Chapter 90
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29th September, 2007:
Am I not meant to have a single peaceful night's worth of sleep, really?
If I continue like this, I'm certain to become an insomniac. When I didn't have a job, I had no sleep. Now that I have the gold mine in my hand, I still don't have any sleep. What is my destiny leading to? Why is everything turning into such a mess? I thought that after all the troubles, I was so close to the next step of fulfilling my dreams so that I could have Ishaani at the end of it all.
But what am I supposed to do if she's the one standing in my way now? After what happened last night, I don't know what to do anymore. The panic, the fear... How can I leave her like this and head to Sydney? If this is how she's already right now, I can only imagine what is to happen the moment I step out of the house. And that too, for two whole years! If Ishaani had friends apart from me or had good judgment in people, I wouldn't have been worried at all. But she doesn't. She's the worst judge of them, and for the amount of trust issues she has, it's astounding how she ALWAYS ends up trusting the wrong person!
Maybe people are right. This is what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket. This is what happens when you make your life revolve around one person. Maybe this is what happens when the universe decides to abandon you into an infinite spell of darkness. She says that I'm her world, but how do I tell her that she's my Universe? You still can find another world to embrace, but what happens when you leave the Universe for the sake of itself?
It's close to dawn now and I'm devoid of any sleep. All that I can do is sit and sip on the mug of coffee beside me, hoping to catch the sunrise from my room. I've always been a light sleeper, and you have to be one with a job like this. Your services can be required any time - be it taking Mota Babuji to the airport as early at four in the morning or to wait up for him to as late as three in the morning in case he was staying back for work.
Maybe that's why I'm capable of pulling out all-nighters without worrying much about sleep. I manage to function without rest as well. I think I have a record of 32 hours without sleeping so far. Ishaani hates this habit of mine, but I can't help it. We all have out good habits and bad habits now, don't we? And after what happened last night, how do you even expect me to sleep?
So all I did was open the manuscript and give the climax its finishing touch. Well, their story begun at the end. So this was it; this was the end. Bittersweet. Just like he always pictured it to be. Life never gave one second chances now, did it? It gave a lot of chances, but not a second one. Ishaani says that second chances always exist in life. And I argue, saying how we lived and died only once. So it was one chance only. What's gone is gone; you never get another chance to bring it back. And so does Mota Babuji believe as well, both of us being the realists we are in things like these.
But Ishaani begs to differ (and propbably the only thing she doesn't agree with her Papa for). She says that what's gone is gone, but life is a boomerang. It has ways to coming back to you even though you don't know it. And I certainly don't know it. She's an optimist; I'm a realist. And yet in spite of all practicality, her optimism warms my heart. Well, that was the power of hope. It did things to you that nothing else could. It could make you believe in fighting all the odds even though all it truly was just the faintest of glimmers. You don't know what's to happen in the end, but atleast you know that you are not going to go down without trying.
Maybe second chances truly exist. Who knows? But what do I do with the opportunity of a lifetime that God has given me right now? Oh, a week ago I'd have given an arm and a leg for something like this to happen. It's an impossible miracle! A driver's son being accepted into the University of Sydney! Sydney! Australia! Do you know how alien and extraordinary it sounds for people like us? The chance to visit another country for people like us is like a universe in itself for the rich and the blessed.
We are souls who think that Lonavala is a heaven and the best place we could afford and deserve to visit, that too because of the times Mota Babuji has to go there. For me, Manali was as though God had given me a week's worth of impossible happiness with travelling. What was I supposed to say for Australia then? It was Australia! And not just completing my masters from the esteemed university but also a six-months paid internship post that!
Do you even know how impossibly insane it is to achieve something like this on your own merit, especially when the City of Opportunities itself had none to offer to me? Punya ki dharti, it's called. And yet what I got to see in these two months was enough to make me realize that all that glitters in not good. Because it isn't. And the end of the day, hard work and ambition have to bow down to fate. If fate chose to bless, success would find its way into the light after the painful journey. If not, no matter what anyone did, nothing would work out.
And fate chose to bless me with something much better. Something much, much better than I'd ever dared to dream about. How could I be so arrogant and turn it down now when the stars were finally glowing in my favour? But how could I be so selfish to leave the star of my life in the darkest of skies all alone? She would be bait to the leering darkness of the world waiting to consume her.
Maa says that God never blessed those who refused his benevolence and turn their face away from his given opportunity. But didn't God not bless those too who left their loved ones when they needed someone the most? Argh! What am I going to do? I need to make a decision and quick. I've been trying to decide upon something definite for the past eight hours but nothing. Every time, I hit a dead-end. It's seems so stupid to give up on this. And yet, it feels like the most logical thing to do when I think about all the other odds.
Only God can show me the way now.
Ranveer sighed and shut his diary, staring out of the window pensively. What was he supposed to do? To do what's right or to do what's easy? The right thing would be to face all the odds and challenges and to fight for what he truly deserved. The easy thing would be to simply reject the offer and keep trying for a job in Mumbai. Atleast Ishaani would be with him. The prospect of staying away from her for two years was something he did not look forward to at all. And yet he knew that it was a sacrifice he would have to make for the greater good.
Draining the last remnants of the coffee, Ranveer saw the dawn break out through the horizon in its usual explosion of spell-binding colours, greeting this part of the world with a new day. The night had ended, and along with it the suffocating mass of darkness that had claimed his thoughts. Light was breaking through the crevices now, bringing along with it a new hope. This was just the beginning. There was no way he could give up so easily. Not an option at all because there was only one - to succeed or to die succeeding.
He could not fall so weak now, not when so much was changing so quickly. At the end of the day, it was not just Ishaani whose hopes were riding upon him. There were his parents and his Mota Babuji too. He had to think about everything before taking a decision. And he had to have a sane conversation with Ishaani as soon as time permitted him. A new day meant a new battle. And Ranveer knew the number of battles he had to fight today. For survival. For growth. For his dreams. For the people he loved. For Ishaani. And above all, for himself. To make a stand in the world.
For now, he had to fight the first battle of his day at the stock markets. He had to place the final domino on the stack after weeks of hard work and even more precarious strategizing that had a 95% chance of backfiring. Today would determine whether he deserved to pursue what God had given him or no. He'd now left the decision upon the fate of whatever was meant to happen today.
The thought of what was to be his fate at the stock market today was what made his intestines knot up in apprehension first.
-x-
Ranveer stood at a safe distance behind, smiling at the frenzied traders in satisfaction. Yet the smile didn't reach his eyes. His eyes had a different glint - the glint of a lion waiting for its kill. The Tata Motors stocks had been performing terribly for a couple of months now and several of The Parekh Empire's portfolios were showing a loss. Something had to be done quickly to stem the flow of the broking firm's bleeding losses - manipulations had to be put into place.
And hence had begun the experiment. For several weeks, there were excessive shares in the markets, courtesy of frenzied traders doing away with them before they became a bad investment in terms of trading. The prices kept falling lower and lower until the shares couldn't be sold without huge losses; they couldn't be salvaged anymore. Only a miracle could save them. Or a good gamble.
For more than two months now, Ranveer had been buying away the company's shares on the market a little by little, leaving all the other traders astounded. The traders disregarded him at first. What did the boy know anyway? Even Harshad Parekh had remained skeptical of what Ranveer was up to, instantly guessing his tactic. This was not a regular crisis that could be solved so easily. But he decided to trust him anyway. Well, Ranveer had never been wrong before, then why would he be today? But as the days passed by, the traders grew apprehensive.
The boy without the name had his sole focus on the Tata Motors shares.
Years of experience had taught them that the boy was exceptional. He was Harshad Parekh's arm and foot. He was Harshad Parekh's brain. And the boy with no name had never made a mistake. And as the days grew by, the prices of the company started increasing slowly yet steadily. Reforms were being announced and the prices kept soaring higher, just like a series of dominoes unleashed.
And then there was chaos.
In the last ten days, the price of the Tata Motors shares had touched a new high ever since the company had put forth the proposal idea of the Tata Nano. The frenzied buyers were now buying and hollering away like a pack of wolves just as Ranveer retracted from the buying race. He'd been watching the fun for the past three days without doing a single piece of trading. The traders pushed the prices up even higher by the abnormal demand, and the latest policy changes in the company had pushed the prices to its highest since last year - more than double the price of what Ranveer had bought them at.
Today, Harshad Parekh and he stood behind the glass on an elevated section of the market, staring away at the madness in delight.
"What are your brains really made of, Ranveer?" asked Harshad, looking at Ranveer fondly.
He was an exceptional strategist and analyst of the share market, but he'd outdone himself this time. Ranveer smiled slowly, his expression shrewd.
"Demand pushes prices, prices push supply. Panic reigns over sense, and we have a bunch of frazzled competitors," replied Ranveer, his eyes how pulsating with the fire of what was to come next.
Every minute was bringing him closer to the final countdown of the craziest strategy he'd implemented till date that only worked because the company introduced the blueprint for the Tata Nano that had taken the country by a storm with its idea ten days ago.
"Those traders are terrified of you. They've gone bonkers," remarked Harshad, chuckling softly. Both of them knew that the crazy tactic getting pulled off was just as much of a miracle as much it was skill. Ranveer looked at his mentor and smiled.
"They just took the bait," replied Ranveer modestly while Harshad patted his back.
"What am I going to do without you, Ranveer?" questioned Harshad heavily, and the twinkle of the nearing triumph in Ranveer's eyes suddenly simmered. Oh, the question was burning his insides now and if there was one person who could help him, it was his Mota Babuji.
"Mota Babuji, do you think I did the right thing by taking up the scholarship?"
"What do you mean?" asked Harshad, looking at Ranveer in surprise. This was a question he was clearly not expecting. Ranveer gulped nervously, knowing that this was going to be very difficult to put across.
"I don't know... I mean leaving you and Ishaani..." replied Ranveer, letting the sentence trail when he didn't know how to phrase his thoughts. Harshad stared at him keenly for a couple of minutes before speaking softly.
"I thought that you had the fire to achieve something in life, Ranveer."
"I want to do this so badly!" replied Ranveer instantly, and Harshad relaxed. Ranveer shook his head and stared at the electronic board ahead of him, afraid to look at his mentor now because of what he was about to say.
"Ishaani's having second thoughts about it. I'm not so sure anymore," he said quickly in a single breath, as though slowing down would mean a definite slap on his face. He'd be getting that any way, but atleast speaking it out so fast would be like gulping away the bitter medicine in one go. Harshad remained silent for several minutes and stared at Ranveer, his face blank. And yet his eyes spoke volumes. Ranveer felt his soul shiver at the power the older man's gaze radiated.
"Everything comes at a price, Ranveer. Never forget that. It's only those who are brave to pay the price are those who truly become something in life," spoke Harshad finally at length, his eyes sagely scrutinizing Ranveer's own ones. Ranveer sighed tiredly.
"Is that the price of success?" he asked, looking at his mentor with a resignation that threatened to reveal itself in his eyes.
No matter how many times Harshad had told him about the unfair price of success, he had never truly understood its true meaning until this moment where he stood at the crossroad of what was right and what was easy.
"That's the cost of success, Ranveer," corrected Harshad, looking at the former sympathetically. "You have to lose to gain some," he added, shrugging his shoulders as though trying to throw of some of the burdens of success from upon his own shoulders.
"But what about Ishaani?" asked Ranveer, and the worry in his voice didn't go amiss. Harshad turned his fullest attention towards Ranveer, who in turn did the same. The floor of yelling people disappeared, leaving behind in its wake a quiet seclusion where only the other existed.
"She's your best friend. She's the one who's the happiest for you," stated Harshad, wondering why Ranveer had suddenly become hesitant about something he was ecstatic about just yesterday.
"I don't think so. She's happy but she doesn't want me to go," revealed Ranveer reluctantly, not knowing whether to tell his mentor about what had elapsed last night or no.
"When did she say that?" asked Harshad sharply, his eyes suddenly alert.
"In her room, last night. She didn't look too alright to me. Close to a nervous breakdown," confessed Ranveer guiltily, and he saw the surge of vexation enter the older man's pair of usually gentle eyes.
"She looked perfectly alright to me till yesterday morning. What happened?" he asked tartly.
Ranveer knew that this was the last thing that his mentor would have wanted to happen, especially after all the trouble he'd gone through in convincing Ranveer to take up the offer. But he too, like Ranveer, knew that there must have been a driving force that had pushed Ishaani into saying something like this.
"Baa..." whispered Ranveer, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice, even though he felt guilty about it the next moment.
Say what they would, she was his Mota Babuji's mother at the end of the day and his mistress. He couldn't even think of her badly. He didn't have the right to form opinions, no matter how many appeared in his mind. Servants were only supposed to use their hands and feet, not their ears and tongue. And the least preferred of all were their brains.
Harshad grit his teeth in anger and Ranveer hastened to speak.
"But that's not the point, Mota Babuji. She'll be going to the US in a year and a half's time. What then?" asked Ranveer, hoping that an optimal solution popped up, just like the assignment problems in his Maths class. Harshad sighed deeply.
"You can't plan your life in accordance to hers, Ranveer. Say so that you go with her to the US for four years. What then? Tomorrow if she gets married, what will you do?" asked Harshad suddenly, his eyes suddenly holding Ranveer's own gaze in a strong lock.
Ranveer felt his eyes quiver at the strength of the former's gaze and instantly retracted them away. It was as though Harshad was trying to X-Ray his soul and extract secrets that weren't meant to come upon his lips.
Loyalty before love.
It would be a sign of treachery if his mentor knew about it right now. Now was not the time for this. He was a servant. Servants didn't deserve princesses. A self-made prince did.
"I... I didn't-" stuttered Ranveer, too afraid to say anything further in case he spoke anything that he shouldn't have. Harshad may have loved him like a son, but Ranveer knew that there would always be some boundaries between that weren't meant to cross. This was real life, not a novel. Harshad sighed, before putting his hands upon his shoulders and looked serious.
"Ranveer, there's never a second chance in life. Never a chance to gain lost opportunities. And what you've gotten right now is God's sign of telling you how much more you need to achieve in life. For your parents and for us. But above all, for yourself. You've just begun. If you let things tie you down like this, you'll never be able to get anywhere in life. And you are doing it for Ishaani only, no? To live up to all the hopes she has from you?"
Ranveer stared at Harshad silently before nodding his head solemnly.
"Will I be a bad friend if I chose my career over her?" asked Ranveer after some time, the noise from around the area now suddenly coming into focus again in an excruciating shove of reality. He looked around, as though disoriented with the sudden mass of people that seemed to pop out of nowhere. And then Ranveer gasped.
The trading! The deadline!
"There is no choice here, Ranveer. Don't create circumstances that don't exist in the first place," replied Harshad, snapping out of the spell just like Ranveer. The latter looked at him as he caught on to the implied meaning of his statement and smiled confidently. Well, they had created a circumstance that didn't exist in the first place. And now was the time to rectify that.
"Speaking of which, how long?" asked Ranveer, his eyes now upon the clock.
"Wait till three."
Ranveer smiled and sighed patiently. His heart considerably felt better. Yes, he'd convince Ishaani to see it his way. And he didn't like staying away from her for two years either. How could you expect to stay away from your life for so long? The person who is the reason you live?
It's as though I'm abandoning my life just so that I could have a life with her. Yes... I'd make her see things my way. I'd convince her.
Ranveer looked up and saw the time. 3PM. Looking beside him, he nodded at his mentor triumphantly. It was time. He walked down the staircase and made his way amidst the din towards the counter.
"Checkmate."
The code word was said. The next moment, the transaction happened. 12,00,000 shares sold at Rs. 382. The entire market was struck silent as their eyes fell upon Ranveer, who wore a satisfied smile upon his face. The next moment, an explosion of harried voices and even louder hollering broke out as Ranveer walked straight out of the BSE building, following his mentor in a silent walk of grace with his hands in his pocket.
Eyes turned around the two of them both in envy and anger. Damn, the boy was brilliant! That Parekh man was a lucky cow! What wouldn't they do to have someone like the boy with no name under their wing! But there was no use to try. His loyalty was unquestioned and they knew the way he revered the older man.
Grudgingly getting back to the hollering, the traders yelled harder in frustration. Damage control wouldn't help because there was no way to recover the humongous amount of profits that the Parekh Broking Solutions had managed to hog away. Ranveer and Harshad both looked back at the floor one final time and smiled at each other. How sweet were the fruits of patience and hard work! And of brains.
How the two men loved the games of the stock markets!
-x-
The prices of the shares had fallen back to normal by the time the markets shut down for the day. The inflation that demand had created was cut out with the excessive supply and the prices had fallen accordingly. The Parekh Empire was the only one who walked away with twice the profits than was investing, making it the highest grossing profits from the trading after the Reliance gamble six years ago.
Some traders managed to take away minor profits too, but that didn't matter. But the time they'd begun trading on them, the prices had already crossed Rs. 270. The portfolios with this had not just recovered the principal losses but had also managed to scoop up exceptional amount of profits as well. Check and mate. And with it, Ranveer got his answer. He knew what was to be done.
By the time he reached his room that evening, he'd made up his mind. He would take up the offer. And he'd convince Ishaani in favour of it and reassure her about it too. All he needed now was to find her and talk to her about it. He could always make her understand and he knew that she cared for him enough to put his happiness as the top of her priority.
"Ishaani's left this for you in the morning," said Amba the moment Ranveer entered the room.
She walked up to him and handed him over a note. Ranveer frowned but accepted it from his mother nonetheless. The moment he opened the note and read it however, he felt his heart stop.
Don't try to find me. I need some time alone. I'll come back home when I want to.
Constructive criticism will be more than welcome and sorry for any typos. :D :D
Next chapter:
Epistle 76
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