Dangerous Glitter

PAZHAYEDATHU PARAMBAN

Notion Press

Old No. 38, New No. 6

McNichols Road, Chetpet

Chennai - 600 031

First Published by Notion Press 2015

Copyright © Pazhayedathu Paramban 2015

All Rights Reserved.

ISBN: 978-93-5206-270-6

This book has been published in good faith that the work of the author is original. All efforts have been taken to make the material error-free. However, the author and the publisher disclaim the responsibility.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is dedicated to my wife, Hima,

who always encouraged me to continue

my passion since childhood, writing.

Foreword

As the life partner of the author, I had the opportunity to read the first copy of this book in its crude form. It has gone through many revisions before it has reached your hands.

People have ambitions. Without ambitions, there is no direction and without direction, there is no purpose in life. But, ambitions should be fulfilled through the right means. Otherwise, ambitions will make people compromise on their values. Once a person starts compromising on his values, he is not only putting his own life in danger, but others’ lives also.

Then, it reaches a point where there is no looking back. In the process of achieving one’s ambitions, one drags other people into it and they also become part of the problem. In this story, there are no heroes, there are no villains. There are only victims: victims of greed. Circumstances make the same people play the roles of hero or villain. The changing roles add to the gripping nature of this story.

It is amazing, the way the characters are introduced, and incidents are stitched together to connect the dots in the exciting plot. The end is unusual and unexpected. The simple writing style of the author makes it easy to read. Some science is involved, but it can be digested easily by readers without much difficulty. I am sure you will like this story as much as I do!

Hima Biju

Acknowledgements

First, I must thank my wife, who was the first reviewer of every chapter in this book. She has seen this book in its crude form and has read multiple versions of it patiently.

I want to extend my thanks to Mr. Kiran Kumar BGV, who always encouraged me to keep writing.

Thanks are in order for my publishers, Notion Press, without whom this book wouldn’t have seen the light of day. Thanks to my editors who patiently edited this book and made it presentable.

I would also like to thank my readers for choosing to read my book. I am grateful to my immediate family and my extended family for their support and encouragement. Thanks are also in order to all my friends on social media, for reading my stories and criticizing me.

I am also grateful to Wikipedia and Google. I have used these wonderful websites to refer to the history of Tamil Nadu, and for the segments dealing with science, in the book.

rt – 1

The Origin

Chapter 1

Many years ago…

In the 17 th Century, Mangammal was the Ruler of Madturai, which was constantly under attack from the Mughal Emperor, Aurangzeb, and the neighbouring countries. There were 72 ‘Palayams’ (provinces) under Madurai. Alagpuri and Sivagiri were two of them. Both provinces had supplied many brave soldiers to Mangammal’s army for her wars against her enemies.

Mangammal believed that the treasury should not be situated in one place alone. Her Kingdom was under constant threat from the Mughals, the Marathas, and the rulers of Mysore and Thanjavur. If everything was available and accessible in a single place, her treasury could be easily looted. She decided to divide all her kingdom’s gold into separate containers for each of the 72 Palayams. The rulers of each of the Palayams were in charge of protecting the gold. As Alagpuri and Sivagiri were known for their brave soldiers, Mangammal ensured that at least a quarter of the total gold was kept in both these Palayams.

Thenna was the youngest son of Alagpuri’s ruler Raghunath. Raghunath had trained all his children in martial arts and sword fights. Thenna was the best among his children, and was a fast-learner. He caught the attention of his father when he single-handedly killed all the 16 soldiers of Thanjavur’s secret army, when they had come to kill his father and loot the gold in his safe custody. Knowing that the gold would be safe with Thenna, Raghunath made Thenna the keeper of the gold even though he was only 20 years old. Thenna lived up to his expectations. His fame reached Sivagiri, and Sivagiri’s ruler, Ramachandra, wanted to meet Thenna. A meeting was arranged, and Ramachandra took his 17-year-old daughter, Meenakshi, along with him. Ramachandra had two specific items in his agenda for the meeting.

Sivagiri had a lot of young brave soldiers, but they lacked a charismatic leader like Thenna. Meenakshi’s father wanted either Thenna himself, or soldiers trained by Thenna to be the keepers of the gold entrusted in his Palayam. He also wanted to give Meenakshi’s hand in marriage to Thenna. She was his only daughter. Ramachandra was getting on in years and wanted Meenakshi to be in safe hands before he died. Meenakshi’s mother had died of a nasty fever when Meenakshi was only ten. Ramachandra never married again, because he loved Meenakshi enough not to put her through a stepmother. If Thenna was a good man, and if Meenakshi liked him, Ramachandra was willing to arrange their wedding at the meeting.

Meenakshi was a beautiful girl. She appeared to older than she was, and was a great dancer. She performed at the meeting, and Thenna instantly fell in love with her. Thenna was handsome and Meenakshi liked him, too. Soon, the wedding was fixed. As there was news coming in through their secret channels that Aurangzeb was likely to attack Madurai soon, the wedding was scheduled to be solemnized after six months. Both, Meenakshi and Thenna didn’t want a war during their wedding.

Aurangzeb, on the other hand, was thinking of ways to conquer Madurai. From his spies, Aurangzeb had learnt that Alagpuri and Sivagiri were the Palayams from where the maximum number of brave soldiers came. He surmised that Mangammal would keep the most riches under the control of the rulers of these Palayams. To break any country, he knew that, its financial strength had to be broken first. The easiest way to break Madurai was to break Alagpuri and Sivagiri, which would then create a sense of panic among other Palayams. If the best of the best could not defend their wealth, it would undoubtedly have a negative impact on the confidence of the other Palayams. He decided to attack those Alagpuri and Sivagiri, and began his preparations to send his army there.

Meanwhile, Meenakshi and Thenna spent time together, becoming the quintessential love birds. They found reasons to meet each other whenever it was possible. Thenna visited Sivagiri often under the pretext of training soldiers and ensured that he met Meenakshi each time. They wove their dreams together. Thenna was mesmerised by Meenakshi’s beauty and her dancing skills. Meenakshi was so sure that nobody could defeat Thenna in combat. They created castles and gardens in their dreams. Both, Ramachandra and Raghunath, were aware of these meetings. Even though they disapproved of these meetings outwardly, due to the restrictions in the societies, they were happy about it in their hearts.

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The Glitter

Chapter 2

Today

Rajesh was born in a middle class family. He was brought up with good principles. But, like anyone else in his generation, Rajesh dreamed of becoming a millionaire. That was why he studied architecture engineering while studying for his B.Tech degree. He was good at studies. Rajesh was intelligent and hard working. He understood early that Information Technology was not going to bring him fortunes. The IT industry had already matured and the wages were not getting better. The charm of onsite travel had gone because the soaring prices and inflation made things unreachable even with dollars. Rajesh was quick to learn that India had only one ultimate investment destination: real estate.

Rajesh was born in Delhi. His father was a bank clerk and mother was a teacher. He was the only child to his parents, born after 10 years of marriage. For most of their lifetime, they lived in a rented apartment. With money from his parents’ retirement funds, and with the small amounts that his parents got from their share in their families’ ancestral property, they barely managed to buy an apartment in Delhi for a whopping Rs. 90 lakhs. It was an eye opener for Rajesh. If an apartment of hardly thousand square feet could cost so much, the money that real estate giants would be so much more. That was when Rajesh decided to be an architect. He tried his best not to burden his family for the fees for his engineering course. He succeeded in getting a seat in NIT, though, he was confident that with the kind of effort he had put in he would get into IIT. Rajesh was not the only one who was putting in such efforts to get into IIT. There were thousands with the same dream.

Rajesh focused on his studies and passed his engineering course with flying colours. He was the first one in his batch to get selected in the campus interview by a well known name in the real estate business. The day Rajesh came home with the offer letter in hand, his father hugged him and said, You are my son! I am proud of you! Though Rajesh felt like saying that ‘pride got one nothing, but money alone did’, he did not speak out. He was relieved that he had completed his first step successfully in his journey to the millionaires club.

Rajesh despised his middle-class status. He couldn’t do anything about it, but he hated it. If his father had enough money or properties, Rajesh would have gotten a jumpstart in achieving his dream of starting a real estate company. But, now, he had to take a slightly longer route. First, he had to work in a company, find like-minded people, gather them, earn money, find a financer and then start a company in partnership with someone else. Rajesh gave himself five years. After all, he was joining as a junior architect in a very reputed company. Unfortunately for him, the truth was far from reality. Within a year of joining, Rajesh understood some of the harsh realities. The first thing he found out was that as a junior architect, he had to work under reputed senior architects. The senior architects were mostly relatives of the board members of the company. The only work of senior architects was to make sure that the junior architects thought well and came up with brilliant architectural designs. The second thing Rajesh realized was that though the junior architects do all the thinking and come up with designs, the credit will be stolen by senior architects. The designs will be submitted under the name of senior architects.

The third reality Rajesh understood was the fact that it was not easy to become a senior architect. The minimum number of years of experience required was 10, and it was still not a guarantee unless one was approved for a promotion by the team of senior architects. To get the approval of the senior architects, he had to feed them with a lot designs and be in their good books. They wanted to be pampered, and taken out to eat at expensive hotels every now and then. Rajesh would not be able to do that.

Unable to bear all of this, most junior architects tended to leave the company within three or four years of joining. They went to the new companies where they were treated as mid-level architects, if not seniors. But the problem was that these new companies were always crushed by the big companies. There was a lobby of big companies always trying to choke the money supply to the new companies so that the elite group was maintained and they could control the prices in the real estate industry. It was like a cartel. Though they didn’t like each other, they were united to beat their common enemy.

Rajesh realized that it would take a long time to be a millionaire. But he was not ready to take the risk of going to a new company. He had seen many architects joining such companies, queuing up for interviews again within six months of leaving. Rajesh found another pressing problem. He was not finding like-minded people to start a new company. Most like-minded people he found came from the same middle class background as he did. Even if they put some money together by selling their houses or by taking loans, they were sure that they couldn’t beat the lobby and come up. The giants would choke them and eat them alive. Soon, he succumbed to his fate. He completed five years in the company. His intelligence was not helping him much. It started wearing away. There were new kids coming in year after year and the senior sharks kept drinking their blood. All of them resigned to their fate like he did. They waited for a chance to become a senior architect.

Life was frustrating for Rajesh. His parents were ageing. As typical Indian middle class parents, they began putting pressure on Rajesh to get married. They wanted somebody to look after them. Rajesh day dreamed about old Hindi movies where the hero falls in love with a corporate tycoon’s daughter and within months, he became a billionaire. But, soon, he returned to reality when he was called by his senior architect for a new design for an upcoming project. After much persuasion from his parents, he decided to follow their advice. He had an affair when he was in college. Rajesh was handsome. Sindhu was beautiful and expressed her interest to Rajesh many times during their college days. He liked her too. Her family’s financial