Mr. Sarun was tall. He had been to an English convent school and had been on the school rugby team (only these English schools in India had a rugby team), and still looked it. You would never think he was a fifty year old man who had a daughter my age. Standing a few inches over 6 feet, he had massive broad shoulders, and had kept himself very fit and athletic. He was also very dark, almost black, in complexion — a true Dravidian.
Now Mr. Sarun did not spend a lot of time in our office. He mainly lived in USA, but spent some time in Calcutta every month near the head offices of his business empire. Since a lot of the company offices were also in the city of Pune. Mr. Sarun would come down to Pune every month for 3-4 days and stay in a five star hotel nearby. So I had not encountered him much other than brief meetings, and I wondered what he wanted with me, showing up in my office without any notice.
As a Lead Engineer, I did have a large corner office and a door that could be shut off for privacy. Mr. Sarun walked by the office secretary, told her that he would be busy with me for some time and to cancel all of my appointments, and then walked in and shut the door. So now he and I were alone in my office.
“Sir!” I stood up. “It is such a surprise — a pleasant surprise I assure you — to see you here! I hope everything is alright, Sir!”
We at the office used to call him “Sir” out of respect. This is also standard Indian practice where you call your boss “Sir”.
After shaking my hand with his massive one, Mr. Sarun made some small talk about our new sales figures and hires. Then he pointed at the picture frame on my desk.
“You have a very lovely wife, Rajesh.”
“Why, um, thank you Sir.” I answered, happy to be talking about anything else other than business. The picture of Vidya I had on my desk was indeed a sexy picture of her, showing her in a figure hugging white sari, with a tight blouse, and her midriff bare. She was pouting, and eyes had a mischievous smile as she looked naughtily at the camera.
“Rajesh,” Mr. Sarun suddenly dropped his voice and sat down in the chair opposite my desk. He then motioned for me to sit as well. “I wanted to talk to you about Gaurav.”
Suddenly time paused, and I could almost hear the seconds tick on the wall clock as my heart skipped a beat. Gaurav had been my boss a long time ago, and also Mr. Sarun’s daughter’s boyfriend, before he had been fired.
“You see,” Mr. Sarun continued, keeping his eyes focused on me. “I had always wondered why my daughter let go of Gaurav all of a sudden. One minute she was in love with him, next minute she wanted nothing to do with him.”
“Yes, Sir.” I tried to keep my breathing normal despite my increasing heart rate.
“Then, of course I heard about this sex video of Gaurav where he is banging some whore and talking about how he was taking kickbacks on our contracts.”
My throat became very dry. The ‘whore’ that Mr. Sarun was referring to was of course my wife Vidya. It was how we had set up Gaurav, how he was fired and how ultimately I took on some of his important projects and contacts in the company. I could see Mr. Sarun’s eyes were on me.