The meeting with Rustom Khan was a seed planted in barren soil. It would need time, and the right conditions, to germinate. Harsh knew he couldn't simply wait. While Khan worked the shadows of the bureaucracy, he needed to wage a war in the light of public perception. Joshi had the power of the state; Harsh needed the power of the people.
He found Sanjay not at the new Nava Bharat office, but at the old, sealed Patel Holdings factory, standing outside the main gate and staring at the bright yellow "UNDER INVESTIGATION" notice pasted across it like a scar. His usual energy was gone, replaced by a slumped dejection.
"They won't even let me get my tools," Sanjay said, his voice thick with frustration. "My own soldering iron is in there, locked away as 'evidence'. Evidence of what? That I know how to fix a radio?"
"This is the fight now, Sanjay," Harsh said, coming to stand beside him. "Not with circuit boards, but with stories. Joshi is telling his story—that I'm a criminal, that this company is a front. We need to tell a better one."
Sanjay turned to him, his eyes skeptical. "A story? Bhaiya, they have frozen our accounts. They have our servers. What story can fight that?"
"The truth," Harsh replied, a plan crystallizing in his mind. "Or a powerful part of it. We are the victims. We are the young, Indian innovators being crushed by a jealous old guard and a slow, soulless bureaucracy. That is a story every small businessman in this country will understand."
He laid out his gambit. They would go on the offensive, not in a courtroom, but in the newspapers. But not through a dry press release. Through a human face.
"Not me," Harsh said, shaking his head. "I'm too tainted, too associated with the scandal. They'll say I'm trying to save myself. It has to be you."
"Me?" Sanjay's eyes widened.
"You, Sanjay. The son of a taxi driver. The boy who started selling calculators from a cloth bag. The face of the hungry, ambitious India that just wants a chance. You represent every young man in this city who dreams of being more than his father. That is who Joshi is really attacking."
He saw the idea take root in Sanjay's mind, the dejection slowly being replaced by a spark of purpose.
"What would I even say?"
"You tell your story. All of it. You talk about the first walkman we fixed. The thrill of that first two-hundred rupees. The late nights in the alcove. You talk about the National Telecom order—a huge victory for a company like ours, a symbol of what we can achieve. And then you talk about the raid. The humiliation. The sealed factory. The fear in your mother's eyes when the taxmen came to your house asking questions."
Sanjay flinched. "They came to my house?"
"They will," Harsh said, his voice grim. "If they haven't already. This is personal for them, so we make it personal for us. You don't accuse Joshi. You don't even mention his name. You just ask a simple, heartbreaking question to the public: 'Is this the reward for hard work in India? Is this how we treat our innovators?'"
The next day, Sanjay, dressed not in his usual market clothes but in a simple, respectable shirt and trousers, sat for an interview with a sympathetic business journalist from a prominent daily. Harsh had chosen him carefully—a reporter known for his populist leanings and his disdain for corrupt, bullying authorities.
The article was published forty-eight hours later. The headline was a masterstroke of emotional manipulation: "My Soldering Iron is Evidence: The Story of a Young India Being Broken."
It was pure, unadulterated pathos. Sanjay's voice, transcribed with vivid detail, spoke of his dreams, his struggles, the pride of building something from nothing. He painted a picture of Harsh not as a shadowy financier, but as a visionary older brother who had given him a chance. The description of the raid was visceral—the confusion, the fear, the helplessness as agents treated their hard-won tools like contraband. He ended with the poignant line Harsh had suggested, and it landed with the force of a sledgehammer.
The effect was immediate. The story was too human, too relatable to ignore. Other papers picked it up. Television news channels, always hungry for a dramatic, human-interest story, sent crews to film the sealed factory. They interviewed other small shopkeepers in the market, who unanimously praised Harsh and Sanjay as honest, hardworking boys. A narrative was born, not of scamsters, but of martyrs.
Harsh, watching from his apartment, saw the first flicker of his shield being forged. Public sentiment was a fickle thing, but when harnessed, it was a wall no bureaucrat could easily breach.
The phone rang. It was a number he didn't recognize, but the voice was familiar—cold, sharp, and furious.
"Patel." It was Joshi. "This cheap drama. This sentimental nonsense. Do you think this changes anything?"
"Deputy Director Joshi," Harsh said, his voice calm. "I'm not sure what you're referring to. My colleague, Sanjay, was merely sharing his personal experience. Is it now a crime for a young man to express his disappointment?"
"Do not play word games with me!" Joshi snarled. "I see your hand in this. You are trying to paint me as the villain."
"The facts paint the picture, sir," Harsh replied, a steel edge entering his tone. "You sealed a factory, jeopardizing the jobs of dozens of people and a landmark order from National Telecom. You are pursuing a man who has been publicly exonerated by the confession of the real culprit. The public is simply… connecting the dots."
There was a long, seething silence on the other end. Harsh could almost feel the man's rage vibrating down the line. He had backed Joshi into a corner. To continue his pursuit of Harsh now would look like a personal vendetta, a bullying campaign against a nationalistic tech pioneer.
"You have not heard the last of me, Patel," Joshi hissed, his voice low and venomous. "I have other avenues. Deeper avenues."
The line went dead. Harsh set the phone down. The public shield was up, but Joshi's threat was real. He was talking about the Mauritius funds, the Singapore account. The deeper avenues. The shield would protect him from frontal assaults, but it was useless against a dagger in the dark.
He had won the first public battle. But the war for his survival was now entering a deeper, more dangerous phase. He had his shield. Now, he needed to ensure Joshi's dagger never found its mark. The success of that now rested on the weary shoulders of a bitter, mustachioed bureaucrat named Rustom Khan.
(Chapter End)