Mohsin Hamid - How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

Another unit of MPs sees you exit the cantonment, and ten minutes later private wardens watch as you pass below the arch that signals the start of an elite housing society marketed, developed, and administered by one of a comprehensive network of military-related corporations. At the headquarters of this enterprise the gaze of a rooftop sniper follows you and the brother-in-law who is your deputy and chief operating officer as you both dismount. Inside, a retired brigadier shakes your hands, leads you to the boardroom, and tells you with proprietary pride about their latest scheme.

“Phase ten is big,” he says. “It’s bigger than phases one to five put together. Bigger than seven and eight combined. Bigger even than six, and six was huge. Ten is a milestone. A flagship. With ten we’re taking it to the next level. Ten will have its own electricity plant. No blackouts in ten.”

He pauses, waiting for a response.

“Incredible,” your brother-in-law offers. “Unbelievable.”

“But that’s not all. Other premier housing societies are installing electricity plants. We’re rolling them out across all our phases, in all our cities. No, what’s going to make ten unique, and why you’re here, is water. Water. In ten, when you turn the tap, you’ll be able to drink what comes out of it. Everywhere. In your garden. In your kitchen. In your bathroom. Drinkable water. When you enter phase ten, it’ll be like you’ve entered another country. Another continent. Like you’ve gone to Europe. Or North America.”

“Without leaving home,” your brother-in-law says.

“Exactly. Without leaving home. You’ll still be here. But in a secure, walled-off, impeccably maintained, lit-up-at-night, noise-controlled, perfectly regulated version of here. An inspiration for the entire country, and for our countrymen abroad too. Where even the water is as good as the best. World class.”

“Fabulous.” Your brother-in-law salutes for added emphasis.

“Can it be done?”

“Yes.”

The brigadier smiles. “Right answer. We know it can be done. What we want to know is who can do it. Who can be our local partner. We’re setting up a water subsidiary. We’ll have top international consultants. But we need someone who can execute, someone with a track record in this city. Which is why you’re on our shortlist. It’ll be our brand, our face to the public. Naturally. But we can’t do it alone, not yet. So there’s excellent money to be made working with us, especially while we’re getting up to speed.”

“We’re thrilled to have the chance.”

“Are you?” The brigadier looks pointedly in your direction, where you have thus far been absorbing the conversation in silence. He recognizes a canny old hand when he sees one, and he believes he knows what you are thinking. There are serious technical challenges, not least that the aquifer below the city is plummeting and becoming more contaminated every year, poisonous chemicals and biological toxins seeping into it like adulterants into a heroin junkie’s collapsing vein. Powerful water extraction and purification equipment will be needed, plus, in all likelihood, a plan to draw water from canals intended for agricultural use, fiercely contested water itself laden with pesticide and fertilizer runoff.

Yet he suspects it is not these obstacles giving you pause. No, the brigadier thinks, you are wary because you know full well that when we military-related businesses advance into a market, the front lines change rapidly. We get permissions no one else can get. Red tape dissolves effortlessly for us. And reappears around our competitors. So we can move fast. Which makes us dangerous commercial adversaries. But it also makes our projects more exciting. And in this case we are going ahead whether you partner with us or not. Better, surely, to be close to us than to be yet another incumbent we swat aside. Besides, at least in the near term, we are simply offering too much cash for you to walk away.

“Yes,” you say inevitably, and as expected.

The brigadier nods. “Very good. We’ll have the RFP delivered to you by the start of next week. Gentlemen.”

He rises and the meeting comes to an end.

That evening one of your four pump-action-shotgun-wielding uniformed security guards leaves the kiosk abutting your steel gate for a patrol along the perimeter of your property. In two twelve-hour shifts of two, along with barbed-wire-topped boundary walls and a personal nine-millimeter automatic in your locked desk drawer, guards are a key component of the measures you have taken to defend your mansion against would-be robbers, kidnappers, and underhanded business rivals, the constant threats your wealth engenders. This guard, a retired infantryman, subsists on a combination of his wages from a protection-services firm, his holiday bonuses from you, and his military pension. In exchange for the last, or perhaps out of a less transactional patriotism, his eyes and ears remain at the disposal of national security, making him a tiny part of those vast hives of clandestine human assets abuzz not just in your city but in all cities and in all countries, throughout the world.

At this moment his eyes and ears, or his eyes, rather, the distance rendering his ears of somewhat diminished utility, would allow him to report that you are visible through a window, seated at the dining table of your wing of the house, awaiting, as is usual at this hour, the arrival of your son, who can be seen traversing the foyer that separates your wing from that of your wife. She is a lady well regarded for the charitable religious nonprofit she runs, and when the guard is working the day shift, by far his most frequent tasks are receiving the registered envelopes that stream to her with donations and opening and shutting the gate for her spirited band of piously attired female volunteers.

It is common knowledge among your guards and other household employees that the split between you and your wife extends beyond the floor plan of your house, encompassing domains sexual and financial as well. Your wife invariably sleeps alone, and insists on paying her bills herself, which she does out of the modest salary she draws from her nonprofit. She has been overheard by her cleaning girl saying that she will cohabit with you only until your child reaches adulthood, a situation now just a couple of years off, and for the guard, who is aware of this plan, she cuts a devastatingly romantic figure, chaste and determined, the sight of her undyed graying hair, a lock of which occasionally slips into view, reliably bringing his senescent heart to a canter.

The guard watches you embrace your son as the boy arrives for dinner. Your son is tall for his age, already almost as tall as you are, but slender and effeminate, an agonizingly antisocial teenager who spends inordinate amounts of time self-exiled in his room. Yet you gaze upon him as though he were a champion, strong of body and keen of mind, a born leader of men. In the one hour each day that you dine with your son, it is said often in the household, you smile and laugh more than in the other twenty-three.

Through a crack in the curtains of your study, later that night, the guard sees you turn on a lamp and settle out of sight, alone. Your bearer enters with a tray containing your cholesterol and blood-thinning medications, a tablespoon of psyllium husk, and a glass of water. He leaves empty-handed. The light remains on, but from the guard’s vantage point there are no further signs of your activity.

Online, however, you can be tracked, and indeed you are tracked, as are we all, as you proceed through your e-mails, catch up on the news, perform a search, and wind up lingering, incongruously, on the website of a furnishings boutique. There is little there, the site not offering ordering facilities or even a catalog. It merely has a home page with a few photos and text, a contact section with phone numbers, address, and a map, and a brief biography of the owner, a woman in her sixties, judging from her picture, with an unorthodox and varied career. All in all, an odd spot in the ether to capture the attention of a water industrialist. A log of your internet wanderings indicates you have not visited it before. Nor, subsequently, are you recorded visiting it again.