Disruption in the Family

Gopal Desai looked at his watch and clapped his hands. Iditri Patel his personal assistant came running.

The whole family Patel looked after the Desai’s spacious penthouse occupying the complete area of the top level. It was luxurious and had access to the roof area which Gopal’s wife Smt. Rajvi utilized for entertainment, recreation and rooftop gardens in the area not occupied by water tanks, air conditioning that served the entire building and the housing for elevator shaft. The view over Surat was fabulous. Prana supervised cook and other servants under direction of Rajvi along with the estate Mali serving this building tower. Her children Shashikala, Vimala, Sanam and Prerit were conscripted when not in school to do whatever was assigned by their father or mother.

The Patel family had served the Desai’s and their parents before them for the best part of a hundred years and as the Desai’s had prospered over that time being diamond and precious stone cutters and polishers the Patel’s had become more trusted with responsibilities at a high level over those years.

Precious stones were sourced from Russia, South Africa, Botswana, Australia, and other parts of the globe but supplied to the Indian processing industries through Antwerp, Belgium. The private company Krishna Diamonds had been in the family since days when India was the primary country of source and supply and the Desai ancestors had discovered there was a market for their processed stones with the ancient colonial trading powers. Now competition was fierce and Gopal as the inheritor of the family business was responsible to keep competitive and produce funds for expansion into other industries and real estate to see their wealth was protected through diversification of their assets.

The high rise they were living in was an up-market construction in the upper-class residential area of Adajan, Surat. The two families recently moved there on completion of the high rise and Desai was currently engaged in building on lots in that surrounding developing area. The rich and famous rented apartments from Gopal as this development was in a gated community area well protected by security checking authorized people in and out twenty-four hours in a day.

Iditri as Gopal’s personal assistant was charged with the responsibility to liaise with those renting from the company as part of his responsibilities, so he’d accompany Gopal to the downtown office for the meeting held at the commencement of each day before departing with a company driver to take up his assignments. Because Iditri’s wife was in affect the personal assistant to Rajvi Desai and entrusted with supervision of the penthouse and maintenance liaison with rich residents occupying the rest of this new building, she relied heavily on her children to help. The Patel’s occupied an apartment directly under the penthouse for that reason so they were always accessible.

Iditri’s primary assignment now was the supervision of the high rises currently being constructed close to the just finished and occupied Desai tower in Adajan and watchmen were kept busy checking in and out construction contractors and their workers and materials suppliers who were rapidly working their way through building the new towers planned to eventually host all occupants of this gated community. It was well planned by the best architects and engineers and major battles with government agencies were now complete and only requiring frequent greasing of the wheels of government to ensure necessary permissions were granted on time. Desai had a quality reputation to maintain and as his current project to provide a gated community for the rich and famous required strict attention to the best of materials and construction to avoid legal battles with his rich renters afterward when they moved in it was necessary for Iditri to be on top of his game. The responsibility was sometimes more than he could bear and impacted his health but his loyalty to the Desai family kept him going.

Gopal’s eldest daughter Kamini had become jealous of the attention given to the Patel children by her mother Rajvi and father Gopal. Kamini had watched as her father had given the Patel children the same educational opportunities as his own children and as she felt her higher caste status should have given her the right to order the Patel children around as the eldest child, she’d do that at every opportunity until her mother overheard it one day and scolded Kamini in front of those children. Rajvi had reminded her that Kamini meant beautiful, and beauty was more than good looks. It was rather a description of character shining through what was said and done.

Kamini’s ego was further hurt by their father on her graduation when he decided to begin to orient her to the family business starting her working in the most menial tasks at the factory under direction of skilled workers who were experts in gem cutting and polishing. These were also not of her caste, and she felt humiliated but too frightened of incurring the wrath of her powerful father to refuse his demands.

But she knew that in the future she’d settle scores with her parents and the Patel’s and did her work each day under the exacting authority of those skilled workers assigned to teach her with a burning desire to seek revenge for what she wrongly assumed was an insult to her caste status.

It was Gopal’s belief that to be able to manage a company you had to understand how it worked from the bottom up and be willing to start at the bottom and become skilled in the work over a long period of time to develop an understanding practically why things were done as they were and not make foolish mistakes due to ignorance when called to administrative responsibilities later. Gopal would do that with his other daughter on her graduation and when his twin boys Chandresh and Ambaresh came of age and received their undergraduate education he’d send them to an advanced management school and finally when that was completed have them spend time in Antwerp through his contacts there to understand The Belgian skill in identifying the highest quality of stones. But they’d also have to spend time working under his specialist workers at the basic level to understand the workings of production. This had been done for him by his father and before practiced by his grandfather. Because the boys were twins, he’d have to find a way to satisfy both boys’ ambitions in that only the first to be born would get to replace him when he retired. Fortunately, the boys enjoyed each other’s company now but as adults how would the youngest feel suddenly finding himself no longer equal to his twin. The young women he would find suitable matches for and they would eventually depart the family. He and Rajvi were unaware of the depth of their eldest daughter’s anger as she was careful to conceal it in the home when they were together.

Kamini as she plotted her revenge suddenly realized she could work on the younger twin to point out someday the happy relationship as an equal would come to an end when his older twin inherited the position his father held in the extended family was passed on to the eldest son. She began to cultivate the younger twin. Nothing was too much trouble for her to do for him. Both twins looked on this as an unusual thing as Kamini had in the past tried to assert her authority as the eldest of the children on her siblings until they complained to their mother, and she was once again set straight. But over time the youngest began to gravitate to her enjoying the special treatment.

This went on for approximately a year before she began to carefully broach the subject of the younger twin’s secondary position in the family when Chandresh took over management from his father at the factory. It had never occurred to Ambaresh there’d come a time when the twins would no longer have equal status in the family. He was more curious about the pecking order in families than irritated at that time and as the relationship between the twins was extremely close, he talked about Kamini’s comments with his brother who shrugged it off. Chandresh was too young to be bothered about the future. He and his brother were enjoying their school experiences and sports together and to them it was unthinkable their father would someday not be acting as head of the extended family and looking after their interests. But more out of curiosity than a need to think about that time they asked their father about Kamini’s comments when travelling together on one occasion. They were surprised when their father turned to them and frowned then resumed paying attention to the road ahead.

The boys looked at each other had they said something wrong to displease their father. The active conversations they’d had in the car suddenly turned to silence.

To be continued.

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