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“Sir, it’s time.” Naresh stood at the door to his office, holding it open.
Agastya rose and strode out, the rest of his retinue falling into place behind him. “Where are we meeting them?” he asked Ganesh who walked beside him.
“Meeting hall number two.” Ganesh didn’t look up from where he was frantically typing something into his phone.
Agastya made it almost to the meeting hall when someone hailed him.
“Chinna Babu!”
He groaned. If someone was calling him ‘Little Master,’ it had to be one of his father’s cronies. He didn’t have the time for this, but he plastered a smile to his face and turned. His father’s friend came to a halt before him.
“Look at you,” the older man said, twirling his expansive grey moustache. “All grown up.”
Agastya had been all grown up for a while now, but he wisely refrained from pointing that out. He touched the older man’s feet and stood. “How are you Chandran Garu?”
“Good. Good. I have come to meet your father. We have business together.”
Business. The old goat wanted a party ticket and his father was probably going to give him one. A familiar sense of frustration swept through Agastya as he watched the other man twirl his moustache again. His father refused to move with the times but Agastya was determined to drag him into the future, even if Nanna was kicking and screaming the whole way there.
“I have a meeting to get to, Uncle.” Agastya smiled apologetically. “I’ll come to Nanna’s office after that, and we’ll catch up.”
Chandran nodded and then waddled off like a walrus. Agastya sighed before steeling himself and pushing the door open to the horde in the meeting hall.
An hour later, he had a headache and a grim sense of mounting failure. This wasn’t going to work and sadly, the youngsters facing him weren’t wrong. But repealing an election promise that had brought his party to power was not going to be possible. Not right now.
“We need to work together,” he told the youth activist leader, Niranjan.
The younger man nodded. “We want to. We are not against you Agastya Garu but we need you and your party to see us also.”
Agastya saw them. He saw them clearly. His father on the other hand…
He rose and the rest of them stood too. With a last round of handshakes and murmured noncommittal words, he left, his head throbbing now.
“Sir, about tonight,” Ganesh began.
“Not now,” Agastya snapped pushing his way through his father’s office door. His father didn’t bother looking up from the papers he was signing.
“Nanna, I need to talk to you in private.”
“Now?” his father asked, signing the last paper and handing the folder to his PA who stood waiting for it.
“Yes.” He looked around the hordes of people milling around them. “In private.”
“Then we can wait till we are at home,” his father said, his bushy eyebrows rising.
“No.” Agastya pressed a thumb to his throbbing temple. “We can’t.”
He raised his voice. “Everybody out!”
The room emptied with alacrity leaving him alone with his father in an office that was steeped in heritage and history. Agastya blocked it all out, the legacy, the weight of their family name, his father’s torturous path to power, all of it, and focused on the present, on the now.
“You gave Chandran Garu the ticket.”
His father inclined his head. “He’s an old family friend. Loyal and backed by the right people.”
“He’s not going to win,” Agastya said flatly. “The people in his constituency hate him.”
“The people vote for me,” his father said, leaning back in his chair. “It doesn’t matter that they hate him. It matters that he has the money to fill the party coffers.”
