely latched on to a few words and responded with what was uppermost in his mind.

"But you are the right choice," Gautam said, "because you see, I don't have the hunger." With that Gautam drained his glass and as he brought it down it slipped from his hand and rolled on the grass. Gautam looked at it absent-mindedly.

"...not enough hunger," he repeated in a low voice, to no one in particular. "And what is to become of a man running a race without enough hunger to win it?"

Tapan was now really concerned about his friend. "I think I need to get you something to eat. Come on let's go," he said as he stood up.

"No, I don't want to eat," said Gautam. "I just want to get out of here." With that he held out his hand to Tapan, who pulled him up. As soon as Gautam stood on his feet, the copious amounts of alcohol he had consumed hit him and the world spun around.

He sat back on the grass. "Give me five minutes," he told his friend, "and I'll be fine."

"Don't worry, I'll get you home," said Tapan. "But first I need to get some food into that empty stomach of yours. Wait here and I'll be back with something to eat for both of us."

When he got back, Gautam wasn't there. He asked the group sitting close by and they told him that Gautam had gone. "A couple of guys said they wanted to catch the ten o'clock bus back to Bangalore and when Gautam heard that he said he wanted to get out of here too."

"So he caught the bus?" Tapan asked.

"I don't know," the young man replied, "but it sure looked like that's what he was going to do."

But that wasn't what Gautam had done, he had got into his car and decided to drive to Bangalore. Tapan tried to call him to check if he was on the bus but Gautam didn't hear the phone ring. He was already on the highway, driving fast on the empty road with the windows down, the wind roaring in his ears. Moreover, the phone was on the rear seat, inside his jacket pocket, while a bottle of rum nestled on the passenger seat next to him.

Luckily there was not much traffic and despite his inebriated state Gautam managed to avoid any mishap. His mind was agitated as he thought back on the events of the past few days. He was angry at Exigon, angry at Venkat and perhaps angry at himself too. In his eyes, the world had slighted him, it had set him up and manipulated him. True, he hadn't reacted well but that didn't mean that there was any justice in what had happened. He unscrewed the cap off the bottle of rum and took a large swig. The more he thought about it, the more he began to seethe inside.

He carried on for quite some time like this, with his mind in turmoil. Then slowly, without his realising, the emotional energy was expended. He began to feel the wind on his face again and, in the blackness all around, the short tunnel of light created by his headlights drew his attention. The rhythm of the wheels on the road soothed him.

As he quietened down, a melancholy mood took over. The hammering of anger in his chest dissipated, leaving in its wake was just a feeling of resigned disappointment. Where a few minutes back he had been determined to show the world its place, he now found himself in a state of mind where he was ready to abandon it.

He took another long gulp of the rum and this time it really hit him. For a few seconds, his head spun around and when it became still again, he was thankful that he was still on the road. The road was twisting and turning through a small town and there were low buildings on both sides now.

There was a retching feeling in Gautam's stomach, it passed once but then it came again. Gautam had just exited the town when he realised he couldn't wait any longer. There was no habitation on either side and he drove a few feet off the road into a clearing and stopped. He got out of the car and made his way away around to the passenger side, away from the road. As soon as he let go of the support of the car, he couldn't stand any more and fell to his knees. As he knelt in the dirt, hidden from the road by his car, the lack of sleep for the past two days, the lack of food since morning and the excess of alcohol, all finally caught up with him and he threw up. When he was done, he felt weak, really weak. He couldn't even get up and stand, leave alone walk to the car and get inside.

The thought of driving the rest of the way was too much for Gautam and he finally gave up. He lay on his back in the dirt and watched the stars for a few seconds before he passed out.

  1. #  Chapter 24

It was mid-morning when Gautam opened his eyes and found himself looking at a thatched roof above his head. He looked around and saw that he was in a rectangular room about eight feet by ten feet, its walls covered with mud plaster. Below him was a mud floor and on it was the woven mat which he had been sleeping on.

There was a window in the wall next to him and he could see a _peepal_ tree outside. Sunlight filtered in through the gaps in its leaves. The wall farthest from him, on his right, had two shelves built into it along its breadth. The lower shelf contained a few folded clothes and the upper one was lined with books. There was a door in the middle of the wall in front of him and bright sunlight was streaming in. Outside, he could see a few feet of ground and then the sky but no road.

Gautam stood up and stretched his body as the stiffness of a night spent on the hard floor became apparent with his first movement. Walking to the far wall, he saw that there were two sets of _kurta-pyjamas_ and some undergarments on the lower shelf. Next to these was his own neatly folded jacket upon which his belt had been rolled and placed. His shoes were on the floor.

It was the upper shelf lined with books which drew his attention. There were books on Buddhism, Sufism, the Gita and the Upanishads. There was also a treatise each on Plato, Heraclitus and Kant. Not really the kind of stuff he read. The novels were more familiar to him, he had heard of most of them and had actually read a few of them when he was a student.

It was a small bare room and in a few seconds he had seen all there was to see. He wore his socks and shoes and picked up his jacket, finding his car keys and wallet in the pockets but not his cellphone.

As soon as he walked out of the room, Gautam realised that the hut he had spent the night in was on a hill. To the right, a path ran down the hill, lost to sight after a few feet where it entered a grove of trees and then was visible again as it emerged at the base of the hill. There was a stretch of flat land between the base of the hill and the highway and his car was parked in that stretch, its roof reflecting the sunlight.

There was not much traffic on the highway, a car passed by every few seconds. Just beyond the highway, the land stretched out in a terrain with sparse greenery and several rocky outcrops of varying heights, none of them higher than his current vantage point. There were a couple of hamlets in the distance but they were not much larger than twenty or so homes.

The same path which went down the hill to Gautam's right crossed in front of the hut and disappeared behind it to the left. Also to the left was a small, flat clearing with a large _peepal_ tree, the same one he had seen from the window upon waking up. Gautam sat on a mound under the tree and looked out over the landscape.

It was a clear day with a bright pale blue sky and he could see for miles. To the left, a narrow river flowed along the bottom of the hill and continued on into the distance. Along the river was a small town, probably the same one he had driven through last night. Beyond the small town the land was flat, dotted with streams and small water reservoirs. In front of him, a few kilometres away, there was a small lake. To the right, the highway snaked its way across the countryside and he could see a couple of other rocky hills in the distance.

This was a place which necessarily put a lot of distance between the observer and the world he was observing. Not just physical distance, it was tough to feel part of the maelstrom of one's daily worries from a vantage point of such serenity. To Gautam the events of the past few days seemed far removed from this place, as if they had taken place in another world and someone else had participated in them, not the person sitting here.

Gautam followed the line of the highway from the horizon back to the base of the hill. As he watched, a car turned off the road into the clearing where his own car stood. He saw a woman get out and walk towards the point where the path going down the hill ended. There was a man sitting on a chair in the shade of the trees, he hadn't noticed that when he had glanced there a few minutes back. The man and the woman exchanged a few words before the man got up and walked a couple of steps to a wooden cupboard, took out a bottle of mineral water and gave it to the woman. She paid him and left.

Maybe that man would know how he had ended up in this hut. Moreover, Sandhya would be getting worried, probably Tapan too, so he should find some way of contacting them. Gautam took one last look at the vista spread out in front of him and reluctantly turned his back on it.

As he walked down the path, he found it tricky to retain his footing. He noticed that someone had put a little bit of effort into making the pathway easier to walk on. The twists and turns seemed to be naturally selected but wherever the slope became too steep, slabs of rough stone had been placed to create makeshift steps. When the path entered the grove of trees he had trouble picking his way in the shade and had to tread slowly.

Then the ground flattened, the trees ended and there, a few feet to his right was the man he had seen from above. The man looked up as he entered the shaded clearing and smiled. It was the most honest smile Gautam had ever seen. It softened the man's face, lit up his eyes and made Gautam the object of all the goodwill which one stranger could bear another.

"So, you're awake," he said. "Come, sit here. How are you feeling? You must be thirsty."

Without waiting for an answer the old man got up and opened the rickety old wooden cupboard. Gautam saw that three of the five shelves were lined with bottles of mineral water and the other two with packs of an inexpensive brand of biscuits. The old man took one of each and gave them to Gautam.

"Thank you," said Gautam as he looked around for a place to sit but couldn't find a second chair. Finally he sat on the ground, resting his back against the cupboard and drank half the bottle.

"Where exactly am I?" asked Gautam. "And how did I end up at the top of the hill? The last I remember, I was lying somewhere there," he said, pointing towards his car which was standing thirty paces away.

"A quarry worker who lives close by found you there around midnight and called me," said the old man. "He and his son carried you to my home."

The old man retrieved Gautam's cellphone from his pocket and handed it over. "I'm afraid its battery is exhausted. Someone called Tapan called soon after we got you into bed so he knows where you are. Your wife called within five minutes of my speaking to your friend. I assured her that you're safe but in no state to continue your journey home"

"I should be getting home," Gautam said and was about to get up when the old man motioned to him to stay.

"Relax, the people who matter know where you are. I spoke to your wife again today morning and told her that it might be good for you to spend a few hours here and she agreed. Lunch will be ready in an hour, why don't you stay till then."

It looked like the old man had indeed taken care of the essentials. Gautam wondered how Sandhya had allowed a stranger to persuade her over the phone that Gautam was better off with him, in this back of beyond place. But then the old man looked like he couldn't bear ill will towards anyone and maybe that quality came across on the phone too, just as it came across in person.

Gautam settled back and looked around. The clearing they were in was fairly large. It was about twenty feet wide, began where they were sitting and ran along the road for about fifty feet before the tree line curved and joined the highway. The highway itself emerged from behind him to the right and then ran in a straight line to his left, disappearing into the distance with no human habitation visible on either side.

Across the road, the landscape stretched out. The terrain was a mixture of dry grassland studded with rocks and wooded areas, the same view he had seen to his right from on top of the hill.

He was sitting next to a stretch of man-made asphalt and the whole world was stretched out before him, an endless vista all the way to the horizon and a vast sky above. Yet the entire effect was one of isolation from the world. Even the cars on the road seemed to leave this place untouched, whizzing by without leaving any impact in their wake.

Gautam let his body relax. "Yes," he said to the old man. "It'll be good to spend a few hours doing nothing. Right now, I really need some time away from everything."

"I know," responded the old man and Gautam did not think that there was anything out of place in the old man already knowing that.

For an hour Gautam sat there on the ground and did nothing in particular. In the course of their conversation he found out that the old man's only occupation and livelihood was running this stall which sold biscuits and mineral water. "Maybe ten years or so," was the vague answer Gautam received when he asked the old man how long he had been doing this.

Gautam was about to ask about lunch when a boy's excited voice cut through the silence. " _Ajja_ ," he squealed, as he came running, threw his school bag down and hugged the old man.

The old man's eyes too lit up at the sight of the boy. "So, how did we do today?" he laughed and asked, as the boy sat down at his feet.

"The History teacher got angry at me for talking in class but I solved one problem in Maths which no one else could. That makes it six questions answered in class this week, so you have to give me my reward."

All this came out in a rush in Kannada, a language which Gautam could not speak but managed to understand a little. Clearly the boy had been waiting impatiently to tell his grandfather all this.

"But I will take that later," the boy continued. "First I want you to talk to _amma_. All my friends from school are going for the new Sudeep movie on Sunday and she always says no. But you and I agreed on one movie a month. Tell her you will give the money so she can't say it's too expensive."

_Ajja_ had been smiling while the boy had been prattling on and when the boy spoke of money and looked at him anxiously for his assent, he nodded his agreement. The boy quietened down, concentrating on figuring out what else he could do to get his mother to agree.

"Okay, I will go home now and be a good boy," he said, finally thinking his way through to the most optimal sequence of actions. "I will help _amma_ lay out the lunch and when you come to eat, you can ask her about the movie."

"That's a good plan," the old man laughed. "And I think you should help her in her chores the rest of the weekend too so that she doesn't change her mind." The boy nodded his head in agreement and ran off.

"That was Ramesh," the old man told Gautam. "His father Dharmaji is a labourer in a stone quarry nearby and they live just behind the hill. His mother Lakshmi runs a breakfast stall in town. It's a pretty meagre subsistence but they manage."

"And Ramesh?" Gautam asked.

"He attends the government school in town. His father had thought of putting him to work in the quarry when he turned ten but his mother insisted they let him continue in school. That's when she started the breakfast stall to supplement their income."

"I have my meals with their family. On her way to the breakfast stall at eight, Lakshmi leaves a plate of _idli_ for me. Lunch is when Ramesh comes back from school and dinner is just after dusk, as soon as Dharmaji is back from the quarry and has finished his bath. You could say they have adopted me as their father."

Then the old man got up. "Come," he said, "let us go for lunch. Ramesh will be getting impatient to find out whether he can go for his movie tomorrow or not."

The old man handed over two packets of biscuits to Gautam and closed the cupboard. "To supplement the lunch. Lakshmi would not have cooked for an extra person," he explained as Gautam followed him down a path which led to the back of the hill.

The lunch was a quick affair, the old man shared his _rotis_ and _sabzi_ with Gautam and they both rounded off the meal with biscuits dipped in half a cup of curd. Midway through the meal, the old man had convinced Lakshmi to let Ramesh see the movie with his friends and after that the boy kept up an incessant stream of happy chatter.

After lunch, A _jja_ and Gautam returned to their place under the trees and Gautam spent one of the slowest, laziest afternoons he had ever spent. He sat on the ground, leaning against the old cupboard, dozing periodically but mostly staring at the patterns in the land in front of him as the shadows changed with the angle of the sun. In the entire afternoon, only two or three cars stopped by to interrupt the stillness. Other than that, and a few short conversational interactions between them, there was silence.

Gautam guessed that anyone who had spent the last ten years sitting alone under a tree would not have done so if he did not like silence. There must have been some magical influence in the old man's presence which made Gautam too like the quietness of the place - not just as a respite from the frenzy of his normal life but as something desirable in itself.

Once, when a woman had just bought a bottle of water and driven off in her car, Gautam had remarked, "Old man, why don't you keep chocolates too? The children will jump at the sight of a chocolate after two hours of a boring journey and chocolates have better margins than biscuits. You'll certainly increase your income if you keep them."

"What makes you think I want to increase my income?" replied the old man.

Gautam was taken aback by the question. "You know, it's a business, it should grow," he said. "And you can eat better food, wear better clothes if you earn more."

"I like the food which Lakshmi makes for me, I own three sets of clothes and I earn enough to buy my monthly requirement of toiletries. I make enough of a surplus to periodically gift Ramesh something and I even have a thousand rupees saved up in case the roof of my hut starts leaking. So why would I want to grow this business? It serves its purpose admirably as it is."

Gautam pondered that response in silence. It denoted a simplicity of requirements which was utterly alien to the world he lived in. It said that when things were sufficient, anything which added to things as they were was actually subtracting from your life.

That thought made him feel defensive, perhaps even a little ashamed, without fully realising why. If only his inward looking eye still worked, it would have shown him why the old man's life made him feel this way about his own. But that third eye of his was shut, sealed with the accumulated encrustations of years of disuse.

Gautam was still lost in his thoughts when he realised that the sun was about to set. It was not yet dusk but the landscape across the road was no longer as brightly lit as it had been some time back.

"It is time for me to go," he said, getting up and dusting his backside.

"Yes, I think it is," agreed the old man.

Gautam wanted to offer the old man some money but he wasn't sure in exchange for what. For one day of peace and quiet? That sounded absurd. But he had to give him something.

" _Ajja_ ," he said, calling the old man grandfather just as Ramesh had, even though the gap between them was one generation and not two. "I'd like to buy five bottles of water from you?"

The old man laughed at Gautam's clumsiness. Then he saw the awkward stiffness of Gautam's body, sensed his need to return something to the old man in exchange for one day's shelter and his eyes softened in compassion. The old man seemed to have eyes which penetrated so deep inside you that they could see what you were thinking. He had not spent ten years sitting under a tree for nothing and with crystal clarity he saw a heart which had stiffened so much over the years that it could not even accept a few hours of peace and quiet from this world without paying for them. And he saw a mind which was no longer capable of forming a human connection other than one based on mutual benefit... at least not in just a day.

"It's not that long a drive to Bengaluru, one bottle is all you need," he replied as he picked up a bottle from his cupboard and held it out, "And that one I can just give to you."

Gautam hesitated, the old man had just turned this into a transaction where Gautam was going to take without giving anything in return. And Gautam was not used to taking from someone unless he had first convinced himself that a deal of some sort had been transacted.

"But I always pay," he said.

The old man took hold of Gautam's hand and placed the bottle in it. "I'm sure you do but this time you have to accept something without the safe wall of a fair trade between us. A transaction of humility will do you some good."

But it had been years since Gautam had allowed himself to accept compassion from anyone. He had spent those years becoming a man who had earned his success and won every race fair and square. Somewhere along the way he had overlooked the fact that following that path was a choice that he had made. The old man's words had suddenly reminded him that there were other paths which some people followed – and that those who followed them were not necessarily deficient. He felt an inexplicable need to justify himself.

"I wasn't always..." he started to say but stopped, not sure exactly what he was trying to say.

"I can't any more but once I could..." he tried again but he still couldn't find the rest of the words to express what was just a vague feeling of regret at having lost something he had once possessed in abundance.

The old man closed Gautam's hands around the bottle and patted them reassuringly. "I know you once did and can't any more," he said. "But don't worry, you will again some day. I can see that too."

Gautam understood the sense of what the old man was saying and he did not know how to respond, so he just turned around and walked back to his car, the bottle of water grasped firmly in his hand.

# Chapter 25

Each of us has an identity which, as our years progress, acquires more and more substance. Each happiness or sadness we experience and each success or failure we learn from adds to it. Over the years, we become warmly familiar with some things in our environment and consistently uncomfortable with others. As all of these stances of ours begin to settle down, our identity acquires a consistent shape. Our deepest desires, beliefs and fears begin to govern our interactions with the world - we react more and think less, wanting to shape our situations according to what these traits of our identity dictate. We feel happy when things go "our" way and fearful when they don't.

It is all very well to say that our innermost selves are pristine things, bereft of all the conditioned stances and free from all the mental habits which make our identity. In reality, however, very few people actually realise their mythical innermost self. The rest of us continue to react to our situations based on the stances and habits our identity has already formed.

In Gautam's case, being at Exigon and winning every race were both integral parts of his identity. Exigon was more home than home itself and as for winning the race, that was so deeply ingrained in him by now that he wouldn't really know who he was any more if he wasn't a winner. He may have lost the hunger to win but paradoxically, that didn't make him view losing with equanimity. There was only one ultimate resolution to this paradox, that Gautam should stop running races altogether. But who we are doesn't change so quickly, even when that change is inevitable.

***

Recruitment agents started calling Gautam as soon as Tapan's appointment became public knowledge and it took Gautam very little time to leave Exigon. There were several offers, ranging from senior positions in large companies to the position of CEO in smaller ones. There was even a high profile investment firm wanting him to mentor the software start-ups they had invested in.

The offer Gautam finally selected was to be the CEO of the Indian operations of Quathena, a large multinational software company headquartered in San Francisco. Quathena's India centre had grown at a rapid pace in the past five years but when Gautam visited the San Francisco head office, he found the entire management team unanimous in their belief that it had done so in a haphazard manner. The operational and financial numbers showed that this was not a tightly run ship and various surveys showed that employee morale was not as high as it should have been. The American parent wanted a person who would shape up the Indian subsidiary into a well oiled machine.

Despite his one and a half decades of experience, this was only Gautam's second job. He spent the first few weeks just observing, getting into the nitty gritty of the Indian operations and he attended innumerable meetings which a CEO was not expected to attend, in which he just listened and never spoke.

By the end of the second month, all the Quathena India division heads who reported to him were beginning to wonder if this new CEO was going to do anything at all, or were things supposed to run on auto-pilot. Gautam himself had a few moments when he was not sure when he would get the confidence to assert himself with the incumbent management, even though it was clear to him that their apathetic comfort with the status quo needed to be shaken up.

It was towards the beginning of the third month that Gautam began to see where the mismatch between the American parent's expectations and the Indian subsidiary's performance was coming from. Over the next few days he spent a lot of time with the Finance department and the Project Management Office, first asking for extensive data and then making several changes to how these teams prepared their periodic reports.

When Quathena India prepared its financial and operational reports at the end of the first quarter of two thousand and seven, a curious thing happened – numbers which had hitherto shown uniform trends suddenly showed surprisingly high variations between different parts of the business. It was as if Gautam had in one stroke separated the causes of inefficiency and unprofitability from the rest of the business and exposed them in tables and charts for everyone to see.

It took Gautam another fortnight to formulate a plan of action and at the end of that fortnight, he was on his second trip to the Quathena headquarters.

The plan itself was simple, bold and brutal. It was backed by sound logic and data and when explained by Gautam, it made the next steps appear inevitable. Most important for the Americans, it was expected to start showing results in less than a year. Everyone attending the presentation was impressed and relieved that their most important operation outside of America was in safe hands.

After Gautam had left the room, the CEO remarked to the global head of operations, "Bob, hold on to this guy. He's going to take your place in a few years when you retire."

Gautam came back and straight away began to set things in motion. He restructured the entire India organisation according to the plan which head office had just endorsed and also reshuffled the senior management team in the bargain. A few people were asked to leave, some were elevated and others were simply retained where they were. Then he sat with each of them and made sure that they were all clear what direction he wanted them to take and that his vision percolated into changes down the ranks.

Within a few weeks the morale in the employees was distinctly upbeat as they realised that the house was being cleaned up. In less than three months, Gautam's team could see that the various components which made up Quathena India had been rearranged into a more streamlined structure which not only worked better but was more satisfying for the employees. Six months later, when Quathena India published its third quarterly numbers after Gautam took over, the improvement was there for everyone to see.

All this made Gautam's American bosses even more determined to hold on to him but paradoxically, this success only made Gautam feel more alienated from his employer. Sure, he had been very involved these past nine months but what he had felt was a grim determination induced by an apprehension of failure. Now that he had observed, understood, manipulated and succeeded, this situation was no longer new to him. The buttons to press and the levers to pull were not so different after all from the situations he had mastered earlier. With that realisation also came a certain tiredness. While the entire organisation was now enthused, Gautam grew a little more withdrawn each day.

It was on a rainy evening in October, two thousand and seven, a year after the day of Exigon's Mysore party, that Gautam was browsing through a folder of old Exigon photographs on his laptop. There was one group photograph taken during his fresher induction program and one of him and Rajeev raising glasses in a pub just before Rajeev left for London. There were assorted photographs with clients, including one of him and Chris at BMB. And finally there was the one which had made it to the cover of BizWeek. The one in which Tapan and he were laughing with Venkat looking on. He stopped at that one. They had had some good times, the three of them, for so many years. But in the end, it had all been so ephemeral.

And now he had started another cycle. At first the change itself had made things appear new and fresh but after some time that freshness had disappeared. Now, this situation felt a little stale, just more of the same thing he had always known and not something new at all.

Was it time to change jobs, to start another cycle? And what if he did? That too would get stale some day and he would need to start again. It doesn't ever end, does it?

In the instant he asked the question, he also had the answer. It ends when I want it to end. Do I think it's time it ended?

Yes, it was time. That conclusion was instantaneous. He had not had time to think his way to it, he had just known that it was right.

He was still running the same race but his enthusiasm was gone. There had to be something else, something other than this stupid race he didn't want to run any more, there just had to be. He had to leave this place and go somewhere else to begin again, but where? And suddenly, just as he had known with absolute certainty that it was time, he also knew with equal certainty where he had to go.

  1. # Part 3

  2.   3.   4. Vânaprastha - Sanyâsa

  5.

  6. #  Chapter 26

The old man was surprised, but not very, when he saw Gautam step out of the taxi. "I had a feeling you'd be back, though I didn't expect it to be so soon," he said.

Gautam was relieved to hear the note of welcome in the old man's voice. Although the thought of coming here had first occurred to him a few days back, he had not known how to contact the old man, short of actually reaching here in person. As a result, he had been uncertain about what kind of reception he would get.

"At least you expected me Ajja," he responded with a smile. "I didn't expect to be back at all."

"And I see you've packed light. Just staying for a couple of days or are you trying to change the amount of baggage you carry?" Ajja asked with a teasing smile when he saw how little luggage Gautam was carrying

"I don't know," was Gautam's truthful answer. He really didn't know what to expect over the next few days - neither from himself nor from this situation. And right now, what he needed was a little reassurance that that was fine.

"Sure, no problem," Ajja responded. The brevity of the response and the matter of fact nature of the tone was exactly the kind of acceptance which Gautam needed to hear.

Gautam pointed to the path going up the hill and looked questioningly. Ajja shook his head. "Why don't you leave your bag here for the time being. We'll go to Lakshmi's for lunch in about five minutes and you can go up after that."

Gautam nodded his head and placed his rucksack behind the old man's cupboard of wares. He sat on the ground in front of the same cupboard, settled back against it and looked around.

The scene was as he remembered it. The same road which emerged from behind him to the right, turned a little to cross his line of sight in front of him and then ran in a straight line to his left, disappearing into the distance. The large clearing in which he was sitting, which ended as the tree line curved and joined the highway, was the same. The same vista of scrubs, rocks and trees spread out for miles on the other side of the road. Even the man-made objects had not changed. The cupboard, the old man's chair, their placement – everything was as it had been. The passage of one year had left its inevitable mark on Tapan and Sandhya, on Exigon and Quathena, on Gautam and the entire world he lived in – but it seemed to have bypassed the old man's life altogether.

Ajja watched Gautam and did not interrupt his reverie until it was time to go for lunch. "Lakshmi would not have made food for an extra person," he said. "We'll share my food and make up for it with these." As he had done on that day a year earlier, he made Gautam take two packets of biscuits out of the cupboard. Gautam noticed that the contents of the cupboard had not changed either in the past year – the same racks of mineral water and an inexpensive brand of glucose biscuits.

On the short walk to Lakshmi and Dharmaji's hut, Ajja asked Gautam, "Should I talk to her about cooking extra for you for the next few days?"

"Yes please," Gautam replied. "And tell her I'll pay her for it."

"I'm sure you will," Ajja said with an amused look on his face. "You said you always pay."

After lunch, while the old man stayed down to mind his shop, Gautam took his rucksack up to Ajja's hut. He followed the path winding up the hill through the grove of trees, till he emerged into the open area in front of the one-room hut. He was drawn to the _peepal_ tree and instead of going inside the hut to put his belongings away, he sat on the mound under the tree. He stayed there for several minutes, looking out at the countryside. At the bottom of the hill, to his right was the clearing in which Ajja was sitting and to the left of the hill was a narrow river and then the town. Beyond these immediate surroundings, the world stretched out all the way till the horizon. There was the highway, there was flat terrain, there were wooded areas, rocky outcrops of varying heights and a few hamlets in which people lived out their lives far away.

Yes, this place certainly did put a distance between you and the world. It was as if all the mundane, everyday activities of life happened "down there", and you were "up here", detached from that entire flow. You could acknowledge it at your own pace and there was no necessity to react to it. Just like he had felt the first time he had sat here, he again felt as if someone else, not he, had participated in Gautam Singh's life the past year.

I am a dispassionate observer, he thought. If I had lived Gautam's life instead of him, he would have withstood much better the storms of emotion which pummelled him about. He would have stayed uncorrupted, unsullied.

At least that is what the current moment was telling him. Then he shook his head clear of the notion and turned away, heading for the hut. There was unpacking to be done.

As soon as Gautam entered the hut, he felt like an intruder. The room was imbued with the barest evidence of habitation and ownership that he had ever seen, but however bare it was, it still bore the unmistakable mark of one man's presence. This was so clearly a single person's home. The single straw mat for sleeping against the right wall. The two shelves on the left, the top one full of the inhabitant's choice of books and the lower one half used up by his clothes.

Despite his misgivings that he did not belong here, Gautam proceeded to unpack his rucksack. He had three sets of clothes, other than the ones he was wearing, which fitted easily on the lower shelf next to the old man's clothes. So did a small bag of toiletries. For some reason not fully clear to him, he had packed nothing to read but he had brought a notebook and some pens, which easily fitted on the upper shelf next to Ajja's books. There was a battery powered electric lantern which too went on the upper shelf. The spare batteries he left in his rucksack.

He took out his cellphone charger and looked around but there was no power point to plug it into, so he left that in the bag. For a second, as it sank in that he would not be able to communicate whenever he wanted with whomever he wanted, Gautam panicked. He had not even realised how much that device had become part of his personality and how bereft he would feel without it.

He took the cellphone itself out of his pocket and saw that there was a strong signal, probably from a tower in the town below. The battery though was down to fifty percent and wouldn't last till tomorrow morning, so he may as well use it to call Sandhya right now.

When he finished his call, he looked wistfully at his phone, then he shook his head and dumped it into the rucksack. In a final act of giving up, he took his wallet and threw that in too, it wasn't as if he was going to be buying things on a regular basis here. The rucksack itself he folded and placed in a corner under the shelves. Finally, he took the synthetic rubber mat he had brought for sleeping on and unrolled it on the floor against the longer wall, between the shelves and the old man's mat of woven straw.

When Gautam got up to survey his handiwork, he saw that his clothes on the rack, his mat on the floor, his rucksack stowed away in a corner – all of these had somehow been fitted in. To someone who just chanced upon the room, his possessions might look like they belonged here but Gautam knew that they were fresh ripples in a place which had hitherto been settled.

He shrugged his shoulders, deciding to stick with the flow for now despite his doubts. Yes, he was an intruder, but he was also committed to this act. As it turned out, he need not have worried at all.

Before starting out for this place, Gautam had never really spelled out clearly what kind of reception he was hoping for, probably that Ajja would make adjustments to his life to include Gautam into his routine. But the old man went one step better, he made Gautam feel comfortable and welcome by not doing anything special to make him feel either. Other than including Gautam in his meals, Ajja just continued to go about his own unchanged routine and left Gautam to himself.

In less than a week, Gautam had settled into his own rhythm. He would rise around six a.m. and the first order of the day was to walk down to the riverside, to the point which the old man had shown him, and perform his morning routine. Then he would trudge back up the hill, put his toiletries back in the hut and hang his towel and the clothes he had just washed to dry. Then down again, this time the other side of the hill, to where the old man was already minding his shop.

The morning's peak sale time was between seven and eight. "Many people start from Mysore early in the morning, to get to their destination in Bengaluru before the office rush starts," was what the old man had told him, calling the city by its new official name but the one he had always used.

Gautam noticed that the morning shoppers were mostly professional men and women, dressed in office clothes, stopping to buy a bottle of water and a pack of biscuits which would serve as a grab-and-run substitute for the breakfast they had skipped in their hurry.

The afternoons were different. There was not much traffic and the people who stopped were generally older and in less of a hurry – _sari_ clad housewives and balding, retired men, the former often imperious in their mannerisms when they got out of their chauffeur driven cars. Probably visiting friends and family or out for a shopping trip to the big city, Gautam thought. The old man closed his shop at seven in the evening, just as the evening traffic was picking up. Gautam thought it strange that the old man missed out on what could potentially be a second period of peak sales in the day but he guessed that Ajja shut shop because that was the time Ramesh came to call him – or them, since Gautam had landed up - for dinner.

After dinner the two of them trudged back up to the hut. Gautam found it difficult to negotiate the uphill path after dark since most of it wound through a grove of trees and the moonlight didn't penetrate to the ground at all. Gautam was more or less walking blind and he lost his footing more than once. However, after the first night he was slow and cautious so that he wouldn't suffer a serious fall.

# Chapter 27

In his first week there, Gautam pretty much sat all day and watched the old man minding his shop. Sometimes they talked and sometimes they didn't. In all their conversations, Ajja never asked Gautam why he had come and how long he would stay. Gautam, of course, never volunteered that information because he himself wasn't sure. He neither knew the answers to those questions nor was he inclined to spend energy exploring them. For the time being, he was content to just sit there and watch the old man sell his water and biscuits.

When they did talk, the conversation was usually short. There was a certain bareness to this place, a brevity to all of one's actions which extended itself to the conversation too. Gautam simply didn't feel the need to keep a conversation going because this was not a social setting in which silence was awkward.

There was another reason too why their conversations were short. In just a few days Gautam realised that the old man looked at the world and his place in it very differently from Gautam, or from anyone else Gautam had ever known. As a result, he had a habit of giving the strangest of answers to even the most common place comment which Gautam made. Answers which would send Gautam's mind spinning off on a tangent, abandoning the conversation he had originally started. Like this one time, towards the end of his first week there, when Gautam commented on some of Ajja's customers.

In the first few days itself Gautam had noticed that Ajja's customers were a fairly diverse set. Young and old, professionals and businessmen, students and housewives. Nevertheless, there was one thing common to most of the people who stopped by at the shop, they were almost always in a car. For some reason, people driving by on motorcycles and scooters rarely stopped. Other than that one limiting factor, it seemed to Gautam that there was no limit to the kinds of people who stopped by.

Several of these cars were driven by chauffeurs and in time Gautam noticed one thing common to all these drivers – they all seemed to exhibit as much possessiveness towards their cars as the owners themselves. To Gautam, it was amusing that these chauffeurs actually let the car they were driving influence their personality as if they owned it. The chauffeur who drove a German luxury car seemed to be more smug than one who drove an Indian hatchback. The one who drove a large limousine had more of a swagger than one whose employer owned a small, inexpensive car. Regardless of the size and cost of the car he drove, every salaried driver fidgeted with the controls of his car with a familiarity bordering on affection. He hadn't paid for it, he didn't own it but in his mind it was as much his as it was his employer's.

Gautam mentioned this to the old man once. "Isn't it funny how the driver behaves as if he owns the car he's driving, when it's really his employer who owns it."

Ajja just shrugged his shoulders. "Why? Does he own it any less than his employer?"

"Doesn't he?" Gautam responded. "The owner has paid for it, it's registered in his name."

"Yes it is, but that's not the only way in which we own our possessions. When someone owns an expensive car, he falls in love with everything it denotes about him. He values the envy it provokes in others, he begins to take for granted the respect others show him because of it. He uses it to make a statement to all the people in the world. Isn't the driver subject to all these emotions too? Driving an expensive car gets him as much envy and respect in his peer group as it gets the owner amongst his acquaintances."

"So what are you saying? That it's justified for both of them to feel they own it?"

"Maybe neither of them should own it. Maybe they shouldn't let it denote their status to others and they shouldn't let it reaffirm their worth in their own eyes. After all, if you shed all the emotion you've invested in it, then it's just a piece of machinery which serves a purpose, isn't it?"

There it was. Gautam had merely pointed out that it was slightly foolish for the chauffeur to behave as if he owned the car. To Gautam that was a self evident truth but Ajja had given it a whole new perspective which had never occurred to Gautam.

***

It was late in the morning on his sixth day there that Gautam decided to call Sandhya. He climbed up to the hut and retrieved his cellphone, only to find that it had switched off because its battery was fully discharged. He took the charger from the rucksack and trudged down again. On Ajja's suggestion he made his way along the road, around the hill and into town until he saw a restaurant selling the standard local fare – set meals at lunch time and _idlis_ , _dosas_ and _bisi bele bhath_ the rest of the day.

Inside the grandiosely named Bhagini Palace it was dark and cool, a welcome respite from the afternoon glare and heat outside. Gautam noticed that the walls hadn't been painted in a long time and the dirt in the corners had coagulated over so many years that it was now as hard as the floor itself. The smell of the coffee though was alluring and Gautam ordered a cup. He sat and enjoyed it while his cellphone spent a few minutes plugged into the power outlet behind the cashier's chair.

Sandhya was happy to hear from him and they agreed to meet the next evening. Gautam gave her directions to the same eatery he was sitting in since it would be easier for her to find this place than to spot Ajja's little cupboard and chair while driving by.

Next evening, Gautam stood by the road outside Bhagini Palace as Sandhya got out of the car and approached him with a wide smile. "You're looking fresh, less tired," was the first thing she said. "Looks like this past week has done you some good."

"Nothing to do here except relax," he said.

"Seriously, what have you been doing all day for the past week?"

"Seriously, nothing," Gautam responded. Seeing that she was having some trouble believing that, he told her his routine. "So you see, from about seven in the morning to seven in the evening I just sit and do nothing."

"Do you guys talk a lot?"

"No, not much, just a little bit here and there if something triggers a conversation. Sometimes he says the strangest of things that set me thinking, but mostly I just sit on the ground and watch the colours of the landscape change through the day."

Sandhya smiled back. "Well, a week of doing nothing would drive most people I know up the wall. I'm glad you're still able to handle it."

"I'm quite enjoying it actually."

"So where is this beautiful spot?" Sandhya asked. "Let's go see it. And let's go meet this old man who's made you forget all your troubles."

Ajja and Sandhya met each other with a warmth which surprised Gautam. Sandhya moved to shake hands with him but Ajja embraced her instead.

"Come _beta_ , make yourself at home. I'm sorry I don't have another chair," Ajja said.

"Oh that's all right," Sandhya said. She saw that Gautam had sat on the ground and immediately sat next to him. "This is fine," she said, resting her back too against the cupboard door.

It was late evening and the heat and brightness of the day had petered out. Sandhya kept the conversation going with her questions. She asked about the old man, where he was from, how he came to be here, his family. Gautam came to know more about the old man's past in the next half an hour than he had in the past week. Then Sandhya started asking about the neighbouring town and the area around. How big was it, how did most of the people earn their living, was the school well run? Finally she ran out of questions and spent the next half hour watching the landscape across the road darken as evening changed to dusk.

Over the past week, Gautam had gotten very used to long silences. He and Ajja often sat without speaking a word to each other for long periods. But somehow, with Sandhya present, the silence didn't feel as comfortable to him. Sandhya herself appeared content to not speak but Gautam felt that there was something unnatural in those few minutes. It was as if the silence which hung over this place wanted to include only him and the old man in its cocoon, not Sandhya.

Their reverie was interrupted by Ramesh's appearance. "Dinner's ready," he said. "Amma says you should come now."

Gautam was hungry. "Why don't we go for dinner too?" he asked Sandhya. "Shall we go to the same place in town where we met? Let Ajja have his dinner with Lakshmi and Dharmaji."

Ajja nodded his head. Lakshmi would not have cooked for an extra person and it was best for Gautam and Sandhya to go into town. Over dinner, Sandhya mentioned that Tapan had been asking about Gautam.

"Have you told him where I am?" Gautam asked her.

"How could I?" Sandhya replied. "Till you called me yesterday even I didn't know the exact location."

Gautam looked up at her face. There had been no sharpness in her voice and there was no reproach in her eyes. Or wasn't there? If there was, Sandhya didn't speak of it. Throughout their short dinner, she didn't comment on the place or on Ajja - or on the fact that Gautam was here and not at home with her. It was understood between them that the situation was what it was and there was nothing to be said about it. The only oblique reference to a return to his old life came when Sandhya was getting into her car to go back.

"So, I'll see you in another few days then?" she asked as she got in.

"Or whatever," Gautam responded.

"Or whatever," she agreed. "But call me once a week."

"That I will certainly do," Gautam assured her.

While he was walking back, it occurred to Gautam that Sandhya had assumed that he was going to spend at least another few weeks here, whereas he hadn't actually cleared that with Ajja. In fact, it hadn't been so clear to him either till Sandhya had mentioned that he should call her once a week.

By the time Gautam reached the shop, Ajja had finished dinner, locked the cupboard and was making his way towards the hill.

"Ajja, I wanted to ask you..." Gautam started to say but Ajja had already entered the grove of trees where the uphill climb started. Gautam hurried behind him, hoping to catch up but, as happened every day, he had to slow down on the uphill path. In the dark there was almost no light penetrating the tree cover and he had to feel his way up the gradient rather than see it. The path twisted this way and that around trees and Gautam had to walk with his arms outstretched to avoid bumping into them. The steeper parts had steps but he stumbled a couple of times in his attempt to hurry. He finally gave up trying to catch up with the old man and made his way slowly and unsurely, being very careful at every step.

The old man, on the other hand, negotiated the path with practised ease, reaching the hut when Gautam was still just halfway up. Gautam guessed that Ajja had climbed this way in the dark so often that by now he knew every twist and turn and every uneven foothold. In fact, it was probably his passage over the years which had contributed to the creation of this path, otherwise it would have overgrown by now. Still, every time Gautam stumbled, he couldn't help but compare his blind progress with the old man's sure footsteps.

They had both settled into their beds when Gautam asked Ajja if he could stay on longer.

"Sure, stay as long as you want," the old man responded.

"But what will I do here?" asked Gautam.

"Whatever you want. Do what I do, do something else, do nothing," Ajja replied with a shrug. "It will come to you, don't worry about it."

  1. #  Chapter 28

Gautam stayed and spent his time watching the old man sell his water and biscuits. Well, _sell_ was the wrong word, Gautam thought, because the old man didn't really try to sell at all. He just sat there and gave people what they asked for. A whole month passed before Gautam intervened in a sale for the first time.

A young woman got out of her car and asked for a bottle of water. "Would you like anything else?" Gautam asked her, as she took out the money to pay for it. The woman didn't respond.

"Maybe a packet of biscuits. It'll take you at least another hour to reach Bengaluru," Gautam continued, calling the city by the same name which Ajja always used.

"No, no thanks," the young woman said and drove off.

When Gautam turned around he saw the old man watching in amusement.

"Still pushing, I see. Even here," Ajja said.

"Come on Ajja, you can't have a problem with me trying to sell more."

"No, I can't," said the old man agreeably. The expression on his face said that he couldn't very well blame a child for thinking childish thoughts.

"It's not as if I want anything more for myself," Gautam responded a little defensively. "I'm just trying to increase your income."

"Is that really what you're doing? Last week you asked me to keep the shop open longer in the evening to make more money. My answer is still the same, I don't have any use for more money. Look around you. I have chosen this bare life, how will more money improve it?"

Ajja hadn't finished. "You're not trying to increase my income so that it'll be beneficial to me. No, what you're really doing here is resisting a viewpoint you cannot understand. In your own gentle and friendly way you are trying to move this situation in the direction you deem to be right. You, like all the other people you have seen here in the past month, are trying to make this world you live in turn, to change its speed and direction ever so slightly with your effort."

Gautam just shook his head in response because he didn't fully understand Ajja's words, especially the ones about him trying to turn the world. But he had to concede that Ajja was right about one thing, Gautam had just assumed that Ajja wanted more money, probably because he had never met anyone who didn't. Perhaps Gautam's actions did have more to do with his own mental habits than with any benefit he was trying to get for Ajja. He was willing to concede that but the thing he was not willing to concede was that he was like all the people who stopped here. No, Ajja was surely wrong about that one. He was not like those people at all, he was better than them.

Gautam had watched all the people who had stopped at Ajja's shop in the past few days and he had been able to judge each and every one of them very quickly. There was no limit to how much he could surmise about everyone in just a two minute interaction. How they dressed, how they stood, their car, their bearing, their demeanour, how they spoke to the old man, everything about them revealed who they were and how their mind worked.

As he understood the people that he saw, so he slotted them, and he instinctively fitted them all somewhere below himself. Sometime in his life, somewhere in this world, there had been an occasion when he had been superior to each and every one of them. Compared to the young professionals, he had reached heights in his career which they were yet to come anywhere near. The less educated or excessively traditional people were summarily dismissed because they lacked Gautam's educated, world-aware, liberalism. When he saw a brash youngster, he remembered his own sensitivity as a teenager and found the youngster wanting. The people obviously richer than him came up short because he had given up the pursuit and jumped off the race track. Surely, that must give him moral superiority over them.

Gautam delighted in his rediscovered power to understand human beings. He was reminded of his adolescent days, when he had often sat for hours thinking of people and the relationships they formed with the world. He sat for hours now too, thinking of the same things. Yes, he was thinking again, not of business plans and projects and end results as he had for the past two decades but of seemingly purposeless things, as he had half a lifetime ago.

There was one difference though between then and now, he had lived several more years. He had formed his own relationships with the world now and he had his own judgements and fears to preserve. He was delighted to rediscover his ability to ruminate but the freshness, the naivete of the adolescent, was missing. It seemed that seeing himself in a better light than other people was the new purpose of understanding them. Whereas the seventeen year-old had understood people to form his view of the world, the forty year old, without consciously realising it, seemed to be using that understanding to reaffirm his own place in it.

Of course, Gautam didn't convey any of his thoughts to Ajja, God alone knows what the old man would say in response. Instead, he continued to pursue his thoughts wherever they led him. And he also read.

He started with a couple of novels from the bookshelf in the hut. He liked both and picked up a tome on the Upanishads next, just out of curiosity. Fifty pages into it, he confessed to Ajja that he wasn't fully understanding it and Ajja suggested a slim volume instead, one by a new age guru with a German sounding name.

"Is he any good?" Gautam asked, revealing his disregard for all self-proclaimed gurus who were not yet dead.

"Good enough for you," Ajja responded. "He has one thing to say mainly and I think you will like it."

"So many pages for just one thought?" Gautam said, his disdain written on his face.

"Agreed," smiled the old man. "But don't you think that when that thought is so alien to you a little repetition might not be entirely bad?"

That was typical of the approach Ajja took to Gautam's reading in those first few months. Whenever Gautam asked a question or tried to initiate a discussion on something he had read, Ajja didn't give him very long answers, just brief responses and a suggestion to read a particular book or a specific chapter or passage in one. When Gautam asked him why he did that, Ajja was, for once, very clear in his response.

"When you're trying to understand something, the written word has a lot less urgency than the spoken word. If I explain something to you face to face, you will feel pressured to understand it immediately, to agree or disagree with it and to give intelligent reasons for your judgement. But if you're reading the same thing alone, there's no one to look foolish in front of and you can take your own time understanding it. You will have no hesitation in reading the same thing again and again if you need to, but in a conversation you may feel hesitant to make me repeat myself."

"Okay, I'll read all these books," Gautam said. "But won't it be faster if you explain some of the things I don't understand?"

"Maybe," Ajja replied. "But I've found that sometimes not explaining works better. For some strange reason, when people read and understand something they feel the understanding is their achievement but when they listen to someone say the same thing, they feel they must share the credit with the speaker. I want you to take your time understanding these things. I think you will later thank me for letting you understand them on your own, even if it takes a little longer."

So Gautam read the book Ajja had recommended over the next few days, sitting on the ground by the roadside, letting his mind digest the passages at leisure. When he was done, Ajja suggested a second book to him. This one was more complex, ranged across a wider gamut and it required him to make more of an effort to absorb. He enjoyed that effort, concentrating hard on the more cryptic passages, looking up at the landscape for a moment's pause and then focusing his attention back on the book.

The landscape itself, which he glanced up at every now and then, changed its colours through the day. The brown of the dust and the green of the leaves were at their most vibrant in the morning, contrasting well with each other. By afternoon that same brown had been beaten into a pale yellow by the bright sunlight and the glare drowned out all the other colours. In the evening, the colours of the ground briefly regained some of their lustre before quietly relinquishing the stage to the sky, which put on a final psychedelic show to distract one's attention from the onset of darkness. By the time one focused on the ground again, all the different colours had merged into varying shades of black. Every day, Gautam watched this cycle repeat itself. Even though he enjoyed watching it, he never consciously acknowledged the beauty of its rhythm. It was just something playing itself out in the background.

What occupied his mind fully was the stuff and substance of all that he was reading. It made him think in ways he had forgotten he could think in. The last time his mind had meandered like this, two decades ago, his inward looking eye had made him see things without concerning itself with what the ultimate benefit would be. Then, for several years, an obsession with concrete goals and end results had taken over his life. Now, even though those worldly purposes were beginning to fade slowly, setting the stage for his eye to begin seeing again, it had not yet begun to do so.

Well, he may not have had his inward looking eye to guide him yet but, just like his in his younger days, he had the time, he had the books and he had the inclination. He also had Ajja, though the old man rarely explained things to him in explicit detail. Whenever Gautam did not understand a passage fully, he had to rely on his own devices, either going back a few pages to something connected or spending a few moments reflecting on what he had just read. Ajja never interrupted his absorption.

There was this one time though, that Gautam did ask Ajja for an explanation of something he had just read and sure enough, the old man didn't give a direct answer to his question.

"What you are reading are words," Ajja said. "Sometimes words are just an approximation of what their writer is trying to describe. They don't always communicate very well. If I add my explanation to this, it will be even more words."

"I thought words were the only way of making someone understand what you're trying to describe," Gautam responded. "How else can one understand?"

"Wake up before dawn one morning," the old man said in a seeming non sequitur after several moments. "But right now, let us go see if dinner is ready. I am hungry."

  1. #  Chapter 29

The next morning Gautam did wake up earlier than usual. Dawn had not yet broken and it took him a few seconds to orient himself to the darkness. When he saw that Ajja's bed was empty, he wondered why the old man had gone for his bath so early. After all, the shop didn't need to be opened for some time yet.

Gautam got up and went out into the night. He stood in the clearing and looked east. It was a moonless night and, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he saw the same landscape stretched out before him which he saw every morning. Except that in the night it looked very different. The darkness made differences in colour and even height difficult to distinguish and it took him time to separate out one distant silhouette from another. Even the lakes and reservoirs were difficult to differentiate from the ground around them.

He stood at the edge of the clearing for several minutes, letting the night permeate his being, feeling comfortable in the ambience. It was not the first time he had felt one with the night but this time was different. This time he was not in a city, surrounded by man-made structures. This time he had not spent his days embedded in urban society and the night was not an escape from people and activities. In fact, tonight was not a break from yesterday at all. He had spent the past few weeks alone and the darkness tonight only made that aloneness seem more wondrous. The stars, the black landscape stretched out all around, this small clearing on a wooded hill – they all spoke to him of the limitless potential of his solitariness. He could sense that something, he didn't know what but something, was within his grasp. It was not surprising then, that tonight seemed to have the freshness of a dawn.

That dawn though was still some time away and Gautam turned around to go back inside. That was when he saw the old man sitting under the _peepal_ tree, cross-legged with his eyes closed, palms resting one above the other in his lap. Gautam's initial grogginess had prevented him from seeing Ajja when he first came out into the clearing.

So the old man hadn't gone down for his bath after all, he was here meditating, or at least that's what it seemed like. Gautam was fascinated with the sight and kept staring at Ajja. He stood there, he didn't know how long till slowly, without his realizing, the faint pre-dawn light crept into the horizon and he could see Ajja more clearly. The old man was utterly still. Not a muscle moved, there was no expression on the face. How many hours had he been sitting there? Was he even breathing?

Just then the light acquired an orange hue and Gautam turned around to see the sun peeking over the horizon. For the next few minutes the change of the sky from red to orange to blue captivated Gautam and when he turned back around a few minutes later, Ajja was standing a few steps behind him, enjoying the sunrise just like him.

"Nice, isn't it?" Ajja asked.

Gautam nodded his head. He had many questions to ask but he hesitated. For now he just followed Ajja as he made his way into the hut. Gautam watched him pick up his towel, soap and clothes.

As Ajja turned to go, Gautam finally blurted out, "Did you learn that on your own or did someone teach you?"

Ajja didn't seem to be surprised at the question. "Someone taught me to start with and then I just went with it naturally from one step to the next."

"Should I also learn it?"

"Since you are still asking yourself the question, you have two options. You can either jump into it despite your uncertainty or you can wait till something happens to give you clarity. I cannot decide that for you," Ajja said as he walked off down the hill.

With that, the moment passed without Gautam arriving at his decision. He needn't have worried though, because a similar moment would come just a couple of weeks later and that time Gautam wouldn't hesitate.

It happened one morning when a car with several youngsters in it stopped and one of them got down to buy a bottle of water. While he was paying Ajja, a girl popped her head out of the rear window. "Get two bottles," she yelled at her friend.

Ajja looked quizzically at the young man and he seemed undecided, but finally he shook his head. "One will be enough," he said. Ajja nodded and gave him his change.

When the car had driven off, Gautam remarked, "You could have easily convinced him to buy another one."

Ajja just smiled back at Gautam and shook his head. "Stop trying to turn the world," he said.

"What's the big deal in trying to sell that man another bottle of water?" Gautam asked. "I was just trying to get you more money."

"You already know that I don't need the money," Ajja responded patiently. "I think you just want me to need it because that is how the world makes sense in your mind. Every time you do something to get me more, you are trying to push the world in the direction which makes sense to you."

"With that small act I was turning this huge world?" Gautam asked incredulously.

"Yes," Ajja replied. "That may have been a small act but it wasn't very different from the larger ones you've committed in the past. Think back to any tough situation you've faced in your professional life. Did you not try to mould that situation? Did you not use all your will to try and move things in the right direction? The scale between then and now is very different but what your mind is doing is the same."

"Just like you, everyone else in this world has desires and fears too," the old man continued. "They too make an effort to achieve their goals, they too push their lives along. Not just their lives but the lives of everyone else who interacts with them. The sum total of all these pushes and pulls from seven billion people, that is the energy on which this world turns."

Suddenly, Gautam saw with crystal clarity what the old man was talking about. All the people who have ever lived, and the lives until now of everyone currently alive, this is the momentum the world has of this instant. Yes, it is a big, complex world but the thoughts, desires, fears, action, striving of seven billion people as of this instant, that is the amount of energy behind just one push. And with every passing instant, human beings reaffirm a new desire or a new fear, they contemplate or take one more action, they give the world one more push. This will continue forever.

Gautam held that thought until it was fully absorbed, then his mind focussed back on the present. The old man was looking intently at him and in that look Gautam saw that Ajja knew exactly what vision Gautam was seeing, exactly what he was feeling. He knew that the old man had seen the same things long ago. And he was not finished yet.

"Now I give you a different image," the old man continued, as Gautam listened mesmerised. "As you see this world seething with everyone's desires and fears, their strivings, do you see yourself enmeshed in that same web?"

"Yes," nodded Gautam. "I am very much a part of it."

"Now imagine yourself gone. If you are not here the world will still turn because its job is to turn."

"Of course it will still turn," Gautam agreed. "But if I am not in there then where can I go?"

"You should be where you are in this new image. You need to be the one observing the turning of the world."

Gautam thought for a long time and the more he thought, the more he considered it infeasible. Finally he said, "What you are saying sounds absurd to me. It is my involvement in this very world which gives my life a flow, a purpose. You are asking me to live a life without any objectives, without a purpose at all."

"No, not really, though I can see how it would appear like that to you. Think of it as living a life without any of the purposes you have so far lived it with."

"Is that even possible?"

"Yes it is but don't worry right now about getting that far. We will cross that bridge when you reach it. Right now, I just want you to think of the world as all the thoughts and reactions inside you, not those things outside you which stimulate your thoughts and your actions."

"I'm confused," Gautam said. "I cannot stop thinking and reacting and doing."

"Then don't," Ajja replied. "Think of your mind as having two parts – one which reacts to everything the world presents to it, as it has always done and a new one which just looks at that reaction. That second part just turns inward and observes, it doesn't do anything else."

"So you want me to watch how I contribute to the turning of the world?"

"Precisely. Be aware, that whether you contribute to the turning of the world or not, its turning is inevitable. And watch how it turns inside you. If you remember just one thing, let it be this. The job of this world is to turn. And you must learn to just watch it turn."

"But why?"

"Because that is the only way to not turn with it."

Ajja paused and Gautam let everything he had just heard sink in. After several moments, the old man spoke in a gentle voice, "You have recently ended a very big part of your life. What you have done takes courage, but that ending is incomplete if you don't know what to start next. This will be the start."

"The start of what?"

"Of something much more real than you will believe right now."

***

So Gautam began to learn how to stand still, away from the world, and just watch it turn. He woke up every day an hour before dawn, the old man sat on the mound under the _peepal_ tree in the clearing outside the hut and Gautam sat on the ground beside him. The old man instructed him for a few minutes and Gautam listened, sitting cross legged with his eyes closed and his palms in his lap. Then both would sit quietly until the break of dawn.

Gautam wasn't sure what the link between the specific concentration technique that Ajja taught him and watching the world turn was, but he followed Ajja's instructions anyway. Within a few days, without any instigation from Ajja, he increased the hours he spent at it, leaving Ajja alone at the shop and going up the hill - sitting either in the hut or in the clearing outside, depending upon how hot the sun was.

The hours he didn't spend on the hill, he spent as he had done earlier, either at the shop with Ajja or walking the road. His time at the shop was spent reading, or just sitting silently next to Ajja, watching the colours of the landscape change little by little, his mind chasing some thought or the other. Often, a couple of hours would go by before their reverie was broken either by one of them saying something to the other or by a vehicle stopping to purchase water and biscuits.

Waking up to a pre-dawn session with Ajja, reading, walking and more sessions alone under the _peepal_ tree, this became Gautam's new routine. A few months into it and he still had no clue how the practices Ajja was teaching him were going to help him just watch the world turn but they certainly were doing one thing, they were making his mind active in ways that it hadn't been for two decades. There were no external problems here to get involved with, no races to run, no investments to manage, no teams to manipulate. There was only himself, so that's what he instinctively turned his attention to. His inward looking eye was wide awake again – as sharp as it had been earlier but this time a little older, a little more mellow and a little more contemplative. Twenty years earlier that inward looking eye of his had helped him become who he was, this time round he already had a clear picture of himself and it helped him challenge that picture.

Though Ajja and Gautam still spent a lot of time together at the shop, these hours were fewer now than they had been when Gautam had first started living with Ajja. Not only did he leave Ajja alone at least twice a day to practice the techniques Ajja was teaching him, he also started taking long walks alone.

The sight of Gautam walking by, engrossed in himself, sometimes even speaking to himself and making gestures with his hands, became familiar to those people in town who spent their whole day looking at the road. The proprietor of Bhagini Palace, the security guard who manned the gate of Ramesh's school, the priest of the Sree Krishna temple at the edge of town, they all got used to the sight of Gautam walking by without even registering their presence. He would continue on, leaving them all behind, till the town itself was lost from sight. Till all that remained was a man-made road which went on and on, a God created landscape which stretched out on either side and a solitary Gautam who kept walking oblivious of all this.

  1. #  Chapter 30

The one part of Gautam's daily routine that still retained a flavour of worldly relationships was his growing attachment to Ramesh. Lakshmi and Dharmaji's son had been eleven when Gautam had first met him and he was now over twelve years old - and as delightful a child as any Gautam had ever seen.

His life revolved around his school because that was where he spent half his day, that was where he had friends and that was where his intellect was challenged. Once he came home his life was dreary by comparison and to compensate for that he injected school into the second half of the day too. While doing the lunch-time chores his mother commanded him to, he narrated to her what had happened with a particular teacher or with his friends that day in school. While eating lunch, he prattled on to Ajja about the same incidents and then spent an hour or two on homework. Towards evening, he visited a friend from school who lived on this side of town. Whenever he spoke to Ajja, Gautam or his mother over the weekend, it was again somehow connected to his school.

When Gautam looked at Ramesh, he saw a delightful and intelligent child whom fate had cruelly consigned to a childhood of poverty. Ramesh himself, though, was not conscious of his misfortune at all. He was too busy taking pleasure in the small little incidents that happened to him every day to contemplate the ways in which fate had done him in. Gautam always found him in good humour, if not relating something interesting from his day then looking forward to something interesting that was about to happen.

When Ramesh had time to kill, he would come and sit next to Ajja and talk to him. On these occasions he kept up such an incessant stream of chatter that his presence alone seemed sufficient to make up for the hours of silence which Gautam and Ajja subjected themselves to. On one such visit, Ramesh described his run-in with his Maths teacher.

"She taught us a new chapter yesterday but I couldn't understand any of it," he related. "It's called Algebra and it has all these alphabets in between numbers. None of my friends understood it either. Today she continued with the same chapter and again no one in class could follow her. Finally, I stood up in class and told her that she should explain it all again."

"Then what did she say?" Ajja asked.

"She got angry with me and told me to stand outside the classroom," Ramesh replied in disbelief. For a change, he actually looked sad.

"It's not fair. No one understood what she was teaching but she singled me out just because I told her so," he continued, giving voice to the iniquity which all children feel when the ways of the world begin to personally impact them.

There was a lull in the conversation for a few seconds, broken finally by Gautam. "I can help you understand Algebra, if you want," he offered.

"Can you?" asked Ramesh, a little sceptical.

"Yes," replied Gautam. "Don't worry, it's not that difficult. It'll take some work but you'll understand it eventually."

At that reassurance, Ramesh's good humour was immediately restored. "I'll get my books tomorrow afternoon," he said.

Then he grinned. "She probably didn't understand it herself, that's why she got angry at me," he chortled in glee, clearly delighted at having got one back at his teacher.

The next day he came with his books. Gautam explained the basic concepts of variables and equations to him and was surprised at how quickly Ramesh grasped them. He helped Ramesh work out a few sample questions and then asked him to solve the first exercise. Over the next week, Ramesh took it upon himself to solve each and every question in that chapter. Gautam may have marvelled at his determination but to Ramesh this was not an arduous task at all. Now that he had got over the initial hurdle of understanding, he quite enjoyed making his way through the chapter.

At the end of the week, when Ramesh finally completed the chapter, he shut the textbook with a satisfied sigh, stretched his arms, and let his body flop to the ground in mock tiredness. Gautam smiled at him indulgently.

"I bet I can give you three sums which you won't be able to solve," Gautam said teasingly.

"Not now, Gautam Uncle. Tomorrow," Ramesh promised, still lying on his back, his eyes closed against the sunlight and a satiated smile on his face.

So Gautam let the boy be, allowing him to revel in his feeling of accomplishment while he himself made his way up the hill for another session of meditation. In a way, this practice of concentrating his mind and this interest in metaphysical concepts was an education of sorts for Gautam and, while Ramesh had just made significant progress in his education, Gautam wasn't sure he was progressing as well in his own.

Since the first day that Ajja had instructed him, he would sit every morning before dawn and on most days he would repeat the process again some time later in the day. Exactly how this was supposed to help him, he wasn't sure. What he was sure of was that all the time he had spent alone with himself this past year had certainly activated his inward looking eye once again. That, in turn, helped him explore the layers of his own mind and clean it of some of the debris it had accumulated over the years.

In that whole year, the only link Gautam had maintained with his old life was Sandhya. Without fail every week he took out his phone and charger and made his way to the Bhagini Palace restaurant, charged his cellphone while he sipped his coffee and then had a long conversation with her.

Sandhya visited every month, sometimes more often, and every time their routine was the same. Gautam would walk into town and they would eat lunch together, the set meal of rice, _sabzi_ and _sambhar_ at the only eatery in town.

There was nothing strained about these meetings. Gautam would give her news of Ramesh and the old man and tell her any interesting incidents that may have happened since they last met, often making her laugh. Sandhya updated him on what had transpired in her life and with their friends.

The one thing Sandhya never referred to was the question of when Gautam was coming back. She knew he didn't have an answer and she didn't want him to come up with one under pressure from her. And Gautam knew that that was why Sandhya didn't ask him. However, about a year from the day Gautam first came to live with Ajja, Sandhya found herself in a situation where she couldn't avoid asking any more.

"Do you remember Thespians Corner?" she asked Gautam one afternoon while they were sitting in Bhagini Palace, waiting for their meals to arrive.

"Aren't they the theatre company in Mumbai you worked with a couple of years back? The ones who don't have a regular producer?"

"Yes, they still don't. I'm thinking of shifting to Mumbai and working with them on a more permanent basis. Do you think I should?"

It was just as well that the waiter brought their meals right then. Sandhya felt that she had sprung this on Gautam a little abruptly and he should take a moment or two to digest it before responding. To Gautam it was apparent that while the question Sandhya had asked was important in itself to her, there was another question hidden behind it which was even more important. He knew that what she really wanted to know was when he thought he was coming back to civilisation.

"You must," Gautam said when the waiter had left.

"Are you sure?" Sandhya asked again.

"Yes, you must fill up the space I have vacated," he said. "You cannot keep it empty forever, it's not good for you."

"And what if you want to occupy that space some day again?"

Gautam shrugged his shoulders. "Then you will make some space for me again. Or maybe you will not. We will worry about that later. Right now, if this is the step which fills that void then you must take it."

He saw her expression and continued. "Don't worry, you will do fine. You are quite capable of making the world interact with you on your terms. Much more than anyone else I know. So make the move, you will be happy. Even if this isn't perfect, you have to start somewhere," he reassured her.

And so the die was cast. In a way, it was not a surprise. With this decision they were both accepting a situation which had gradually evolved to this point and this conversation was merely a formal acknowledgement of what had become increasingly apparent.

While they ate their meal, both Sandhya and Gautam allowed the enormity of what they had just acknowledged to seep through and the rest of the meal was spent in silence. Not separate silences which contemplated separate futures but a shared silence which remembered a shared life. There may not have been any despair but there certainly was a tinge of sadness. Its presence was natural and it was just and it was only what was owed to the years they had spent together.

As they finished their meal however, their minds wandered and they tried to come to terms with what this implied for their respective futures. Gautam wondered that if his time with Ajja was not short term, not temporary, then it could not be just a vacation from the rest of his life. In fact, it had to be the rest of his life. Given that, shouldn't it have a more purposeful flavour to it? Wasn't that how you were supposed to live a life, have one or two central aspects of it which were its primary purpose and take brief interludes which gave you respite from that purpose. If his life here was not merely a respite, then shouldn't it have a more formal purpose?

Sandhya in turn, while disappointed, was only now beginning to realise that she could pursue a full-fledged involvement in the theatre, something she had not done since moving out of Delhi. That desire had been buried so deep inside that she realised only now how strong it actually was, now that she could allow it to surface in its full intensity.

It was natural for both of them to think of their respective futures at this moment. After all, our lives can never be a vacuum. The very same moment which marks the end of something also contains the seed of whatever will take its place.

Normally, after these lunches, Sandhya didn't spend much time with Ajja. After the meal she would drive Gautam back to the old man's shop. She would park her car and get out, exchange pleasantries with Ajja, buy a bottle of water and quickly be on her way.

This time though she embraced Ajja instead of just greeting him verbally. She sat down on the ground next to him, made sporadic small talk and continued sitting silently when she ran out of small talk. Every time she had met Gautam in the past year, she had wanted to spend time with him alone but this time she wanted to spend time with this setting. She wanted to absorb it, to carry the memory of it with her so that she would remember it not just clinically but also remember the feel of what she was leaving Gautam to.

# Chapter 31

Other than the fact that he did not meet Sandhya every month, Gautam's routine continued pretty much unchanged for the next couple of years. Waking up while it was still dark, sitting with Ajja under the _peepal_ tree in the clearing outside and getting up when he felt the sun's first rays upon his eyelids. The morning trek down to the stream and the beginning of the day proper. Then there were the walks, the reading and the occasional discussion with Ajja. On most days, Gautam trekked back up the hill during the day to sit once more under the _peepal_ tree, sitting in _dhyan_ as Ajja taught him.

Despite the seeming lack of activities to engage him, Gautam was not bored at all in those months and years. If anything, it was the opposite. His reading, his practice, his days with the old man and his time alone, all these made his life interesting in ways it had not been before. It did not matter that he didn't manage any projects or go to any parties or watched any TV. It didn't matter that he was in a place so devoid of stimuli that any object of interest was to be found only inside himself. In fact, if anything, the fact that he was in such a place made the experience of looking inwards all the more rich and exciting. The hours of the day elapsed without any weariness and the days and weeks, which passed by in a blur, did not seem to be a long period of time to him. On the contrary, as the months passed, he became more and more comfortable with this state of continuous internal exploration and he sometimes wondered how he would react if he ever had to undertake a full-fledged return to his old life.

That was merely a hypothetical question for now and he had no way of getting a real answer to it because his life with Ajja afforded him very little opportunity to test that. Perhaps the only test, if it could be called that, of whether his way of engaging with the world was changing or not, was his reaction to Ajja's customers. He noticed that he wasn't as instinctively dismissive of them as he had been when he had first arrived. He watched them with a curiously non-judgemental interest now, more keen to learn about them and to surmise things about their lives, than to compare himself to them.

The young man who got out of his inexpensive Hyundai hatchback in the morning for example, the one who was dressed neatly for another day at work, probably in a large software company, taking the first eager steps in his career. Gautam noticed that he appeared confident, possibly he had reason to believe that today's workday would go well. It didn't occur to Gautam to disparage the man's youthful eagerness by comparing it with his own seasoned success.

The _dhoti_ -clad trader and his fat, bejewelled wife fascinated him. He tried to gauge the extent to which social changes in India in the last decade or so had impacted their unquestioning traditionalism. He didn't try to belittle them by contrasting their values to his own educated, world-aware, liberalism.

Just like it had two years back, how these people dressed, how they stood, their car, their bearing, their demeanour, how they spoke to the old man, everything about them still revealed to Gautam who they were and how their minds worked. What had diminished over the past two years or so was his instinctive slotting of them somewhere below himself. Instead, he was more interested in understanding them.

These changes in him had not come about because he had made a deliberate attempt at them in any way. Nevertheless, despite his not trying to consciously achieve this effect, his stay here had gradually changed him anyway.

***

Guiding Ramesh in his studies took more and more of Gautam's time as the months went by. What had started with one chapter of Mathematics became a regular occurrence whenever a new chapter of Maths was taught in school. By the time Gautam completed one year of living with Ajja, Ramesh had reached high school and the Science subjects grew tougher. At that time, Physics and Chemistry lessons were included in their routine and they started sitting together two to three times a week.

Over time, study did not remain the only interaction between Gautam and Ramesh, as the two of them grew closer they shared a lot of other conversation too. Ramesh was insatiably curious about Gautam's life in the big city. He would ask Gautam questions about the office he had worked in, whether he drove a big car or not, whether he lived on a high enough floor for people on the ground to appear very small.

When he found out that Gautam had actually travelled and worked in foreign lands, he became even more excited. The first thing he wanted to know was whether foreign countries actually had roads which went round and round in the air. He had seen them in the movies, where songs were often shot in foreign locales. Gautam had trouble understanding what Ramesh meant, until he realised that the boy must be talking of the complex flyovers and interchanges one often saw at some intersections in America. Gautam reassured him that the roads which went round and round in the air did really exist and yes, there were indeed buildings covered in shining glass which were more than a hundred floors tall.

That was when Ramesh first confessed to Gautam that his dream was to build such buildings. Initially, he referred to it sheepishly but when he saw a few times that Gautam did not consider the proposition as absurd and impossible as he himself did, he was emboldened and spoke of it a little more confidently. Pretty soon he was gushing about how he would build a skyscraper which would be an exact replica of one he had seen just yesterday in the latest Sudeep movie.

"It is so tall, Gautam Uncle, that you won't believe it," he gushed. "I've never seen one as tall as this one. And it's fully covered with glass, you can see everything around it reflected in that building itself. It's so tall that it looks very thin but it's actually not, you know. When you go inside, it has this very large hall which a huge statue of three horses running. The horses are as tall as two human beings and there's so much space around them that you can fit one thousand people in that space. I'm going to build a hall just like that one someday. Except that I won't put a statue of three horses, instead I will hang a thousand birds from the ceiling of that hall. They will be made of steel and glass and when you enter that hall you will feel that they are flying above you and the sun is shining on them."

Gautam smiled indulgently at Ramesh. Such conversations became a regular feature of their interaction from then on. Ramesh had never been to a big city. "My parents haven't even taken me to Bengaluru," he would lament. As a result, he had only one avenue with which to satisfy his curiosity about large buildings.

Every time Ramesh saw a movie, he found some building or the other in it which he commented on. He was unimpressed with the movies shot in rural settings and palaces didn't move him much either. What he gushed endlessly about were the modern buildings, especially the skyscrapers. In interiors, his tastes tended towards the glitzy. Large halls, glass walls, gleaming marble pillars, shining floors, these were what he found attractive. It was in keeping with his life's setting that the more ostentatiously wealthy a building was, the more he loved it. One of the movies he saw had a song which had been filmed in Las Vegas and Ramesh couldn't stop gushing about it for days.

Gautam encouraged Ramesh's interest. Often, when Ramesh spoke of the kind of public hall he would design or the kind of skyscraper he would build, Gautam asked him questions which would force him to think about the implications of various features of the building. To Gautam's surprise, this boy who had never lived in a city and never seen such spaces in actual use, was able to apply his mind quite well to the problems which Gautam posed to him. Gautam thus became the parental figure who not only encouraged Ramesh's fantasies of what he was going to do in life, he got him even more involved by making him analyse what he was seeing instead of just passively appreciating it.

There was only one occasion that Gautam tried to deflect Ramesh from following his interest. Gautam had been pensive for the past few days, pondering something he had read in one of Ajja's books, when Ramesh saw a movie and came to talk of his latest fascination. He started speaking of a futuristic factory building he had seen in the movie when Gautam interrupted him.

"You know trying to build these things has problems too," Gautam told him. "It's not just about thinking up the design and enjoying the process of building it out. You have to manage irritating situations, manipulate people when they obstruct you in your path, sometimes even abandon your project without completing it. And then when you do succeed, you've just started an endless cycle. It's not enough that you've done one; you want to do another one, a better one, a bigger one. It never stops."

"Are you sure you don't want to stay here?" Gautam continued. "Life here is simple, isn't it? You won't have any worries. Look at me, I'm much happier here than I was towards the end of my earlier life."

"But I haven't even been once to the big city," Ramesh retorted, hardly waiting for Gautam to finish. "And what about building those tall towers which you said I can build?"

"Well," said Gautam, wondering how to respond. "If you stay here you won't build them. Maybe you won't want to build them. Is that so bad?"

Gautam saw the perplexed expression on Ramesh's face and was wondering what else he should say when Ajja burst out laughing.

"Don't worry, Ramesh," Ajja said. "Gautam Uncle is just making fun of you. Of course you should go to many big cities and build the tallest building in the world if you can."

Gautam frowned but didn't contradict Ajja, there must be a reason he had dismissed Gautam's words. As soon as Ramesh left, Gautam asked him, "Why not let him stay here? What's wrong with him living a simpler life and avoiding the yearnings and disappointments which everyone goes through? Imagine how far he can go in his personal evolution if he skips years of that."

"Does he want to live that simpler life?" Ajja asked Gautam. "Do you see him worrying about the yearnings and disappointments? Do you think he wants to skip any of the thrill and excitement which he imagines city life will bring him? This is his age to dream, not worry. When he looks forward, all he sees is the world laid out before him, it is his to explore and conquer. He is about to come into his own. If he finds some work which he finds fulfilling, like you did, he will begin to feel that he too has the power to move the world. This is his age to feel that power, you cannot take that away from him. Don't force him to stay, his going is the natural order of things."

"But what about all this?" Gautam asked, making a sweeping gesture with his hands which included the clearing and himself and Ajja and their surroundings in its ambit. Ajja understood that he wasn't referring to the people or the location.

"Did you want this from the day you were born?" Ajja asked. "Or did you have to live almost an entire life before you thought of all this? Can anyone truly understand this without first having lived a life of passion, of fears and desires, a life of the world?"

With that Ajja was silent. So too was Gautam. Like a chastised child, he was too close to the scolding to be able to judge its merit. But a couple of days later, he knew that the old man was right. Ramesh's life would flow a certain way. Gautam did not know how it was going to unfold but he knew this was its most natural next step. He could not take that away from Ramesh. If anything, he thought, he should assist him. That was when the immediate next step of his own life became clear to Gautam.

# Chapter 32

After almost three years of living in an isolated hut on a hill and going only as far as his own feet could carry him, Gautam was once again riding in a car. Sandhya had booked the taxi to the airport for him and Gautam spent the entire drive making notes on the ground he wanted to cover in the meetings she had set up for him. He wanted to make sure he was well prepared for those meetings and, as a result, he did not get a chance to absorb the sights and sounds of his home city as he drove past them.

The familiar landmarks whizzed by without getting noticed and without triggering any emotion in him. If Gautam had been apprehensive, or at least curious, about how he would react to his own return to the big city, then clearly this drive to the airport was not when he would get to observe that reaction.

Sandhya had misjudged the commute time and Gautam was late when he reached his destination. He hurried to the airline's ticketing counter to get a printout of his ticket, then made his way into the terminal, got his boarding pass and went through the security checks quickly. Only when he reached the boarding gate did he realise that the flight was late by half an hour.

Gautam made his way to a lounging chair nearby. Stretching his legs out and settling back in a semi-reclined position, he allowed himself to absorb his surroundings for the first time since he had left Ajja's place in the morning.

He was in the central hall of the departure terminal. The large atrium had seating for about three hundred people and almost all the seats were occupied. There were several shops, some of them quite crowded, selling books, leather bags, electronics and clothes. There were escalators leading up to a busy food court and there were escalators carrying a steady stream of people down to more boarding gates. The ceiling was high, higher than any public structure Gautam had been inside, criss-crossed with fat ducts for cooled air and wires.

The large size, the ample facilities, the steady flow of people, the efficiency of the activity, everything about this place was impressive, but what hit Gautam the most was the overwhelming man-madeness of this structure. Not just this structure, its surroundings too.

The entire front wall of the building was tinted glass, providing an unobstructed view of the sprawling tarmac. Several aircraft were parked, a few were taxiing to their designated positions. A couple of small private jets could be seen and the regular airliners looked huge in comparison to them. The entire tarmac was level concrete with no detectable undulations. There were a few grassy knolls which had been left exposed here and there, and they served only to highlight the completeness with which the area had been flattened. The building, the tarmac, the shops, the aircraft, the people, everything was a reminder of humanity's majestic ability to bend its surroundings to its will.

Gautam had been in many airports before. He knew them well enough to appreciate the extraordinary ones and curse the dilapidated ones. But right now, it did not matter to him that this airport was impressive and efficient. In his eyes, the entire scene was a testament to the capacity of humans to create more and more objects, and then end up making their lives more and more busy using those objects.

Gautam felt that he was strangely disassociated from this scene, and from that disassociated perspective it would have been easy for him to think of himself as the wise observer and everyone else as vaguely inferior to him. But what he actually felt was a strong empathy towards the people whom he saw all around him. To him, each of these people was an individual being whose personality had been honed over years. Each was undeniably unique, and in that moment Gautam could see them all with crystal clarity.

His glance took in the mother who was pushing her child to choose the right book, the newlywed couple who were pretty much oblivious to everything other than each other and the stock market investor who looked worried as he watched a TV screen on which a nervous looking man had been cast in the role of an expert. He saw them all and he instantly knew what made them feel happy or insecure. He could see their idiosyncrasies and their commonalities, their conditioning and their openness, their tendency to worry and their ability to enjoy. He could see what each of them based their self-esteem on and he could see how brittle or resilient each of them was. In one glance, he could see through to their inner cores.

Yes, in that instant they all stood naked before him and yet, he felt one with them. He looked at each and every one of the people in his sight and he saw himself in them. He was not the man who was better than them, not at all. Instead he was the man who had dedicated years of his life to concerns not very different from theirs. He felt for them because their anguish and their pleasures were no different from what he had felt, which he could feel again any time.

" _I am your brother,"_ he said to them all. _"We are cut of the same cloth, you and I. Everything you feel, everything you are, is inside of me as well, capable of coming to fruition at any time. If there is something in me which you think you do not possess, look carefully and you will find its seed is already in your heart. Yes, we are one."_

" _I wish you a life full of happiness. I wish you a life without pain. And because neither wish will come true, I wish you a life lived with wisdom."_ For one moment, Gautam felt all of that from the bottom of his heart.

In that moment, Gautam got his first unexpected experience of just how vast a goodness he was capable of feeling. That one glimpse showed him a state of being he would never even have contemplated as possible. Then, all too fleetingly, that brief instant was gone, leaving him overawed in its wake. How incomplete all his quests and achievements seemed now that he had seen how much gentleness and grace lay untapped within him. At that instant, Gautam felt more humble than he had ever felt in his life.

In the past three years which Gautam had spent away from his old life, he had diligently walked the path as he had seen it, without ever asking himself what his destination was. He still did not know clearly what he had set out to become but at least he knew now that he had already started becoming that. Just a few moments of sitting still and absorbing the ambience of his earlier life had made that clear to him.

# Chapter 33

When the flight landed at Mumbai airport, Sandhya was already waiting for him. The embrace between them lingered longer than Gautam expected. He did not mind, he knew it was an expression of Sandhya's wish that things would return to as they were.

Of course, they weren't going to. Gautam's understanding smile as they separated, and the avuncular way he put his arm around Sandhya's shoulder as he led her out of the terminal made that clear. They were gestures which were full of affection, nevertheless they did not denote that Gautam was here to do anything other than conduct the business he had spoken of when planning this trip.

But then, Sandhya already knew that. Her feelings were the same curious mixture of hope and acceptance which all of us feel when caught in a situation which we have made peace with while still wishing that it were somehow different.

When they were finally sitting in the car and on their way to a late lunch, Sandhya finally asked him, "Gautam, I understand you want to set up this foundation to fund higher education for children who can't afford it but why did you suddenly get this idea?"

Gautam explained in great detail to her about his sessions with Ramesh. "He's quite good at Science and Maths, you know," he said. "Couple that with his interest in large buildings and he could easily be an engineer or an architect. But he's certainly not going to be either unless someone gets him out of that place and into a good high school and then a college."

"So why not just help him out? Why set up this ambitious foundation?"

Gautam shrugged his shoulders. "The money is just lying there anyway, why not use it? We can leave half of it untouched for you and put the rest into this."

"If that's what you're thinking, then I don't need half. We can sell our apartment in Bangalore and I can buy one here. We can use everything else to set up the foundation."

"What about living expenses for you?" Gautam asked.

"I make some money from my theatre work," Sandhya replied. "And the foundation can pay me a salary. After all," she smiled, "you're expecting me to do all the work while you sit in that secluded place with Ajja. I may as well get paid for my effort."

Gautam grinned. "Yes, you may as well," he agreed.

"And I'm not going to do all this on my own. I've roped in two other people to help me out."

"Okay, who are they?" Gautam asked.

"The first is a director I've come to know here. He's kind of the granddaddy of the theatre scene in Mumbai and he's adopted me as his protégé of sorts."

Gautam looked a little uncertain.

"Gautam, I've agreed with you that we should do this but if I'm going to do all the work, then I'll do it my way," Sandhya told him. "And besides, he knows people inside Bollywood, so he can raise additional money for the foundation if we ever need it."

"You really have been thinking about this. I'm delighted," Gautam commented. "This guy sounds like a good choice. Who's the second?"

"You can meet him right now," Sandhya replied, as she pulled up at a restaurant. "He's a friend of yours."

When Gautam saw who was waiting for them at the door, he knew today was the day for reunions.

In his first few months living with the old man, Gautam had imagined this scene very often. Sometimes he had dreaded it, wanting to put more distance between himself and his guilt, and sometimes he had wanted it, seeking the liberation which only a direct facing of one's accuser can give one. Now that the time had come, he welcomed it.

When they had greeted each other with the warm embrace of long lost friends meeting once again, Gautam held Tapan at arm's length. "I must thank you for giving me this opportunity," he said. "I am truly sorry for the harm I thought of doing to you."

Tapan was about to brush the apology aside with a joke when he saw that Gautam was serious. He nodded his head solemnly, accepting the apology without any protest. He was glad he did, because the subsequent expression on Gautam's face made it clear that, with that small wordless act, Tapan had given him something he had been needing for a long time.

Once he saw Gautam smile in response to his acceptance, Tapan himself broke into a grin. "Shucks man, do you see me suffering for it?" he asked.

"No I don't. You look like you're doing well enough," Gautam agreed in good humour. "And Sandhya's told you about this foundation I want to set up?" he continued. "You're ready to help her run it?"

"Yes, of course," Tapan responded. "I've spent the last two decades focussed on my career. I wouldn't miss the chance of doing something else with my life for a change."

"Then let me tell you a little more of what I was thinking of doing," Gautam said, as he put his arm around Tapan's shoulder and led him inside.

Over the next few days, the three of them repeatedly met with bankers and lawyers. Initially Gautam had a lot to say on how the proposed foundation should function, what exactly its charter should be and how its money should be invested, but very soon he noticed Sandhya and Tapan becoming more and more assertive in these meetings. On seeing that, he quietly receded and started letting them have their say.

At the end of the week, after a couple of meetings in which Sandhya had instructed the bankers to configure a more conservative portfolio for the foundation and Tapan had got the lawyers to change some of its rules and regulations, Gautam was satisfied that he was more or less redundant now.

In another couple of days, he had signed all the papers which set up the foundation, funded it and gave total control of it to Sandhya and Tapan. That same night, towards the end of their celebratory dinner, Gautam mentioned to them that it was time for him to go back.

"Do you really have to go?" Tapan asked. "I've enjoyed the past few days. Why don't you stay some more time and get this thing started off?"

"No, it's time I went."

Tapan had asked the question but Gautam felt it was Sandhya he was addressing when he replied. Sandhya in turn knew that the events of the past few days had made Gautam feel freer than he had earlier been and that he was ready to go. There could now be only one reason which might make him hesitate.

"Let him go, Tapan. This is what he needs to do," she said, knowing fully well that by her saying this, Gautam would be free of the very last constraint he might have felt.

# Chapter 34

When Gautam returned from Mumbai, he felt that he had in a way closed the door on his old life. He said as much to Ajja when the old man asked him if his trip was successful.

"Why? Have you done something which means that you can't go back?" Ajja asked in return

"No, of course not," Gautam replied. "But I do feel that I have tied up some loose ends."

"Have you removed all imprints of yourself from that world?"

"In a way," was Gautam's response. "I've certainly reduced them to the point that nothing will necessarily require my presence."

The old man nodded his head. "That is good," he said and closed the conversation.

Over the next few days and months, Gautam fell back into his old routine. He started his day sitting in dhyan under the peepal tree and after his bath he took whatever book he was reading currently and went down to the shop with Ajja. He was waking up earlier now and could sit with Ajja at the shop from the start of Ajja's work day.

While at the shop, he no longer made any attempt to interfere in Ajja's transactions. Instead he was content to sit next to him and read. In the mornings and evenings he went for long walks. Once every afternoon he went up the hill and practised his dhyan again. Sometimes he did none of these things, preferring to just sit on the ground next to Ajja, leaning his back against the cupboard door and letting his mind wander.

One afternoon, in the dull hour when both of them were staring at the road, listening to the sound of the tyres and the wind as the occasional car whizzed by, Gautam asked the old man a question which it had taken him almost four years to get to.

"So Ajja, tell me about God," he said.

The old man looked surprised. He wondered if he should give Gautam a flippant or evasive reply, letting him work his way towards his own answer, as he often did. But then he decided that Gautam was ready for a more complete answer.

"I'm not sure how to answer, because I do not believe in an all-seeing entity that governs my destiny. I also find it hard to worship any supernatural force, even though I can't explain how this universe came to be created. In short, I don't spend any time thinking about God, at least not in the way most of the world uses that word," Ajja began. He then paused to gather his thoughts before continuing.

"What I can tell you instead is that I have lived many full years and every moment of that long life has been brimming with thoughts and feelings. All my life I have thought my thoughts and felt my feelings. Everything that brought out a strong emotional reaction in me, I thought about again and again, reliving the first experience till time inevitably dulled the intensity. I have had moments when I felt a love so strong or an anger so spontaneous that I could not do anything other than immerse all of myself in that feeling. I have also spent hours contemplating my future, at times with hope and at times fearing for it. Every human being who has ever lived has done the same. And like all of them, my entire being too is my thoughts and feelings, my past and my future."

The old man stopped again and Gautam waited patiently. Both of them continued to sit there, not taking any particular note of the occasional car which whizzed by. "I have sometimes had the ability to dissect these feelings in a more detached manner, to view them with the passive interest of an observer rather than the passion of the person feeling them. This used to happen only occasionally though, usually what I was feeling was too heavy for me to be dispassionate about it. I think it was the same for you several years back."

Gautam was startled at this reference to himself. He had never told the old man about his inward looking eye but the old man seemed to know about it, he was just using different words to describe it. Gautam did not say anything because he did not want to interrupt Ajja's flow.

"The difference between you and me," Ajja continued, "is that over the years I have learnt to wear all of my feelings lightly. I can look at them and explore what in me makes them arise, without ever fearing what this exploration will do to me. I have even learnt to scrutinise my fears as if they were not mine and they have lost their ability to grip my heart."

"Like most of us, I too fall in love with my thoughts and feelings. I love thinking them and I love feeling them but, unlike most of us, above all I love watching them. I can spend hours like this, first thinking something and then watching that thought till I understand where it sprang from and how it developed itself. Often, I watch till that thought loses its power over me and dissolves."

He added with a smile, "Sometimes when that happens, I am not sure whether that feeling occurred spontaneously or did I dig it up just to watch myself feeling it." Then the faraway look was back on his face as he continued.

"Anyway, the important thing I wanted to say was that sometimes, not always, when I come out of my _dhyan_ , I realise that in that time of silence I sensed something in me very different from this excitable and emotional person that I watch all the time. All my hopes, my fears, my loves, my hates – for a while there was no trace of them. There were no thoughts and no memories. It is not as if they had been substituted with peace or tranquillity or coolness or anything like that. Even those are feelings whereas what I experienced was an absence of all feelings and thoughts. I realised that in such moments, everything that I have so far known as myself has ceased to be. I do not even have a clear memory of that moment because there was nothing in it that I can remember it by."

"When it happens, is it just one moment?" asked Gautam.

"It does not matter how long it is," the old man replied without stopping. "Even if there were many moments, they were each one moment only. And that one moment was alone, not embedded in a sequence of time. There was no previous moment which had led to it and there was nothing in it which could give rise to the next moment."

The old man paused again for some time and both of them were silent. Then he started again. "It is only when I come out of that moment that I can begin to try and understand it. I know that in that moment I am not dead, I am not unconscious. No, I am very much alive and conscious, I'm just not living a life as we know it. And then I wonder that if everything that I know of as myself had ceased to be, then why had I not ceased to be, what part of me still remained conscious."

"I don't know what that part of me is. If it were something to be seen, it would have no appearance and if it was something to be heard it would be a silence. I cannot try to describe it because I did not feel anything describable. Perhaps it was just consciousness without content - the base of nothingness on which every thought, every emotion, every sight, every sound, every sensation, every reaction of my entire life has been placed."

"These sights, sounds and sensations, these thoughts and emotions - all these things _are_ the world, they are the sum total of it. I, my entire life, is only what I am in my mind. The world is only what I know of it and how I react to it in my mind. When I am in that moment, I have erased all the contents of my mind. I feel that I have penetrated to a substratum which is void, destroying everything which had ever been built up on that substratum. In that moment I am Shiva, I have destroyed the entire world, magically burnt it up so that all that remains is the base on which it was built."

Gautam was startled by this statement from the old man. "Are you trying to tell me that you are God?" he asked.

"Of course not." the old man said sharply. Then he smiled. "Well, if you're going to refer to me as that," he said, "then why stop at one. Then let me be all three of them. Because once I am out of that moment, I lose touch with that void. Like a mist rolling in and obscuring a distant light which was clear a few moments ago, all my knowledge of the world comes back to me, all the stances of like and dislike, love and hatred, which I had ever taken towards anything in this world come back. In the next few minutes, as everything I have learnt in my time on this earth comes back, as my hopes and fears for the future are recreated, in those next few moments I am Brahma, creating the world afresh in my mind."

"And how are you Vishnu?" asked Gautam.

"Am I not Vishnu every moment of my life, including right now?" asked the old man in return. "I look into the eyes of every person who buys a bottle of water from me. I try to understand them. When they smile at me I like them and smile back. When they get irritated at me I look away and feel grim, perhaps even a little superior for not responding in kind. Do I not strengthen the part of me which reacts, which ties me to the world every time I do that? Perhaps those people too have gone away with a judgement of me which resonates in their minds for some time. Have I not then given a little push to the turning of this world? Am I not always Vishnu, the preserver, every action of mine ensuring that my enmeshment in this world is strengthened?"

"But there is hope for me yet, because every time I spend a moment, even if it is just one moment, however fleeting, in that void, I am closer to a complete understanding of myself, a feeling of not needing to know anything else. Even a lifetime of learning can never make a human being feel that. You get that one pure moment often enough and it stays with you a little, even after it's gone. Even while doing my work, while living my mundane life, every day I get closer to it. Who knows, maybe some day I will live every waking minute of my life in that state."

Gautam was silent for a long time, digesting everything he had just heard, trying to fit it in with everything he knew about living a life. He was a little overwhelmed and wanted a few moments of quiet. He sat still, looking at the distant white clouds. It was evening now and the white glare of afternoon had receded to give way to the gentler light of evening before dusk gave warning of the disappearance of light altogether.

"But then even I am Vishnu, all of us are Vishnu," he finally spoke.

The old man had not looked at Gautam even once when he had been speaking. He had been looking ahead, staring blankly at nothing in particular as if he was talking not to Gautam but to himself. He turned now to look at Gautam and laughed when he saw the awe-struck expression on his face. Gautam responded with a sheepish smile.

"Yes Gautam," Ajja grinned. "You have been Vishnu almost every moment of your life. But I am hoping that some day you will learn to be Shiva."

"Why is that?" asked Gautam.

Still smiling, the old man said, "Because as Vishnu you help this world turn by giving it a little push here and a little nudge there. But it is best if you don't do that because you see, even though the job of this world is to turn, ..."

Gautam parodied the tone of a good student reciting a lesson learnt well as he joined Ajja in completing that sentence, "... we must learn to just watch it turn."

As soon as they finished voicing those words in unison, both of them looked at each other and burst into laughter.

# Chapter 35

One afternoon, six months after Gautam returned from Mumbai, a very excited Ramesh came to call them for lunch. Apparently, a woman from the city had visited his mother. The woman was from an organisation which sponsored promising children for education in high school and beyond. Selected children from the slum areas in Bangalore and from the villages and small towns surrounding the city were granted admission in some of the best schools of the city.

The organisation not only paid their school fees but also ran a hostel in the centre of the city where they housed the children. They had resident tutors who coached these children in the subjects they were deficient in, thereby serving as a bridge between their new school and their education so far. The lady had assured Lakshmi that the entire expense of Ramesh's education and his stay in the city would be borne by the organisation, all she and Dharmaji had to do was consent to this arrangement.

"So what did your mother say?" asked Gautam.

"She hasn't made up her mind yet," Ramesh replied. "She also asked the lady why they had selected me."

Gautam held his breath, wondering if the lady who had come even knew that he was the one who had told Sandhya that this was the ideal time to include Ramesh in the program.

"And what did the lady say," he asked. The tone of his voice made Ajja look at him questioningly and he nodded his head imperceptibly in response to Ajja's look.

"She said that she had been to my school and my teachers had recommended me."

Gautam was relieved at that. He didn't really want Lakshmi and Dharmaji to start looking at him as some kind of benefactor to whom they owed a debt.

"Do you want to go?" was Gautam's next question.

"If I go, doesn't it mean that some day I might be able to build big buildings?"

"Yes."

"Then I want to go. But I think _amma_ is not very sure. I don't know why."

"Maybe I should talk to her." Gautam said this to Ramesh but he was looking at Ajja as he said it. Ajja nodded in agreement.

"Come, let's go for lunch," Gautam said, as he put his arm around the boy and led him towards home.

When Gautam raised the subject at lunch, Lakshmi didn't argue. She just handed him a visiting card. "The lady who came in the morning left this," she said. "You talk to her and tell me if they'll take good care of Ramesh, then I'll decide."

After that it didn't take much to convince Lakshmi and within three months Ramesh was gone from all their lives. Ajja had seen the child grow up but Gautam missed him more. Between the lessons and the conversations, they had spent a lot of time together. While Ajja was the ever-present foundation on which Gautam's presence here rested, whatever little visible structure there was to his life had been provided by Ramesh. As a result, Gautam's mind was unsettled for several weeks after Ramesh's departure.

But human beings are ultimately survivors, willing to adjust to almost any change in their situation as long as they can still pursue their central purpose. No healthy human being defines the upkeep of erstwhile relationships as their central purpose in life, which is why we let time fill all our emotional gaps. So it took a few weeks but ultimately Gautam settled down into his routine again.

The pre-dawn session under the _peepal_ tree would set the tone for the rest of his day and it was usually followed by one more session in the afternoon. Other than that, his attention was back once again on taking long walks and digesting whatever he read.

He liked some of the modern European and all of the ancient Buddhist philosophers he read. And the even more ancient Hindu texts didn't trouble him anymore, the way the Upanishads had in the beginning. Apart from reading during the day, he also spent a lot of time on the ground next to Ajja, even though the two of them didn't talk much. Then there was the meal at sundown, with all four of them slowly getting used to it being a more silent affair without Ramesh. Finally, there was the trek back up the hill in the darkness.

This sparse roster of activities continued as it was for the next few years and, to any observer, it would have been apparent that there was no significant change to Gautam's life in these years. What an observer could not have seen however, was that while Gautam lost a human presence from his life, another presence, a more abstract one, slowly began to take its place.

Every day Gautam opened his eyes after his first session of _dhyan_ when the orange rays of the rising sun hit his eyelids and he saw the road winding away into the distance. He spent hours sitting by the side of that same road, either reading or staring at it as his thoughts churned this way and that. Much of the time he was not sitting next to it, he was walking along it. Even when he looked away from the road, he ended up looking at the landscape around it, its presence still there in his peripheral vision, reminding him that in the midst of untouched, passive nature as far as the eye could see, this symbol of the human journey was always there.

To someone else, the tarmac might look like a dead, monotonous thing, but Gautam was as familiar with it as one was with a constant companion. He was familiar with its contours and its colours. He could make out what kind of vehicle was coming and how fast it was going before he saw it, all based on the sound the road extracted from the tyres.

More than being familiar with the road, he understood its rhythms. How the traffic flowed and ebbed and then flowed again on it as the day progressed. He understood how the changing light of the day changed not only its colours but the shape of the landscape around it. He saw how the change in seasons affected it, making it cold, then hot, then wet and then cold again, in turn affecting the people who travelled on it.

The road lay there, passive and incapable of reacting, providing a stage for humans to journey on and for the cycles of this world to act themselves out on. By virtue of his position, Gautam got to watch the world passing by without having to journey with everyone else. Instead, some of the travellers stopped by to give him a peek into themselves. The road was a corridor the world passed through and Gautam was sitting by the side of that corridor, watching and learning.

Over the years, one of the things that sitting by the side of the road taught him was that, consciously or not, we spend much of our adult lives in the belief that we need to form a judgement on whatever stimulus this world throws at us. Perhaps we judge every person and analyse every situation we encounter because it makes us feel more capable of dealing with the world. Or perhaps there is some anxiety we live with which the act of judging soothes temporarily.

When Gautam had first come here, he had had nothing to do with his time but analyse Ajja's customers in ways he was familiar with. He had instinctively ended up finding fault with everyone who stepped off the road and transacted with Ajja. But a few years into his stay with Ajja, he had lost his appetite to incessantly prove. Prove what and to whom he wasn't sure because whatever it had been, it seemed to get less and less important as the years passed. By the time Gautam had spent seven or eight years with Ajja, he did not seem to have the need to convince himself of anything anymore.

He no longer judged the people who stopped by. He still understood them, perhaps better than he had earlier, but that understanding was an automatic action of his mind now, devoid of any estimation or comparison. In every person who stopped and then left, he saw a human being living his or her life as best as they could, just like he had done all his years.

The harried mother travelling with the angry adolescent daughter got his sympathy. He felt her helplessness at not knowing how to teach her daughter the ways of the world, just as he felt the daughter's frustration at having to deal with a world which was forcing norms of behaviour she was not yet ready for. Gautam silently wished the young man on the way to a fresh workday all the success he deserved and more. He hoped that the older executive who stopped by, the one who was clearly stiffened by his success, would find a new gentleness with which to enrich his interactions with people.

It didn't matter to Gautam who was traditional and who was modern, who looked like a good person at first glance and who looked evil. It didn't even matter whether they smiled at Ajja or they were mean-spirited with him. He found them all deserving of his goodwill. In fact, if it had been his place in the world to do so, he would have blessed them all from the bottom of his heart. Yes, he loved them all now because they were all just reflections of what he either had been or quite easily could become. The road had finally taught him that. Sitting by the side of the road and letting other people journey on it had taught him that. Watching the world turn had taught him that.

# Chapter 36

Gautam first realised that Ajja was unwell the day Ramesh visited his parents after graduating as an architect from a local Bangalore college. He had done very well and had been placed in a prestigious firm of architects in Mumbai.

When Gautam asked him over dinner what kind of work the firm did, Ramesh had smiled and responded, "Don't worry Gautam Uncle, I checked and chose a firm which designs a lot of commercial buildings. Maybe I'll get to design some tall ones myself in a few years."

Gautam nodded. He was happy that Ramesh had got till here and he was glad that the foundation he had set up seven years ago had played its role. He hadn't done anything other than set it up, it was Sandhya and Tapan and whoever else they had selected who ran it. But watching this grown up Ramesh, so confident in his expanded world, Gautam was glad that at least he had taken that first step, putting to good use something that was just lying there anyway. Not to mention the fact that his action had probably set him free as much as his decision to come here in the first place.

On the climb up to the hut after dinner that night, he was still preoccupied with these thoughts and did not concentrate at all on where he was stepping. Nowadays, when he climbed up in the dark, he did so with the surety of someone who knew the path like the back of his hand. After a decade of walking the same ground, his feet knew which patch was rough and which one slippery and they moved automatically without his commanding them. Even though he could easily outpace Ajja now, he preferred to walk a few steps behind the old man.

That night he was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he did not notice Ajja had stopped halfway, until he almost bumped into him. The old man was leaning against a tree, just another silhouette in the dark, barely distinguishable from the tree trunks around him.

"Everything all right, Ajja?" Gautam asked him.

"Just felt a little dizzy," Ajja replied. "Give me a moment."

It was more than a few moments before Ajja started moving again and this time Gautam stayed close to him. It was good that he did so because within a few steps, Ajja missed his footing and stumbled. Gautam was there to catch him and the rest of the way he held Ajja's arm to balance him, having to be sure footed enough to provide a stable climb for both of them. When they reached the top, Ajja went to bed without mentioning the incident. A couple of days later, Ajja needed help again and after that, Gautam started staying close to him on the climb up instead of a few paces behind.

A few weeks later, one day Ajja didn't return from his morning trip down to the stream. When Gautam got worried and went to look for him, he saw Ajja sitting on a boulder next to the flowing water. He had bathed and dressed in a fresh set of clothes, his old clothes were lying washed next to him.

"I felt very tired after washing the clothes. I thought I'd rest a little before climbing up," Ajja offered as explanation. Gautam nodded his head and did not press the matter. When Ajja was ready, Gautam picked up the wet clothes and towel and helped him up the hill.

"Why don't you rest a few minutes," he told Ajja when they reached the top. "You can open the shop late today." But Ajja couldn't open the shop late every day.

Gautam started accompanying Ajja down to the stream in the mornings, washing Ajja's dirty clothes along with his own and then helping him back up the hill after his bath. Then he would let Ajja lie down and rest while he himself went down and unlocked the cupboard, ready to service any customers who stopped by. In this new arrangement, Ajja usually came down and took over his seat a half hour later.

As the days passed, while Ajja's dizziness did not grow worse, his tiredness did and he let Gautam handle the transactions at the shop. A month into this new routine, Gautam finally asked Ajja if he wanted to see a doctor.

"I can go into town and get one, you know. You won't have to go anywhere you don't want to," Gautam said.

"And what will the doctor do?" Ajja retorted. "This is not just an infection that he can simply treat with some tablets. He will need to do many tests just to find out exactly what the problem is."

"Anyway, it's just old age, that's all," Ajja continued. "Time is catching up and it's better to let it have its way."

With that statement, Gautam knew that Ajja really didn't want any intervention in the progress of his condition. Gautam accepted that as Ajja's wish, perhaps not with as much conviction as Ajja himself displayed but with a certain amount of equanimity nevertheless. Gradually Ajja lost more of the strength in his limbs and the climb which used to take them five minutes started taking them fifteen minutes and then half an hour, with Gautam supporting Ajja all along the way.

In the end, Gautam ended up nursing Ajja for several months. It finally got to a stage where Gautam would take a bucket down to the stream and fetch water for Ajja's morning ablutions and bath.

Gautam bathed him, dressed him and tended to his every need through his final days. None of this perturbed Gautam, or Ajja for that matter. Ajja just accepted Gautam's help without ever showing that he felt grateful towards Gautam or that he owed Gautam a debt of any kind. Gautam, in turn, just stepped into the situation as he had into every situation which he had encountered with Ajja over the last decade.

Patiently, quietly and gently - Gautam nursed Ajja through his last few months. Not out of any sense of duty but because that is what was required. He had never done this before, devoting his time to the physical well-being of another person who grew more and more helpless as the days progressed. Towards the end, the old man was so totally helpless and so obviously dying that Gautam felt he was performing a task which was as futile as it was essential.

If Lakshmi and Dharmaji thought that Gautam's attitude was remarkable in those last few months, then Gautam found Ajja's to be even more so. It filled him with humility to watch another human proceed towards his own demise with a silent calmness which was so graceful that it was magnificent in its own way. Watching Ajja wither away, Gautam became acutely aware of the impermanence of his own physical body and the smallness of all the concerns he had taken on in a lifetime of occupying it. As he tended to Ajja without any fuss or uneasiness, Gautam realised that he too possessed the same calmness and grace which Ajja was exhibiting in such abundance.

As befitted a soul of such stature, it departed quietly in its sleep one night, and the rest of the world knew of its passing only when the old man simply refused to wake up the next morning. It was as if the fuss of the past year had not been because Ajja needed to suffer to atone for some old ill deed but because Gautam needed to learn some last lessons from Ajja's life. And when that last purpose had been served, that life simply extinguished itself.

A decade with Ajja had finally brought Gautam to the stage where he could react to such events with a graceful dignity. Dharmaji and Lakshmi did not grieve in an overt fashion either, because they had seen Ajja's condition deteriorate and because they accepted the inevitable with a simplicity which was innate to them.

The funeral was a sparsely attended affair with just a few locals. Gautam phoned Ramesh and Sandhya and they both made it in time for the last rites, which were performed at the banks of the river Kaveri. Gautam lit the funeral pyre in place of the first born son.

There was lunch for all those who attended the funeral. The proprietor of Bhagini Palace had wanted to host it but Lakshmi insisted that she would cook the entire meal with her own hands. Knowing her financial situation, the proprietor supplied her with all the provisions the previous evening. On the day of the funeral, he shut his restaurant and made his staff arrange the tables and chairs outside Lakshmi and Dharmaji's hut so that the guests could be accommodated comfortably.

After the meal, when Sandhya was ready to leave, she asked Gautam, "Will you continue to stay here or seek some place else now? What next, Gautam?"

Gautam could make out that she was not hoping to hear any specific words in his answer, she was just curious and concerned. He had not met Sandhya for the past few years and he could see now that she had well and truly moved on. She was here not because of some expectation from him but out of deference for the place Ajja had occupied in his life. Old links as strong as his and Sandhya's could weaken and change form but they would never fully disappear.

"I think I'll stay here," he replied. "I'm used to this place and I don't see what I'll gain by going somewhere else. Whatever I want to do, I can do here."

So he stayed. And because he was used to it, he kept up his routine, even though it felt very strange to go through those same actions without Ajja beside him. He ran Ajja's shop and, over the next few days, several of the people who stopped by asked about the old man. Gautam was there to tell them that Ajja had passed away and they were all sorry to hear that.

The days turned into months and even then, some people who were stopping by after a long time, asked about the old man. Gautam was there to give them their water and biscuits and tell them that the old man was no more. A few years later, a woman who had moved cities just before Ajja died and was finally back again, asked about the old man who used to sit here. And Gautam was still there, sitting in Ajja's chair and informing her that Ajja had died some years back.

All these people, and anyone else who gave Gautam's presence there any thought, saw a middle aged man, who looked like he could easily be pursuing greater success elsewhere, choosing to spend his years away in this secluded place. They saw him leading a lonely life. They saw him leading a dull and dreary life without any pain and pleasure to give it interludes of satisfaction.

It is the most common of human mistakes, to believe that our chosen path to happiness is the most direct route to it. We believe that anyone not walking the same path is misguided. We implicitly value situations which are rich in potential to bear the fruit we desire and any life which pursues goals we have not yet imagined looks like a fruitless life to us. Hence, to all these observers, Gautam's life looked like it was of no value to anyone, especially himself. They knew their lives to be rich with possibilities and imagined that he inhabited a bare and arid world which never bore fruit.

But Gautam was not here because he did not know where else to go or because he was stuck. On the contrary, he found himself to be truly free. He had progressed to a stage where he had left all his prisons behind. One by one they had all fallen by the wayside, unable to follow him where he was headed, and he carried no encumbrance with him anymore.

Where others saw a life without pleasures, Gautam experienced a contentment which can only come from not having any pleasure still left to satisfy. Where others saw a lonely man, Gautam felt that all the people whom he had ever met were here with him. He was keenly aware of all the strangers who stopped by and he was touched by all of them. Where others saw a life devoid of variations in colour, a life dulled by a lack of interests, Gautam lived a life free of darkness, absorbed in the most interesting pursuit of all.

For all of these reasons, while everyone else tried to take their lives to relatively better places, Gautam stayed where he was. Because after all, there is only one absolute and it is not in this world or any other. It is deep inside of us. It is always there, hidden behind all our thoughts and feelings. And if we finally reach it and begin living in it, then does it really matter where in the world we live?

#  About The Author

I was born in Delhi in nineteen sixty seven and spent the first twenty one years of my life there. For the past two and a half decades, Bengaluru (formerly known as Bangalore), has been my home. I live with my wife and daughter, who try to keep me humble and kind respectively. Needless to say, they rarely succeed.

This book is not being actively marketed, so if you liked this book, do write a review and recommend it those of your friends who you think will enjoy it. That's the only way other people will know about it.

If you want to send me feedback directly, send an email to vidyutkapurauthor@gmail.com.

Vidyut Kapur
