Rekha Shetty - Innovation Sutra: The Secret of Good Business and a Good Life

He stood amidst the ruins of yesterdays party, which had ended that morning at six. They were all gone, those gleaming wheeler-dealers, the slick Ivy League investment bankers, the leggy, anorexic models with mascaraed eyelashes and sharpened talons. The only thing that remained was that hidden letter from his banker, telling him it was all over. The next stop in his dazzling career graph was a maximum-security prison. He, who was called Dharam, was now to inhabit a place created for the ultimate practitioners of adharma.

He looked out from his city flat at the Manhattan skyline as it was being touched by the wavering fingers of sunrise. And he remembered how it had all begun.

His earliest memories were of his mothers voicequiet and sweet, but firm. Hers was the iron hand in the velvet glove that kept his world functioning smoothly, like a river of silk. It was a household where everything happened like clockwork, till Dharam screamed out, at the boredom of it all.

Even as a baby, you were restless, said his mom. You always wanted someone to carry you and take you outdoors. School was an elite boys institution in Richmond, Washington. He had a good time, always in the middle ranksan average boywith a very successful father. Dharams dad had made his money by fooling rich patients and making prudent investments in the stock market and in real estate. Dharam knew for sure that he did not want to be like himfat, flatulent and vaguely fifty. A bridge-playing, Scotch-drinking dinosaur; a doctor who ignored his only son. And his mother tried to forget it all by whiling away her time in temples and ashrams. He wanted to make a mark, leave a footprint on global history. And he wanted to be a billionaire, in dollars. Then his dad would take notice.

Last year, he felt he had arrived. A grey gable-roofed house in a wooded, four-acre plot in Oyster Bay, Connecticut. A home with five-star facilities. He was the new investment superstar billionaire, founder of the Platinum Group, having dropped out of medical school in India and with an MBA from Columbia. Starting out as a lending officer in Citibank, he had soon changed over to a boutique investment-banking company in New York. He stared at the picture of his parents and grandparents standing beside him in the quadrangle of Columbia University. It captured his ultimate joy and relief at being able to go out into the world and follow his dreams. He was chunky but funky, said the pretty girls who clung to his arm as he enthusiastically sampled the charms of Greenwich Village.

One

New York

I love New York. A melting pot of cultures where Ethiopian injera can be topped off with a tiramisu from the Italian restaurant next door. It is the centre of the world, where I wanted to be. Being arrested by the FBI, however, can be a bit bad for your mood. I knew the next few years were going to be bad. I knew I had to leave before they got me. But how? I wandered around my beautiful, empty flat. It already smelt deserted.

When I first saw the Connecticut house I live in, in the Oyster Bay Cove, I knew I wanted it more than anything else in my life. Next door, a boat was chained on the lawn, upside down. Even for an ultra-rich American, it clearly said, Youve arrived! It was the kind of suburb where everyone was a multimillionaire, where kids swam and sunbathed on private lakefronts. The median age is forty-two years, said the brochure where all the wives looked twenty-one at a distance of 15 metres. Carefully preserved, gym-bodied, and nipped and tucked to within an inch of their lives. One feared they might crack that brittle facade if they laughed too heartily.

This is where I would nurture my future perfect family of sixRatna and me, two boys and two girls. I, who had always looked up longingly at the elite of the world, would seamlessly belong here. It would mean staying in New York and commuting long distances at times. But it was all worth it.

It was just past 4 a.m. There was a cautious knock on the front door. Lets get out of here fast, said Kunal, his eyes gleaming in the dark. Im going on a trip to India to collect Buddhist antiquities. Come with me. If you get caught in the correctional facilities of the US, youll never get out. Lets go!

It took me just five minutes to pack a bag and leave. Then we were cosily ensconced in Kunals purring Mercedes-Benz, which we soon ditched for a less conspicuous car, a battered Ford.

No calls, said Kunal. They can all be traced. He collected my Blackberry and iPad. I heard the resounding plops as he dropped them into the dark Hudson river.

It took two days of being holed up in Kunals godown before I had a false passport made out for Ranjan Ratti. My hair was shaved close in a buzz cut. Finally, Kunal and I were on a flight to New Delhi without incident. I thought about Ratna living with her aunt in New Jersey, and her terror at finding me gone without a word. How would she handle the police, the law enforcement agencies, the media...? I had no choice.