Yantrixa 12: Leann

Taking in Aero India with Jaggu dada, an old friend from high school. Jaggu dada is the man when it comes to press passes. I don't know how he went from being a skinny kid in high school to being a geeky, fat, farty defence blogger... but somewhere in that transition, he picked up the god-like ability to get press passes to any event.  With Jaggu at my side, I breeze through the security gates and walk right on to the exposition floor.

Aero India used to be a place where only fat Russians and a few Frenchmen showed up. They were usually joined by a bunch of balding old men from the various aerospace research corporations that dot the B'lore landscape. There used to be some small snacks here and there and then the fat old men would give long technical speeches and those that weren't asleep would give a feeble applause.

Then one fine day the Americans came... and everything changed. The only way everyone else could stay competitive was to bring in the booth babes. The French started it, and then the Russians, and then the Ukrainians, and so it went...

I wouldn't usually bother to go to Aero India, but I haven't gotten laid in like a year and Sergio is here as Aermacchi rep. I know Sergio and his wife Maddalena from my Italian sojourn... they taught me how to take pride in the local tharra and call it fine wine...

Between Jaggu - the perfect wingman - (babes see him and are automatically drawn in the opposite direction) - and Sergio and Maddalena at my side... I am all set. I just have to stand quietly and the babes will come.

After wandering aimlessly through the concourse, we hit the Dassault booth, partly because I love all things French and partly because Jaggu has some weird crap to ask them about their latest drones. I couldn't care less about drones, all I see is the utterly magnificent Amandine Royale... It isn't her blond hair or blue eyes that necessarily draw me to her, but her perfume has a certain allure... although in about five minutes of conversation with her the only thing I can smell on her is SDECE.

I get the distinct feeling she knows me better than I know her - how many frikking french women do you meet randomly that seem to know so much about an obscure Indian documentary film maker? That Corsican Marchand seems to pick his people well... this is going to be an interesting night. Sergio has found a local bar that serves some truly Italian stuff, it is on MG Road and when I extend the invitation to Amandine, I am rewarded with a smile and we are all soon walking her arm in mine. Jaggu now feels like the fifth wheel....

As we walk through the crowds and head to the exit... I see her... I see Leann.

They say all superheroes have their weakness, Achilles had his heel, Superman had Kryptonite... and I have Leann.

It has been a decade and now I finally see her...

When I met her, she was married so someone else. That didn't stop me. It didn't end well...

If things had gone differently then... my life would have been decidedly different. Leann was the only woman who ever made me want to stay.

As I stare at her in the resplendent blue saree, she looks up and locks eyes with me.

She left without saying goodbye.. we haven't spoken since. We are two people who have everything to say to each other but nothing comes from either of our mouths.

Amadine's arm tugs on mine and I realise I have stopped in my tracks. I sense Amandine turning around and the momentary distraction causes me to break eye contact with Leann. It is then that I see the sign on the stall the she is standing in. Above her head in a deep red circle, is a stylized springbok in brilliant blue and next to that in a deeper blue is the word "TechCor".  And stranger still is a tiny golden crown... in the center of the stylized springbok. Under the crown are the letters, I, aleph nought and then I.

As I feel the penetrating gaze of Amandine's blue eyes on me, I blurt out..."Ce n'est pas correct" (that isn't right...). She looks at me quizzically and I point to the golden crown in the center of the springbok... She stares at it and says.. "Vous ne savez pa" (don't you know).... "Techcor est une filiale de la Corporation Anamika".. (TechCor is a wholely owned subsidiary of the Anamika Corporation).

I am stunned...........

The Anamika Corporation... 

In the days of old, a mighty retired general called Chanda ruled a corporate empire.The empire was built on a vast amount of government outsourcing. The Chanda empire was to Delhi what Booz Allen Hamilton was to Washington DC. But as time would have it, the son of Chanda was not cut from the same cloth as his father. The son's addiction to drugs was most terrible and eventually it led to a car crash in which a dozen innocent bystanders were killed. The son initially dodged the legal bullet but then eventually paid for his errors in blood... died of an overdose weeks after he was acquitted a high profile trial. The Chanda name was mud in the halls of South Block. 

From the ashes of the old empire, the nephew raised a new corporation. Rebranding it as the Anamika corporation, he once again filled the order books with government contracts. The choice of the name was a fortuitous coincidence, it was both the name of his late sister and the name of his hostel magazine which edited during his time in Powai. That wasn't the only symbolism to be borrowed, the sign of the Anamika Corporation, the golden crown resting on the three letters, was borrowed from the symbol of his old hostel wing - the "Infinitus Imperatores" - The Infinite Emperors.

My mind spun... how stupid I had been. The photo in Ramzu's office..with Ramzu on the left and the Prime Minster on the right of the foundation stone of the AISG... to the PM right was the nephew, the CEO of the Anamika Corporation....


The CEO of the Anamika Corporation,....  'Sri' Sriraman Vijayan, a.k.a Pondi....