I understood that Chirag was distinctly entrepreneurial in his own right, despite living in the shadow of a rather strong-willed father. Hardly had he turned twenty than Chirag set up his own business in real estate and construction in Auckland. He also began to shuttle between Auckland and Dubai, where he helped his father in the business.
After dinner that night, I drove Chirag around central Delhi for his first glimpse of the magnificent treasures of the old and dusty city I lived in. I wished he would see—as I did—that no other city in the world could hold a candle to the elegance of Delhi by night.
Red palash flowers swung from the trees, bowing towards the road. Monumental relics in carved stone from the times of the Mughal emperors sat firmly on the crossroads like old guards of the city. Sprawling bungalows watched us from behind iron gates as we drove past. A gurdwara and a few temples decorated with strings of coloured bulbs shone in the dark. The public gardens were coquettish, promising to reveal lawns sprinkled with more Mughal relics only at dawn. So for now, the black night came alive solely by the blazing force of the neon-lit circular pandemonium around India Gate.
Parking our car by the kerb, we paused to take a good look at the war memorial. I came here often to watch the crowds, I confessed to Chirag. Here, people old and young, driving Rolls Royces, BMWs and rickshaws, speaking in different languages about different things, were united in their love for ice cream, kabuli chana and the hullabaloo. The memorial’s history largely forgotten, it was the congregation of a heterogeneous and unrelated mass of people that had breathed new meaning into the space. This spot, for me, was India’s epicentre. It throbbed with extraordinary diversity, and the deeply distressing contrasts between the exorbitantly rich and the despicably poor that co-exist in India, I told Chirag.
I was neck-deep in work the following day when I received a message on my phone from Chirag—at an hour past the time of his flight back to Dubai. He asked if he could take me out for dinner once more.
It was not the only time that Chirag would forsake his flight out of Delhi for me, and certainly not the last of our dinners. Over the next three months, our weekends were spent together, either in Dubai or Delhi. Chirag’s trips to Delhi would usually be extended by a few days, each visit longer than the last, until the evening he unilaterally took a decision and announced it to me in the parking lot of Khan Market when I reached there after work to pick him up and go home.
‘I have decided I am not leaving!’ declared Chirag, hastening towards me in the characteristic duck walk he does when he is excited.
‘How come?’ I replied, surprised, looking at him through the window of the driver’s seat.
‘I just spoke to dad and told him that the market is great here in India, and I’m setting up my own business,’ he said, his face beaming as he got in the car and gave me a peck on the cheek.
‘That is a wonderful surprise,’ I said, after taking a few moments to realize that both our lives would now change forever.
It was also hard for me to miss the irony: the land his father had once desperately quit to sail off to more lucrative pastures in Dubai now seemed to Chirag a bed of business opportunities—far more than Dubai.
Chirag’s business idea was to manufacture and set up India’s first isolation tank at a central location in Delhi. He described it as ‘a well-established medical procedure for mental wellness that replicates the Dead Sea in a controlled environment.’ Isolation tanks were popular in the US and a few other parts of the world, including New Zealand, where Chirag had experienced it, but he had discovered that they were not yet available in India. Chirag felt there was a ready market in Delhi for this luxury experience, not only for those Indians who had tried it while travelling or living abroad, but also the increasing number of Delhi residents who had the money to spare.
Our discovery of Delhi from that moment on was of a different face of the city. The volume of money flowing into Delhi was massive. Investors had come in with fat chequebooks, vying for projects that promised them a windfall of profits. Government officials had padded up their bank balances, middlemen had flourished, and some businessmen seemed to have struck pure gold. While the centre was calm, it seemed that Delhi was stretching at the seams. New roads, bridges and overground and underground Metro lines were being constructed to connect the expanding corners of the city. As Chirag went across town looking for locations to set up shop, we learnt of all the action on the city’s periphery. On the fringes of the city, several hundred apartment buildings were being built and many more were needed, to cater to a wide range in terms of affordability. Large global firms had set up offices here, attracting talent from around the world to live in the neighbourhood. These people wanted the services and goods they might have seen when they travelled or lived abroad, creating new opportunities for businesses. There was more of a demand than supply of hospitals and doctors, as also of new schools in every budget bracket. Everywhere, there was a thirst for newer malls, shopping choices, cinema halls and fresh entertainment. Yet the money and opportunities coming into the city did nothing to reduce the numbers of children sleeping on the streets. Entire families would be living under bridges, exposed to the harsh Delhi sun and the fuming vehicle engines on all sides. Twenty-something men would be sitting on pavements outside marketplaces with
