The Bull Woman

Synopsis 

The Bull Woman is an enthralling novel about adventures in the financial jungle. Just like human beings, financial entities too display distinct identities and behavioural patterns which if understood and leveraged appropriately can lead to massive, perfectly-legal financial gains.

The protagonist of the story is Nita, whose passion lies in trading in the capital market, a trait she has inherited from her stock broker grandfather. The book takes the reader on a roller coaster ride - Nita’s journey of executing a range of diverse trades under a diverse set of circumstances. In the process she dabbles in derivatives, commodities and a host of other interesting things. 

Chapter 1 - A mysterious message in the mobile

The bull-triggering red car skilfully snaked through the rush hour traffic, bullying and bulldozing its juniors and begging the big brothers for a bit of way. 

The streets were crammed from cheek to cheek with an array of everything on wheels - the four wheelers crawling like giant centipedes and the butterfly bikes gaily fluttering into the in-between gaps. The buses ran bellyful, gorging on the explosive mass eager to be devoured, while a tempo after antagonising a truck during an adrenalin overdrive, lay belly-up on the roadside.

Amidst all these, the red car hurried along. In the backseat Sai sat with his wife’s head on his lap and his hand on her pulse from which every now and then he could feel a faint movement, assuring him that perhaps all was not lost. 

Suddenly there was a beep sound, signaling an incoming message in his wife’s mobile phone, which he had remembered to carry along. He fished out the phone and was inundated with surprise. An amount of 3, 00,000 INR had just been credited to her account.

Sai was stunned. What was going on? Who had given Nita this money and why? His wife was a homemaker and to the best of his knowledge, she was not engaged in any sort of activity from which financial gains, and that too such a huge amount, could be expected.

Their marriage anniversary, his birthday, her birthday, typical occasions on which funds ( not lakhs but only a few thousands) from the family elders flowed into their bank accounts in representation of their blessings, was nowhere in the vicinity. Then from where did this money land into her account? Was Nita involved in any sort of illegal affair? Drugs, Sex, Marajuna? Something which she had managed to shield from him during all these months of togetherness? He shuddered at the prospect.

Suddenly the car screeched to a halt.

“Now what?” Sai impatiently asked, jolted out of his thoughts at the sudden cessation of motion. Every second mattered now, every minute made a discernible difference.

“Don’t worry!” a male voice answered from the drivers’ seat. “We are almost there. The hospital is just after the crossing, we should get there in another ten minutes, even counting the craziest of traffic.”

Hearing that, Sai loosened a little. He looked outside the window and the sight of a man and his wife on a shiny two wheeler momentarily seized his attention. Why, only yesterday, that could have been the two of them, himself and Nita speeding back from the supermarket after a shopping spree! And now, he was unsure whether he would ever get an opportunity to even ask her what had actually happened which had led to the current mess!

A little more than an hour ago, Sai had received a call from a concerned neighbour that his wife was not responding to repeated knocks on the door. It seemed that Mrs. Kaur, their nosey and noisy next-door neighbour had noticed Nita running up the flight of stairs and rushing into their apartment, appearing extremely tense. The very fact that Nita did not have the time or patience to deploy the services of a lift and had instead resorted to her twos had attracted the attention of the elderly lady. Bitten by the quintessential bug (the composition of which was 90 percent curiosity and 10 percent concern) Mrs. Kaur , unable to contain herself had come to enquire. She had knocked at the door and rung the bell repeatedly. After waiting for a reasonable amount of time when Nita still failed to respond ( she was also not picking up her phone), Mrs. Kaur had informed Sai in his office.

It was a little after 3 pm and Sai, after a contented lunch of lemon rice and curd had just sat down for a meeting with his team when he received the knock-out call. Immediately abandoning all discussions about risk management for an upcoming presentation, he had rushed home to manage the risks pertaining to his personal matters. He ran into a swelling crowd waiting outside his apartment, the very sight of which made him shudder for he knew he would be held accountable for the wrong state of affairs, if any, on the other side of the closed door.

Then, as everyone eagerly and acutely watched, with trembling fingers he had turned in the key and opened the door ajar only to stumble upon a sight which unnerved him completely.

Nita had collapsed just outside the bedroom door. At first glance she seemed to have passed out forever, but detection of the still-functioning pulse, faint breathing plus the absence of any external injury marks prompted Sai to bundle his wife and head for the nearest hospital. 

A neighbour offered to drive them and now he was anchored to the backseat of the car with his senseless wife and surrounded by a shoal of senseless traffic.

Sai stared at the still face on his lap and he suddenly remembered his wife as he had first seen her twenty two years ago on a bright murmuring morning of summer.

He was then a boy of twelve, just tethering on the brink of teens. Savitri, his elder sister, expecting her first child, was at her parents' place for her delivery. There were just the two of them in the house and they were playing a game of cards. Savitri, in the advanced stages of impending motherhood, was playing to divert her mind from the uneasiness and discomfort which had just begun to surface, but was yet to assume any significant proportions. Sai was extremely serious and focussed about the game. Hence when his sister requested him to fetch her a glass of water, he refused outright, assuming it to be one of her tactics to change the position of the cards once he was out of sight. 

So reluctantly, Savitri stood up to help herself and suddenly a strange thing happened. Out of nowhere a small pool of water appeared at her feet. As she gave a shrill cry, Sai too swept aside all former feelings of hostility and sprang to his feet. Then upon realising the seriousness of the situation, he frantically rushed out of the house to gather the neighbours, deploying the assistance of whom he took his sister to the hospital. By then, their parents had also arrived and along with them, Sai eagerly awaited the news of the new arrival. 

Sai first saw his niece in the nascent rays of the sun and as he stared at the elfish face crowned by a cap of jet-black mane, he felt as if he was looking at the most beautiful baby in the world.

A few days later, Savitri, to Sai’s extreme delight, expressed her desire to give her daughter away to Sai in marriage once both of them attained appropriate ages. At the proposal everyone in the house was overjoyed as in their community, an uncle-niece union is touted as an extremely auspicious one. Sai’s mother and her other sisters too had got married to their respective uncles and were leading happy, fulfilled lives.

Savitri was the only odd one out, having married another-community man with whom she had fallen in love during her college days; at an age and stage when the entire world appears alluring like a flower bed , carefully concealing the thorns which make their presence felt only one walks on them.

Right from the day of her marriage, Savitri had sensed that she was an outsider in her husband’s home. Though his clan had reluctantly opened the doors of their house to her, they had shut all the windows of their heart. Her husband hailed from a traditional trader community which had their roots in the north western fringe of India where the hot desert type climate conditioned the lives of the inhabitants and accordingly shaped their habits. Savitri, on the contrary, hailed from the coastal part of south India. Now as a result of the cross-community marriage, cultures clashed and customs collided, creating endless confusion in the lives of the two and those around them.

The inmates of Savitri’s new home made fun of the manner in which she adorned her plaits with flowers. They mimicked her native language whenever she spoke to her kin on the telephone.

And back at her parental home, it was the turn of the South Indian wife’s North- Indian husband to feel completely out of place amongst the other men of the family and face the flak. Even in front of him, they would make fun of his seemingly strange ways, purposefully discussing him in their mother tongue, taking full advantage of his ignorance of the lingo.

So, Sai’s sister was determined that her new born daughter should not suffer the same ordeal, all the more since her husband had abruptly passed away in a train accident shortly after the baby was conceived. Hence, at the very first opportunity, she bequeathed her daughter to her brother and as her parents accepted the proposal, a big load lifted from her heart.

Over the course of the next few years whenever Sai met Nita, he felt a strange sense of bonding between the two of them. He rigorously prepared himself to be worthy of her so that they could have a good life together. Right from his boyhood, it had been drilled into his head that success in life was equivalent to a flourishing career in software and he worked very hard to attain his goal. He burnt the midnight oil and strived to get into an eminent engineering college, after passing out from which secured a plum job in a posh software conglomerate. 

Then, finally on one bright breezy morning of autumn, in the presence of his entire entourage of well- wishers and amidst the showering of rice and rose petals, he tied the sacred thread around Nita’s neck, making her his own forever.

Post marriage, they shifted to the city of Hyderabad which like them too was in the throes of a transition- the once sleepy city of Nizams had acquired a new identity and was fast becoming the symbol of new-age India and all that it stood for- software parks, signature towers and shining malls.

After the initial euphoria of discovering each other, Sai settled down in his job and quickly got sucked into the vortex of the cyber world like it typically happens with most techies, while Nita efficiently managed the matters of the house.

Life, like a well-lubricated machine was progressing fine. Nita, though she was well-educated, was not at all enthusiastic about a career outside the four walls. A happy home bird, every morning she served him oven-fresh idlis, starched dosas and steaming coffee, packed him his favourite lemon rice for lunch ( burgers and pizzas might be fine for a day but nothing to beat the appeal of freshly prepared curry-leaves sprinkled lemon-scented rice) and whatever time of the night he returned he found her eagerly waiting for him.

Sai, however wanted Nita to be “productive” and pursue a career, at least in the in-between time between marriage and motherhood. Lately, at his insistence she had reluctantly begun appearing for interviews. Had something happened somewhere? Had she met someone who had enticed her to tread the wrong path?

Does your wife have a past history of migraine attacks or epilepsy?

Had she ever been diagnosed with hypertension or blood pressure fluctuations?

Had ever a diagnosis been done of her cardiac conditions?

Had any abnormality ever been detected in her circulatory system, such as tears in the aorta, dysfunctional heart valves?

Was she sweating just before losing consciousness?

Had she ever undergone any tests to rule out brain tumour? 

Did she recently suffer any trauma to the brain?

As the doctor in the hospital rattled off the above, trying to identify probable causes of Nita’s present state, Sai felt as if someone was hammering at his brain and it would explode.

“Caused due to deep mental shock!” the doctor pronounced in a steely voice after the initial round of examination and eyed him suspiciously. When something unusual happens to the wife, the first suspect is usually the husband.

Sai detailed out the entire sequence of events to the doctor- how Nita was all-alone in the house when the entire incident happened and he didn’t have any inkling as to what could have triggered the tragedy . He was as much in the dark as everyone else.

But the doctor still looked at him in deep disbelief, simultaneously instructing his juniors to conduct a thorough medical examination when...................

The miracle happened.

Nita regained her senses. She slowly opened her eyes and on realising that she was in hospital immediately sat right up on the bed with a puzzled look on her face which soon turned to embarrassment.

The doctor and his entire team were clearly stunned at the unexpected development. Two minutes ago, the patient was clearly in the no man's land between life and death and now she looked perfectly fine, fully in control of her actions and its consequences! 

Man, this was maddening!

“I am alright now!” Nita stated sheepishly, lowering her eyes as shades of suspicion grew on the stares showering her.

“It is not that simple Madam.” The doctor finally found in voice and declared with an air of authority. “We will need to conduct certain tests and keep you under observation, at least for a day!” He vehemently insisted, desperately with and steely determination. Then he spelt out a string of tests, most of which were irrelevant to her present state (obvious even to a non medical person).

Actually it was the prevalent medical practice of milking a well-to-do patient on the pretext of checking her well-being.

Realizing that his wife was clinically fine, Sai too heaved a sigh of relief. He needed to return to office urgently. He was about to leave when he suddenly remembered the message and the money.

Rs. 3,00,000.

The amount was equivalent to his salary of three months’ - hundreds of hours of hard work and endless brainstorming at varied geographies. 

And Nita has earned the equivalent amount without any apparent effort !

“Your phone.” He placed it on the bedside table. “There is a message for you. You are now the proud owner of 3 lakhs. "

Hearing him, Nita immediately turned pale. She was still unable to believe the sequence of her actions which had led to its existence.

Was this what one called destiny? Her hands began to tremble as she picked up the phone and clutched it with all her might.

Sai was watching Nita closely and her reaction only confirmed his earlier suspicion.

That there was something fishy about the entire matter. Something which he had no knowledge of. Something which she had skilfully managed to shield from him till then.

Without saying another word, he stubbornly and stiffly stood near her bed in anticipation of her elaborate explanation and stream of confessions. But Nita offered none and soon an uneasy stillness gripped the antiseptic interiors of the cabin. A stillness, which slowly stifled the silent channel of communication till then oscillating between the two of them.

Then suddenly, the over-enthusiastic and dutiful attendant noticing Nita’s colourless and feverish face forcefully herded Sai out the cabin by authoritatively declaring that the patient needed rest and should not be disturbed.

Sai reluctantly left. He closed the door of her cabin with a thud to express his unhappiness and discontent. Nita, though she felt guilty, was simultaneously grateful to the attendant for the time she had unknowingly given her to collect herself and her thoughts- how to break it all to him.

She was aware that the time for disclosure had come. Her secret would no longer remain only hers anymore; it would now be analysed and opinionated. She was unsure if Sai, who was quite traditional and conservative in his thoughts and approaches would allow her to continue doing whatever she had been doing till now.

By then dusk had considerably thickened and the traffic had begun thinning out. The neon street lights silently stood like dutiful sentinels of the night. Outside the glass window ,the sky was dark, the lights of the city had eclipsed the existence of the heavenly bodies dotting the celestial space.

But Nita knew that somewhere up in the high heavens someone was there, dwelling as a star as she had believed all these years – unseen but seeing her, watching her every move, guiding her at the twists and turns and smoothening the rough edges.

“All this chaos has happened because of you!” She turned her face towards the sky and whispered. “You were the one who introduced me to that alluring world; otherwise I would never known that it ever existed.”

“No, my dear.” The familiar voice of Nikoonz Agarwal whispered in her ears. “It was your destiny. You were chosen to be part of a magical universe which opens its door to only a lucky few.”