Dil Beparwah | ✔

twenty two

||CHAPTER 22||
《¤》

┊V A R U N┊

When the pimple faced, horn-rimmed spectacled man had arrived the previous evening, I had suspected a lot of things. His wiry arms were trembling when he showed me the papers, hands frequently wiping the sweat on his forehead with a white napkin, legs shaking rhythmically under the table. Too hesitant to even deliver the information, too scared for a reason that could only simmer from something akin to fear. A man like him wasn't villainous to begin with—whatever he was doing had not been his mastermind. 

His request for anonymity wasn't unusual. Why would a person like him risk losing their job anyway? His need for urgency was. It was uncanny, and not solely because it had something to do with Arvika Deewan.

However, Mikesh seemed sold when he heard of it and I did not have a concrete construct of a reason why we shouldn't be publishing it as a normal article. Even if it was accurate and had the right amount of buzz to stir up a rouse, this diffident want of keeping Arvika out of it was confusing the fùçķing daylights out of me. Was she being framed? Was it some sort of corporate trap to keep her from something? Was this a part of a more elaborate scheme for pawning her off?

Was it really worth creating a fuss about?

Moments after Arvika left, I crushed the half smoked cigarette on the ashtray, reaching for the handy strip of migraine tablets. The fùçķer was back again, raging, bold and untimely. Should have slept it off, but I had stayed in the office the entire night.

My eyes lingered on the sheaf of documents Arvika had refused to acknowledge, the one that had been brought in last night. Even through the fog of the head ache and sleep–a deadly combination–I'd noticed the terror in her eyes. The ship meant a lot to her—the project was a huge one after all. For months my team had been chasing her and we knew she was pretty much involved in the smallest of decisions in the project. Whether she was dedicated to it or not, wasn't my area of expertise. Her voice had trembled and she sounded shocked, and that's how I could boil it down to a schemed sabotage.

Instead of dumping the papers, I headed down to BizNest's podcast production studio. Mikesh was there already, and I assumed it was for Esha's sake. Karan Bahl's interview was scheduled today and when it came to Esha's stupid section, Mikesh didn't seem to have any funding issue or even an iota of objection. He was letting her host an entire episode and no one needed a head-ache to predict that it was going to be futile.

"Walk of shame, Malhotra?" The publisher wiggled his eyebrows in a very unflattering way. Clad in a bright orange suit and white fedora, he looked no less than a traffic cone to me. A very vibrant, fluorescent and stab-me-in-the-fùcķing-eye traffic cone. "Looks like all of us woke up to a happy day!"

My head was fùcķing throbbing with all that good mood bullcrap. He was so adamant about publishing the piece immediately that I'd ended up working till the sun was up, conjuring my migraine. "Listen, I think we should look more into this thing."

Mikesh sipped from a metallic straw inserted in his Starbucks mug. I'd stopped pointing out that it looked obnoxious and was unnecessary because metallic or not, no one needed straws to drink fancy cappuccinos—but apparently the rich fùçķer got laid because of that move. "Tujhe kal uss admi ne sab kuchh diya toh thha. And you said it looked authentic as well."

I pulled out a chair next to him. "News pakki hai, usme koi shaq nahi hai. Par ye news hume usne diya hi kyu? Itna important waise hai nahi jitna urgency woh dikha raha thha."

"What are you trying to say, Malhotra?"

"We shouldn't have published it."

A noisy disturbance caused by the mic inside the studio saved me from his judgmental gaze. Esha had dropped her papers and while trying to pick them up, pulled all the wires along. Her palm was still holding her phone against her ear as she clumsily tried to untangle herself. With knitted brows, she looked at the stretched hands to help her up.