We start talking about Africa.
“The Ethiopia thing fell through,” he says. “There was a change of government and the new government wanted ten times the price. We lost $3 million on that. We had to shift the whole project to Guinea. We took more precautions this time: now we have sovereign guarantees. We managed to get our equipment out, though, which was the important thing. Our South African sugar refinery is safe.
“There are loads of Indians in Africa. Many of them are doing roses. Some rice. The Chinese don’t understand farming as well as we do, so we have an advantage. I have the sense that the Chinese are not so liked either, because they make big guarantees about the employment they will give but they end up bringing crowds of their own people.
“Over here, our real estate business is growing very fast. We’re building two big developments in Noida. One of them has a 240-metre tower, with a swimming pool and restaurant on the sixtieth floor. We’ve acquired 8,000 acres across the border in Uttar Pradesh where we’re building a complete private township. We’ve got civic authority status and we’re going to do everything ourselves. Garbage, sewers. It’s going to be a model city and we will train the population how to live in a modern city. How to divide up their garbage, not just throw it out in the streets. We have a system for collecting fees from all residents to pay for all these services.”
I already know about this new development because Mickey’s company seems to have bought up pretty much every billboard in Delhi to advertise it. Computer-generated images show a sparkling metropolis of skyscrapers and glass. The rumours are that Mickey spent significantly in excess of a billion dollars acquiring the land for his new city. Given the costs of developing that land, and all the other projects he is funding right now, one has a sense of the scale of financial backing he has.
“We’re outsourcing our architecture to the US. We couldn’t find people in India who could do the work and have now got an architect in North Carolina whose office does all the work for our projects over here.”
While he is talking, Mickey surreptitiously dials the phone number of the friend who is sitting next to him. The friend’s tablet starts to ring and he puts it to his ear. It is about the size of a hardback book. Mickey bursts out laughing.
“I just love seeing him put that thing to his ear. It’s so big he can’t even hold it in one hand.”
We talk about other things. I ask Mickey what he thinks of the calibre of other Delhi businessmen.
“Most of them are not very impressive. They’re not thinking big. You should meet a friend of mine who makes car parts. Rakesh. He’s expanding into the Middle East and Europe, he knows how to compete with China — he’s the one person I look up to. The story I hear most often is people selling out. Going to live in Europe. They can’t deal with it here — it’s too difficult — they have to pay people off at every level and get involved in politics and they just want to sell their father’s business and go to Europe. I say, ‘What are you gonna do there? What are you gonna do with the cash?’
“People are giving up their family business, moving out of their parents’ house and losing their values. I think it’s shameful. Why do you need to move out of your parents’ house? Are you Indian or not?”
Since I last saw Mickey he has moved, with his parents, into the enormous farmhouse he has been building for the last two years. I have never seen this place, but its scale and opulence have created waves of rumours I hear everywhere I go. The golfing carts for navigating the grounds. The underground swimming pool surrounded by bullet-proof glass panels on steel rollers. The interior decor of gold tiling, red velvet and crystal masterminded by a British nightclub designer
“And those people are idiots,” he continues, “because the opportunity is now. This is the time that money your family built up in the last generations can really explode. We’re approaching a global food crisis. The climate is changing and a lot of established food markets are having major problems. Look at Australia. There is so much scarcity. The next oil is food.”
He says it with exaltation, and I remember this feeling from my last conversation with him: that he is a businessman bred for the era of catastrophe, delighted by food shortages, climatic disturbance and turbulence of all sorts. Unlike American elites, who might have come to maturity in an age that believed that the future would be less assailed by catastrophe, Mickey comes to maturity in an age that believes that catastrophe is just beginning.
“Our next big venture in India is poultry. We’re looking to deliver 500,000 chickens per day. They’ll be properly packed and hygienic. Currently chicken farms are very dirty. The knife they cut with and the base they cut on are so dirty. We just have to tell people the knife they cut with is dirtier than your toilet seat and they’ll all abandon the old suppliers. This will be a very important product for us.”
He seems to have even more energy than the first time I met him. Any one of the many projects he is managing would defeat most other people I know. I say he must be working hard.
“Of course it’s difficult. I don’t get to see my kids. My wife goes on at me about it. I see them for half an hour in the morning and maybe two evenings a week. But I tell her — when they’re nineteen, at least they’ll have money. Imagine if we didn’t have money and they were complaining that they couldn’t go to good schools or anything. What would I say to them? ‘Well, at least I spent time with you’?”
It is time for Mickey’s massage.
“It’s a great time,” he says, rising, “the greatest time ever in Indian history. There’s money to be made in every corner. Everywhere you look there’s scarcity. It’s very corrupt — you have to work very hard — but it’s a great scene.”
“Would you like it to be less corrupt?” I ask.
“No!” He laughs at length, and turns to his friend in mirth.
We walk out through the hotel. He and his friend head towards the spa. We say goodbye and I walk away. He calls out to me.
“And by the way!”
I turn around.
“I still want to buy Heinz!”
• • •
Driving past Delhi’s sole dealer of Bentleys and Lamborghinis, I stop in on a whim and ask to speak to the manager. He’s not around and I’m sent to have coffee with the PR girls. They are appropriately attractive and, judging by their diamonds, from the right kind of family. (“I’ve driven a million Porsches and Ferraris,” says one. “They’re nice cars. But when you get into a Lamborghini, it’s something else.”) For them, Delhi is a place of infinite money-making, and they fall over themselves trying to express this fantastic fecundity.
“When someone comes in here looking to buy a Bentley, we don’t ask him what he’s driving now. Just because he drives a BMW doesn’t mean he can afford a Bentley. We ask if he has a jet or a yacht. We ask if he has an island.”
“Are there many people with jets in Delhi?” I ask.
The girls wax apoplectic.
“Everyone has one. And not just one — they have two, three, four.”
We chat about nice cars and expensive living. A Lamborghini is driven into the showroom: the noise is so deafening that we have to stop talking until it’s in place. I ask the philistine’s question: what’s the point of spending 30 million rupees [$600,000] on a car that can do over 300 kilometres per hour in a city where the traffic doesn’t move? They tell me about the car club that meets at night in the diplomatic enclave, where the roads are straight, wide and empty.
“You have to have at least, like, a BMW or a Mercedes to join. They meet at midnight and they race their cars. The prime minister’s office is always calling us to complain.”