May 14, 1974
By the second week of May, the Republic was as close to paralysis as it had come since independence.
On the eighth, after George Fernandes was arrested under MISA, a million and a half railway workers walked off the job. The nationalized railways — the only spine the country had for moving coal, grain, steel, and everything else — stopped cold. Eleven thousand locomotives sat dead in yards from Assam to Gujarat. Signal boxes stood empty; in Bihar and Bengal, whole switching yards turned into graveyards of stalled boxcars. Delhi, Punjab, and Maharashtra's thermal plants had less than twelve hours of coal on hand. Wholesale inflation had cleared twenty-eight and a half percent.
Delhi answered with force — ESMA invoked, army units on the railyards, twenty thousand strikers arrested, families evicted from railway housing.
Beyond the subcontinent, the world wasn't faring much better. The Fed had pushed rates to historic highs to fight inflation, choking Western credit. West German industrial output had fallen for a third straight quarter, and mid-sized machine-tool builders in the Ruhr were quietly shopping for hard-currency buyers.
To Bombay, Ahmedabad, and Calcutta's old business houses, the strike was an ambush — fleets stranded without fuel, inventories running dry, credit lines already spent.
In the Nariman Point war room, Rudra looked at the same blackout and saw the largest acquisition window his family had ever had.
May 14, 1974, 9:30 AM
Pratap Industries Corporate Headquarters, Nariman Point, Bombay
Fog sat over the harbor, foreign bulk carriers still waiting on berths that wouldn't open for weeks. Karan unrolled the transport map and started marking nodes with a red grease pencil before Rudra had even finished sitting down.
"Report."
"Grid's dead," Karan said. "Not one coal train's moved out of Jharia or Raniganj in six days. Every trucking firm in Bombay and Gujarat that ran on public pumps is finished." He dragged the pencil along the green corridors. "We're at ninety-four percent capacity. February's diesel reserves are the whole reason — nobody on our payroll has queued for fuel once."
"The relay system."
Meera set a wooden tray of brass shift tokens on the table with a soft clink. "Intact. Fixed legs, home depot every night — no highway exposure. Union agitators tried to block Surat three days ago. Our own mechanics dispersed them before police showed up." She tapped her ledger. "Drivers are pulling forty-two percent above baseline pay right now on completion bonuses. State transport men are getting arrested. Ours are getting rich."
Ashwin didn't need to open his folder. "Maharashtra Transport tried a blanket requisition in South Bombay on the tenth. Fell apart the moment we produced Karnataka and Deccan Zone charters — different state, different jurisdiction, no authority to touch them. By the time they draft an inter-state petition, the strike will already be history."
"The coal contracts," Rudra said.
Karan pulled out the government parchment, gold crest stamped across the top. "Signed yesterday. Sixty-five percent freight premium to haul metallurgical coal from Vizag to state boards in MP and Orissa."
"Paid premium rates," Rudra said, "on fuel we bought before the crisis started."
"That's the trade."
Rudra turned to Ashwin. "The Pune assets."
Ashwin opened the blue dossier. "Thirty engineering firms in Chinchwad and Akurdi have gone dark — power cut, steel exhausted, credit dead." He laid three files on the table. "Deccan Precision. Konkan Stamping. Maharashtra Auto Components. Six and a half million rupees combined in default. Banks file for liquidation next week."
"The machinery?"
"Untouched." Karan leaned in. "I walked Chinchwad myself two days ago as a valuer. Three West German Schuler presses, four hundred tons each, bought in '69. Try to import those today and you're looking at two years and triple the money. The floor's silent because the owners ran out of cash, not because anything's broken."
"They built the capacity and skipped the foundation." Rudra closed the ledger. "Ashwin, the Bank of Maharashtra, tomorrow morning. We buy the debt."
May 15, 1974, 11:00 AM
The Executive Chamber, Bank of Maharashtra Regional Headquarters, Laxmi Road, Pune
Bidi smoke and old ledgers. Outside, rickshaw horns and newsboys shouting the latest strike arrests.
Chief Recovery Officer V.M. Joshi tapped a stack of default notices. "Six and a half million in non-performing debt, Mr. Pratap. Three quarters unserviced. The board's authorized liquidation."
Madhav Gokhale, white-haired, founder of Deccan Precision fifteen years back, looked up with eyes that hadn't slept properly in weeks. "Liquidation means scrap prices, Joshi-saheb. We defaulted because the railways stopped delivering steel from Bhilai. The board cut our power. Four hundred men are standing outside our gates unpaid for nine weeks."
"The bank can't carry six and a half million to subsidize a national supply failure, Mr. Gokhale." Joshi's tone didn't soften. "Without hard liquidity by Friday, the sheriff locks the gates."
Ashwin slid the folder across. "A different option."
Joshi opened it, and something in his posture changed as he read. "The full six and a half million? Cleared?"
"Four terms," Rudra said. "Friendly foreclosure — forty-two acres, the plant, all the machinery, transferred to Pratap Heavy Components at thirty percent of '71 book value. We clear the debt in cash, Singapore FDI, RBI-certified. The owners give up the board and the equity — Gokhale and his senior engineers stay on as consultants, three-year contracts, reporting to Karan. And the four hundred idle men come onto our books under Meera's structure, back wages cleared within forty-eight hours."
Gokhale's mouth opened and didn't quite finish forming a sentence. Grief and relief sitting in the same expression, neither one winning yet.
"You're taking the family name off the door."
"I'm keeping your presses off a scrap truck, Mr. Gokhale." Rudra held his gaze. "Your machinists get paid tomorrow morning. You built a plant that works. You didn't build one that survives a national crisis. Under us, it runs at ninety percent."
Joshi looked down the table at his own men. There wasn't an argument left to make. He signed.
"The Bank of Maharashtra accepts." The seal came down hard. "Title transfers execute in the Pune High Court tomorrow."
May 18, 1974, 2:30 PM
The Private Study, Pratap Wada, Nagpur
Heat radiated off the old basalt walls, cicadas going steady in the courtyard neems.
Rudra opened the morning's dispatch from Delhi — an official bulletin from the Ministry of External Affairs, still smelling faintly of fresh ink.
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA — PRESS INFORMATION BUREAUMAY 18, 1974
THE POKHRAN TESTAt 08:05 hours today, India successfully conducted a peaceful underground nuclear explosion at the Pokhran test range in the Rajasthan desert. The detonation was fully contained, demonstrating India's advanced indigenous scientific and technological capabilities...
He set it down. Western embargoes would follow within weeks — technology sanctions, dual-use equipment restrictions, tighter capital monitoring out of Washington and London. He'd expected the test. The timing of the fallout was the only real variable.
Beneath the bulletin sat a second sheet, sandalwood on the paper.
Rudra,
Pokhran has External Affairs and the Secretariat in full crisis mode. Western missions are already drafting protest notes — my father expects the US and Canada to freeze technology transfer agreements within weeks.
But the PM's own office is focused elsewhere — domestic self-reliance. The Cabinet Secretariat's supply committee has finalized a memorandum on 'Priority National Manufacturing Infrastructure.' Any enterprise with verified indigenous fabrication capacity in precision machinery, defense electronics, or heavy transport gets state-guaranteed fuel, priority steel allocation, and highway transit immunity.
I've made sure Pratap Heavy Components' new Pune and Thane facilities, and Vajra's regional divisions, are listed in the top tier.
Delhi is loud right now, Rudra. It helps to know your ground doesn't move.
— Ananya
He read it once and set it beside the bulletin. While Bombay and Calcutta braced for embargoes, Pratap Heavy Components had just picked up forty acres, German presses, and four hundred trained hands — and now had state fuel and steel guarantees on top of it.
Balwant came in with a telex strip. "From Singapore, Malik."
PRIORITY ONE // STRICTLY CONFIDENTIALFROM: BHAIRAV HOLDINGS (SINGAPORE)TO: RUDRA PRATAP (PERSONAL)
1. $800,000 USD (6.5M INR) INWARD FDI CLEARED, RBI FIRC #4092.2. FUNDS TRANSFERRED TO BANK OF MAHARASHTRA, DEBT RESOLUTION COMPLETE — DECCAN PRECISION, KONKAN STAMPING, MAHARASHTRA AUTO COMPONENTS.3. BERMUDA TREASURY UNTOUCHED.4. VAJRA WAVE DISCHARGED WEST GERMAN MACHINERY AT BOMBAY.
— VIKRAM
He touched a match to the corner and let it burn to ash in the tray. Across the desk, the signed Pune deeds sat waiting for the courier. One week — a national strike, a nuclear test, and forty-two acres of German steel now running under his name.
May 20, 1974, 10:30 AM
Factory Floor, Deccan Precision Engineering Complex, Chinchwad, Pune
Machine oil and hydraulic grease hung in the air, sunlight coming down hard through the skylights onto rows of grey machine tools.
Karan stood at the Schuler press console in a canvas workshop jacket. Gokhale waited beside him, fifty re-hired machinists in fresh blue overalls lined up along the walkway. Outside, a Vajra flatbed idled, loaded with steel billets straight off the Vizag dispatches.
"Start the main drive, Mr. Gokhale."
Gokhale's hand didn't shake on the lever this time.
The flywheel spun up, the hydraulic gauges climbing into the green — powered by a diesel generator Vajra's mechanics had installed the night before. Gokhale nodded to the operator, who fed a steel sheet onto the die and stepped on the pedal.
CLANG-THUD.
The ram came down and lifted a chassis cross-member, clean-edged, no burrs, no fractures. The operator held it up to the light.
Four hundred men who'd been facing nine unpaid weeks and empty gates five days ago found their voices at once.
Karan picked up a stick of chalk and marked the frame:
PHC-PUNE-001
The presses were running. The fuel was flowing. And the machine kept moving forward, one stamped piece of steel at a time.