Page 113 - Till the Last Breath . . .

he thought. With the mild hallucinogen in his bloodstream, he could see

images of a bikini-clad Zarah turning heads on an exotic beach in Brazil.
‘Why haven’t you told your parents yet?’ she asked. ‘And how long do
you think you can keep up with the medical expenses?’

‘I have more money than it looks like,’ he said.
‘Rich parents, eh?’

‘My father is a clerk and my mother is a housewife. They haven’t sent
me a single buck since my second year,’ he answered.

‘Then how?’ she asked. He searched for signs of shock on her face but
found none. She was too high to care.

‘I am a face that people forget. But I am also a brain that forgets little.’
‘So you do little brain-trick shows for people?’ she chuckled.
‘Not really, but close. You remember those multiple-choice questions we

had to answer to get through entrance examinations?’ She nodded and he
continued, ‘I was brilliant at that. In eleventh grade, my coaching-institute

teacher had noticed that and made me take an exam for a rich kid in the
senior batch. I cracked three exams for the kid. All we needed was to click a

picture of his which looked like me, and it was done. It was five thousand
for each exam. My teacher had a new car the very next week.’

‘So?’ Zarah looked disturbed. Finally!
‘Business slowly grew. I started taking every type of exam. BBA, MAT,
CAT, engineering and even medical entrances. I have taken the board

exams, tenth and twelfth, every year since then. I know all the textbooks by
heart. I make more money in those four months of examinations than

people make in years. I am a safer bet than a leaked paper or two years of
expensive coaching classes. If I am not caught, I have a zero rate of failure.

And I come cheap.’
Last season, Dushyant had taken thirteen board examinations, nine

engineering entrances, four BBA entrances and a few MBA entrances. He
took the GRE five times and a whole host of other exams which now he
couldn’t even remember. None of the surrogate examinations went cheaper

than twenty thousand rupees. He made 8 lakh that year. What with his