The tension at home became a constant, low hum in the background of Harsh's life, a dissonant chord beneath the daily symphony of commerce and danger. He navigated it the way he navigated everything else now—with a grim, strategic silence. He provided for his parents, assuaging their practical worries while letting their deeper fears remain unaddressed. It was a costly peace, paid for with emotional distance, but it was peace nonetheless. And peace, however fragile, allowed for thought.
His mind, freed from the constant firefighting of immediate threats, began to stretch. The alcove was his world, but the newspapers he now deliberately sought out were his windows. He'd always glanced at them, but now he studied them, treating the inky pages with the same analytical intensity he applied to a circuit diagram.
He started with the local financial sections, the dry reports on bank rates and textile exports. But his eyes were always drawn to the international pages, to the whispers of a world tilting on the edge of change. The talk was all about the Gulf. A dictator named Saddam Hussein. Troop movements. The word "oil" was everywhere, spoken with a new, nervous energy.
One stuffy evening, the air thick with the smell of monsoon rains and soldering resin, he heard a crackling voice from a neighbouring chawl's radio. A BBC World Service broadcast, cutting through the static: "...as tensions escalate, analysts fear a conflict could severely disrupt oil flows from the region, triggering a global price shock…"
The words hung in the humid air. Oil. Price shock.
A circuit connected in Harsh's mind with an almost audible click. It wasn't just a news story. It was a memory. A future memory.
A flash from his past life—a documentary, a conversation, a headline scrolled on a phone screen decades from now. The Gulf War. It was coming. And when it came, the world would change. Oil prices would not just spike; they would scream. And gold… the ancient sanctuary of the fearful… gold would skyrocket as investors fled chaotic markets.
He stood up so abruptly his stool screeched against the stone floor. Deepak and Sanjay looked up, startled.
"Harsh Bhai?"
Harsh didn't answer. He went to the small crate where he kept his personal items and pulled out the new, larger ledger. He flipped past the pages of The Ocean, The System, and Us. He turned to a fresh, clean page.
At the top, he wrote a single word: FUTURE.
Beneath it, he created two columns.
OIL. GOLD.
His hand was steady, but his heart was hammering. This was different. This wasn't about optimizing repair workflows or negotiating with suppliers. This was a different league entirely. This was about seeing the currents of the world before anyone else even felt the tide change.
"What is that?" Sanjay asked, peering at the new headings, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"The next game," Harsh said, his voice low with a new kind of intensity. He tapped the words. "The real one."
He began his research with a feverish obsession. He couldn't access sophisticated market reports, but he could piece together a mosaic from what he had. He read every international news snippet. He listened to short-wave radio broadcasts until late in the night, the voices from London and America painting a picture of a world barreling toward conflict. He noted the dates, the rhetoric, the inexorable build-up.
He started tracking prices. He'd call a friendly jeweller under the pretext of wanting to buy a gift for his mother, casually asking about the daily rate of 24-carat gold. He befriended a pump attendant at a petrol station, buying him a cup of chai each week to hear his complaints about rumoured price hikes and supply worries.
Every data point was entered into his ledger. The crude oil price from a two-day-old international newspaper. The Mumbai gold rate from his jeweller contact. He watched the lines—in his mind and on the paper—begin their slow, creeping ascent. The world was sleepwalking towards a cliff, and he was one of the few people who knew it.
This wasn't street-smart tactics. This was business foresight. It was the ultimate application of his greatest, most secret weapon: the knowledge of what was to come.
He'd lie awake at night, not with fear of the ghost or Desai, but with the terrifying, exhilarating scale of the opportunity. The money in the Us column was growing, but it was a pittance. A single smart move in the coming oil and gold frenzy could multiply it a hundred times over. A thousand.
It could be the key to his freedom. A war chest large enough to eventually buy his way out from under Venkat Swami's thumb. A capital base so strong that not even a customs officer could easily threaten it.
But it was a terrifying leap. It meant moving his money from the tangible—cash in a lockbox, inventory in the alcove—into the volatile, abstract world of global commodities. It was a game played by giants in air-conditioned offices, not by a boy in a Mumbai alley.
One afternoon, a wiry, sharp-eyed man named Chiman, a known broker who lurked around the edges of the gold market, caught Harsh as he was leaving the jeweller's. Chiman was a whisperer, a creature of the grey spaces where cash met gold.
"Harsh Bhai," Chiman said, falling into step beside him, his voice a confidential murmur. "I hear you have been asking about the price of gold. A wise man looks to gold when the winds change." He glanced around theatrically. "The whispers are getting louder. From the Gulf. The smart money is already moving. The price… it is preparing to dance."
It was a sales pitch, but it confirmed everything Harsh already knew. The first ripples were reaching the shore. The time for observation was ending. The time for action was approaching.
Harsh stopped and looked at Chiman, really seeing him. This man, this whisperer, was a potential instrument. A risky, unreliable one, but an instrument nonetheless.
"The dance hasn't started yet, Chiman," Harsh said, his voice cool. "When it does, I'll know who to call."
He walked away, leaving the broker looking both disappointed and impressed. Harsh's mind was already racing ahead, past the whispers, to the thunder that would follow.
He had built a small, profitable machine. But to truly build his empire, he needed to ride a tsunami. He closed his eyes, the sounds of Mumbai fading away, replaced by the future echoes of ticker tapes and headlines screaming about oil and war.
The setup for the next arc was complete. The petty hustles of Bhuleshwar were behind him. His first BIG investment wasn't in electronics or scrap. It was in the inevitable chaos of the world itself.