Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) (13 page)

‘That’s good to hear, James.’ The chairman of the grants committee could not hide his relief. In the year gone by Deahl was largely responsible for MIT spending twelve million more than the budgeted expenditure. The institute had been pulled up for that. ‘But I thought you said four assignments. You have put up only three.’

‘I am coming to my last project in a minute.’ He pulled up the last two slides of his presentation on the screen.

When Cardoza saw what appeared on the screen, he suddenly straightened up. His body divorced itself from the back of the chair and moved forward. His elbows rested on the table in front and his palms pushed against his cheek. He continued to stare at the screen in shock.

Deahl had taken up the same research assignment that Cardoza had kicked out of the door. On the screen in front of the committee were the words: ‘Correlation between poverty and gun-related violence. Does alleviation of poverty change group behaviour and result in reduced instances of gun crimes?’

And when the next slide came up, Cardoza nearly let out a muted scream.

Against the name of the organization sanctioning the grant was ‘Department of Social Justice and Equality (DSJE)—Government of Arizona’. He knew the moment he saw it that the NRA had influenced Arizona, a state under the control of the Republicans. The DSJE fronting the project would lend credibility, something which an NRA-backed assignment could never have provided. The slide also had details of the sponsorship amount.

Twenty million dollars was a huge sum by any standards. Sounds of excitement resonated in the room.

Cardoza was agitated. He wanted to oppose the research citing professional impropriety, but then something held him back. It wasn’t appropriate to interfere in each other’s domains. The research had first come to him. He had turned it down. He had done his bit. If someone else took it up, it was not his problem. Also, he didn’t want to play party pooper at a time when everyone was so excited about the twenty million dollars.

As he walked out of the meeting, part of him kept needling him into wondering if he had done the right thing by keeping quiet.

22

April–June 2007

Mumbai

It was a peaceful Saturday evening. Aditya was in the living room, watching the replay of the India vs Bangladesh World Cup cricket match held in March that year, when his phone rang. He answered and glanced quickly in the direction of the kitchen. Cirisha was stirring up some veggies for dinner.

‘Hello?’ he whispered into the phone and walked towards the bedroom.

‘Adi. That bastard screwed us.’

‘Who?’

‘Deven. Deven Khatri.’

‘Why? What happened?’

‘He forged my signature on multiple cheques and transferred ten crore rupees into his account with Citibank.’

‘What? Are you serious, Shivinder?’

‘Why will I kid about this, Adi?’

‘When did this happen?’

‘It’s been happening over the last fortnight. He has been withdrawing small sums to make sure that it remains below the radar. Today I casually logged into the account to see how much cash we have lying idle. That’s when I noticed it. I was livid. I still am. I walked up to him and confronted him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘Nothing. He just picked up his bag and walked out. I have been trying to call him. His phone is switched off. He is not at home either. I don’t know where he is.’

‘What a jerk! I know the ACP. Should we call him and lodge a complaint?’ Aditya was panicking now.

‘Are you out of your mind? What will we say about how this account was created and how we came into so much money?’

‘Hmm …’ Aditya felt a bit foolish.

‘Thank God I caught him before he could clean out the account.’

‘Send someone to his house to pick him up and thrash him. He can’t do this to us and get away.’

‘I will kick him in his balls till they come out of his mouth. He can’t run away with my cash.’

‘Once you decide on what to do, let me know. Cirisha is around. Can’t talk.’ He hung up and turned around to get back to his cricket match. He froze when he saw Cirisha standing right behind him. He was not sure how much of the conversation she had heard.

‘Was it Shivinder?’

‘Yes.’

‘What happened? Who were you guys planning to thrash?’

‘Deven has apparently run away with ten crores of Shivinder’s money. He is now trying to locate him and recover the money.’

‘I always knew this Shivinder was a crazy guy. But how does this concern you, Adi?’ she asked him once they had settled down in bed. ‘Looks like the guys in his team are following his lead. They learnt fraud from him and are now cheating him. Do you have to be friends with him?’

‘You are never here, and yet you have a view on who my friends are, who I spend my time with!’ an irritated Aditya snapped back. Cirisha’s timing was wrong. A piece of advice was the last thing Aditya wanted after hearing that he had just lost ten crores from the fortune which was supposed to be jointly owned by him and Shivinder.

‘I’m only asking you to be careful, Aditya. He is like a scorpion inside your shoe. You will never know what bit you till you reach a point of no return.’

‘I am not a child, Cirisha. I can handle it. I know what is good for me and what isn’t.’ His face had a ruthlessly cold look. It was as if he didn’t really care. She was worried sick. In Shivinder, she saw a selfish, corrupt and immoral devil. She knew that if Aditya were to fall into his trap, he would never be able to extricate himself.

That night the simmering tension transformed into a full-blown war. There was a huge argument and, like every other argument of theirs, this one too led to a nasty conversation on the need for Cirisha to be in Massachusetts at the cost of family. There was no dearth of aspiration in the two of them, but for Aditya everything was measured in terms of money.

The fight that night was a clear indication of the fact that the distance was taking its toll. Aditya was fed up of the constant state of flux in their lives. ‘When was the last time we took a vacation, Cirisha? Do you even remember? I am beginning to wonder if I matter to you, or is it only your MIT, Michael Cardoza and research projects that are paramount.’ There was sadness in his eyes.

Pangs of guilt overcame Cirisha. She had not bargained for this when she advised Aditya on Shivinder. She backed away from the discussion. But one thing was clear. She needed to figure out a way to be in Mumbai more often. What started off as a one-week-Massachusetts–three-weeks-Mumbai arrangement, was now divided into two weeks each. Things had to change.

That night after making sure that Aditya was asleep, she called Cardoza. He had just got into work. ‘Last night Hillary Clinton announced her intention to run for President in 2008. So now we have Edwards and Hillary who have confirmed. Let’s see who else joins the fight. It’s getting interesting, particularly for the Democrats.’ Cardoza, like every other American, followed the presidential elections with a fair bit of enthusiasm.

‘I like her. It will be interesting to see how she fares. Two exciting years ahead.’

‘Absolutely,’ Cardoza said and then after a pause added, ‘Is there a problem, Cirisha? Why are you sounding low? Is everything OK?’ Cardoza was extremely perceptive. He had an amazing knack of figuring out that things were not the way they needed to be.

Cirisha was quite candid. ‘Michael, I’m having trouble at home. I have mentioned it to you in the past, briefly. I am beginning to feel that India needs me more. I don’t know what to do. How do I manage? I don’t want to give up research. I am so close to qualifying for my tenure too.’

‘I understand, Cirisha. Living a nomadic life is not easy. And you have been doing it for so long.’

‘I was wondering if I can get a break. Six months. I’ll try and sort things out by then. A sabbatical, maybe.’

‘Or maybe even get Aditya to come to the USA.’

‘I wish.’ Cirisha eyes were moist.

‘But hey! Why do you want to take a break? I am sure we can work something out.’

‘Six months is a long period, Michael. Moreover, I do not have any serious live project in India. There’s not much to work on.’

‘Wait.’ There was some noise on the other end as if he was riffling through some papers. He was back in a minute. ‘Cirisha, you there?’

‘Yes, Michael.’

‘Tell me, where is Dherevi?’

‘Pardon me!’

‘Dherevi … apparently it’s a slum in Mumbai. The largest in Asia.’

‘Oh … Dharavi.’

‘Yes, yes … the same one. It is D.H.A.R.A.V.I,’ Cardoza spelt out the name.

‘What about it, Michael?’

‘Last week the National Health Association came to us with a grant of two million dollars to study life in urban slums—Urban Curse or Urban Boon. They want us to study two of the five biggest slums in the world and help them conclude whose residents are better off: the ones in the urban slums or those in the rural areas. Behavioural patterns need to be studied. What makes people leave the comfort of their villages and towns and migrate to slums in urban areas.’

‘Wow! There comes Batman, saviour of my Gotham!’ said an excited Cirisha. ‘But Michael, two million seems like a small budget.’

‘That’s what I was going to tell them. But now after this conversation with you, maybe I will take it on. If there is any shortfall, I will ask MIT to bear it from their overall research allocations. They are in any case making shitloads of money on the NRA-sponsored research.’

‘It’s not NRA-sponsored, Michael.’

‘Yes. Yes. We all know who is behind that, don’t we?’ Cardoza was sarcasm personified. For the first time that day, Cirisha smiled. She knew how much Cardoza hated Deahl’s research project. More so after Cardoza had rejected it on the grounds of his principles and values.

‘Anyway, Cirisha,’ Cardoza continued, ‘the National Health Association has given us a choice of five slums—Neza-Chalco-Itza in Mexico, Orangi in Karachi, Pakistan, Dharavi in India and there is one in Cape Town and one in Nairobi. I forget their names. These are the five largest slums in the world.’

‘OK.’

‘If we decide to take it on, we can do the study in Mumbai and in Mexico. Two Third World countries with significant economic diversity. What do you say?’

‘Sounds interesting. Would it be possible for you to send me the research request? It’ll help me structure my thoughts.’

‘Right away.’

‘When do we have to start?’

‘Well, as far as I am concerned, you are already on it.’ And he laughed. ‘Jokes apart, when you get back here, we can fine-tune the research deliverables and get on with it.’

‘I will be back in early March, Michael. Is that all right?’

‘Suits me.’

‘Thanks, Michael. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for this.’

‘Well, don’t then!’ he laughed. ‘Isn’t it late in the night there?’

‘Yes. It’s around 12.30 a.m.’

‘Go to sleep now. Goodnight, Cirisha. And say hi to Aditya.’

The next morning, when she mentioned this to Aditya, he was quite ecstatic. Three to four months, maybe longer, at a stretch was quite a luxury by any standards.

In a couple of weeks, Cirisha was on a flight to Massachusetts for a briefing from the National Health Association on the research deliverables. Thankfully, by the time she was able to present her assessment and methodology to the board and to Cardoza, the budget for the research had been raised to a comfortable four million dollars. There was no need to dig into the university corpus for funds.

That evening Cirisha was in her room, taking stock of what she needed to carry back with her to India, when Richard walked in.

He looked quite harried. Dishevelled hair and tired eyes. It looked as if he hadn’t slept for a few nights. Cirisha was worried when she saw him in that state.

‘Richard! Are you OK? Where were you the whole of last week?’

‘I was travelling on work, Cirisha. Just got back this morning. Heard that you were here and were leaving today. Just came around to say bye. We will all miss you.’

‘Aww Richard! You are such a sweetheart.’ Cirisha hugged him. ‘You take care of yourself.’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

‘And go get some sleep. You look so sleep deprived.’

‘I’m working too hard, Cirisha. This research on guns and crime is too stressful. James is paranoid about the results. They say that if you torture data hard enough, it sings. In James’s case, he tortures—not the data but the data-gatherer—so much that even he starts to sing James’s tune. He doesn’t listen to anyone. He draws his own inferences and conclusions. Some of them highly debatable. But who is to tell? Eventually no one will question him given his stature.’

‘You mean to say he is faking data?’

‘No, no. That’s not what I am saying. You can always look at the same coin in two different ways. What you interpret is a result of your discretion. James is interpreting data to suit his hypothesis.’ Cirisha had a hunch that Richard was not telling her the entire truth. But it was not in her nature to probe unnecessarily.

‘Won’t it get stuck at the peer review stage?’ Every academician knew that it is mandatory for research, before it got published in any journal, to be reviewed and cleared by a set of peers or individuals of repute. ‘None of the peers will give him a positive review if James is not convincing in his report.’