Free Delhi by Elizabeth Chatterjee

shirts.
    There was one snag. Everyone wore affiliation tags, marks of social status dangling at navel level on unmissable scarlet lanyards, and scanned those of strangers with avid snobbery. My own scarlet letter, unfortunately, screamed that I was not a CEO, or even a humble consultant, but a researcher. This was the equivalent of ringing a bell to announce my hunchbacked presence (though at least the 99 percent male population stared a little lower than usual). People backed away in horror, crossing themselves. My only hope was to seize a business card from the runts of the herd before they recognised my affliction.
    At one point I thought I might finally have made a friend, a sweet Gujarati man called Abhinav. Most of the other conference attendees instantly dropped to sleep, smartphones glued to their hands with the devotion of teenage girls. But Abhinav followed all the conference talks with open-mouthed awe and giant Bambi eyes. There was something pleasantly herbivorous about him. I could tell he was relatively junior: his suit was crisply tailored, and his moustache—that Samson-like indication of seniority—still limp and sparse.
    We shook hands, his fist pumping enthusiastically. He smiled with genuine warmth, and barely flinched when he found out I was a note-taking subhuman. We made small talk—power grids, gas markets, the open access provisions of the Electricity Act 2003—and he introduced me to some bigger moustaches. We sat together for the following session. I felt positively jolly.
    At the day’s end, Abhinav said, ‘We will talk, Lidge.’ (Zs are borrowed from Persian and Arabic, so now and then you find a Hindu who says bajaar not bazaar , and who calls me Elijabeth.)
    â€˜Yes, yes!’ This was a break, I could feel it. ‘I have so much to ask you about ultra mega power plants!’
    He pressed something into my hand, and I beamed at him.
    â€˜I can tell you are lacking direction, Lidge. Look at this,’ he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, ‘and we will talk.’
    What? He headed for the exit, then turned dramatically, wearing a messianic look. ‘I will make you student cum entrepreneur !’
    I looked down. He had handed me a CD in an aggressively orange case. Despite the obvious hints to the contrary, I clung to the belief that it contained vast insights into the world of natural gas, and played it that evening.
    Uh-oh. The only gas was metaphorical. It appeared to be a business motivation CD. While the others had shunned the research leper, Abhinav had come over all Mother Teresa and decided to save me from my own sad fate.
    I idly googled the company. After a couple of brief detours—Google at first helpfully translated the company name into ‘BBW’, the ‘big beautiful women’ who tickle a certain type of internet inhabitant—I found it. Crikey Moses. It turned out that, again like Mother Teresa (if Christopher Hitchens’ excoriating The Missionary Position is to be believed), Abhinav sought to get a little something himself out of his charitable act.
    The company looked to rely on a classic ‘multilevel market’ scheme (obviously I won’t say ‘pyramid’ or ‘Ponzi’, not at all) in which the top tier accumulates vast wealth from the efforts and hopes of a constantly rotating lower membership. Like a warped version of Avon, the bottom stratum must try to sell overpriced health food and cosmetics to their friends and family—and are encouraged to buy a big chunk themselves. The only way the system makes profits is by continuing to expand, bringing ever more sellers into its orbit and sending ever-greater profits upstairs.
    But the company’s biggest product was exactly the CD I was listening to: it sold motivation . Pre-packaged, gold-plated, Jesus-infused motivation.
    The CD continued playing. Its cover showed a grinning middle-aged Indian-American couple; the married couple is the