The new ledger lay open on the rickety wooden table, the word OIL staring back at Harsh like a challenge. The cold certainty he'd found outside the gold shop had settled into a low, humming focus. The paralyzing fear was gone, replaced by the sharp, alert tension of a predator sensing a shift in the wind. He was no longer waiting; he was listening.
And Mumbai was beginning to whisper.
It started at the docks. The usual chaotic symphony of clanging metal, shouting dockworkers, and blaring ship horns had taken on a new, sharper key. Harsh stood with Rane, the wiry dockworker who had first offered him "misplaced goods." But today, they weren't talking about contraband electronics.
"You feel it, don't you, Harsh Bhai?" Rane muttered, his eyes scanning the hectic port, not looking at Harsh. His voice was low, meant to be carried away by the salt-tinged breeze. "The tension. It's not just in the air. It's in the manifests. It's in the captains' eyes."
Harsh followed his gaze. There was a frantic energy to the movements around them. Cranes swung with a little more urgency. Officials clustered in tight, anxious-looking groups.
"What are you hearing, Rane?" Harsh asked, his voice casual, but every sense was tuned to a razor's edge.
Rane spat on the ground. "The Gulf. It's all anyone talks about. Saddam. Kuwait. The Americans. It's a pot, and the lid is about to blow. The shipping lines are nervous. Insurance premiums are going through the roof. Some captains are refusing the route altogether." He finally glanced at Harsh, his sharp eyes knowing. "You asked about oil. This is what it looks like before the tap is threatened. The smart money is already getting jumpy."
The confirmation sent a thrill down Harsh's spine, so intense it was almost nausea. The smart money is getting jumpy. He was right. The future was unfolding exactly as he remembered.
He left the docks and walked through the crowded streets, but his ears were now fine-tuned receivers, picking up fragments of conversation he would have ignored a month ago.
Outside a tea stall, a group of men in lungis argued over a week-old, crumpled newspaper. "...says here the Americans have sent warships! I tell you, it will be a bloodbath!" "Warships mean blockades!No tankers will get through! The price of diesel will be more than whiskey!"
At a taxi stand, drivers huddled around a car radio, the volume turned up high against the traffic noise. A crackling, urgent voice from the BBC World Service cut through the static: "...demand an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait… President Bush has stated all options are on the table…"
The words options are on the table hung in the smoky, petrol-fumed air. The taxi drivers listened, their faces grim. War was an abstraction, but the price of petrol was their daily reality.
Harsh felt the pieces clicking into place. The whispers weren't just from brokers like Chiman anymore. They were everywhere. The nervous energy was leaching out of the newspapers and radio reports and into the very bones of the city. The butcher, the baker, the taxi driver—they were all starting to feel the tremors of a coming earthquake they didn't understand.
He ducked into a small, grimy library, the kind that smelled of dust and old paper. He ignored the fiction section and went straight to the periodicals, pulling out weeks of international newspapers. He didn't read the articles; he devoured them. He cross-referenced dates, looking for the pattern, the inevitable escalation.
Troop build-up in Saudi Arabia. UN Security Council resolutions. The word "sanctions" appearing with increasing frequency.
It was a countdown. And the clock was ticking faster.
That evening, in the alcove, the atmosphere had changed. The anxiety was still there, but it had been alchemized into a shared, electric anticipation. Deepak and Sanjay watched Harsh, not with confusion, but with a dawning understanding. They had seen the change in him. They had heard the same whispers in the market.
"Harsh Bhai," Sanjay said, breaking the silence. "The price of petrol... it went up by fifty paise today at the pump near the station. The owner said it's just the beginning. He said his supplier is talking about... shortages."
Harsh didn't look up from the ledger where he was noting down the day's whispers. "It is just the beginning," he said, his voice calm. "The storm hasn't even hit yet."
He closed the ledger. "The world runs on oil, Sanjay. Imagine a single, sharp stone thrown into a complex, delicate machine. The gears grind. The belts snap. The entire machine seizes up. That stone is about to be thrown."
Deepak, who had been quietly listening, looked up from his workbench. "And gold?" he asked, his practical mind seeking the connection.
Harsh met his gaze. "When the machine breaks, people don't try to fix it right away. They panic. They run for cover. They look for the one thing that has always been valuable, long before machines, and will be valuable long after. They look for the thing that can't be printed by a government or sunk in a tanker. They look for gold."
He let the statement hang in the air, the simplicity of it cutting through the complex geopolitical fear.
"The whispers are getting louder," Harsh said, standing up. "The tension is building. It's not a question of if anymore. It's a question of when."
He walked to the entrance of the alcove and looked out at the bustling market. The streetlights were flickering on, casting long shadows. The city was going about its business, oblivious to the tidal wave of fear and money that was beginning to form thousands of miles away.
But Harsh saw it. He could feel it coming in the nervous energy of the docks, in the worried conversations at tea stalls, in the creeping price of fuel. He had heard the whispers of war, and in them, he heard the unmistakable, ringing promise of a gold surge.
The prediction was no longer a memory. It was a certainty. The first move had been made. Now, he had to be ready for the avalanche.
(Chapter End)