Unfortunately he took ten minutes to tell me this. I had only fifty minutes left to finish the whole thing. I was very, very scared. Tony told me to chill and go and talk to Yetch.

Yetch took fifteen seconds to go through the deck. And then he told me to leave him alone for forty minutes and not to tell Rajni that he was helping me. I nodded and went downstairs to get a bite to eat and check out the gym in the building. Shailesh had said it was cheaper to work out there than go outside and join a proper gym.

When I came back Yetch showed me a three-hundred-and-twenty-slide presentation with an optional additional section of forty-two slides.

I didn’t know what to say. I just stood there with my mouth open.

When I asked him how he did it, the bastard replied that I had to develop my own skills when it came to making decks. He then told me to go through it for a few minutes before we left for Bandra.

I swear I haven’t seen such a detailed PowerPoint presentation in my ENTIRE life. It was un-freaking-believable.

Yetch is God.

First there was a section on the history of higher education that went on for forty-odd slides. Then one on modern higher education for another thirty. Education in India was hundred slides long, followed by ‘Indian Colleges: An In-depth Glimpse’ that went on for seventy slides and included rankings of the top Indian colleges in a dozen disciplines.

There was more shit which I didn’t go through. Plus pictures and graphs and tables and lists and …

I made a mental note to never let Yetch out of my sight again. If I could combine his deck-making ability with my inherent intellect and problem-solving skills I could … make partner in five years! Even faster than that fellow in the Vietnam office who had made partner in six. Boris Nguyen.

But my first target is to make associate in less than a year. Boris did it in fourteen months—a worldwide Dufresne record!

When we got into the cab Tony said that he would take care of all the ‘non-specifics’. Those are the expenses that cannot be ascribed to any single consultant. Things like cabs and group dinners and so on. Normally the seniormost guy present is supposed to spend and then expense these. Which means Tony is the seniormost …

The cab ride took twenty minutes and no one spoke one word. Somewhere near Lilavati Hospital I made a general statement about it being really hot in Mumbai. I was hoping someone would say something.

The bastards didn’t say a word. Instead, I had to make fifteen minutes of completely pointless, and mostly meaningless, conversation in half-something half-Hindi with the cab driver who took over completely at some point and started talking non-stop about the Shiv Sena. Suddenly he said something loud which I did not understand, called someone ‘madharchod’ and started playing some form of loud, trashy music. He kept playing the terrible, terrible music till we reached Out of the Blue.