Page 203 of 12 Years
Her parents looked dumbfounded.
Okay, she hadn’t told them I would be here. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have come.
‘Hello,’ Payal’s father said in a meek, mouse-like voice.
Payal’s mother just did a namaste.
‘That’s Mudit. And you’ve met Neeraj, my boss, before,’ Payal said to her parents.
‘The way Payal is cracking deals, Mr Jain, she’ll soon be my boss,’ Neeraj said and laughed at his own joke.
Payal’s parents didn’t react. They seemed to be in complete shock, wondering what to do next. Neither the food, nor the people, were to their liking. Yet, it was their daughter’s workplace event.
‘Remember me, Uncle? We met once, at your house. Outside your house, rather,’ Mudit said, with the sole intention of needling Payal’s father.
‘Hello, Mudit,’ Payal’s father said, his voice subdued.
‘You guys know each other?’ Neeraj said.
‘Not really,’ I said quickly to ride over the awkwardness.
‘Well, Mr and Mrs Jain, Saket Khurana is the man of the night. He’s the founder of the company we just bought, for three and a half billion dollars.’
I hate showing off. However, that flabbergasted look on Payal’s parents’ faces made my day. It made all the hard work that had gone into creating SecurityNet worth it.
‘Congratulations,’ Anand said, coughing a little.
‘Did you eat anything?’ Neeraj said to Payal’s parents.
‘They are Jain. We’ll need some special snacks for them,’ I said.
Payal’s father looked at me, surprised.
‘I’ll go arrange that,’ Neeraj said. ‘Meanwhile, Mudit and Saket, can you guys make your way to the stage, please? Let’s cut the cake.’
‘Relax, bro,’ Mudit said. ‘You’re palpitating over a seven-minute act? You just sold a multi-billion-dollar company.’
I took deep breaths. Mudit and I were backstage, in the tiny area where I’d waited a hundred times during my stand-up days. I peeped out. The small auditorium was filling up with people.
We had finished all the formalities. We had cut the cake, made a toast, done a few media interviews and taken group photographs with the senior management of Blackwater, CloudX and SecurityNet. After that, Neeraj had asked everyone to move to the auditorium for ‘the founder of SecurityNet to showcase his other hidden talent—stand-up comedy’. Except that my ‘hidden talent’ had rusted.
‘Bro, now it’s just for fun. It’s not your career anymore,’ Mudit said. ‘It’s a flex. A unicorn founder doing stand-up comedy. The media will love it. You’ll get famous.’
‘I don’t want to be famous.’
‘Too late for that,’ Mudit said. ‘All the business papers will carry your picture tomorrow.’
‘Oh dear.’ I exhaled.
‘Kill it,’ said Mudit.
As I walked onto the stage, the crowd burst into applause. The spotlight shone in my eyes. A flood of memories came rushing back. My stand-up days, the nervousness before my first act and the noise my heart made. For a moment, it felt like another Saturday night from twelve years ago.
I scanned the crowd. Blackwater employees sat with their families, mostly their spouses or parents, and some teenage kids. A few people from CloudX and SecurityNet were thereas well. I spotted Payal sitting in the fourth row, along with her parents.
‘Hello everyone, how’s it going?’ I said.
‘Great,’ two young people said in unison from the front row.
