Top Flight

A bright and enterprising woman defies the seemingly insurmountable odds of breaking into the male dominated world of property development in the pensioner’s paradise that was Bangalore. Will she be able to land a birdie?

Laxmipriya Kumaraswamy Rudrashetty, M. Arch. IIT-Kharagpur, gold medal architect and heir to Balaji Developers, daughter of Thiruvenkatam Balaji Rudrashetty the developer don of Bangalore, stepped out of her Porsche SUV and dragged her golf clubs out from the back. She took a deep breath as she stared for a moment at the elegant golf clubhouse before her. Then she pushed a button to close the back of her car and started walking to the entrance.

It had been two long months of very early morning golf lessons every day followed by equally long and late evenings establishing her presence every night at the club, running up a bill. Many lakhs later, she was now a full member, albeit still a poor golfer.

The aggression of a serve and volley tennis game made no sense to her, locking her out of potential conversations for new development projects. The duplicity of a drop shot and high return badminton game escaped her, closing the door on potential bonhomie that could lead to lucrative connections. Now her 160+ golf score was keeping at bay any last prospects that remained. No one was going to take her seriously, no one was going to discuss building projects, no one was going to talk business alliances with her.

“No more,” Laxmi had resolved yesterday. She was not going to play the game, any game, she was not going to try and break into the last male bastion, the gentlemen golfers club. Or any other male bastion for that matter, business prospects or no business prospects. “Enough is enough,” she had reminded herself. She was going to quit playing silly games. But, before she went, she was going to do something spectacularly memorable to leave behind a lasting impression.

Laxmi pulled out her trusty 3 wood club, picked up a ball, set her bag down by a pillar and started walking. Trepidation began to creep in halfway out to the putting green. Maybe a Driver would have been a better choice than a 3 wood. A brave course monitor interrupted her thoughts as he made a half-hearted attempt to point out that madam’s attire, t-shirt and spandex shorts, was not permitted, but her withering glare made him shrivel up and slink off in silence. It also steeled her will and banished all doubt.

Roger Greenfield, retired regional manager, consumable sales, Xerox India, stared idly at the bag of clubs near the pillar as he walked in and sat down at an empty table. This was not a good day. He had just been forced to sell his precious golf clubs to get new tires for his car. Fixing the leaking roof of his big old, crumbling house at first cross, first main in Benson town was going to cost more than two months of his dwindling resources. Fixing the brakes on his car was going to make another dent. He also had a sinking feeling that the builder who had agreed to meet him here was going to expect him to pay for the drinks.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Roger ordered a Kingfisher and started examining a club from the bag that someone had left there. “Expensive, high-class irons,” he muttered to himself, remembering the good old days when the flood gates of expense accounts made endless rounds flow with no end in sight. Roger sighed.

He loved waking up before the sun came out, he loved watching its rays peek over the tops of the trees on the golf course, he loved watching the ducks on the green. Most of all, he loved walking on the grass among the tall trees, working methodically to keep the ball moving along the shortest distance from one hole to the next. For him, golf had always been a source of quiet solace, a haven that let him heal from the wounds life inflicted.

The sun was playing hide and seek with the clouds, a light, refreshing breeze flitted in and out of the trees, and birds sat about contentedly after a good day of feasting and flying. A crow or two held a golf ball in their beak, hopping about to attract attention and impress someone without cawing and dropping their precious cargo.

Roger’s fond hope, plan, if you will, was simple. Find a developer to build on the property he had inherited. Giving up the house in which he had grown up and lived all his life would be a huge loss but at least he would then have a roof to live under, not to mention some cash to live on.

His search so far had left him yearning for the good old days when builders knew how to spell Victorian, Tudor, and Gothic and, hopefully, recognized the different architectural styles. More importantly, he had yet to meet a builder who would start by coming up with some of the cash he needed. “A few lakhs up front can’t be too much to expect, dash it,” Roger complained bitterly to the beer, “all I want is a fair deal and a beautiful building that will last a hundred years.”

Laxmi set up a golf ball and willed herself to focus on it. This was her one last chance and it had to be perfect. Her plan was simple: make a shot no one had ever managed before.

She took a deep breath and channeled all she had learned from her golfing lessons. She stilled her mind using all she had learned from her yoga classes. Her fingers curled around the club, her shoulders squared off, her knees bent in unison to adjust her center of gravity. The wind held its breath, the trees stopped whispering. She swung back her club and, keeping her eyes on the ball at all times, took her shot. 

Before she knew it, the satisfying thump of a club hitting a ball at the perfect spot, at the perfect angle, at the perfect moment, made her belt out a loud and triumphant “fore!”

The ball rose majestically, slicing its way through the air, hissing in the wind as it soared past trees, unstoppable in flight.

Laxmi gasped, mortified, as she suddenly realized she had faced the wrong direction when she settled in to swing. The ball was now headed toward the restaurant, determined, so it seemed, to inflict horrific damage on some hapless guest lounging there after a long day of golf, gossip, and business deals.

The ball landed safely on the net set up to protect restaurant guests from just such an eventuality. No one was disturbed by its sudden appearance, no one even noticed. No one, that is, but a crow strutting about on the net with a golf ball in its beak. It’s startled squawk dropped the golf ball from its beak down a hole in the net on to Roger’s table. 

The ball would have splashed into the stein of beer if Roger hadn’t picked it up at that very moment. The beer wouldn’t have splashed all over his jacket if he hadn’t been holding the stein when he jumped with a start at a golf ball thwacking his table.

Laxmi ran all the way to Roger’s table to apologize. “I am so sorry!” she exclaimed, “I don’t know what came over me. I got everything right in the wrong direction.”

“Jolly good shot!” remarked Roger, always the gentleman, “I have not seen one like it in my thirty years at the club.”

“May I pay to have your jacket cleaned? Can I at least pay for the spilled beer?” Laxmi asked anxiously.

“It’s all right,” Roger replied, “don’t worry about it. I was getting ready to leave anyway. The chap I was supposed to meet to discuss a building project did not show up.”