Murthy shut his mobile phone with a snap and flung it up in the air. He caught it with his right hand just as he maneuvered his way from behind the functional rectangular desk, away from the corner that housed his laptop with a high-speed Internet connection. He danced a little victory jig. The victory dance, the high-five — they had all come to India with the call centers. Now success was measured by every person one enticed with the offer of a new credit card or phone plan, or every person who signed up for a repayment plan on a now defunct credit card. At least he wouldn’t have to sell India to Mr. Richardson. That had been done by Parineeta — call me Neeta — who contacted Murthy not by e-mail but a personal phone call. All he had to do was to show up for dinner at Benjarong tomorrow. With Mrs. Murthy.

Mrs. Murthy. Mrs. Sukanya Murthy. Sukanya. Anya. His wife. Maybe. The mother of his daughter. Always. “I have no more money for your pipe dreams. Why do you keep turning up on my doorstep?” she had told him three months ago. But she would help him out. Sukanya always did. And this time he would be able to repay her. This was a sure hit. All he needed from Mr. Richardson was the whiff of a contract. Murthy would use that to get funding for his new venture. He had everything else lined up — equipment, personnel, even an accent trainer.

Murthy leaned back on one of his two visitor chairs and surveyed his one-room-office. A copy each of the current issue of five business and technical journals spread out on his desk like a deck of cards before a dealer at a casino. His decrepit desk chair faced him. He’d gotten away with calling it his lucky chair and avoiding the expense of a new one. He swung the chair around to face the window. His view was blocked by the back of a tall sleek building exposing its window air conditioners that dripped water, brown with rust, from incorrectly installed water collectors. A brown streak ran along the wall of the building where the water had trickled back and stained the cream exterior. He was sick of this low-key existence. Whatever business he managed to hustle was barely enough to pay for this minimal setup after he had paid his employees. And he couldn’t even offer office space for his employees. They worked out of their homes and Murthy had nightmares of their seven-year-old children doing the work while his own employees worked for another employer or - worse yet - ran their own business on his time.

Murthy called his travel agent. After giving instructions to book a room at Hotel Park Sheraton and rent a car for his stay in Madras, he asked for a train ticket from Bangalore to Madras. There was a brief pause on the other end. “Sorry, Sir, did you mean plane ticket?”

“No. Just a train ticket will do,” he said. Why waste money on a flight? It was important to stay at the Hotel Park Sheraton in order to meet Mr. Richardson as an equal. It was equally important to arrive at the swank hotel in a good car. Sukanya would approve of his line of reasoning. He must also remember to tell her that he had traveled by train. That would earn him some brownie points with her. Brownie points — another import from the American outsourcing jargon.     

*

Sukanya stopped her Scooty at the police barricade and cursed the Chief Minister, Jayalalitha. She joined thousands of office workers who had to cool their heels until the Chief Minister drove past this road. If only she had ironed her daughter Nalini’s school uniform last night, Nalini wouldn’t have missed the school bus and made Sukanya drive her to school. Now Sukanya still had to go home and get ready for work. Luckily it was the beginning of the month and she hadn’t used up her three tardy days. Thank God for that. Maybe the Chief Minister could fling signed tardy slips as bounty as she sped by in her bulletproof jeep. The commuting delays had gotten so bad that managers in offices insisted that their employees factor in the Jayalalitha-Delay-Factor or CM-Delay-Factor into their commute time. Police barricades were no longer accepted as an excuse for tardiness.