Chapter 1 (contd.)

My reread of the letter added nothing further to my knowledge about The Collective. I scrutinized the seal of the Master Craftsman at the end of the letter. It was quite large and graphic. In the centre was a huge tuning fork with a thick trunk and two arms pointing to the sky. Something about the tuning fork made me look closer and as I brought it up to my eyes, it transformed into a giant human figure, arms stretched heavenwards! Around its feet were twelve people, some hitting rubber hammers against the figure’s legs, others measuring the length of the trunk and a few just dancing like dervishes. One figure sat alone on the shoulder of the large human tuning fork, long hair flowing, leaning back against the arm, and playing what looked like a panpipe for the pleasure of the tuners below. It was this figure (obviously the Master Craftsman) that was larger than the others and more surely etched out in the seal.
I wondered, not for the first time, how the Master Craftsman of the secret guild had got me on his radar. Who had nominated me? According to the folk-lore the nominator had to be a core member (limited inner circle who wrote in The Journal) who should have seen the candidate’s work from close quarters for a minimum of two years.
It felt creepy; I had been under observation for so long without knowing it. Who’d been watching me? The Journal was pretty popular in corporate circles in India and the grape wine whispered of many Indian core members but who they were, was of course, a mystery. Legend also had it that if a nominee was not selected, the nominator stood to loose their own membership. So nomination was a serious business and the stakes were very high. Who had gambled with me?
Well I was going to try my best not to let them down. As far as I was concerned, nomination into the list of probables was a privilege, like being chosen into the first sixteen of the Indian Cricket Team. As I locked my hotel room, I reflected on how close I’d come to being a part of that Dream Team many moons ago. If only the blasted match-fixing scandal hadn’t imploded my dream! Aborted it in the womb it did. The enquiry had not been able to prove anything but it had taken its time. And its toll on my career. Having been banned from first class cricket while the enquiry was on (almost eighteen months), my confidence had combusted and my talent had been reduced to tatters. When the committee had declared me eligible for selection again, a few half-hearted innings had produced dismal failures and I’d vowed never to pick up the bat again. I’d put my dream to sleep and had retooled myself to play this Corporate game.
Five years into it, the dream was stirring again. A different game, a different match, but a crack team beckoned again.

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I went down and bought the Turkish Daily News and an eye pendant at the kiosk. I slipped the eye around my neck, opened the paper to the daily crossword and read the cryptic 6 down clue. 6 letters - ‘The azure part of an evergreen rock’. The answer would give me the location of the meeting. I didn’t have too much time to solve it; within three hours or thereabouts the coaches to Cappadocia would depart.
Again I thought of Pause; she was a crossword enthusiast and would have been able to crack this one for me quite easily. I was already missing her and had wanted to talk to her as soon as I landed but had refrained lest it look too eager on my part. Throwing self-respect to the wind, I called from the newspaper booth but her hand phone was switched off. Blow my nose! Now I was in trouble. Clutching the paper against the wind I stared at the clue. Precious minutes later I was still clueless.
The friendly kiosk owner tried to strike up a conversation. “I help?”
I looked up irritated. “You cross?” He asked pointing at the open paper I’d now spread out on his counter.
“You India?” He ignored my attempts to ignore him.
I sighed. “Worry not!” He hurriedly reassured me. “My brother love your country. End of road - his shop. Last but not least. He welcome you special.”
I paid him and walked ahead. Fed with large doses of Europeans and Americans, the locals seemed to find Indians an unusual brown treat. Shopkeepers pounced on me like spiders on a vulnerable colored fly, some to snare me into buying something, others just to play with me. “Hindu?” a stout man lounging outside his stall asked me. “Holy cow?” another one said with Turkish delight writ large on his face.
I walked through the lot without stopping. Until a hand on my chest got too impolite to ignore. I clutched at my portfolio instinctively. Seeing that the one who’d accosted me was a reedy youth, I straightened the shoulders I’d hunched against the cold, uncoiled my spine and reached to my actual height of 186 centimeters.
“Sharukh Khan? You know?” I sighed and slumped back into my usual question mark. Shahrukh Khan wasn’t a topic worthy of my full potential. I actually happened to have studied in the same college at Delhi University around the time the now famous Bollywood actor had graduated. I nodded in affirmation, “Yes Boss…” To my surprise, the reedy young man with gelled hair instantly recognized my answer as the name of one of Shahrukh’s big hits; he grinned, jabbing the air emphatically with his middle finger. If he hadn’t accompanied it with the words, “No. 1”, the gesture would have been deemed obscene.
All of a sudden, inspired by my smile, he broke into a song, presumably from the film, mangling the words into a HinTurk mush that didn’t ring a bell. He urged me to join in but I just blew my nose in reply. Other people had gathered around meanwhile and they were all disappointed I wasn’t being a sport. Three shoeshine boys joined in, presumably to encourage me, but I wasn’t biting. I’d done my bit for this Hindi-Turki Bhai Bhai dialogue; as far as I was concerned, it was now over. All I wanted was to be left alone to think about the ‘evergreen azure rock’.
Thankfully, the song ended after the first stanza as they didn’t know the rest of the words but the effervescent reedy Turk hadn’t quite finished with me yet. “Come shop. Take carpet,” he said.
“Not interested!” I shouted, hoping the volume would convey the message in case he didn’t understand the English. I also waved my hands in front of my nose vehemently to make myself completely clear.
It didn’t work. “Come carpet!” He barked it out like an order this time.
Was he crazy? Did I look like a seth or something? I’d plunged into my savings to make this trip and hadn’t planned on any shopping. “I can cancel my ticket back to India if you sell me a flying carpet for the amount,” I joked.
He didn’t get it. He looked at me dead serious and said, “Turkish carpet must.” I looked around at the crowd for support; I was sure they’d agree it was unfair to expect me to buy a carpet as a payoff for listening to a film song I hadn’t bothered to buy a tape of back home in India. They didn’t! Every single man of them and the three shoeshine boys felt a carpet was certainly in order. A shiver went down my spine and cradled my sparse buttocks.

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