Never Say Never

By Kaushal Patel

“As it stands today, Shivya’s sister is still missing. Till you find her, you can’t claim the inheritance.”

Sutradhar Apte aka Sutra is staring at an uncertain future after losing his job as an investment banker when he gets unexpectedly nominated in his dead grandfather's inheritance. Sutra is surprised as he was left an orphan at an early age and had never spoken to his estranged grandfather. Is this sheer good luck? Maybe not.

The grandfather’s will has a curious condition – Sutra must find Yami, a young girl who is mysteriously missing, to claim the inheritance.

A baffled Sutra thinks – I struggle to find a missing sock and am expected to find an entire person!

Reluctantly, the laid-off banker gets sucked into unravelling the mystery of Yami’s disappearance, along with Yami’s beautiful sister Shivya. As they piece the clues together, one after the other, they get caught into an unnerving and dangerous net, with every discovery leading to a few more things to be discovered.

Even as the cynical Sutra discovers his true calling, will he be able to fulfil his dead grandfather’s wish and find Yami? Are there any other surprises in store for him and Shivya, his newfound muse?

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Jan 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9789355590039

Kaushal Patel

Kaushal Patel is a father to two beautiful daughters, best friend to his wife, and a decent enough son. He fared poorly in accountancy and maths, studied branding in MBA, but he has been a banker for over 18 years – other than that he has good control over his life. This is his first novel so he has no writing achievements to gloat over until the next book unless one counts the innumerable action packed office emails. Please beware, for he is determined to write more books! Kaushal grew up and lives in Mumbai with his family and his sense of humour.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

It was Monday morning. I had woken up an hour ago but I wasn’t out of bed yet.

As the city of Mumbai purposefully rushed out to start its day 25 floors below me, I was lying in the bed and staring at the ceiling. I had no purpose in life. It was as if I was a part of a different world now, which probably was a valid inference of my current situation.

One single event - a meeting, which had barely lasted ten minutes, had suddenly offset the whole purpose of my getting up and getting ready.

It takes a pink slip to appreciate how innocent Monday mornings are and how insignificant Friday evenings can become.

Maybe it was always brewing; I had simply missed smelling the coffee. I was too immersed in the glory of my own success in the Bank, blindsided to the reality that it was an MNC after all, where a few fat-assed board members sitting miles away could decide to cut down South Asia operations over a cup of coffee.

Unprecedented times call for unprecedented measures. That’s how my boss had started the discussion in his final act as my boss. I had zoned out after hearing that, knowing fully well where this was going. Those ten minutes had washed ten years of my hard work in the Bank away. On the inside, I also wanted to wash my boss away in the toilet.

A few clients and colleagues had made their consolation calls the next day to mourn, and to enlist all the nice qualities that I possessed, which, strangely, they had forgotten to express while I was working with them. They had said that they were going to miss me immensely. I now knew how dead people felt when they witnessed their own prayer meet.

The morning maid walked in the room. This was the fourth day in a row when she had entered the house with the spare key and the assumption of an empty house only to find me, lying on the bed, listless and lost. As she kept the coffee on my bedside table today, I noticed incredulity in her eyes, probably she was worried about her own pink slip. I meant her job. What a vicious circle, I thought as I sat up on the bed and wrapped my hands around the cup of coffee.

I looked around my bedroom and recalled the special efforts I had taken to make this rented apartment my own. The corner nook had my bar and books, and a lounge chair; my most favourite spot. I often used to whine that I didn’t get a chance to savour the place; I longed for some free time to sit there, sip a beer and devour Sherlock Holmes. But I hadn’t felt the urge to sit on that chair even once in the last three days. It seemed that I wasn’t clear in my communication with the Universe, this wasn’t the sort of free time I had longed for.

I got out of the bed and went up to the balcony. I placed the cup on the coffee table in the balcony, just next to the bottle of Hendricks, which was full till last night. Now it was empty, like my schedule for the day. The expansive view felt meaningless, just like the corner nook and everything else about the room. It was ironic to learn that the yearning for all these leisurely things was tied to the constraints of my busy corporate life. Now that the constraint had vanished, the yearning had vanished too.

Such life lessons were the only things I had garnered in the last three days. I guess failure and setback turned everyone into an Aristotle. Some of them became wiser. Some of them fell in a bottomless pit of depression and fatal thoughts. I realised I was slowly proceeding towards the same pit by allowing my mind to have a free run. I had to get my bearings right. My years at the boarding school and later at the Investment Bank had given me abundant training on how to soak the pressure in. I needed to dig into that reserve.

I pulled up my office bag from the floor and plunged my hand inside to pull out some blank papers. A few visiting cards carrying the imprint of my name and designation slid through those papers and fell on the ground. Tragedy loved drama. I stepped on them and walked across to the table.

I wanted to make a realistic assessment of my situation. I drew two columns on the paper – ‘Good’ and ‘Screwed’. Under Good, I first wrote – ‘No dependents’

My parents had died long years ago. As such it was inappropriate to put it under ‘Good’ but it did give me some relief from knowing I didn’t have to worry about their care. I was yet to get married. Few days back it seemed odd that I was into my fourth decade but still wasn’t married. Today it seemed like a blessing. I didn’t have a girlfriend presently. I had overcome the temptation of a live-in relationship with my ex for which I felt glad today.

The constant company of my own self since childhood had made me wary of staying with anyone. Not that I was an introvert. I had a decent count of friends. I enjoyed the company of women. I was reasonably popular, known for my wise cracks and dry humour, both of which were presently AWOL after the pink slip. Probably pink wasn’t their favourite colour.

After some thought, I added ‘No home loan’ to the list. After some more hard thinking I wrote ‘long career ahead’ just to make the list a little longer and make myself feel a little better. That was it on the ‘Good’ side. Next, I started writing under the ‘Screwed’ side. I started with ‘Economy’ then added ‘No job interviews’, ‘Hardly any Savings’, ‘Car Loan’, ‘Personal Loan’, ‘Rent’, etc. Clearly this was turning out to be a one-sided affair. I dropped the pen and reached out for my bag again to pull out the old pack of Benson & Hedges; I had cut down on my smoking off late but I needed one right now.

As I rummaged through my office bag, my eyes fell upon an unopened envelope that was lying inside. Pulling it out of the bag, I recalled that I had bumped into the courier fellow on the way to office a few weeks ago, when life was normal. Since I was in a rush, I had just shoved the envelope in my bag and forgotten about it. I was too busy and unconcerned at that time.

With the unlit Benson dangling between my fingers, I curiously rolled over the envelope a couple of times. It had come from Shimla. My name and address were hastily written on it. It looked like someone had sent me a letter but it wasn’t a love letter because the sender’s name was mentioned as Ravi Bhatia, Advocate and Legal Consultant. I was already screwed and now it looked like I was getting sued too. I tried to think back if I knew Ravi Bhatia. I didn’t. I knew my late mother was from Himachal Pradesh. And I knew that I had a maternal grandfather, my last living chromosome connection, who lived there. But I had never seen him or spoken to him. I knew of his existence. I wasn’t sure he knew of mine.

I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter to read it.

One pink slip had already rocked my life. Little did I know that another letter was about to cause a tectonic shift in it!

CHAPTER 2

‘E xcuse me sir, Veg or Non-Veg?’ asked the airhostess, breaking into my chain of thoughts.

‘I am good’, I replied.

The flight was full and my seat was cramped. It had been a while since I had flown in the economy class but I rationalised it by thinking this was the least of my problems at the moment.

The gentleman next to me was snoring away to glory. I winced and looked at the airhostess.

‘Can you do something about this relaxed soul? Can you change his seat?’ I asked.

‘Sorry sir the flight is full.’ The air hostess replied with a smile.

‘OK, can you upgrade him?’

‘Even the business class is full,’ she informed me.

‘Is there place in the cockpit?’

The airhostess chuckled and left. As if this was his cue, the gentleman started snoring louder. I turned my attention towards the window to distract myself. I wondered at how life had changed. If someone had told me last Tuesday that by coming Tuesday, I would be out of work, and in a flight going to a small town in Himachal Pradesh, sitting next to a World Class snorer, I would have laughed. But I guess the joke was on me today.

The letter from the advocate was short and to the point. But it had packed a punch in its brevity.

Representing his client, my maternal grandfather, who it appeared, had recently relocated to heaven, Adv Ravi Bhatia had sent the posthumous communication to me. It had to do with the will of my now late grandfather.

It was incredible that my grandfather had reached out to me from heaven considering he had never done that when he was on earth; we had never met, we had never talked and we had never crossed paths. Had I drunk dialled God that night?

I had read the letter over several times to be sure of what it entailed.

Mr Biren Kumar (Prem) Dhumal, resident of Garli Village, Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh had died peacefully at his residence on 10th May 2017. He had bequeathed all his savings, investments and properties to the only son of his only daughter.

That would be me. Simple enough. Or was it?

Mr Dhumal and my mother, who was Mr Dhumal’s only daughter, were estranged. That’s what I had heard from my parents’ friends. That was one of the reasons they had to enrol me in a boarding school after their death. It was well known that the father-daughter relationship was always strained; they were perpetually at loggerheads. But when my mother had decided to marry a certain Mr Apte - a Maharashtrian from Mumbai, the relationship had given away. I didn’t even remember seeing my grandfather at my mother’s funeral, but I couldn’t say for sure. I was only 8 years old then.

I must have spent the first few months of my life there, a deduction I had drawn from my birth certificate. But I had no recollection of him or of the place, for obvious reasons. In one way, this was as good as a stranger leaving behind all his wealth to me.

Reading that letter after losing my job had made me ecstatic. Unfortunately, that ecstasy had lasted only as much as an orgasm. The second para of the letter had the effect of the Asterix mark that accompanied a never before, once in a lifetime annual sale at a shopping mall. The terms and conditions were complex, onerous and frustrating.

The combined assets of Mr Biren Kumar Dhumal, deceased at the age of 73 Years, including but not limited to 3 Apple Orchards, 1 Mansion, 2 Commercial Buildings, Liquid Investments, Ancestral Jewellery, etc. was to be bequeathed to the only son of Mrs. Purva Apte provided:

1.The claimant proves his identify beyond reasonable doubt -Though I was presently struggling with identity crisis, I thought this could be managed.

2.The claimant is alive and in good health - Being dead and in good health was not acceptable.

3.As per the last wish of the deceased, the claimant will have to relocate to Garli at his residence to manage the transition of ownership and complete a few unfinished tasks – What kind of tasks? Mr Dhumal seemed to be a strange man, like me. Or perhaps I was like him

4.Upon relocating, the claimant will have to visit the under mentioned advocate at the start and once every week thereafter - I figured this was to ensure I didn’t come up with some stunts.

5.The detailed valuation of the assets would be shared with the claimant after he visits the under mentioned advocate - cute!

6.The above referred will of Mr Dhumal provides for an acceptance window of one month from the date of this letter failing which all the assets in question will be transferred to a charitable trust of Mr Dhumal’s choosing – That, ladies and gentlemen, was why I was on the plane subjecting myself to the snores of the gifted gentleman.

I had not felt any shock or grief to learn about my grandfather’s death. His presence had not reduced my loneliness, his absence was not going to add to it. It was, however, intriguing to be added to his will. What had made him think that I would get excited with the inclusion. Normally, I would have replied to such a cut and dry letter by sending a middle finger emoji. But nothing was normal. I was no longer a well-paid investment banker; I was a well-laid ex-banker. It would be stupid to ignore the potential windfall. The problem was I did not know how much was the windfall. The absence of valuation appeared strategic. I was leaning towards believing that maybe it was too little. And for that why should I be subjected to staying at Garli village, which by the way looked beautiful on the internet.

My first reaction had been to place a phone call to the advocate. The remnants of corporate life were still fresh in my bloodstream; I was entitled to argue and re-work the terms.

Adv Ravi Bhatia, the undersigned of the intriguing letter, was a soft-spoken laconic man. He had handled my surprise, outrage, and arguments with tremendous equanimity. There was no way out, he had finally stated, of revealing the valuation or any further information. After that the decision to go to Garli was arrived at quickly, aided largely by my extant financial position; I had 3 months’ worth of house rent and 6 months’ worth of car EMI in the bank account. I had to go. But I had made up mind; there was no way I was going to relocate there. My intentions were clear; check out the dough, work out a deal with the advocate and return fast. After all, I had to find a job back here.

The plane landed at Chandigarh airport. My neighbour was still sleeping. Since I was worried that he might end up sleeping till the flight returns to Mumbai, I let my haversack slip out of my hands from the overhead bin. It hit his nose and fell on his lap. He was wide awake now. With that singular act of kindness, I walked out of the flight. I noticed the air hostess was grinning as I passed her to exit the aircraft.

CHAPTER 3

Icollected my luggage and walked out of the airport. I had asked the advocate to arrange for a pick up from the Chandigarh airport. Garli was at a 3.5 hour driving distance from Chandigarh; a heritage hamlet in Kangra Valley with the snow peaked Dhauladhar mountain range as its wallpaper, a fact I would have been kicked about if I was on my honeymoon.

I craned my neck in the arrival area to look for the pickup. Bored drivers were standing in an assembly line holding their placards with disdain. I took two rounds around them but could not locate my name in any of the placards. Maybe the advocate had forgotten to arrange for a pick-up or who knows, maybe all of this was a hoax. I went to a corner and lit a Benson. I was cursing the advocate in my head when my eyes caught sight of a young girl hurriedly walking in my direction, whilst struggling to tie her silky brownish hair in a bun due to the breeze. The piece of paper that she was holding by her teeth was dangling from her mouth as she walked. There’s nothing more attractive than a busy woman casually tying her hair. I dropped my cigarette and straightened up in anticipation of her coming and falling in my arms.

It was my lucky day, well almost. The girl came closer to me, removed the paper from her mouth, looked towards me and read out ‘Sutradhar Gangadhar Apte?’

I hated my name. I hated the sound of my full name even more. It had the feel of an old, retired Government servant. And coming from a young girl like her, it made me cringe. I wanted to deny.

‘Hi, I am Sutra,’ I responded instead.

The girl said nothing. Just raised her eyebrows as a question. She appeared disinterested, as if she was sent for this task against her will.

I pointed at the paper and uttered, ‘Me’!

Without any change in her demeanour, she said ‘Hi Sutradhar’.

‘People call me Sutra.’

‘That’s kind of them,’ she replied even before my statement was over. ‘I am Shivya.’ She motioned towards the car park and started walking, assuming that I would follow her like a puppy. She was right.

We were walking in silence. Shivya was noticeably tall; I pegged her at 5 feet 7 inches. She had naturally broad shoulders but a thin frame. Her easy going and confident walk divulged that she was comfortable in her skin. This was my observation as a fellow human being. As a member of the opposite sex, I observed that her form and shape was A-Class. Not to forget her silky brown hair. And of course, that fragrance. She didn’t have the sharpest of features up close; her high cheekbones were a little chubby. It made her look cute. What was life without appreciation for the good things?

Once inside the car park area, we halted near a white Toyota Innova. I kept my luggage near the rear tyre, rested my back on the Innova and pulled out a Benson. Shivya was looking at me all this while. I raised my eyebrows with the unlit cigarette hanging from my mouth, ‘What? You are not comfortable with smoking?’

‘No. I am wondering what are you taking a break for?’

‘Waiting for the driver,’ I replied in an obvious manner.

Without any response, she opened the driver’s door, sat inside with a smirk and started the ignition.

I had made an arse out of my self - a sexiest arse. I immediately put the cigarette back, shoved my luggage in the boot, and went and sat from the other side.

We exited the airport and made our way towards the highway. After a few moments of awkward silence, she finally said, ‘You seem to be under the impression that you have booked yourself in a 5-star resort.’

‘Why do you say so?’ I knew something was coming and should’ve kept quiet but I wanted her to talk.

‘What was all that send me a car to pick up at the airport instruction to Mr Bhatia?’ she said in a mildly irritated tone. ‘He is a lawyer not your travel agent.’

‘Since he indeed is a lawyer, he must possess the quality of thinking and communicating. He should have told me he is not a travel agent and so he can’t arrange for it.’ I defended

‘He thought you would not come if the arrangement of getting your own self to your own grandfather’s property was left on you.’

‘Well, assumption is the mother of all fuck ups. Besides I didn’t give any specifications on what kind of pick-up I wanted. I must say he took the arrangement rather seriously,’ I quipped.

Shivya sneered and blasted the horn at a moped rider ahead. I got the message.

‘So how do you come into the picture?’ I asked her, trying to connect the dots.

‘I used to work for Prem Uncle.’

‘Who that?’

‘Your Grandfather!’ She said, irritation writ large on her face.

‘Oh! I didn’t know his nick name.’ I admitted. ‘How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘I don’t. I am 22.’

‘Oh. So, you were working for my grandfather since your last birth.’

For the first time since I had met her, I saw a faint smile appear on her face. She quickly regained control and went back to her no-nonsense look.

‘It’s a long journey Sutradhar. You will get to know all that you need,’ she said after a few moments of silence.

I observed that like her hair, her eyes were also brown. And they could communicate as well as her words, may be a little more.

‘Can you please call me Sutra?’ I registered my protest

‘Ok, Sutradhar.’ she said and chuckled. It seemed she was settling down with this event of her life.

‘If we have to go to Garli via Shimla, how long will it take?’ I inquired.

I asked her this question because Adv Ravi Bhatia’s office was in Shimla and I was keen to meet him before going to Garli to my grandfather’s house.

‘A hell lot longer. Garli and Shimla are in two different directions from here,’ she replied instantly. ‘You can leave for Shimla tomorrow from Garli and meet Mr Bhatia. He won’t be expecting you today.’

I observed that she had quickly read my mind

‘I don’t want to stay any longer than needed,’ I clarified.

‘Fine but if we go to Shimla first and then head home, it would be well past midnight. Besides staying one day more should not……..

She had to stop her statement mid-way as both of us heard loud honking from behind. We looked back to see a convoy of vehicles with red lights mounted on top, signalling us to give way. It seemed the VIP being escorted was in a hurry, maybe because of an unruly bowel. It was a single lane road and Shivya had to tactfully manoeuvre the left side tyres onto the narrow footpath to make way. Shivya cursed as we both watched the entourage pass. After the convoy had passed, she started to drive again.

‘So, as I was saying, one more day won’t make a difference,’ she completed her statement

‘Obviously, if you feel that’s asking too much, we can head straight to Garli.’ I replied, leaving the decision on her.

We continued ahead in silence. Both of us coming to terms with each other’s opinion. There was a hair pin bend at a short distance. As soon as we covered that, we saw that the road ahead was blocked by one of the escort SUVs of the convoy