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  Her hazel eyes looked suspiciously moist, her voice quivered ever so slightly, as she kept the nation updated with the latest on the Prime Minister’s condition. Of course, there was more emotion than facts in her account. But that was what worked in such situations. And Gaurav had to grudgingly concede that she had got the tone just right: a mix of calm and disquiet underpinned by a layer of barely-suppressed hysteria.

  The door opened and his production manager rushed in. The link had been fixed. Gaurav straightened his tie and took one last look in the mirror that hung opposite his desk. His salt-and-pepper curls were tousled as artlessly as his hairstylist could manage. The subtle application of bronzer had given his somewhat pudgy face contours it did not, in fact, possess. Slipping on his rimless glasses (he didn’t really need them but he thought they gave him a suitably ‘intellectual’ look) he headed into the studio, mulling just how he could distinguish his coverage from Manisha’s.

  By the time he had taken his place behind his desk and been miked, Gaurav knew exactly how he was going to play this.

  The Prime Minister of India was in surgery, suspended between life and death. The doctors weren’t saying very much about his condition. But the truth was clear to anyone with one and a half brain cells. Birendra Pratap had been targeted in some way at the rally as he went into the crowd. A healthy man like him didn’t just collapse for no reason. There had to be foul play.

  And if there had been foul play there was only one suspect: Pakistan. India’s perennial enemy number one. The country that had vowed to inflict a thousand cuts on India by using terror as an instrument of state policy. Clearly, it had now decided to up the ante with a direct attack on the Prime Minister himself.

  The cameraman counted down, ‘Three, two, one…’ as NTN came back from a break.

  Gaurav took a deep breath, looked straight into camera, his eyes already bloodshot, his mouth an angry line, and started: ‘This is a sad day in the history of our nation. Our Prime Minister is in hospital, the target of a diabolical attack.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, don’t be misled by all these so-called liberal journalists who are talking about how he has had a stroke or a heart attack. We at NTN are here to tell you the truth: Birendra Pratap was the victim of a cowardly assassination attempt. Somebody has tried to take the life of the Indian Prime Minister. And the finger of suspicion points directly at Pakistan.’

  TWO

  It was a grey morning in London as Asha Devi hauled herself out of bed, quickly brushed her teeth, pulled on her workout clothes and headed for the neighbourhood gym. The brisk walk along the quiet, well-mannered streets of Belgravia—lined with the most expensive real estate in all of London, home to English aristocrats, Russian oligarchs, tech tycoons, and of course, Indian billionaires—served as a pick-me-up in place of her usual coffee fix. Asha used her membership card to punch herself in, and then headed straight for the treadmill, feeling more energetic than she had in weeks.

  It had been a tough break-up with her boyfriend of two years. She had first met Sunny Mahtani at a party thrown by a mutual friend at Annabel’s, the trendy members-only nightclub where the posh folk liked to drink and dance the night away. She had arrived straight from her Bond Street office, wearing the uniform she had devised to blend in with the air of discreet luxury that prevailed at the tony art auction house where she worked: a perfectly-tailored pin-striped trouser suit, spotless white shirt, and black stilettoes, her hair pinned up in a tidy chignon.

  But by the time she had gulped down a couple (or four, who was counting?) of glasses of Krug, her favourite champagne—she much preferred its flinty notes to the toasty taste of Dom Perignon—and migrated to the dance floor, her jacket had been discarded, her hair had been released to fall straight down to her waist, her shirt unbuttoned to show a tantalizing glimpse of a lacy bra, and if you looked really hard, a flash of bare flesh. It was while coming off the dance floor, her face flushed with exertion and her head buzzed with champagne, that she had been introduced to Sunny Mahtani.

  Sunny, with his glinting brown eyes, his insolently-curved mouth, his mop of unruly black curls and his six-foot-two frame of rippling muscle. Sunny, with his devastating smile that he pulled out whenever he wanted to charm and dazzle. Sunny, with his billions in the bank and a fleet of private planes to enable him to lead his transcontinental lifestyle. Sunny, with his reputation as a playboy who only dated supermodels and famous actresses.

  She should have been wary of him. She should have steered clear. She should have said hello and goodbye and moved right on. But of course she had done no such thing.

  Since then, whenever she looked back on that evening, Asha blamed the industrial levels of Krug they had both consumed for all that followed. She had only blurred memories of the evening itself but crystal-clear recall of waking up in Sunny’s bed the next morning. She should have felt embarrassed—for all her talk of being a ‘liberated’ woman this was the first time she had slept with a man the first time they met—but for some reason it had seemed entirely natural to wake up in his arms.

  From that morning on, they had rarely been apart for more than a few days. Sunny’s father’s telecommunications business was headquartered in London, and the Mahtani family home—a sprawling house in Eton Square—was very close to the Belgravia flat that her father had rented for her. And it was within those few square miles of prime real estate that their affair had been conducted, the relationship bolstered by the approval of both their families.

  Birendra Pratap, who had banished his only daughter to London so that her wild capers ceased to be the subject of incessant gossip in India, was relieved that she seemed to have settled down with a suitable boy (and an Indian at that; thank God!). As for Sunny’s parents, they couldn’t believe their luck: their only son had managed to snare the daughter of the Prime Minister of India. This could only be good for business.

  Though Asha—with her penchant for getting into trouble—had had a difficult relationship with her father while in India, distance had made their hearts grow fonder. And once the daily irritants were removed from the equation, Asha and Birendra Pratap had slowly repaired their bond. Ever since she had persuaded him to give up his Blackberry for an iPhone, the two of them had fallen into a routine of Facetiming one another every night (it helped that while Asha was an early sleeper, Birendra Pratap was an insomniac who didn’t fall asleep till the early hours of the morning).

  Their chats were long and meandering but always meaningful. She would fill him in on her days at the auction house, entertaining him with tales of vulgar Russians who wanted Renaissance works of Grand Masters that would match the paint on the walls of their master bedrooms and mega-rich Arabs who bought Impressionists as if they were scooping up candy. And he would fill her in on all the political events in India that she had been following on the news.

  The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh had reached out to him to see if their parties could have some sort of seat adjustment before the next general election. Did Asha think this was a good idea? He was thinking of doing a full-scale cabinet reshuffle, his last before the term of this government ran out. Did it make sense to do that now or had he left it too late? He wanted to announce a welfare scheme for his constituency before the Election Commission enforced the model code of conduct that prevented the disbursement of any freebies. What should he focus on: Dalit upliftment, maternal health, primary school education, or a pension scheme for elders?

  These conversations always left Asha with mixed emotions. On the one hand, she was grateful to have established a rapport with her father all over again and flattered that he sought her advice on such matters. But on the other, it rankled that he didn’t value her enough to ask her to come back home and help him in the run-up to the election. Or even give her a ticket to fight for a seat of her own. No, she would be summoned home a few months in advance to run the election campaign in her father’s ancestral constituency, Bharatnagar, where she knew every gram pradhan and panchayat head.
But her father, who never tired of saying how much he missed her, always stopped short of asking her to move back to India.

  Asha didn’t know how she would react if he did. Truth be told, she missed her life in India, and the buzz of politics that had surrounded her ever since she could remember. But she also loved the life she had made for herself in London. Her beautiful flat, her fun job, the lovely bubble in which Sunny and she had lived.

  But that bubble had burst. And it had taken her newly-repaired closeness to her father with it. The two of them had not spoken for a couple of weeks now. There had been complete radio silence ever since she made that explosive call to tell him she had broken up with Sunny.

  Almost as if she had conjured him up with her thoughts, Asha looked up from the treadmill monitor to see her father’s face flashing on the TV opposite her. The sound was off, and she was idly wondering what he could possibly have done to rate a report on CNN, when the screen cut away to shots of a political rally, her father collapsing on the ground, being carried into an ambulance and driven away.

  Without her realizing it, her legs had stopped moving. She was thrown off the treadmill, landing on her back, momentarily dazed. But she scrambled to her feet a moment later, grabbing the TV remote and switching the sound on, oblivious to the annoyed looks being cast in her direction. The commentary was quite superfluous as it turned out; the images told the entire story.

  Asha could feel her legs turn to water. She sank on to the bench press stationed behind her, trying to get her heartbeat under control.

  Why hadn’t anyone called her as yet, she wondered, as she rummaged inside her bag for her phone. Fuck. She had left her mobile back at her apartment.

  Holding back her tears, Asha ran blindly for the exit, and then jogged the entire way back to her flat. She headed straight to her bedroom and snatched her mobile from where it was charging, even as she switched on the TV and tuned into CNN.

  There were no missed calls. She tried her mother’s direct line. No reply. She tried Karan’s mobile. It was switched off. So was Arjun’s. By then, CNN had moved away from the India story to report on a suicide bomb attack in Turkey. Maybe the BBC would have an update instead.

  There was something wrong with this picture, she thought, as she rapidly scanned the channels to get to the BBC. Her father had suffered what looked like an assassination attempt, was in hospital, and nobody had thought of calling to tell her. So, that old cliche was true: out of sight; out of mind. Here was proof, if any more was needed, that she was a marginal presence, a barely-discernible figure banished to the fringes of family life, who could safely be ignored.

  She wasn’t surprised that her brothers (half-brothers, she corrected herself automatically) hadn’t called. She was used to their ignoring her very existence. But how could her own mother not try to reach her?

  The BBC had the banner ‘Breaking News’ flashing as it cut to the familiar sight of AIIMS in Delhi. In the forecourt, there was a press conference of sorts going on. It was a chaotic scene, with a few white-coated doctors standing impassively beside her brothers, while a very agitated Madan Mohan Prajapati, Defence Minister in her father’s government and an old family friend, called for calm from the noisy press corps.

  She could hear cameramen shouting in the background as they tried to get to vantage points. The massed reporters were shouting questions, unintelligible though they were in the general din.

  It took Madan Mohan a couple of minutes to wrestle some control on the scene. Then, as the noise subsided, he handed over the mike to one of the white-coated doctors. The man looked terrified at being put in the spotlight but after a few nervous starts began reading from a sheet of paper.

  ‘Honourable Prime Minister was admitted to AIIMS today at 12.05 p.m., with respiratory distress. Tests revealed that he had suffered an acute myocardial infarction. He is now in surgery, and we will be able to update you on his condition as soon as that is over.’

  With those words, the doctor turned around and headed for the safety of the VIP wing, followed closely by Singh’s two sons and Madan Mohan. All of them turned a deaf ear to the questions being shouted at them from every direction.

  Asha collapsed on to the carpeted floor with a thud. It was a heart attack. Baba was in surgery. He wasn’t dead. And as long as he was alive, there was hope.

  ▪

  Dr Randhir Gulati could not believe the nightmare he found himself in. Just an hour ago, he had been sitting in his office, looking over his case notes as he prepared for his afternoon rounds. And now, here he was, lying to the media on national television. If the truth ever got out his medical career would be over.

  Matters had proceeded entirely according to protocol as first. By the time Birendra Pratap’s ambulance had hurtled into the Emergency bay of AIIMS, the medical team had already been assembled. The surgeons and surgical staff had scrubbed up and were positioned around the operating table awaiting their patient when the wide doors to the surgery suite swung open and the gurney bearing the Prime Minister was wheeled in at top speed by his attending paramedics.

  That’s when everything had started to unravel. A gaggle of people had followed the paramedics into the room, of whom Gulati could only recognize Birendra Pratap’s two sons, Karan and Arjun.

  ‘What on earth?’ shouted Gulati, from behind his surgical mask. ‘This is a sterile area. You can’t come in here.’

  Nobody paid any attention to him. Instead four SPG men entered the room and took up position against the door, while four others stood guard outside.

  ‘What is going on?’ said Gulati, addressing Karan Pratap. ‘I can’t operate on your father in these circumstances.’

  Madhavan Kutty took charge of proceedings at this point. He gestured to the SPG to isolate the assembled surgical team in the adjoining scrub area. He then summoned the two surgeons closer to the gurney and removed the CPAP mask from Birendra Pratap’s face. It was clear that he was dead.

  It was the PM’s elder son who broke the shocked silence that followed, explaining that they needed to announce that Singh was in surgery to buy some time. They needed to send security forces to key spots in Delhi so that there wasn’t a repeat of the kind of violence that had broken out after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. The same exercise had to be carried out in all other major cities and state capitals. And the army had to be put on alert.

  Gulati had agreed, thinking that the delay would only be for twenty minutes or half an hour at most. Now, more than an hour later he was being asked to lie to the Indian people about the health of their Prime Minister. Their late Prime Minister. This could not end well.

  Once the group was back inside, the doctors were shepherded into their lounge by the SPG, which then took guard outside. The rest of the party went down the corridor to a waiting room, already teeming with people. The babble of voices died down as the bereaved sons entered the room, and then as discussions resumed, the noise level went up again.

  The topic under discussion: Who would take over as Prime Minister from Birendra Pratap? Would it be Karan Pratap, the heir presumptive of his father? Or would it be Madan Mohan Prajapati, the senior-most minister in the Singh government?

  An old-style, cow-belt politician, Madan Mohan’s appearance belied the fact that he was one of the richest men in the country. His trademark white kurta was always crumpled as if he had just rolled out of bed, while his intricately-pleated dhoti looked as if it was in imminent danger of coming undone any moment. His face, with its bulbous nose, bushy eyebrows and scowling jowls, went perfectly with his unkempt style.

  But appearances didn’t matter to Madan Mohan; money did. And he was not interested in money for money’s sake either. To him money spelt power. And it was power that motivated him. So, even as he put on a suitably sad expression now that his ‘best friend’ and political mentor, Birendra Pratap was dead, his brain was working overtime to see how he could leverage this situation to his best advantage.

  As the moneyman of the party, Ma
dan Mohan held the political fates of half the people in the room in his hand. And in any leadership bid, they would support him unquestioningly. But he was well aware that he had also alienated as many with his abrasive, verging-on-violent style. Over the years, in his role as an enforcer for Birendra Pratap, he had been the strongman in charge of the dirty tricks department of the LJP. And inevitably, some of the dirt had stuck to him as well.

  It was this latter group, who had felt the edge of Madan Mohan’s knife at their throats on numerous occasions, who would throw their weight behind Karan, son and heir of the late Prime Minister. And given that they were motived by both fear and revenge, it would be hard to get them to change their minds.

  It helped their cause, of course, that Karan Pratap Singh had the aura of being his father’s legitimate heir. And it didn’t hurt that he looked as if he had come straight from central casting. If life were a romantic novel, Karan would be described as the tall, dark and handsome hero. Having just turned forty, he had acquired a sprinkling of grey around his temples, and a few wrinkles around his eyes, but that only added to his air of laidback elegance.

  In stark contrast to Madan Mohan’s bullying style, Karan believed that a soft word was often more effective than a hard knock on the head. That said, the Prime Minister’s son wasn’t a pushover. It’s just that he believed in speaking softly and carrying a large stick. But anyone who pushed him too far would be rewarded by the most terrifying display of out-of-control rage.

  If Karan lacked anything, it was what the media referred to as the ‘common touch’. There was a reserve about him, a certain aristocratic hauteur that prevented him from reaching out and touching people (both literally and metaphorically), the way his father and half-sister did so effortlessly.