Addiction (series 2) - Avneil

Beginning of Dayawanti's end

Hey guys.. I might use Avni and Ananya interchangeably at places as I am not able to edit carefully at all places! Consider yourself warned for some silly mistakes :)

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Ananya had spent a good part of the morning with Neil, who had then gone to his office as he received an urgent call.

Neil was feeling and behaving like a man in love, every thought about Ananya made him happy and he went back to thinking about her every ten minutes. He realised he was day dreaming now!

Neil decided either ways, he definitely should say no to marriage with Riya. Neil was in a daze when he had said yes to his mom, who had somehow extracted a yes out of him, rather than caring about his consent.

He called his dad, whom he thought to be more mature and receptive than his mom.

Neil - "Hi dad, would you have a minute or two. I need to discuss something important"

Prakash - "Haan Neil beta. I am in a meeting, ek tender bharna hai aaj aur uski pricing discuss kar rahe hain. Kuch bahut zaroori hai kya? Else I will call you back?"(I've to send a tender and today we are discussing its pricing.  Is it something really important?)

Neil (sighing inwardly) - "no problem dad, nothing so urgent. We will discuss when you come back home!"

Neil kept the phone and thought about Saturday evening when he and Ananya were to meet for coffee outside. Ananya had expected to feel better by then in terms of being able to walk and Neil was in full mood to spend some quality time knowing her. Till then all he knew was she was pretty, sensible and brave, he wanted to know more about her life and the person she was.

On the other hand, Ananya was busy investigating into Dayawanti's businesses and her life. She had a breakthrough in one of her calls to Dayawanti's associates when she discovered that Dayawanti owed a lot to the industry. In fact she was neck deep in loans from banks and from other not so good counterparties! She was also able to get hand on Dayawanti Mehta's tax returns from one of her contacts she had carefully developed in the Income Tax department.

Ananya thought very carefully. She was an intelligent girl and did not want to use the information she had thoughtlessly so that Dayawanti is able to wiggle out of the trap she was creating for her..

Dayawanti's pride was her wealth. She was an extremely status conscious and greedy woman. She appeared refined and principled to people on the outside but she was pretty rotten on the inside. Avni decided that first she will rob Dayawanti of her status and wealth. And incidentally Avni did not need to do a lot of work here as Dayawanti had dug her own grave!

Avni decided to hide her identity while trying to do this step, so that it cannot be traced back to her. She put on a little make up to change her look and applied some white powder to her hair. She wore Neela ma's old sari and then left the house and entered a public telephone booth. Avni called the bank credit officers who had sanctioned Dayawanti's loans from there, one by one. And she informed them anonymously of her inability to service the bank loan interests and her inability to make their payments. She said Dayawanti had misrepresented her assets to them and their value was negligible when it came to act as a security against the loans that she had taken. Dayawanti's companies were highly leveraged (indebted) and Ananya's calls caused the banks to scurry and open their ledgers to check how were Mehta industries doing.

This caused dominoes effects as all banks started calling Dayawanti and each other to check on the loans. Within hours, Dayawanti's reputation in the market went to the dogs!

In Mehta mansion, Riya was busy throwing tantrums to the servants when suddenly Ketan walked in and asked her to keep her voice down. He walked into his mother's room who was busy on the calls trying to pacify the bankers. But clearly it was not working as he could see his mother getting even more worked up!

Dayawanti saw her son and grew even angrier. She clicked the cell phone off and turned to Ketan.

Dayawanti - "Ketan. Kuch pata chala? kisne hamare khilaaf market mein sach failaya?"(Ketan did you find something? Who's leaking truth about us to the market)

Ketan - "nahi ma. Could not trace the person but abhi tak call tracing se bas itna pata chala ki she was an old lady from a public booth who called all banks and started this wildfire!"( No mom...through call tracing we just know that..)

Dayawanti - "Someone is conspiring against me. Aur main ye pata laga ke rahungi ki ye shadyantra kaunn rach raha hai.."( I'll find out who's conspiring against us!)

Ketan - "Lekin ma. Banks ko kaise handle karein? Sab apna paisa wapas maang rahe hain. Aur hamare paas to kuch bhi nahi bacha hai dene ke liye. We have misrepresented our losses as profits on accounting sheets to get more loans and now we have spent every last penny trying to get our business in order..!" (How to handle banks? All are asking for their money back. And we don't  have anything left to pay them.)

Dayawanti (laughing maniacally) - "Isiliye to main teri ma hoon. Maine wo already plan kar liya jo tune socha bhi nahi tha. Why have I showered so much love on your kid Riya? To use her now! Riya will ensure that by marrying into Khanna family she can open the doors to their wealth!"( That's why I'm your mother. I've already planned what you haven't even thought)

Ketan looked at his mom surprised. Ideally being Riya's father he should have been disgusted at his mother trying to use her grandchild. But being his mother's son, he also gave an evil smile, seemingly satisfied at the way his mom had handled the entire scheming.