Poles Apart

Chapter Twenty-Eight

On Friday evening, or better, midnight on Saturday, I return home after a long-ass flight from Hong Kong. Fuck the airlines for not having a single available flight that flies directly to Hyderabad and fuck me for being concerned about the environment.

Early on Thursday, Suresh Babai (my father's younger brother) and I took the private jet to Hong Kong. I was supposed to return on Friday while Suresh Babai stayed back until the following Tuesday. He was carrying out interviews for a post in senior management in his capacity as the Vice-Chairman.

He insisted I call the private jet to go back home, but like the dutiful daughter of mother nature, I refused. I asked for a commercial flight. I could only leave after five in the evening and the last direct flight to Hyderabad from Hong Kong was in the afternoon.

So, I caught a flight in Hong Kong at 5:50 in the evening and landed in Chennai at around 11:00 PM Hong Kong time, 8:45 PM IST. My flight to Hyderabad from Chennai was at 9:30 PM. To my utter misfortune, I had a co-passenger who was hell-bent on knowing what was happening with Zēlos.

The man started with praising me for my interview article, which was seemingly a huge hit, the PR team was happy with it. Apparently my interview was inspiring to young women across the country and the continent.

I don't see how. Sure, I'd got my degrees from these prestigious institutes in the UK, but that's a privilege I received from being my parents' daughter. Surely there are people smarter than me, capable of doing better things than me, sadly disadvantaged by their financial status or inhibited by circumstances that I was immune to.

I haven't done anything in my life that one should be inspired of. I've lived a selfish, liberated, advantaged life.

My co-passenger, Girish Narayan, was in the same flight as me from Chennai to Hyderabad. The flight was an hour and a half long and I had to stop myself from looking at my watch every five minutes so as to not appear rude. At the end of the one and a half hours, I hoped to get off the plane and by on my way back home, but it was raining in Hyderabad and we were hovering in the air for a long time before our pilot decided enough was enough and almost crashed our plane.

That's an exaggeration, of course. There was mild turbulence as we landed, bursting through tear-filled clouds. The heavens were crying at my plight.

The jet lag was hardly anything, a two and a half hours isn't much and shouldn't be much, but I lived two whole days not knowing what time it was because I needed to get my work done in a day.

It seems that I am two extreme ends of the spectrum, dilly-dallying without much to do or swamped in work without room to breathe.

Tomorrow, Luis Pranché and Sahir Khan were coming over to discuss the financials of the project we're currently working on, but Karthik is off to Delhi tomorrow. He needs to be everywhere these days, Chennai and Vizag miss him terribly, Mumbai a close second and Delhi— always on top of the list. With the Annual General Meeting coming up, he's trying hard to keep it together. So, like the wonderful sister that I am, I assured him I could handle today's meeting.

Up until now, our father had been both CEO and Chairman, but he had been training Karthik to take up the company ever since Karthik was sixteen. At first, it was the minor tasks in Hyderabad and then the somewhat important tasks in Chennai and Vizag before shipping him off to Delhi to learn the business in full.

The company is owned by my father and uncle and quite honestly speaking, the opposition would not matter if there was any, because the members of the board primarily constituted of the immediate family.

However, the business isn't something our father would pass on simply because of shared blood. The shareholders would have to be sure of Karthik's capacity. A major concern is that he might be seen too young for the responsibility.