Ode to Broken Things Read Online Free PDF Page B

totally unfamiliar, and wondered how different Kuala Lumpur would be, after an absence of more than thirty years. This short stop in Tokyo and he would be in the air again, then on Malaysian soil in eight hours.
    He would meet Shanti’s daughter. He took out Agni’s email from his breast pocket, trying to straighten out the words.

Tuesday

Six
    Diffused sunlight lit up the cool meeting room. The tinted glass windows looking out to the skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur’s city centre offered a spectacular view from the twenty-eighth floor, but Agni barely looked up as she sat shuffling through sheafs of statistics. The clients, who were government representatives, had asked for a meeting to discuss the progress in upgrading the information systems infrastructure at the airport. They spread a chill in the small room.
    Two of them sat opposite the eight on Agni’s team. A Malay woman engineer, who seemed to be in charge of the government representatives, was glowering with undisguised hostility. Maurice, Agni’s American boss, had worked in Asia for most of his life, and was used to having his terse orders followed by people who never called him by his first name. These clients, who looked unpleasantly irate, puzzled him.
    As the angry young woman fiddled with her pen, Agni recognised the insignia of an American university on the ring she wore. Another spoon-fed Malay government scholar , she thought dismissively, with a scholarship for being born Malay.
    “Therefore, we will provide the fewest possible different styles and types of interfacing elements. Also, the information broker must be flexible enough to accommodate subsystems…” Maurice stopped as the woman held up her hand.
    “We have not approved any of the drafts of the programme yet.” The woman turned her ring agitatedly as she spoke. “But you have already submitted the final version for our review.”
    There was a long pause. Then Maurice explained carefully, enunciating each word, “The deadlines for your written response had passed. We contacted your office many times, but there was no response from you, so we thought…”
    Perhaps it was the shrug with which he delivered the statement, or the condescension in his tone that made the lawyer sit up and cut him off mid-sentence. The Haji with the crocheted cap on his head softly said, “You assume too much, Mr Vossestein.”
    Agni concentrated on the way the sun gleamed on individual strands of Maurice’s blonde hair, setting it alight. The air crackled as his face gradually reddened and he straightened in his seat. Like a cougar on the Discovery Channel, she thought, spine taut with ferocity. He masked his sentiments under a smile and said jokingly, “We have had to assume much as we had a hard time finding your people.”
    “Yes, yes. Our offices are filled with hantus , our ghosts, so you never find our people,” interrupted the woman. “We are not amused. You will have to try a lot harder Mr ah, Vossestein, ah, to justify your fees.”
    She picked up her bag, the Ferragamo clasp flashing in golden outrage, and strode out. The other two collected their documents and followed.
    There was a shocked silence until Maurice laughed loudly. “That one needs a boyfriend. A BIG one.”
    The two men seated on either side of Agni erupted into laughter as she put her head into her hands and pulled her hair gently. Working with a pack of male chauvinist retards didn’t help her stress levels.
    She could understand why Maurice was scrambling to save face in his team. The Malay woman was obviously inexperienced yet in such a position of authority; as a relative newcomer in Malaysia, Maurice was still fazed by situations of competence being replaced by racial entitlement.
    In order to get the government contract, the group had to prepare statistics in multicolour: green for Malays, red for Chinese, purple for Indians, blue for foreigners. To prove to the Malaysian government that racial quotas for Malays would