His last Instagram post was a picture of him in the pool of Leela Kempinski captioned, ‘Self-care’. There are other pictures too—pictures of him in a club captioned ‘I’m too old for this’, a picture of his new Onitsuka Tiger shoes captioned ‘Sneakerhead for life’.

  He’s too thin for his height—at 6 feet, he’s tall—yet looks okay in a way that only rich people can.

  He has made a few documentaries. I watched all of them yesterday. I will admit his student films are better than the ones Karunesh has helped make. His Instagram-rich-kid-feel notwithstanding, there’s an unmistakable intensity he exudes in the videos where he’s talking about his movies. Which is sharp in contrast with his Instagram profile that looks like it belongs to a brat.

  ‘So let’s start?’ says Sarita once our coffee reaches our table.

  ‘Bro?’ he looks at me.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘So yeah, since it’s going to be a short YouTube-only movie, we will need to find different ways to push it out. I have crazy plans on how we can promote it. It’s going to be mad fun!’ he starts out, seriously but still smiling. His lazy hair flops over his forehead and he keeps moving it out of his eyes.

  ‘That comes later, Saraansh. The only consideration is the story. We would like a narration, or if you could send it to us in writing, even that works for us,’ I tell him sternly.

  Why do I feel so much older than him?

  His eyes light up and he says, ‘It’s a great story, bro.’

  I have a fundamental problem with him calling me ‘bro’ repeatedly.

  ‘Can we hear it? Or read it? Whatever suits you,’ I tell him.

  ‘I haven’t written it down yet. I just have a thought but it’s a cracker of a story, it’s so complete. To proceed, I would need your help,’ says Saraansh.

  He’s looking at me and not Sarita. There was an unnecessary stress on the word your.

  ‘I’m sorry? My help?’ I ask.

  His eyes twinkle. ‘It’s your story, your love story,’ he says, leaning towards me.

  ‘What do you mean it’s my story?’

  And then it strikes me.

  ‘That’s a very bad idea. There’s no story there,’ I tell him.

  ‘Hear him out, Ananth,’ commands Sarita.

  ‘Bro, let’s give it some thought. Your story has all the elements for it to make a great web-series. It’s so extra, and it’s so real. And not to forget, that video Mohini made is #goals. I don’t know a teenager who hasn’t watched it. We trip over it every time someone around has a heartbreak. It’s our guiding light, bro, our pole star,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t think this is going to work for us. I think you’re wasting your time and ours,’ I say.

  ‘Why don’t you take some time to think about it?’ asks Sarita.

  What on earth was happening here?

  ‘This is a bad idea,’ I say with as much unpleasantness as I can gather.

  Saraansh is relentless. With the smile still on his face, he continues and for the first time I see the intensity, the seriousness I have seen in the documentaries about bully-culture and teenager-on-dark-web that he has shot, ‘I really want to make this, man. Your story is simple and that’s what works. Hear me out, Ananth. We start from both your childhoods, two parallel narratives, till the two of you meet and everything changes. It ends with you joining WeDonate and using your influence to help thousands of others. There will be a nice subtext of how one girl’s simple, selfless love ended up helping so many people. That’s what you do with the following that you have, don’t you bro?’

  ‘I think we are done here.’

  I get up. Sarita’s face softens and it’s weird to watch her trying to smile. Sarita gets up after me and tells Saraansh, ‘If he’s not on board, we can’t proceed.’

  For the first time in the meeting, I sense a doubt in Saraansh. He had put his bets on waltzing in with this god-awful idea and getting me on board with a snap of his fingers. Sarita and I walk towards the exit.

  ‘You set this up, didn’t you? You knew what he was going to propose,’ I say to Sarita once we are outside.

  ‘Ananth, don’t tell me you can’t see how making this movie can help WeDonate? I’m surprised honestly at your naivety,’ says Sarita rudely as if it was I who had conspired to make a short movie on her story and not the other way around.

  ‘Honestly, I don’t see how,’ I snap.

  ‘You want to save people? This is your best chance! Going viral online is a major component of our business. You know the movie will get traction with the story you have—the virality of Mohini’s video, and that you’re now working at WeDonate. I will give you complete creative control over the process. Get this made and I will shift you to medical.’

  ‘Are you dangling a carrot?’

  ‘There’s a girl who wants to swap too. We can look into it. Please tell me you didn’t think we would hire you and not use the following you have built online? That would be very unwise of us. That’s wasting an audience of over a million people,’ she grumbles.

  ‘But I already share all the campaigns,’ I protest.

  ‘Just sharing the medical campaigns on your profiles is not going to cut it. We need to make deeper inroads,’ she says.

  I reassess why my first reaction was to walk out of there. Was I being possessive about making what we have with each other accessible to all? Peddle a private emotion, sell out? But Sarita’s right, a movie like this, does hold promise. If a video reached out to 123 million people, how far and wide will a movie reach? How many more could we end up helping?

  Saraansh and Sarita must have known this sequence of events because Saraansh was still sitting there with his laptop open when we re-enter Starbucks. We take our seats again.

  ‘It’s not my permission to give, it’s Mohini’s,’ I say.

  ‘So we talk to Mohini?’ asks Saraansh brightly.

  ‘And her mother,’ I add.

  ‘Her father? He’s going to be a part of the story too,’ says Sarita.

  ‘If the mother agrees, other things won’t be a problem,’ I say.

  ‘You’re not going to regret this, bro,’ says Saraansh and reaches out for my hand. He holds it like he’s an old friend. ‘We will do nothing to insult what you guys have. It’s brilliant and it needs to be out there. More people need to know. It’s going to be cray.’

  I catch his gaze and in that moment, I believe in him.

  Back home, I watch the video again. It has a million more views than the last time I checked. This is a good idea.

  Rachita Somani

  Rachita Somani had been at WeDonate for three years. She had seen many new joinees struggle and eventually bow out of the medical team within the first week. It was too overwhelming for most. She had almost given up too, when she first joined. But Sarita Sharan had stood behind her, groomed her and made her into what she was today. Rachita’s mother would ask her to change her job every day.

  ‘You could have been an actress, look what you have done to your skin,’ her mother rued every day.

  But Rachita couldn’t bear to think of doing anything different. Given her theatre background, there were times she had wanted to laterally shift to the entertainment vertical, but she would eventually dismiss the thought.

  The way Anusha Sardana walked around in the office with an angry, hurt face, Rachita had thought Anusha would be one of the first-week casualties too. Rachita observed that Anusha would keep to herself most of the day. She would be gruff and to the point. It seemed like she was making an active effort to not make friends. There were others in the office who had pointed Anusha’s behaviour out to Rachita.

  ‘It’s not good for the team’s morale,’ the team members would say.

  Rachita was wrong about her analysis of Anusha not lasting very long at WeDonate; she was, in fact, thriving.

  Despite not wanting to be in the team, Anusha had been editing medical stories at a breakneck speed. Rachita also noticed that Anusha altered narratives in the stories she edited, making them more effective than earlier.

  Rachita would tell everyone that Anusha was doing well at her work and that’s all that should matter.

  She would find herself telling others about Anusha, ‘Her anger is not specifically directed at you, she’s angry at everyone.’

  ‘She’s a good writer. Maybe she’s right in wanting to be in entertainment. Have you given it a thought?’ asked Rachita to Sarita that day.

  ‘Test her with the unsuccessful campaigns,’ Sarita answered without elaborating further.

  When Rachita told Anusha she would be sending her two campaigns that had failed for them, Anusha rolled her eyes and had said, ‘Fine.’

  The first one was of a rickshaw puller and his wife trying to save their twelve-year-old daughter from cancer. Despite pictures of the crying child, the grieving parents and a heart-wrenching story, it didn’t get them the money. The second was of a twenty-three-year-old boy, Gautam, who needed to undergo an urgent brain surgery. Both these campaigns were falling short of over 20+ lakh.

  ‘Do you need help?’ Rachita asked her in the evening when she saw her hunched up over the laptop.

  Anusha took off her headphones. She said pointing to the screen, ‘I’m going to delete the portion where it says this twelve-year-old girl fighting cancer has a younger brother.’

  ‘But he’s crying in the picture. It moves people,’ suggested Rachita.

  ‘When I see the boy, I don’t care if the girl dies or not. First, there’s another child in the family. Who cares if one dies? They have a spare. We need to hide the brother. He’s killing the sister. And second, it’s a girl so funerals are cheaper than marriages. So maybe people are thinking that this is a good thing?’

  ‘These are real people, real lives you are talking about,’ said Rachita testing her further.

  ‘We are selling stories, Rachita. If we get the money, who the fuck cares?’ said Anusha. ‘When the donors donate, they need to feel like they are really helping someone out. A single child dying makes for a better story.’

  ‘What about the girl’s family?’ asked Rachita.

  ‘They don’t matter. We are also catering to the needs of the rich among our donors, are we not? By telling heart-wrenching stories and making people feel good about themselves when they donate,’ said Anusha disdainfully.

  ‘Do what you feel best,’ said Rachita.

  Rachita turned away from her and smiled softly. She was glad to know Anusha Sardana had no illusions about how the world worked. Rachita had come to WeDonate with idealistic notions about people’s niceness, about their philanthropic tendencies. Now she knew that people who donated money to medical campaigns did it for another dopamine hit. It’s a commodity they buy for themselves—to feel better, superior.

  Rachita was looking forward to seeing what Anusha would do with the stories. No one should have to die just because they were poor.

  After a while, when Rachita looked over, she found Anusha zooming into a guy’s picture. It was the second case. When Anusha saw her, she said, ‘This Gautam guy is cute. Too bad he’s dying.’

  Anusha Sardana

  Manoj Kumar now had a new story. I lied through my teeth, exaggerated certain truths, hid a few things and rewrote the story.

  I had met them twice before I wrote the story. Once at the hospital, and once at his residence. The paediatric cancer ward with its colourful walls and light pink beds was more cheerful than their roofless home with soot-laden walls. Manoj told me their house had been broken twice by the MCD. There wasn’t much to break. They were apologetic about me having to step inside their house. Twelve-year-old Rajni didn’t share her parents’ desolation.

  ‘I will buy the house where my mother works at after I complete my engineering,’ she told me.

  She spoke these words in English. Her parents looked at her with chest puffed with pride as if she was speaking an ancient, powerful language capable of turning ash into gold.

  But for any of that to happen, Rajni’s story needed to be retold, refabricated, bolstered with lies and half-truths.

  Manoj Kumar’s twelve-year-old daughter, Rajni, was diagnosed six months ago with an aggressive cancer. Rajni has acute lymphoblastic leukemia—a type of blood cancer that affects the white blood cells. Rajni has painful swellings all over her body and runs a high fever.

  She requires maintenance chemotherapy for six months.

  A rickshaw driver in Delhi, Manoj earns Rs 3000 a month. His handicapped wife, Jaidevi Kumari, works as a house help in a Gurgaon society.

  He sold his ancestral land and ran from pillar to post to collect money for his daughter’s treatment. He could only manage Rs 1,00,000. He still needs another Rs 18,00,000 to cover multiple rounds of chemotherapy.

  Both parents work for eighteen hours a day and then return to the bedside of their dying daughter. Jaidevi Kumari breaks down and says, ‘My employers refuse to give me holidays. I can’t even be with my daughter when she’s in pain.’

  Rajni cries alone when her parents are working to save every rupee for her.

  Manoj Kumar was thrown out of his village by upper-caste anti-social elements because Rajni did better than the boys in school. Rajni and her mother were beaten up, her books were torn apart. Manoj Kumar had shifted to Delhi so that his daughter could go to school. Rajni wanted to be a doctor and her parents were doing everything to accomplish that. She was a good student. She still asks her parents when she can join her school again. She smiles and tells her parents it’s not hurting so she can leave the hospital.

  ‘Is it too much to ask for?’ asks Jaidevi Kumari holding Rajni’s hand.

  ‘We will have no reason to live if our daughter dies,’ says Manoj Kumar.

  Help save her. Don’t let a disease brutally cut down a promising life.

  Of course, I didn’t write that their caste was linked to their impoverished state. People don’t want to believe that since they know at least one Brahmin who’s poor, and at least one from the depressed class who’s rich but is still using reservation benefits. We find creative ways to be assholes every day.

  A steady stream of donations started coming in for Rajni.

  ‘The story you wrote isn’t true,’ said Rachita when she read it.

  ‘The medical bits are true. Anyway it doesn’t matter if it isn’t true, what matters is that it could have been true. Anyway, you can call the parents and cross-check. They will tell you the same thing,’ I countered.

  ‘You taught them, didn’t you?’ said Rachita.

  Before I could answer she turned back to her screen. Rachita wasn’t as self-righteous as she’d made herself out of be. The way I saw it, she just kept testing me to see how far I would go, how much I would lie to get the donations in. She’s the medical head after all, she’s not stupid.

  Gautam’s was another story. The first story that went up was this:

  Gautam, twenty-three, has been diagnosed with an extreme case of meningioma. The tumour is wrapped on the frontal lobe and requires immediate surgery. The surgery is complex, only a few doctors have the expertise to operate. There’s a high risk of him slipping into a comatose condition. There’s an urgent need for money since both of Gautam’s parents are government servants and have already exhausted all their savings. He needs another 26 lakh.

  Short, dry, and useless. Even the picture wasn’t helping. The boy looked handsome and was smiling straight into the camera. His campaign collected a record low of Rs 16,000.

  Severely short on money, Gautam’s craniotomy was performed in a small hospital by less than capable doctors. I imagined a half-opened skull and blood spouting and splashing on a confused surgeon’s face.

  There was an update a couple of months later.

  Update: There was a requirement of 26 lakh for Gautam’s surgery which couldn’t be completed. Gautam couldn’t get operated in a hospital of his parent’s choice. His parents maintain if the hospital was more competent, he would have not slipped into a coma. His parents’ last hope is a DBS brain surgery that might bring him back.

  Not only was the first iteration horribly written, the second one didn’t make much sense either. Why would someone spend money on an uncertain case? Might bring him back? What kind of sentence is that?

  Nimesh and Nikhat ordered dosas that day and joined at the table. They always ordered something they assumed I liked and then used that as a pretext to start a conversation.

  ‘Great job on the Manoj Kumar campaign,’ said Nimesh.

  I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been sent over by Sarita to uplift my morale. She was a shark, and definitely built like one.

  ‘What’s next?’ asked Nikhat.

  I told them about the Gautam campaign, twenty-three-year-old guy, DBS. I saw their faces fall immediately.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked them.

  ‘Do you know why that campaign didn’t work?’ asked Nikhat.

  ‘Because it’s badly written, that’s why,’ I answered.

  Nimesh shook his head.

  ‘Do you remember the handle @gautam_gabbar? He was also on Instagram and Facebook and such,’ said Nimesh.

  ‘Vaguely.’

  Once they started to talk, you couldn’t really put a stop to them; like a pendulum the conversation shifted from Nikhat to Nimesh to Nikhat to Nimesh, the annoying little rabbits with their bunny smiles.

  Nikhat continued, ‘Back when his campaign first went live, regular donators threatened they won’t use the site if we supported him. They wanted him to die.’

  ‘Even the medical team with all their self-righteousness was hesitant. There was a lot of backlash,’ said Nimesh.

  ‘Sarita took a hard stand. She told everyone categorically that she didn’t care who the person was, he deserved to live and the story went live,’ said Nikhat.

  ‘His donation didn’t get traction. He torpedoed his own donation campaign, made fun of people who were contributing to his surgery. He didn’t get enough money and his surgery was botched up,’ said Nimesh.