Made In China, page 8
The man eventually caught up to him. Never having run since the age of sixteen in a high school race, Raghu was panting when he stopped. He put his hands on the sides of his waist and doubled over. The man seemed surprised at Raghu’s condition.
‘What are you doing here?’ Raghu finally took charge of the situation.
‘Xiansheng, you told me hotel name.’ Raghu immediately cursed himself for blurting it out the first time they met.
‘What are you doing here?’ he asked again, a little more harshly.
‘I talk business with you. Two minutes?’
Raghu quickly concluded that it was easier to learn Mandarin than to dodge Hao Li. Finding no other place to sit, Raghu dragged him to the hotel lounge, keeping his head down as they bypassed giant structures of dancing dragons placed between life-sized bamboo pots. The Buddha waterfall would instantly relax his mind under different circumstances. The man was dressed in a faded shirt and a cap in lieu of his businessman get-up he’d been privy to and clearly didn’t belong in the hotel. Ignoring the embarrassment that was creeping up, Raghu marched ahead.
‘I am Hao. I give you nice deal.’ The man started his carefully practiced pitch again.
‘Look, how many times do I have to tell you this? I—I come from a respectable family.’ Raghu whispered, leaning in, resentment from within so strong he didn’t know if he could contain it much longer. ‘I have a wife, two sons.’ He tried to show the boys’ heights with a hand gesture. ‘Twelve and ten. I sell handicrafts, murtis … what do you call them, idols. I sell idols of Indian gods. I cannot sell tiger soup. Do you understand?’
The man stared at him blankly, his eyes widened. Raghu inhaled, rubbing his fingers over his forehead.
‘How do I say this in plain words? I, you, no business, no deal. Okay?’ Raghu’s arms were crisscrossing in air to drive his point home to the idiot across from him.
‘It make you rich. Why you no want to be rich?’ Hao’s latter question was the same one Rukmini often hurled at Raghu. Rhetorical, pressing and absurd. As if the only reason he wasn’t rich was because he didn’t want to be.
‘I’m going to have to call—’
‘But it’s a magic soup! They add—’ he showed twenty-four with his fingers, ‘—types of medicines to this. Cooked for long time. Hours and hours. Good for men. Make them strong. Only twenty-five hundred yuan per container. I give you for twenty-two hundred.’
Raghu glanced around, contemplating an escape plan from the bugger who just wouldn’t leave him alone. A waiter passed them with two cocktails in his hands. Raghu resisted the urge to pour both the drinks, ice and all, over Hao’s head.
‘Okay last prie. Twenty-one hundred. I give you for twenty-one hundred. You sell for twenty-five hundred. You make four hundred profit per container. Serves one person for a month.’
Almost on autopilot, the businessman in Raghu did a quick mental calculation. A gross profit of four hundred yuan per container. That’s four thousand rupees. That’d be twice that of what he made on the largest of idols he sold. Not a bad deal. An array of questions began to pop up in his head – who’d he market to? How would he distribute it? Where would he store it? What would he tell people he was selling? Would it be illegal or could he get by? Would Rukmini support him? If the word got out, would his family and friends disown him? His first instinct was to not indulge this man who was clearly trying to get him in trouble. But the desperate husband and father in him saw a glimmer of an opportunity; one that he couldn’t toss away so casually. So, he did what any seasoned Gujarati businessman would do in this situation. He asked the man for his number and promised him a call regardless of his intent.
‘I’ll call you. Now please leave.’ Raghu said authoritatively.
‘Xie xie.’ The man flashed Raghu a wide smile and bowed. His teeth were more yellow than the sun on a bright day. ‘Xie xie, Xiansheng.’ He bowed again.
‘Okay, okay xie xie.’ Raghu replied mindlessly, his hands raised as if he were blessing the man. It must mean ‘thank you’ or ‘bye bye’ or ‘I promise to not stalk you anymore’, if he were lucky, Raghu thought. Bowing down was more taxing than it seemed, he realized as he sneered at his own limitations. The man handed over his business card in English, surprisingly enough, and left. Hao Li, the card read. Under it, it said International Exporter, the letters bold and in a bigger font than the name. An intricately printed dragon twisted around the words. A dragon on a business card! That was a first for Raghu.
He continued staring at the card for a moment. Something about it told Raghu that Hao Li wasn’t a virgin exporter and that Raghu wouldn’t be his first scapegoat. The endorphin rush that can only result from successfully dodging a cheat instantly put him in better spirits.
CHAPTER 7
To Raghu, the days in Beijing had felt like his wedding night. He hadn’t quite possessed the requisite skills to make it through but he inexplicably had. But for the first time ever, after finding his way back from the noxious world of back alleys and animal body parts Hao Li had so effortlessly lured him into, he felt taller, more confident. The entire escape was exaggerated in his mind, as if he had emerged unscathed from the throes of death, fighting the Chinese mafia, crushing them, tossing their tattered bodies in those familiar back allies, his fingers stained with their vile blood. The air around him had a whiff of big-headedness that day. Spiced up, it would make for a delectable story for his future grandchildren one day.
He noticed as he continued waiting for the bus to the mall that the bruise on his elbow from the cyclist toppling over him a few days back had become raw again. Perhaps it’s gotten infected, he thought, as he noticed a thin stream of blood trickling down. He spotted a pharmacy across the street, and walked to it. Inside, a man in a white coat in was advising customers who were standing in a line, waiting to be served. Must be the pharmacist, Raghu thought, and parked himself at the end of the line. He saw that the only other non-Chinese person in the store was just ahead of him in the line – an older white woman with a Margaret Thatcher hairdo.
‘Hello,’ he politely mumbled to her. She nodded with an obligatory smile.
Minutes later, the Thatcher doppelgänger walked up to the pharmacist and leaned into whisper something.
‘Don’t understa,’ Raghu heard the pharmacist say to the woman.
‘I … umm … I’m actually … for my husband … do you by any chance have medication for erecti … do you have Cialis or Viagra or something?’ Something pinged in Raghu’s brain. Hadn’t he just been discussing this very issue with that crook of an importer?
The pharmacist disappeared under the counter and brought back some blue pills that he carefully concealed in a brown paper bag. The woman paid for it and, keeping her head bowed low, walked out.
‘Sir?’ The pharmacist called out to Raghu, who couldn’t think past what he’d just seen, bruise be damned. He had turned around and was running out of the shop. He didn’t know why he’d decided to follow the woman but couldn’t help it – he was acting on pure instinct.
‘Excuse me?’ He caught up with her and said, mustering some courage.
‘Yes?’ She must have been in her fifties, going by the few wrinkles on the sides of her eyes and below her cheeks.
‘Myself Raghu. I… I heard you speaking to the pharmacist. Please don’t mind.’
The woman winced. She seemed flabbergasted, and pulled her scarf across her chest, glaring at him before beginning to walk away.
‘Wait, please,’ Raghu shouted. He saw that she was dressed impeccably in a navy blue full-sleeved shirt paired with loose beige trousers. A pearl necklace adorned her neck. This woman exuded class. ‘Madam, please.’ She wouldn’t stop. He didn’t know why he was chasing her, but he felt like he had to know whether she’d heard of the ... soup.
‘What do you want?’ She snapped at him.
‘I—I heard what you asked the pharmacist,’ he explained.
She took a moment to process that information. ‘That is despicable. How dare you eavesdrop?’ she said, huffing. She spoke in fiercely hushed tones.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. But I have a question.’
‘I am in no mood to buy anything. Now if you’ll please—’
She was right. He did look like a desperate salesman.
‘Madam, you’re misunderstanding me. I just want to know if you’ve considered … um … tiger soup.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She stopped dead in her tracks.
He lowered his voice and leaned in slightly. ‘In Beijing, the sure shot cure for erec … for that medical condition is tiger soup, not pills. Have you tried it?’
‘Would you rather leave on your own or should I call the cops?’ she said sternly. Cops! He’d already dealt with them. He turned around, disappointment filling his heart. He could hear her walk away. An impulse swept him over and he ran behind her a moment later.
‘I don’t want to bother, just want to help. Everyone uses the soup here. It’s very popular. Herbal. It’s like ancient medicine.’
The woman stopped again, her eyebrows as far north as they could go, her lips pursed. Either she was seething with rage or was finally ready to get more information, Raghu couldn’t tell. But he took that as a cue to continue.
‘Make your husband try it. It works like a charm.’ Of course, he didn’t know if it actually did work like a charm, but all Raghu wanted to do was to test out selling the zaniest product he’d ever heard of.
‘That’s as may be, but I’ll thank you to stop bothering me now,’ she said, her voice just as stern.
Raghu felt snubbed. This was a dumb plan, he said to himself, and began to walk away to the hotel. A couple of steps later, he turned around on a whim and saw that the woman was still standing there. There were at least a dozen people in the short distance between them but their eyes met. Either Raghu was hallucinating or there was, out of nowhere, a smile on her lips. Raghu felt an unusual warmth in her smile.
After that experience, Raghu’s brain was churning and restless, and abandoning the plan to go to the mall, he began walking back to the hotel. A little down the road, he stumbled upon a sprawling colourful temple that he hadn’t noticed before while chasing the woman. It had a series of beautiful pavilions along with a tall Buddha carved from what seemed like wood. Tremendous amount of incense was being burnt at the entrance, lending the place a soothing air. Raghu walked in as if pulled by an invisible force. Inside, the mass chanting by the monks had an instantly calming, even healing effect on him. It was the first moment on foreign land when he felt at ease.
Once outside, Raghu felt energetic, and there was a spring in his step. He strutted back to the hotel, feeling like a successful salesman after eons. It infused some much-needed confidence in him. The city had served its purpose.
‘How was the shopping?’ Dev asked when he arrived at the hotel. His luggage was packed and ready. They would be leaving for the airport later that night from Raghu’s hotel.
‘Didn’t do any,’ Raghu said, tossing his backpack on the couch. ‘But you know what? I don’t care.’ Raghu confessed, shrugging. ‘I got what I wanted,’ Raghu said with a sparkle in his eye.
‘Did you pack?’ Dev asked.
‘Later, later. Accha, can I borrow your laptop for a minute?’ Raghu requested.
Dev pointed to his laptop on the side table. ‘Pragati.’
‘Huh? Isn’t that your secretary in the Surat office?’ Raghu asked in spite of himself.
‘Sure is. It’s also my laptop’s password,’ Dev replied, his eyes shining with mischief.
Raghu laughed. ‘Your password is your secretary’s name?’
‘I change them often.’
‘The secretaries or the passwords?’ It was like high school all over again.
‘Both. Hard to remember, harder to keep a track of,’ Dev joked.
Raghu grabbed Dev’s laptop and began to launch an application. ‘Why is your wallpaper an image of Pragati playing dandiya?’ Raghu croaked as he logged on.
‘I just told you.’
‘Such a dog!’
Two thoughts parading as question marks were harping at his logical brain. The first was easy enough. A clinic’s website based out of Cleveland, which he assumed must be in the USA because that was his default assumption for any city he wasn’t familiar with, confirmed that 40 per cent of men over the age of forty suffered from erectile dysfunction. In India, that number must easily be the same if not more, he assumed.
‘What’s the population of Surat, Dev?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Not Pragati’s waistline. Surat’s population.’
‘Twenty-five lakhs. And her waist isn’t twenty-five anymore,’ a voice from the balcony replied.
Raghu could feel the endorphins rushing. ‘What percentage of that are men, do you think?’
‘I need to stop buying those Swiss chocolates for her. She’s getting flabbier by the day.’ It was like a cross-connection that sometimes Raghu’s older kid wouldn’t hang up on.
‘Dev!’
‘At least half must be men. Unless you go to a mall. Men barely make up for 1 per cent of the population at these malls. Why do women need to shop ceaselessly?’
‘Men over forty?’
‘I don’t know, yaar.’ Dev answered, his voice rising. ‘Perhaps a third of all the men must be over forty. I have no clue. Why are you asking me these inane questions?’
‘A third of that is four lakhs. There must be four lakh men over forty in Surat,’ Raghu spoke inaudibly, immersed in deriving numbers on the hotel’s notepad. ‘So about one lakh seventy thousand men in Surat might be suffering from ED?’ he asked himself with a dubious face. How many of the one lakh seventy thousand would actually admit to it and be willing to shell out big money for their treatment?
As he scratched his head and looked around, an enormous wooden vase on the side of the television stand caught his eye. It had violet flowers made of wooden scrap. The vase had embellishments on its surface that glittered like polished diamonds. Diamonds! Surat was one of the largest exporters of diamonds.
He ducked his head and continued his online search. The Internet was his friend today. Ninety-two percent of the world’s diamonds get cut and polished in Surat, it told him. No wonder the city housed countless millionaires. Surely, some of those millionaires would be his clients, Raghu rationalized.
By nightfall, Raghu was a man mighty sure of himself. He had a little bit of research, a ton of assumptions and what he was now sure was a killer product. He had a plan, and he was going to make it work.
‘Dev, listen,’ Raghu leapt out of the bed with childlike excitement. ‘I’ll just be back.’
He rushed out of the hotel onto the busy street to look for a call box since he hadn’t activated international roaming on his phone, his heart thumping. There were countless cars, bicycles and pedestrians all around. An open blue truck carrying oranges and two children sitting on top of them zoomed past him, followed by another loaded with tied metal rods which looked like they’d roll off at the slightest jerk. He looked on unseeingly, not registering the chaos of the evening traffic and crowd around him as his mind churned with questions and doubts.
Was this the right thing to do? He stood as if frozen in thought, his hands in his pockets. Minutes later, he was still standing at the same spot, but now, there was a smile on his face, and his eyes were glazed with the vision of a golden future. He was on the right track. He knew it. He would start small, but soon cover major ground. He’d help countless men, save their self-esteem, their marriages. It’d be like running a lucrative social service business. He bit the inside of his cheek, his mind working furiously. Profits and philanthropy; the two could go hand in hand, couldn’t they? He could become the undisputed saviour of manhood everywhere. They’d honour him in his city by parading him around on a massive wooden tiger, tossing thick garlands made of rupee notes around his neck, preceded by a live band and enthusiastic dancers. The women would rush to kiss his hand or touch his feet, bashfully expressing gratitude for returning to them what they had so desperately longed for. The men would go hysterical, chanting his name, trying to embrace him. The local news channels would cover him. The newspapers would publish article after article on him.
A piercing honk from a two-wheeler that almost knocked him over brought Raghu back from that golden future to his mundane present. He grimaced, looking around the crowded street. He needed that life for himself. It was now or never.
He entered a phone booth and pulled out Hao Li’s card. As he stared at it, he had a thought.
‘Raghu, pack your bags, man. We’re leaving for the airport in an hour.’ Dev said to him.
‘Um—’
‘What?’
‘No, no. I was thinking—I actually might stay back here for a couple of days.’
Dev fell silent, his face registering his shock.
‘No, I mean, it’s my first time. We’ve spent so much money to come here. One must stay and explore, right?’ Raghu sounded unconvincing even to himself.
