Chapter 10: Suryansh

# Chapter 10: Suryansh

## The Collector's Office

The District Collector's office in Wellington occupied a building that had once been a British military mess, and it retained the architectural confidence of an institution that had been built to impress. High ceilings, teak panelling, a corridor lined with photographs of previous Collectors dating back to 1947 — a gallery of administrative ambition rendered in black and white, then colour, then increasingly high-resolution digital.

Suryansh arrived fifteen minutes early, which in his internal calendar was exactly on time. He wore his best uniform — the one he reserved for inspections and court appearances, pressed with the geometric precision that the military had beaten into him until it became voluntary. His shoes were mirrors. His belt buckle caught the corridor light. Bahadur was not present; the Collector's office had a strict no-animals policy that apparently did not extend to the collection of stray cats that had colonised the garden.

Swathi was already there. She was in the corridor, pacing, her phone pressed to her ear, speaking in rapid Tamil that Suryansh could follow only in fragments — his Tamil was functional for police work but collapsed under the speed and complexity of an agitated conversation. She wore a cotton sari — blue with a white border — that he had not seen before and that changed the geometry of her entirely. The kurta-and-jeans Swathi was competent, sharp, slightly chaotic. The sari Swathi was something else — composed, deliberate, the kind of woman who could walk into a government office and be taken seriously by men who had spent their careers not taking women seriously.

She saw him and held up one finger — give me a minute — and continued her conversation. He heard the word "headliner" repeated three times, each repetition carrying a different shade of frustration. When she hung up, her expression was the controlled blank of someone who had just received bad news and was processing it behind a professional mask.

"Problem?"

"The backup headliner I was negotiating — a Carnatic-jazz fusion quartet from Bangalore — just doubled their fee. ₹6 lakhs. My entire entertainment budget is ₹4.2 lakhs."

"Can you negotiate?"

"I've been negotiating for three days. Their manager is the kind of person who says 'let me check with the artistes' and then calls back with a higher number each time. I think the 'artistes' are actually just a spreadsheet."

They were called into the Collector's office. Parthasarathy was behind a desk that was exactly as imposing as you would expect — wide, teak, covered in files arranged with a symmetry that suggested either a deeply organised mind or a deeply anxious one. He was in his mid-forties, IAS, with the particular handsomeness of a man who had been told he was brilliant at twenty-two and had spent the subsequent decades trying to live up to it. His hair was greying at the temples in the distinguished way that men's hair was allowed to grey. His eyes were sharp behind frameless glasses.

"Ms. Padmanabhan. Inspector Tomar." He did not stand. He gestured to chairs. "I've read the security plan. It's thorough. Better than I expected."

"Thank you, sir," Swathi said.

"The nature walks as a security measure — whose idea?"

"Kumaran's, sir. Our community liaison."

"Kumaran Gounder. I know him. He organised my daughter's school fundraiser last year. Raised ₹4 lakhs from a town that claims it has no money. The man could sell rain to the Nilgiris." He turned to Suryansh. "Inspector, your assessment of the smuggling threat during the festival?"

Suryansh had prepared for this. He presented his findings — the night observations, the new sandalwood cut, the carrier patterns, the vehicle pickup point — with the brevity and precision that operational briefings demanded. No embellishment. No drama. Facts arranged in logical sequence, leading to a conclusion that was actionable.

"My assessment is that the smuggling network will attempt to exploit the festival period. Police resources will be concentrated in the town. The forest corridors will be less monitored. I recommend maintaining independent forest patrols — myself and K9-TN-417 — during the festival nights, with coordination through the Forest Range Officer."

"You'll be running festival security during the day and forest operations at night?"

"Yes, sir."

Parthasarathy studied him for a moment — the assessing look of a man who managed people for a living and had learned to read the gap between what people promised and what they could deliver. "That's a significant operational load, Inspector."

"It's manageable, sir." The word came out before he could choose a different one. Manageable. The word he had used about Jaipur. The word that had been a lie.

Parthasarathy either didn't notice or chose not to press. He turned back to Swathi. "The festival. Where do we stand?"

Swathi opened her laptop and presented the status — vendors confirmed, venue layout, programming schedule, logistics timeline. She did it well. Suryansh watched from the periphery and noticed things: the way she modulated her voice for different sections (calm authority for confirmed items, honest directness for gaps), the way she used the laptop as a prop rather than a crutch (glancing at it for numbers but maintaining eye contact for arguments), the way she acknowledged problems without dwelling on them and proposed solutions without overselling them. She was good at this. Genuinely good, in a way that had nothing to do with spreadsheets and everything to do with an instinct for reading rooms.

"The headliner situation," Parthasarathy said, when she had finished. "That's your biggest gap."

"Yes, sir. I'm working on alternatives. We have strong programming for the coffee component, the arts corridor, the nature walks, the food court. But the evening entertainment is the draw — it's what brings the 15,000 number from aspiration to reality."

"What's your budget constraint?"

"₹4.2 lakhs for the full entertainment programme. The headliner needs to be a name that draws crowds, but also someone who fits the festival's identity — Nilgiris, coffee, arts, nature. Not a Bollywood playback singer doing greatest hits. Something that belongs here."

Parthasarathy leaned back. "Have you considered local talent?"

"Local as in Coonoor?"

"Local as in the Nilgiris. There's a woman in Kotagiri — Thenral. She's a Toda tribal singer. Self-taught. She sings in the Toda language, which has no written form — the songs are oral tradition, passed down through generations. She performed at a small event in Ooty last year. Someone recorded it on their phone. The video has four million views on YouTube."

Swathi's fingers were already moving on her phone, searching. Suryansh watched the moment land — the slight widening of her eyes, the intake of breath, the recognition of an opportunity that she hadn't seen coming.

"I've found it," she said. "Thenral. 'Songs of the Shola.' Four point three million views. The comments are —" She scrolled. "'I've never heard anything like this.' 'This is what Indian music should sound like.' 'Why isn't she famous?' 'She made me cry and I don't even understand the words.'"

"She lives in a settlement near Kotagiri," Parthasarathy said. "She's not represented by a manager. She doesn't have an agent. Last I heard, she was working at a tea estate. She sings because that's what her grandmother sang and her grandmother before that. Whether she'll perform at a festival with 15,000 people is a question only she can answer."

"I'll go to Kotagiri tomorrow," Swathi said. The words came out fast, certain. "Can you connect me? An introduction?"

"I'll have my PA send you the panchayat contact. They can take you to the settlement. But Swathi —" He used her first name, which shifted the conversation from official to advisory. "Thenral is not a performer in the way you're used to thinking about performers. She doesn't have a setlist. She doesn't rehearse. She sings the songs her ancestors sang, in a language that fewer than 2,000 people in the world speak. If you approach her like a client to be booked, you'll lose her. Approach her like what she is — a keeper of something irreplaceable."

"Understood, sir."

The meeting ended. They walked out of the building into the Wellington afternoon — overcast, cool, the military cantonment's manicured grounds stretching before them in orderly rows of barracks and parade grounds. The contrast with Coonoor's organic chaos was striking; Wellington looked like a place where even the grass stood at attention.

Swathi turned to him in the corridor. "Will you come? To Kotagiri. Tomorrow."

"Why?"

"Because I need a security assessment of the Kotagiri venue options anyway. And because —" She paused, choosing her words. "Because you're calm. I'm going to meet a woman whose music made four million people cry, and I need someone next to me who doesn't lose their composure."

"I don't lose my composure."

"I know. That's why I'm asking."

He should have said no. The Kotagiri trip was not in his operational mandate. The festival was not his responsibility beyond the security plan. And spending a day in a car with Swathi Padmanabhan was — he was honest enough with himself to recognise this — a complication he did not need.

"What time?" he asked.

"Seven AM. I'll drive."

"I'll drive. Your car doesn't have four-wheel drive and the Kotagiri road is unpaved after the fifteen-kilometre mark."

"You've driven it?"

"I've driven worse. Bahadur comes."

"Obviously Bahadur comes. Bahadur is the only one of us who consistently makes good decisions."

That earned it. Not the micro-expression. An actual smile. Brief, involuntary, immediately suppressed — but real. She saw it and her own face responded with a warmth that she probably thought she was hiding and was not hiding at all.

They walked to their respective vehicles in the car park. The afternoon light was pale gold through the overcast sky. A barracks bugle sounded in the distance — the Wellington army base, practising for something. The sound carried across the cantonment like a memory of a time when the hills belonged to uniforms and order.

Suryansh opened the Bolero door and sat for a moment before starting the engine. In the rear-view mirror, he could see Swathi in her car, already on her phone, already working, already converting the Thenral idea from possibility to plan.

He started the engine and drove back to Coonoor on the familiar hairpin road, and he did not think about the smile. He thought about security perimeters and crowd management and sandalwood trails and the operational calendar for the next sixteen days.

He did not think about the smile.

Mostly.