In any case I have decided to not spend too much till that 16,000 transfer is sorted out. In any case I don’t think I know where it came from. So now I am going to assume the money is mine. Let the bank figure out where it came from.

But wow. I can buy so many things if I want to.

Hmm …

Good night. A few days of peace before project work starts all over again.

9 April 2007

5.46 p.m.

Once again I have good news and bad news.

First the bad news. I think I know where that money came from. I had lunch with Dominic Dawood Ibrahim, and Lily from Dufresne HR today at a seafood place near the office. Sort of a celebratory lunch for getting our little scheme into action. Lily seems nice and harmless. Not at all like the sort of person who would readily make false salary checks.

Dominic asked me if I liked shellfish. I told him I loved it. He told me that there was no compulsion. I laughed and told him that shellfish was one of the favourite delicacies in my native place. (Deep fried mussels. Mussel curry with coconut milk and idiyappam. Mussels 65. Mussels dosa. Ayyo deivame …)

So he ordered a massive platter of oysters. Of course now it was too late to back out.

Then while discussing the fake salary slips it suddenly struck me. For some bizarre reason Dufresne’s banking system paid me the fraud amount. They had ACTUALLY paid me the amount instead of just generating a salary slip. Ideally I should have double checked this with Lily right away and reversed the transaction. But she was engrossed in a discussion with Dominic about some European politics thing and I didn’t want to interrupt.

During a lull in the conversation I playfully asked Dominic what he was going to do with this new salary increment that Lily had arranged for him. And then I laughed very convincingly. Dominic chuckled and said that he wished the arrangement was for real. Lily smiled and said that she had ensured that no such ‘accidental remittance’ would happen. She patted my shoulder and told me that she was worried that I would have to live on my real salary. We all laughed.

Then the oysters arrived and I didn’t get a chance to bring up the 16,000.

My first oyster I did not eat as much as directly pour down my throat. Then Dominic told me that the French way to eat an oyster was to put some lemon juice on top and then eat it slowly, chewing properly. So I tried.

Just thinking about it is making me shiver. The oyster tasted like nothing in particular but it had the texture of something that I had already half-eaten in my mouth but then took out and stored in a jar in the fridge, for later consumption, because I was not hungry enough to swallow it at that time.