Fatima found him at 2 AM, still awake. “Shaukat, what have you done?”

And in 1993, for one brief, burning moment, Shaukat Mirza remembered how to be a man.

The first blast ripped through the basement of the Bombay Stock Exchange at 1:30 PM. Shaukat heard it from his flat—a deep, thunderous cough from the belly of the earth. Then another. And another. Twenty-five bombs in total. Over two hundred and fifty dead. A thousand injured. The city burned for three days.

In 1993, the dalaals fell. The courts acted. The SEBI rose. And while the ghosts of 1992 lingered, the legislation of 1993 ensured that no single dalaal —no matter how big—could ever hold the Indian economy hostage again.

But he asked. And that was the only deal that ever mattered.