World in My Hands , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Anis Ahmed K

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124 pages

English

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Struggling newspaper-editor Hissam is finding it harder and harder to pretend that believing in your work is just as satisfying as landing a big promotion. His old college friend Kaiser has fared considerably better as one of the city's wealthiest property developers, who also happens to be married to the woman of Hissam's dreams. Hissam's chance to strike it big presents itself in the form of a military-backed Emergency that upends the country's social order. Choosing to back different sides, Hissam and Kaiser find themselves trading places in a way that changes their relationship, and their lives, forever. This richly satirical novel heralds a major new voice from Bangladesh.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	20 décembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184005264
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright K. Anis Ahmed 2013
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184005264
For my brothers, Nabil and Inam
CHAPTER 1
A ll great success, like all true failure, is ultimately a thing of mystery.
One discovers principles and causalities post facto. One imposes order and progressions on the most spectacular of fates and detects patterns that may or may not exist. Here was the formula that anyone could follow to execute a meteoric rise: believe in yourself, wake with the dawn, never give up, make a daily list, aim big, be a maverick. Hissam Habeeb-Deputy Editor of The Daily Pandua , man of letters with a pungent wit, and deep-seated heresies; and also a possessor of ambitions as huge and hidden as his anxieties-knew it all. He had, in fact, tried it all. Lately he had acquired a taste for tracts of self-improvement: The Power of Yes , How to Get to the Top and Stay There , Only the Paranoid Survive . These books were of course never displayed. The walls of Hissam s library were girded with Great Books, while his office was stacked with the dreariest form of all literature: think-tank reports on development from around the world. Everything he owned, he had read. In his youth he truly believed in the significant branches of knowledge, albeit with a partiality to philosophy and literature and a respectable nod to history and the sciences. If those subjects contained any answers, though, they were revealed with excruciating slowness and indirection. And that was a luxury for which he no longer had the time. Hence his recent reliance on self-help manuals. This cache of secret wisdom, along with his stock of Rogaine and classic pornography in the vernacular, he kept hidden in his bedroom.
It was 9.00 p.m., and it was getting late for choosing the lead news. Unlike many other editors in Palitpur, Hissam didn t skip out early for a round of drinks or a card game at the club, leaving this most crucial of tasks to his news editor. Even if he darted out for an appearance at a cocktail party, Hissam made it back in time for a final approval of the headlines. Especially now, ten days into the Emergency and the curfew still in force, the decision-making process was fraught with risks like never before.
The curfew lasted each day from eleven at night till six in the morning. Hours that were until quite recently covered by fog were now blanketed by this special sanction-the least of Hissam s concerns. Under Emergency powers, the government was arresting people for what appeared to be no apparent cause. People from all levels of society and all manner of professions were experiencing the brute and arbitrary nature of the times. Calls from the Bureau of National Intelligence made sure the newsrooms knew what lines not to cross. Those who tried to be bold got a visit from members of the BNI, or worse were taken into the BNI.
Hissam had often asked himself what he feared most, and he knew that by now, in his mid-forties, it wasn t death. No, what he feared most was torture. He had thought about the matter thoroughly enough to know that physical torture was the one thing he would not be able to withstand at all. Not even if they left his eyes and testicles alone. So, more than ever, even if it meant running a bit late for the press, he reviewed the items for virtually every page personally, and now it was high time to make a call on the next day s leads. He could go with the safe bet:
President Names Ten-Member Interim Government
Or shamelessly lick the new regime s boots:
Nation to Be Put Back on Track, Corruption Root Cause of Derailment
Or the bombshell, the one he d been stewing about for the past few hours:
Top Politicians and Businessmen Under Watch, To Be Picked Up Any Moment
He stared at the paste-up and tried to decide. Tonight he had less time than usual: he had to leave for a meeting with Bakhtiar, a Director at the Bureau of National Intelligence. Hissam would be home late, not that it mattered-he had a curfew pass issued by the BNI. Besides, nobody was waiting for him at home. He stooped over the backlit paste-up table in their production room while the production editor, under his direction, cut and shifted transparencies into place with expert swiftness. The feeling never changed: as if he were giving final shape to the day that had passed. Other men came home to a wife and narrated their exploits. With no one to go home to, no one with whom to archive his days, Hissam liked to think he settled his daily accounts with the world entire.
The newsroom, visible through the full-glass front panel of his office, was aflutter with frantic typing and shouted phone calls. Their office was located in Meherbagh, a once-charming neighbourhood, where Hissam himself still lived. Outside, office-workers muffled up in scarves and sweaters hurried home through the winter evening on the main thoroughfare of Meherbagh, the dim, yellow halogen streetlamps barely able to illuminate their contours. Directly across from Hissam s office, the bright orange neon sign of Regal Kebab blinked furiously with a blind g -making it read Re al Kebab. The earnest suggestion reminded him that he had not had lunch today.
The Editor, when he was regularly in the office, always enjoyed an elaborate home-cooked spread, which he sometimes invited Hissam to partake of. Despite such occasional charities, and despite the man s state of coma of the past four months, Hissam could not overcome a certain resentment toward him. Hissam found the unembarrassed ability of the Relic-his private nickname for his superior-to retain a role for which he had years ago lost health and competence quite appalling. The Board of his paper, and the Chairman in particular, were over-sensitive to public perception and didn t wish to retire a man while he was in coma. What might have been a mere practical step anywhere else in the world was a test of one s humanity and compassion in Pandua.
When Hissam was much younger, he assumed that in time all secrets would become automatically revealed to him. Instead, at a time by which one ought to have reached the peak of one s m tier, or at least be on a clear path to that pinnacle, Hissam was still striving. A Deputy for heaven s sake! And a bachelor too! Work was all he had, and to be denied there too, what cruelty. Like everyone, he pretended that the work itself mattered more than rewards. That small things like designation or office size or the model of his car didn t matter at all. While his feelings about work were true enough, deficits on other counts seemed to sting more as he got older.
He called a peon to bring him a chicken shashlik-he did not want to go into a meeting with Bakhtiar feeling weak and hungry-before turning back to the headlines. Possible roundup of political and business leaders , Hissam said out loud, tasting the words in his mouth. If the news was true, the coup was about to take a new turn, and in a much harsher direction than what they d seen so far.
They re going to go after them, boss, said his chief reporter Gofran, with characteristic relish. It s confirmed, everyone s fucked.
Gofran, a big-eared and ever-smiling fellow, claimed that they, meaning The Daily Pandua , were the first to receive this confirmed List of the new regime s targets.
That s not the part I m concerned about, Gofran, replied Hissam. We need to be sure we don t get fucked.
It s straight from the BNI, boss, Gofran said confidently. Hissam knew that Gofran s contacts within the Bureau of National Intelligence were strong, but the BNI wasn t above tactical dissimulation.
Yes, but is it a genuine leak, or am I going to get screwed for running this?
It is confirmed, I swear it on my child s head, said Gofran, with the bright excitement of a predator who has cornered his prey. You run it tomorrow, we get to break it. You run it a day later, it s a stale paratha.
Remember The Great Defection?
Gofran groaned: That report was true, boss. The buggers changed their minds at the last minute.
Gofran had filed a report a year back, confirmed but not fed by his BNI source, about twenty-one ruling party MPs who were poised to switch sides to bring the government down. Apparently, these backbenchers were getting both cash and promises of ministerial posts or other rewards in a new government. Gofran swore on his mother that time that the event was guaranteed to occur the next day. Speculations to that end had been gaining steam for a while. On the authority of Gofran s BNI sources, Hissam ran an actual list of names. When no one crossed the aisle in the parliament the next day, or at any future date, that list became the greatest embarrassment of Hissam s editorial life. It took a lot to pacify the irate MPs. His rivals named the episode The Great Defecation.
With the best scoops it was always like that. There was a constant element of uncertainty, the risk of getting burned. Hissam loved the privilege of being the first to know, as well as the rush of breaking the news. But these were strange and particularly dangerous times.
Bipin, the news editor, held another report, about shuffles in the bureaucracy, to go in place of the risky scoop. Bipin, a stocky man of quite indeterminate age and equal