Chapter 1
Jap, a 22-year-old boy with no family and all that he can recall is that he reached the big bad city of Mumbai 9 years ago. The only thing that he brought with him was a dream. A dream of becoming rich and the belief that the only way to achieve this dream is through hard work. But this belief changed into the philosophy of “by hook or by crook.” When? How? why? even our hero isn’t sure. But besides craving for his dream every day, the only other thing that he knew was to survive each day by cleaning, cooking, washing and doing everything as a help for his landlord, who in return gave him nothing except a servant room to stay and 2 meals a day.
Mr. Haridhar Pashaik a 65-year-old Indian male is the landlord cum employer (if you’d like to call him that) with no one left in his family. Some of them are dead (his parents) while some of them have not been in contact with this old man since years including his sons. His wife died many years ago and since then he distance himself from every relationship he had with anyone. He never leaves his home and only talks to Jap, who is everything for him at the moment. His cook, driver, cleaner & medium to connect to outer world. Everyday he starts drinking with sunset which continues till sunrise and then if it’s a lucky day for his neighbour and Jap, he falls asleep for about 9–10 hours after being drunk. If he doesn’t sleep than he will probably beat Jap for some reason or shout on his neighbour for something which no one understands as he only speaks with English after he’s drunk. When he turns sober he can hardly speak a single word of English and that’s the mystery no one could solve as his drunk English is not understandable to anyone.
He had an old house in his name in which he stays in 1st floor and has ground floor on rent to some foreigners. Goa being the beach town is very popular with tourist from all over the world. Especially in the season time which starts from October till March. And this is the time for Jap to earn some extra money or tip from the paying guests for himself as Haridhar only provides him with a stay in the house and gives him leftover food to eat for the work he does for him. But Jap doesn’t mind it as Haridhar helped him when he had no money or work.
Jap came to goa 7 years ago from Mumbai in the search for some work as he always wanted to live nearby sea but somewhere far from crowded Mumbai.
Mumbai was very harsh on him and he took someone’s advice to move to goa as Goa was a place of tourists. But he came to goa in summers, which was off-season and there were very few tourists visiting it. So he had to beg for food, until one day when he was eating from the garbage box, Haridhar saw him and asked about his name and family. After listening to Jap’s heart breaking story, Haridhar took him to his house. He fed Jap and gave him a bed to sleep and later in the morning he explained Jap his work. Since then Jap works for him and do some part-time jobs of neighbourhood, when Haridhar is sleeping which is usually from 6 am in the morning till 4–5 pm in the evening. If Jap gets late and Haridhar doesn’t find him in the house when he wakes up then Jap knows his punishment that Haridhar will not utter a single word out of anger till the time he is sober. And once the sun sets and Haridhar is all drunk that is the time Jap gets the beating from him. But altogether Jap was happy with his life.
Things changed when one day his neighbour Annie, asked him to work as a part-time helper and in return of good salary and a promise of not telling Haridhar about it. Annie married and divorced twice and lived in a lavishing beach house which belonged to her first husband which she got after his death. After her 2nd divorce at the age of 31, she had a number of partners but now she planned to seduce Jap as he was young, poor, weak and there was no danger in making a physical relationship with him as she could just tame him according to her.
Annie was born and brought up in goa so she was a very smart, practical and cunning woman. The first day when she took Jap with her for some shopping, she asked him to carry the shopping bags all the way to her house and then she offered him tea which she mixed with some drug (usually called as date rape drug) and then she had her way with him. She took some of their pictures while she was raping him but in such a way that it looks the opposite and threaten him to use it, if Jap doesn’t follow her wish.
Jap was a virgin till that day, as he was working and living with his landlord since he was 15 and had no time to look at his own personal life and desires. He spent his entire teenage just working but now Annie as his first woman, he had no complaints. She used to give him money and new clothes too in exchange for sex, though he was just her servant boy for others.
Annie used to bring many guys as dates to her place but next morning they were all thrown out. She was the one that gave Jap the idea that after Haridhar dies, everything will be his as Haridhar had no family left and that was the sole reason from that day forward for which Jap would bear every insult but made sure that he would never leave Haridhar or we could say it was just a another of his fake reasons to stick to Haridhar.He has never seen or felt how a father is. He was very young when his parents died in the riots caused by mayowaad (Mayo communism) in Nepal.
He used to work for some chaai wala (tea vendor) there till 13 before he came to India with one of his childhood buddy, who he lost in the crowdy and hypocrite city of Mumbai. His name was Rann Singh and he got in the hands of beggar gang of Bangladeshi’s in Mumbai.
They broke his arms and made him a beggar and he sits in some traffic lights in the busy streets of Mumbai as per last info he got about him. Jap still has a contact in Mumbai who still keeps a tail on his friend. It’s one of his dreams to free him from that gang as he was only friend he had. He could never forget that time when Rann Singh helped him escaping from Kathmandu. It was the time when there was a conflict going on between mayoist and the king’s army of Nepal.