Locked in Doubt: Chapter 7
7
June 15, 2023
Rixix Pvt Ltd
Jagan sat in his cubicle in the third floor of his company’s building and felt more than irritable. He had already snapped at two cleaning personnel who had offered to tidy up his desk. He hoped he could make amends later. It was not just the crazy deadlines that were giving him stress; it was much more.
He recalled his meeting with Sanath and Manisha in East Holpura Prison. As always, Jagan had played the part of That Loyal Friend whose sole flaw was an addiction to counting. The friend whom any guy could only love.
At least, any guy who wasn’t aware that Jagan had slipped Dilasil into Sanath’s drink at the award function, without the knowledge of the latter counting addict.
Jagan had sweated profusely over the last few days, whenever he thought of his actions. “Be calm, you didn’t do it on purpose,” Jagan would try to reassure himself before his stomach began doing somersaults again.
But another voice inside him would scoff, “Rubbish! You knew what you were doing when you made the waiter swap glasses so that Sanath would get the Dilasil-mixed grape juice.”
“But I never thought he would kill someone!” retorted Jagan-I. “I was just thinking minor embarrassments — like say, a drunken speech on the stage or slipping up in front of Dr. Pillai. It was just a playful impulse, I’m telling you!”
“Well, sounds like it was an elaborately planned impulse too,” replied Jagan-II.
“Hey, I had at least two good reasons!”
Jagan-II stopped to think. “I suppose you have a point there,” he said.
Jagan-I nodded and clenched his fists. The panic had turned to anger.
2 months ago, just after Sanath had shown his winning project to Professor Arora, Jagan had gone in to show his pathbreaking research paper.
At that moment, he hadn’t cared about getting a prize or a grade. His work was going to transform the field of computer science. He had already spoken about some of his ideas to Arora in the past, but Arora had disregarded them as infeasible. This time around, Jagan had managed to come up with a set of conditions that would make such a project feasible in the current world, albeit a bit expensive.
He waited with glee to see what Arora would say, but to his shock, Arora sent his painstakingly written paper right to the shredder without giving it a good enough look. “What did you just do?” Jagan had screamed at Arora, pounding his fist on the table. “Was it too complex for your pea-sized brain to comprehend?”
He would have preferred it if Arora had retaliated violently. But to his indignation, Arora just looked at him in the eye, as calmly as an insulted professor could appear.
“I am insanely proud of you, but this paper cannot be seen by anyone,” Arora said. “It’s just too dangerous to release in the present world. Maybe one day in the future, when we have developed systems that can counter the negative uses of this research, you can recreate your work.”
Jagan’s jaw dropped in disbelief, as Arora went on to rant about the ways in which the world would be negatively affected. He had slogged for months, only to have his faith in science taken away from him.
“Promise me, Jagan,” said Arora softly, “that you will never speak of this paper to anyone.”
“And why is that?” shouted Jagan. “No, I don’t care about your stupid visionary speeches. I think my work can do a lot of good to the world. You’re retarding scientific development, you retard!”
Arora lost his cool this time around. For the first time that morning, he stood up. Before Jagan knew it, Arora clasped his fist around Jagan’s shirt collar. Pulling his neck forward until they were at kissing distance from each other, he hissed, “You show me some respect, Mr. Jagan Vardha, or I’ll pulverize you to pulp. Promise me that this research will remain hidden for as long as I say so.”
Jagan’s eyes narrowed as he glared back at Arora, his neck still hurting. “It’s not like I have a choice, do I? I hope you and your blasted shredder are happy,” he spat.
To add insult to injury, Sanath had been handed the award, as Jagan’s project was declared void. And when Jagan learned that he was eating Sanath’s dust yet again, the anger and indignation found a new, more dangerous partner — jealousy. A dumb iris camera had trumped Jagan’s solution to a million-dollar computational problem.
The pain did not end there for Jagan. Later that night, Arora had barged into his hostel room and had forcefully vandalized all physical and electronic evidence of Jagan’s research including his notes, the documents on his computer and mobile phone, and all the code which he had written.
Just as Jagan opened his mouth to yell for the security guards, Arora whispered to him — “I know this is a rude shock, Jagan, but I am willing to do anything else you wish me to do, as long as you keep this between us.”
At first Jagan wasn’t convinced, but decided to play along, “Wow. You really are desperate, aren’t you?” he said. To test Arora’s commitment, he gave him a minor task — putting Deep’s name alongside Sanath’s as the project award winner. And when Arora obliged without a question, Jagan decided to pocket his newfound power for a little more time.
*****
As Jagan got back to his work, he felt queasy again. What if people found out that he had indeed drugged Sanath? But a large part of him figured that it would be next to impossible for such an event to occur, since the chargesheet against Sanath had already been filed, and Sanath himself believed he was guilty, for some unfathomable reason. And this realization kept him sane for the time being.
He scrolled through his old emails to soothe himself. Unlike other employees, he liked looking at email, as he had never received much of them before joining work. He re-read the email he had received the previous week from his supervisor, who had heaped praise on him, for a task he had accomplished single-handedly in record time.
Reading this, the colour came rushing back to his face. He had been born poor. His family had gone through countless sacrifices to ensure that he got an education. He had willed himself to develop a genuine passion for computer science and had succeeded.
“I was neither affluent nor brilliant, but I never made excuses. I worked my way up and I’m sure I’ll continue doing so. So what if I slipped a little something into Sanath’s drink because I was jealous? Don’t I deserve a bit of luck for the struggle I went through?”
Click here for Chapter 8
