It took me less than a minute to decide I wanted that number. I forked out five grand from my wallet. The PI counted the notes and put them in his coat pocket.
'Write it down,' he said, reading from a piece of paper. 'It is 98333 81234. Got it? I have got this number with great difficulty. So please use it with discretion.'
'Can I try it right now from a PCO?'
'You can, but you won't get her. I've found out that Shabnam has gone to Cape Town to shoot a film. The mobile will start working only when she returns to India. You can try the number after a week or so.' He knotted his hands. 'Will that be all?'
'Yeah. Thanks for all your help.' I got up.
'Let me wish you the very best, Mr Larry,' the PI said and shook my hand vigorously. 'Your girlfriend is every Indian's dream girl. I feel very envious of you. Very envious indeed.'
I stepped out of his office, happy as a pig in manure. For the first time, things seemed to be looking up.
I bought an expensive Nokia that very afternoon, together with a pre-paid card. Then, sitting in my room, I dialled the number with shaking fingers. The call went through, but no one picked up the phone. After a while a recorded voice told me, 'The subscriber you have dialled is presently not available. Please try again later.'
Disappointed, I hung up. The PI was right. I would have to try later. A whole week later.
I carefully put the little slip of paper with Shabnam's number in my wallet, and that's when I discovered that the wallet was almost empty. I had only got a thousand rupees and two hundred dollars left. And I had to survive another forty days in this city. So that evening I turned to Bilal in the TV lounge.
'Is there anyone here who might require the services of a forklift driver, you reckon? I need to make some quick cash.'
'You don't need to drive forklifts in India. You can do much better as an English teacher here,' he said. 'Let's find you a job.' He picked up a newspaper from the centre table and flipped through it. 'Here, this might be just the job for you.' He pointed out an advert in the 'Job Openings' section:
Wanted:Voice & Accent Trainers for a leading BPO. Job Requirement: Conduct refresher training on Phonetics, Grammar & Culture as and when needed. Complete daily tracking, including end-ofday course evaluations and trainee assessments. Qualifications: No prior experience or specialization needed. Good command of American English the only pre-requisite. Apply with resumé and references for immediate position.
The advertisement was as clear as mud to me. 'What the hell's a BPO?' I asked.
'Business Process Outsourcing. A fancy name for a call centre,' said Bilal. 'You should get the job easily. All you need to do is speak like an American.' He told me not to worry about the resumé and references, but just to go for the interview.
I spent the rest of the week waiting for the week to end. Every day I tried Shabnam's number no less than fifty times and every time I got the same recorded message. I finally lost my patience when I got the recorded message even after ten days. So I marched back to the Shylock Detective Agency and found the office locked and all boarded up. There was a printed notice fluttering on the door. It said 'Prime Office Space. For immediate rent/sale – Contact Navneet Properties 98333 45371.' I called up the number and was told that Mr Gupta had vacated his rented office and gone somewhere without any forwarding address.
For the first time, the thought entered my mind that the PI might have been as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And that he may have given me a bum steer. But the Lord never closes one door without opening another one. As I was returning, I spotted a magazine called Filmfare at a bookstand with Shabnam's picture on the cover, and bought it.
Mizz Henrietta Loretta, our Third Grade teacher, taught us about a crazy dude called Archie-something who lived long, long ago in some country called Grease. The fellow dived into a bathtub and was the first to discover that water starts overflowing from a tub when you fill it too much. He got so excited he jumped out of the tub, naked as a jay bird, shouting ' Eureka! Eureka!' That's exactly what I felt like doing on reading the article about Shabnam Saxena. Coz what I discovered in that magazine was nothing short of a gold mine. It gave the whole life story of the actress and was word for word exactly the same as the story told me by that PI. My respect for Mr Gupta went up a couple of notches. The guy was right on the money. But the magazine had two additional pieces of info Mr Gupta hadn't given me. It had Shabnam's address in Mumbai and even her birthday – 17 March, which happened to be exactly the same as the birthday given to me by Sapna Singh. That was the clincher which convinced me that Sapna and Shabnam were one and the same. I felt so happy, I guzzled down four cans of Coke!
That night I sat down at the desk in my room, took out a piece of paper and began composing a letter to Shabnam. 'My dearest darling Shabnam,' I began. 'I reckon a love like ours is as scarce as hen's teeth,' and before I knew it, I'd filled twenty pages. I put them all in an envelope, marked it 'Highly Confidential', wrote Shabnam's address and posted it first thing in the morning.
The next day, I wrote another letter to Shabnam. And then it became as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. In a week's time, I'd spent more cash on postage than on food and I was down to borrowing money from Bilal.
'You better get that BPO job,' he warned me.
So on 25 October I landed up in Connaught Place for the interview in my best clothes. I was shown into a swanky office with glitzy paintings, plush leather seats and a pretty receptionist.
The person conducting the interviews was a balding guy in his forties called Bill Bakshi. He sat behind a polished steel table dressed in denim jeans, a Buffalo Bills sweatshirt and a Yankees baseball cap. He looked at me with a puzzled expression. 'Mr Larry Page… I thought you would be an Indian Christian from Goa. But you look American. Is that right?' He spoke like one of those damn Yankees from New York.
'Yeah. I'm American. Always have been. Is that a problem?'
'No… no… not at all,' he said quickly. 'In fact, what could be better for us than having an American to teach the American accent? I am assuming you are a true blue American, someone who has actually lived in the US?'
'Yeah. I'm just visiting India. I live in Waco in Texas.'
He smiled, stretched his legs and put his hands behind his head. 'I am a Buffalo Bills fan, as you can see. How about you, Larry? Are you into American football?'
'You telling me! Being from the great State of Texas, I support America 's team, the Dallas Cowboys – only team in NFL history to have won three Super Bowls in four years.'
'And what about the Houston Texans?'
'Sorry to say, but they are a shit team.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Coz they lose all their games. They had their chances in the 2004 season but the 22-14 loss to the Cleveland Browns sealed their fate. Since then the team's been pretty much in self-destruct mode. I mean the whole decision to draft Mario Williams as the number-one pick in preference to Reggie Bush or Vince Young was probably the biggest mistake in NFL draft history. The guy can't hit the broadside of a barn!'
'Wow, you seem to know the history of the NFL by heart. Do you have any previous industry experience?'
'Well, this ain't my first rodeo. I've been working with Walmart for nearly five years now.'
'Walmart? Mr Larry Page, you are hired. Welcome aboard.' He got up to shake my hand.
'Gee, thanks. But what am I supposed to do? I mean, can you tell me a little bit about your company?'
'Of course. Rai IT Solutions is a BPO company. We do many things for our overseas clients. We sell telephone services, handle consumer complaints, conduct market research, make airline bookings, compute income tax and process insurance claims. But our biggest operation is in geographic information systems. Our largest client is the ARA – American Roadside Assistance. You've heard of them?'