03:02 (2 page)

After a couple of hours, people seemed to have given up on the idea of moving someplace else for dinner. Another round of drinks was ordered, and some more snacks. Dhruv had been sitting at the far end of the table and he beckoned to me as he lit a cigarette and walked outside.

‘You must be feeling on top of the world,’ he said when I joined him.

I just smiled. He was slurring slightly and was more drunk than I had ever seen him in all the years I’d known him.

‘Aadi, do you know why I was asked to leave?’

I was stunned by the question. I’d assumed Dhruv had got some better offer, and that was why he was leaving. He had always been a rock star, the one we had looked up to; the one we were sure would one day get a shot at being CEO. It hit me like a sledgehammer to hear that he had been asked to go. I had no idea how to react so I just stared at him as he continued.

‘Look, you’ve earned this and you have every right to feel very proud, and I hope and know you’ll do well. Just remember one thing, will you?’

He leaned closer as if he were going to share some secret.

‘Just don’t get as sucked into those spreadsheets and slides as I did.’

I had no idea what he was talking about, and I held out a hand to steady him in case he lost his balance. Dhruv shook off my hand, looking slightly offended.

‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

He took a long drag of his cigarette before continuing.

‘It struck me for the first time a few months ago, perhaps way too late, but as they say, better late than never. What do we actually do? We invest money in ventures, give advice, take decisions—all to generate profits, increase valuation and one day either pitch them for an M&A deal or get them to an IPO. We don’t make anything or do anything that actually means something to anyone. Our lives essentially revolve around numbers on a spreadsheet. If those numbers are good, we prosper, and if they’re bad, we suffer.’

Another drag and he continued.

‘All those anniversaries and birthdays missed for a spreadsheet, because when the job’s gone, that’s all it really was, wasn’t it? And all those titles we chased for years, all worth nothing more than the bloody cards they were printed on. Sometimes I wonder what really matters and whether we’ve lost touch with it in chasing our careers.’

With that, he stumbled back inside, leaving me there, wondering what had got into him. Thankfully, Kartik was the next one out, and he immediately lightened the mood by screaming at the top of his voice: ‘Tequila shots!’

It was well after midnight when I got home. I was never a very heavy drinker and so was nowhere as wasted as the others, but the three (or was it four; clearly my assessment of my drunkenness was on the optimistic side) shots that Kartik had forced me to have had certainly taken their toll. The guard at the building gave me a look which told me he was both bemused at seeing me stumble home drunk, and also envious at others having much more fun than he was, sitting in his little cabin or on a rickety chair by the gate all day, every day.

The night had been a great one, but Dhruv’s outburst had bothered me. I made a mental note to catch up with him for coffee sometime and, in the sober light of day, figure out what was on his mind. Dhruv had started out as a senior and a boss, but, over time, had become one of my closest friends. I’d never told him this, but he was the person I’d aspired to be ever since I began working for him. In many ways, he was my role model, and to see him so bitter had rankled.

I collapsed on the sofa with a bottle of cold water and finished it in a few, long drags. I lay there for a while and then got up to turn off the lights in the study. As I entered the room, I saw the old box in the corner where it had been ever since I’d moved into this apartment. I had not opened it for years, but today something made me tear open the tape that held it shut.

Inside lay dust-covered reminders of a life I had long left behind. Medals, trophies, certificates. I had been what my coaches at school and college had called a ‘natural athlete’. I didn’t know about that, but what I did know is that I loved playing every sport I got a chance to try my hand at. I was on the track team, I was on the cricket team, I played tennis and I learned karate for years, ending up with a black belt by the time I was seventeen. My coach in college kept telling me to try for the big league in cricket. He thought I could make it to the Indian team if I just tried hard enough and stuck at it. He even went as far as to get forms for an academy that groomed fast bowlers.

When you’re seventeen and someone shows you dreams like that, it’s hard not to get seduced.

Along the way, I also got really interested in the military, read up all about it, and began to dream of joining the Army. This was perhaps natural: both my uncle and grandfather had been in the Army. So, in addition to sports, I joined the National Cadet Corps back in school and stuck with it till college. The dusty box held several medals and certificates from my time as a cadet as well. When I was contemplating what to do after school, those were my two options: pursuing sports as a career, or joining the Army. I was leaning towards the latter, especially when I learned that a career in the Army meant a lot of opportunities to continue pursuing sports; that it was actually encouraged, as shown by the many Olympic athletes who came from a military background.

India had always had an all-volunteer Army, and the NCC was designed both as a way to expose youngsters to the military as well as create a pool of trained people who could support the authorities in times of crisis, especially natural disasters. Many of the kids who joined the NCC with me did so because it would look cool on their résumé, but for me it served a very clear purpose. It was my stepping stone to the military. While others bitched about the discipline and marches, I embraced them. My years of being in the NCC, my family background and my athletics were all going to be factors that worked in my favour when it came to applying to the Army.

In my second year of college, I started reading up on what it would take to crack the Combined Defence Services Exam and the fitness tests that followed. Then came the cold dose of reality and a shock my father perhaps never recovered from. My uncle, Baba’s beloved younger brother, someone who had been a friend and a mentor to me, died in action in Kashmir, killed in a terrorist ambush. Coming on top of the fact that Baba had lost his own father in action, he forbade me from joining the Army. Then came the arguments and the fights. Baba reminding me of responsibility, of the fact that we were a middle-class family and could not afford to chase fanciful dreams; of how, when he retired, I would need to ensure I could be settled. He reminded me of how hard my grandfather and uncle’s deaths in action had hit the family. Of how the family could not handle another of its sons coming back in a flag-draped coffin.

I argued, I fought and then, ultimately, I gave in. I remember the look on my coach’s face when I told him I was going to prepare for MBA entrance exams and could no longer play on the team, and that I would not try out for the Indian Military Academy. But I also remember Baba’s face when I got offers from several of the top business schools in the country and finally joined an IIM. It was the first time I had seen him smile since my uncle died.

I guess you can never please everyone, can you?

The Man of the Tournament trophy and the Best Cadet shield I held in my hand still felt good after all these years, but if Dhruv thought our jobs were all just numbers on a spreadsheet, weren’t these nothing more than hunks of cheap metal? No, I didn’t regret anything I had done. Baba had made his career in the government, and when I got my first bonus, I realized I was earning more than he had after decades of working. My job had allowed us to get the best treatment for Ma when she was diagnosed with stage three cancer, and to ensure Baba was comfortable when she passed. I had hated my old man at the time, but I also realized that a government salary like his would never have covered Ma’s chemo costs and all the experimental medicines we tried in our desperate bid to save her.

Life is full of hard choices, and I had made mine. We just have to roll with the choices we make.

I threw the trophy and the shield back in the box.

Today was not a day to think of old dreams but to celebrate newer ones coming true. Just a couple of years ago I myself would have considered it a pipe dream, but now I could see a clear line of sight to it.

Vice President, head of the Mumbai office, our biggest in India, reporting directly to the CEO. The logical next step was to be groomed to be the CEO. At thirty, age was on my side, and I was in no real hurry. One of Dhruv’s earliest pieces of career advice to me had been that the patient bird got the worm.

I went to my bedroom but didn’t feel like changing. It was a Sunday the next day anyway, and I had asked the maid to take the day off knowing that I would probably want to loll around in bed, nursing a hangover. Then a walk down to Starbucks for a coffee to get myself to join the ranks of the living, and then figure out what I would do with the rest of the day. Most Sundays saw me in office or on calls—it was officially our day off but, in our business, days off meant little since most of my projects were with Indian entrepreneur-led ventures that worked 24x7 or basically whenever the entrepreneur wanted to work or needed advice or help. But this Sunday I would celebrate and give work a pass. It would be nice to have a day with nothing planned and nothing to do, for a change.

As I lay down on my bed, I realized that my grand plans of taking the Sunday off depended entirely on whether or not I got a mail or call from one of the entrepreneurs we were working with. Till that happened, though, I would continue to indulge myself with the fantasy that I would indeed have a rare day off from thinking about work.

My phone was right next to me and I picked it up to make sure the alarm was off. The last thing I wanted was for an accidental alarm to spoil my grand plans to sleep in. As I picked it up, I saw a message from Kartik. His spelling was a great indicator of just how wasted he was.

Grate party. Had tots of fun. Congrass, Boss!

I had been sleeping the dreamless sleep of the contentedly drunk when my eyes snapped open. I had heard something loud, like the pop of a firecracker, only duller. My head ached a bit, and my throat was dry. When I picked up my phone to check the time, the screen was blank and refused to flicker to life though I pressed the button repeatedly. Perhaps I had forgotten to charge it. I cursed whichever idiot had burst a firecracker at this unearthly hour as I checked my watch on the side table.

The time was 03:02.

I lay back down on the bed and then decided that, since I was up, I might as well drink some water. Hydration would do wonders for my parched throat and make the hangover more bearable. I walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge, only to see that it was dark inside. The water inside was still cold, so the fridge must have turned off very recently. Figuring a surge had caused it to trip, and that was what had made the noise that woke me up, I walked towards the junction box and turned on the light switch in the living room on the way.

Nothing.

Looked like the mains had tripped. I fetched the small torch I had in the kitchen and went to the junction box. To my surprise, when I flashed the torch at it, I saw that none of the switches had tripped.

That was when I heard all the voices. Why the hell were so many people up and talking at bloody three in the morning?

I began walking to the balcony but stopped short at the sight of something I had never seen before.

The whole of Mumbai, as far as I could see, was dark. It was as if a giant, unseen hand had taken a brush and, in one massive stroke, painted all of the city black. All except for a bright flame in the direction of the airport. Was there a fire somewhere?

I had the night guard’s mobile number saved on my phone, but when I picked it up to make the call, I was reminded that my phone was dead. I walked to the intercom to call him, but there was only static. Looked like the mother of all power failures had hit us. Perhaps it was a transformer or power station on fire somewhere. That might explain the flame.

There was nothing I could do about it at three in the morning, and certainly not when I was still half-drunk and feeling the onset of a massive hangover. I figured that things would be sorted out sooner rather than later, and my fretting about it wouldn’t help. So I finished the bottle of water and went back to bed. It didn’t take a lot for me to blank out the voices and fall back to sleep.

When I woke next, it was due to a shrill noise. On instinct, I grabbed my phone, wondering if I had set an alarm by mistake, but the screen was still dead. My watch told me that the time was 7:15, and after a few seconds I was awake enough to figure that the noise was coming from outside. When I walked around my apartment, I realized that the power was still out and, looking out of the balcony, I saw groups of people huddled around the various housing societies in the area. Someone was blowing a whistle trying to get people in one of the societies opposite mine to stop shouting and pay attention to him. I couldn’t remember the last time electricity had gone for such a long period of time, and it was no wonder people were getting concerned and, from the sounds of the occasional raised voice, pissed off.

I took a quick shower, the heater not working meant that there was only cold water, but in a way that was good, because it was just the thing I needed to fully wake myself up. A few minutes later, I was in front of the lift and realized that it too was not working. The people across the corridor were an elderly retired couple, and I had barely exchanged a couple of pleasantries with them in the four years I had stayed on the same floor as them. Today, Mrs Guha gingerly opened the door and looked at me, her eyes filling with tears.

‘Nothing’s working. His pacemaker is not working either. I can’t call the hospital since the landlines are down as well, and we can’t walk down the stairs.’