Tewari & Sons, 23, Chandni Chowk

Chapter 13: Dosti

Arnav picked up both his laptops and shoved them into the man-bag that NK had given him earlier in the morning. It was a strange experience for him, carrying a bag around. He had a sports bag in college and even a backpack, but ever since he had begun working, he carried his laptop in his hand and had three sets of chargers; one in office, one is his car and one at home. Only when he travelled did he carry an overnighter that had a compartment for his laptop. But now that he worked for both AR Enterprises and Raizada Designs, he had two laptops. Initially his mother had assured him that AR would not take up much of his time and at best he would need to spend ten hours a week on it. But she was also clear that a separate laptop was required because he was dealing with confidential material. Carrying two different laptops, both different brands and with different charging mechanics was as problematic as handling two businesses. It was NK who got him something called a man-bag, which had dual laptop compartments. At first he had been annoyed with his cousin and had put the bag away into the cupboard in his office. But on a whim he had picked it up a few days back and decided to use it. And surprisingly enough, it worked for him. Though he was baffled as to why a designer would come up with a bag that had two compartments for laptops, he was grateful for it. As he walked into Aakash's office he saw his cousin close his laptop and shove the laptop into a backpack. He considered telling his cousin to get a man-bag too. But though there relationship had thawed in the past few months, they were not that close. He knocked on the door, though it was open.

"Arnav! I was just leaving? Has something come up?"

"No, no. I just wanted to chat with you about something. I was going to call you, but I figured you would be at work, so decided to pop in here to check."

"Yeah Maami had given me a ton of.. homework.. business and stuff is so new to me. And it is all so crazy.. I didn't know AR had a paper and rubber unit. And that a calendar is actually a machine to press them."

"This one is spelt with an e, it is calender, as opposed to calendar."

"See, I didn't know that. You should be handling this business, I on the other hand am not made for this and should just go back. Why am I here?"

He smiled at his cousin and took the chair in front of him. Maybe, what the years of a shared familial connection couldn't do, this could. After all, didn't they say that sometimes the most rewarding relationships are the ones that are formed on a mutual dislike for similar things. For the first time, he considered things from Aakash's point of view. This thing of being pulled into the Raizada business was probably the worst on him. For one, he was technically not even a Raizada, not that in his opinion that mattered. This company would not have existed had it not been for Seema Bua, so as her heir, Aakash had as much right, if not more on this company than he and Anjali Di did. But Aakash had never been part of AR. After college, he left the country for his MS and then found a job there. He lived in California, which was his home, where he had a job, life, friends. And out there he was working on things that he was good at and also found enjoyable. Though sometimes Anjali Di and he joked about how Aakash might be the first Nobel Prize winner in the family, there was some truth in it. Aakash had patents and though he did not understand the details of what his cousin did, but he understood that he was pretty close to some breakthrough. And to leave all that and find himself read about paper roller machinery must be frustrating. He felt sorry for Aakash's predicament, but for now unfortunately he could do nothing much, finding that, he himself was spending over forty hours a week on AR related work.

Given how loaded he was at AR and also the sudden spurt of business at Raizada Designs, life was busy for him. Payal who did help him in Raizada Designs, was now completely off it. She was now completely busy with her party related work, though campaign season had concluded. Whatever little free time she had was understandably spent in her own fashion line, for which she had now traveled to Paris. To give himself some free time he had decided to hire an assistant for himself. He felt that an assistant at AR would be more beneficial because the work was still new to him and honestly another pair of hands would have been very useful. But when he had met the Human Resources Head of AR she told him that there was a recruitment freeze and there would be no new hires across any levels. Further investigation revealed that the diktat for this came from his mother, who had put hiring on hold, without giving any reasons. This had surprised him and added further to his suspicion that something was afoot. First he and Aakash get inducted, then he is given a power of attorney and his mother takes off on an overseas business trip where she had got so busy that evidently was almost unreachable. And then this hiring freeze. Something was wrong and after thinking and overthinking he figured that Aakash was the one person he could talk to about this. He had toyed between speaking with his father or Aakash. But he was always a little unsure about the equation between his parents and inadvertently did not want to set things off in an altogether different direction. Aakash was one of them and yet because there was no special kinship that he shared with him, a certain kind of distance existed. Which is why he was here, tentatively prodding, figuring out the best way to broach the subject.