All those summers spent sipping lemonade in Capri, St. Tropez and Monte Carlo. The winters skiing in Megeve and St Moritz. Hard-earned Diwali invitations to watch fireworks and horseback ride with royals in Jaipur. That life, meticulously curated to 'reach the top', was in peril. And the disappointment was almost too much for Arjun's parents to bear.
The family ice-cream empire, built from nothing over three generations was fading fast. With no apparent heir, Arjun's 'idiotic' infatuation with Karl Marx was no longer finding traction at home. His father laid the blame entirely on his wife. She looked the other way while Arjun collected Liberal Arts degrees at Columbia and NYU instead of the one in Finance they had agreed on. The purpose of which, 'as everyone knows', was to make the life-long network of business associates that keeps them all collectivity, afloat. Now thirty years old and all but pickled in political philosophy, it seemed impossible that Ajun would ever 'get over it' and join The Business. Until he met Nayna, that is.
A striking debutante, Nayna could match, and possibly surpass, Arjun in wit, and definitely in charm. She was the kryptonite his parents had been searching for. Nayna was the real deal. A tsarina in the flesh, to the manor born. Would they succeed in winning her over? Would she succeed in luring Arjun away from that nauseating 'pity for the masses'? And then, would Arjun finally fulfil his parent's dream? Would he scratch his way up to his 'proper place' in the firmament alongside that glorious tribe: the global industrialist elite? They'd worked so hard. And they were so close.
From a work in progress ©Tara Sahgal
Comments