“I will be extremely busy,” Shah said. “I need a few days. I’ll give you details of the shipment, bill of lading, whatever. It will be coming by lorry from Chennai to the bonded warehouse. You’ll have to see to the paperwork.”
“Paperwork” was an ominous term in India. So were “bill of lading” and “bonded warehouse.” Dwight saw in advance the clipboards, the carbon paper, the inventory numbers, the perforated certificates, the seals to be broken, the forms to be filled out in triplicate, the coarse smelly paper, “you must apply for permit,” and at the end of it all, baksheesh.
“Payment will be made by wire transfer from a bank in Baltimore, Maryland.”
What? But he did do it. The chore took five days, back and forth to the warehouse in Bhiwandi, an hour by taxi from the Taj Hotel.
“Why Bhiwandi?” he had asked.
“Because it is adjacent to Grand Trunk Road.”
All this time—negotiating for the release of the shipment of rice, moving it from Bhiwandi to a secure facility nearer the railway junction at Kalyan, following Shah’s specific instructions—Dwight had the feeling he was working for Shah. And what he was doing any office manager could have done—Manoj Verma, Dinesh Patel, Sarojini Dasgupta, Miss Chakravarti, any of them. The other, better question was: What did a consignment of rice have to do with client business? Agricultural products had never been a priority. Five days of this bafflement went by without his setting eyes on Shah. Maybe he was at home, in his lovely apartment, dining off his porcelain?
The phone rang at midnight.
“Hund?”
What happened to “Mr. Hund”?
“It’s kinda late.”
“I am just now proceeding from the airport, speaking on mobile. Sorry to wake you. I wasn’t sure you’d be in your room.”
“Where else would I be at this hour?”
Shah didn’t answer. He said, “Just to thank you for your assistance with consignment of food grains. It is not entirely billable, but I will compensate you.”
“You’ll pay me for moving that ton of rice?”
He intended to sound sarcastic. Literal-minded Mr. J. J. Shah said, “Indeed, for facilitating in business just concluded.”
“The rice?”
“The visit of Chappie.”
“I don’t get it.”
“John Chapman Thaw. Harvard prof. He’s putting some of his people into Bangalore to study IT and related areas. It will benefit us with tech transfer. He is amply funded, but a humble and humane individual.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Dwight said.
“Chappie and tech team have just departed. I saw them off. Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt.”
Dwight tried to draw a breath, but his concentration was too intense, the air too thin, his punctured lungs would not inflate, for he had begun to understand.
“Gone?”
“I would have introduced you, but his schedule was jam-packed.”
He still said wisit and shed-jewel, yet he was a different man, and this was the proof of it. While I’ve been dealing with a ton of rice in forty-pound sacks, Dwight thought, Shah has been wining and dining this Harvard professor and his team. An American contact, an important lead, has come and gone, and I haven’t seen him. How had this happened? Dwight was not angry, he was sad. He felt the bewilderment of a younger brother, a rejected suitor, an excluded bystander, a bypassed partner. And the silly name “Chappie” rankled.
“I must hasten home,” Shah said. “We meet tomorrow.”
It was not like Shah to exclude him from a negotiation. And it was absurd that Shah had taken the initiative to give Dwight five days’ unpaid work while he shepherded the Harvard team around Mumbai. And Dwight was his boss! Yet Dwight was grateful. For those five days he had worked at this menial task. He had not gone to a club. He had not called Indru or Padmini. He had hardly thought of them. He had felt not virtuous—he was certainly not virtuous—but serious, and he understood the fatigue that creates a passivity that empties the mind and gives access to spirituality, the trance state induced by routine that helps in the practice of meditation.
“Many thanks,” Shah said the next day at Jeejeebhoy Towers before the usual meeting—a parade of eager manufacturers with ring binders of products, a lining up of contracts.
Shah was his old submissive self, deferring to Dwight and calling him “Mr. Hund.”
The last deal of the day involved a process for applying a rubberized coating to metal roof racks—not just the pieces that were fixed to the car, but kayak cradles, bike holders, attachments for skis and ski poles. This created an enormous inventory, since many of the racks and clamps were unique to a specific model of car.
Shah itemized the list of attachments and fittings, wetting his thumb and moving through the clipboard of papers. Two companies would be involved, a steel fabricator and the rubber coater. Shah knew about carbon quotients, potential bruising, the matrix of the rubber solution, even the windage—resistance of the carrier on the car roof.
Dwight looked on in admiration, forgiving Shah for putting him to all that trouble with the rice shipment, which was obviously a dodge—Shah didn’t want him to meet the Harvard team, for whatever reason. Never mind. Dwight was grateful to him for the days of pious mindless toil. He had almost forgotten his debauchery.
At the end of the day, Shah saw the businessmen to the door. Then he turned to Dwight and said, “Now we will go on our spiritual journey.”
8
“What’s that?” Dwight asked when the driver opened the trunk of the car. It was early morning, just after dawn, a sourness of damp streets, women scraping twig brooms in gutters. Out of the corner of his eye, Dwight saw two girls with enormous backpacks walking up the driveway. They had stringy hair and sandals. One was very pretty, the other one heavy, with a beautiful smile, saying, “This is unreal.” American girls: he envied them their innocence and wondered what their Indian surprise might be.
“Sack of rice,” Shah said. “Symbol of gift. Remainder will go by train.”
“Will go where?”
“Mahuli,” Shah said. “Adjacent to Mahabaleshwar.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“Indeed so. We take luncheon at Poona and proceed to Mahabaleshwar, for Mahuli. You have checked out of hotel?”
“I’m going to miss that suite.”
Then they were on the road, sitting side by side in the back seat of the small car. The driver fought the other cars, jockeyed for position in the traffic, and once they were clear of Mumbai—it took over an hour—he struggled to pass the big filthy trucks that hogged the road, staring at Horn Please. Living in Mumbai could be horrible, but nothing was worse than a journey like this.
On the first open stretch of road, Dwight’s head cleared. He was able to recall the obvious thought that had occurred to him in the confusion of the previous day.
“You didn’t introduce me to those Harvard people.”
“Chappie?”
The silly name sounded even sillier the solemn way that Shah uttered it. Dwight said, “And his team.”
“They will prove to be excellent partners. Don’t think of Harvard as a mere college. It is a billion-dollar business, a tremendous source of contracts and expertise. Pay dirt. And skill sets, my God!”
Something he has just found out, and is preaching, is something I’ve known since I got into this business, Dwight thought. Yet he was glad for Shah’s enthusiasm, because that always implied willingness, and “pay dirt” made him smile.
“But you didn’t introduce me.”