Then dot on time a woman came and said something in a language I could not understand. The only word I could make out was ‘Persian’. I ignored her. But the woman in the wheelchair began to frantically point and make noises. Slowly everybody started looking at me. So I pushed her forward. She settled down.

Diary, later I realized that the old woman in the wheelchair was a tourist from Spain. (Really. Instead of going for church retreat and preparing to die, like old people in Kerala, this woman is running around stealing culture from genuine tourists.) And the tour was to be taken in Spanish!

Many times I tried to leave her and escape. Immediately she’d started screaming in Spanish. Finally I gave up. Whenever anybody asked me anything I would say basic Spanish words like ‘Barcelona’, ‘Real Madrid’, ‘Santa Cruz’, ‘El Dorado’, ‘Rodriguez’ and ‘Chicken Fajita’.

If you hear them speak Spanish you would think they are communicating very very fast. (Sometimes when they speak it is like the tape is stuck in fast forward but the sound is still coming.) But in fact the Spanish tour took two hours to complete. The old woman looked very happy. But, I swear, at times I just wanted to push her down some staircase.

But I did not.

What a horrible night.

Finished. No more culture. No more museums. That was the last attempt. There is enough culture already in Kerala.

BOOK TWO

DOWNFALL

7 May 2007

11.04 p.m.

Ex-fucking-haust-fucking-ted.

It has been three weeks—THREE WEEKS—since Lederman II started and Dominic has just managed to finally get our 7th team member to start.

There was a huge feeling of relief when Dominic announced at today’s morning meeting that the last fellow was flying in to London tonight.

The scope of the project may have been reduced drastically. But there is still a lot of work to be done. I wonder if Tom and the other kanjoos bastards on the Lederman board know how much analysis, framework building, scenario creation and quant modelling we are doing, essentially, for cost price.

That reminds me. This month also 16,000 pounds were deposited into my account. I have decided that rather than alerting Lily or Dominic every time an erroneous transaction is made, I am going to take care of this at the end of the whole project. I’ll just take the whole amount and make a lump sum transfer back to the Dufresne accounts. That is going to save money, time and hassle for everybody. What is the point in disturbing people once every month for such a small number?

Of course I have full intention of returning this money to Dufresne as soon as possible. But today I was calculating in office. 16,000 pounds is 0.0067% of Dufresne’s total revenue for 2006. Frankly speaking that is the size of a round-off error.