False Signals

 The late September sun cast a golden haze over Pune, softening the edges of the city’s relentless pace. In Kalyani Nagar, where old bungalows now stood shoulder to shoulder with glass towers, the headquarters of VistaraLogic rose like a polished monolith—five floors of ambition, data, and quiet power.

Inside, the fourth floor buzzed with subdued urgency. The walls were a blend of exposed concrete and matte teal, dotted with abstract art and motivational quotes in Marathi, English and Sanskrit. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the Mula-Mutha river, and the scent of roasted coffee from the pantry mingled with the faint hum of air purifiers.

Anand Oswal’s desk was tucked into the southeast corner, where the light hit just right in the mornings. He preferred it that way—sunlight helped him think. At forty-three, Anand, strict vegetarian, was a family man but a stickler for work. A man of precision, his shirts were always solid colors—deep navy, slate grey, forest green—paired with cufflinks that hinted at old money. His hair was neatly parted, his beard trimmed to a shadow. He had returned to India after a decade in Chicago, where he’d built predictive models for Fortune 500 firms. But he’d grown tired of the cold efficiency, the sterile boardrooms. His parents lived in Pune and the city, with its contradictions and warmth, had called him home.

He joined VistaraLogic as Head of Strategy, and within a year, his frameworks had helped the company grow 18% quarter-on-quarter. But lately, something had begun to gnaw at him. Ideas he’d floated in private—concepts still in draft—were surfacing in executive decks. His proposal for a tiered analytics dashboard had appeared in the CEO’s weekly review, attributed not to him, but to Priya Joshi.

 Priya was thirty-seven, married, husband working in Singapore. She lived with her son in her father’s house. She had a quiet intensity and a diminutive frame that often made people underestimate her. Her clothes were mostly cotton handlooms in muted tones, her hair always in a low braid, and her eyes carried the calm of someone who’d learned to listen before speaking. 

Born and raised in Pune, she had studied at Symbiosis and spent five years in Bengaluru working for a logistics startup. She had married and travelled with her husband to Singapore where also she got accolades for her work. She returned to care for her father after his stroke, and VistaraLogic had offered her a role that matched her intellect and her need to stay close to home. As Senior Product Manager, she was known for her ability to translate abstract strategy into tangible features.

 Anand had never fully trusted her. She was too composed, too diplomatic. And now, with his ideas appearing in places they shouldn’t, his suspicion bloomed. Besides she was the only one in the office who could take his place.

He decided to test her.

The following Monday morning, he drafted a fake report prepared by mixing facts and inflated numbers—an elaborate proposal for a predictive maintenance module using AI-driven anomaly detection. It was plausible but flawed. The data sources were misaligned, the ROI projections inflated. He printed it, marked it “Confidential,” and left it on his desk, half-tucked under a folder.

Then he waited.

Two days later, the idea surfaced in a meeting with the CTO. Through the corner of his eye, Anand watched Priya as the CTO praised the concept. She didn’t flinch, didn’t smile, didn’t claim credit. But she didn’t correct him either.

That evening, before going home, Anand sat at the German Bakery in Koregaon Park, sipping black coffee and scribbling in his notebook. He needed more proof. He recruited an intern—Rishi, a final-year student from PICT, Pune, eager and naive.

“Rishi,” Anand said, leaning forward, “I need you to ask Priya about a concept I’ve been working on. Mention the predictive module. Say I discussed it with you casually. See how she reacts.”

Rishi blinked. “Ok. But what if she says why didn’t you approach her directly? You think she’s using your ideas?”

“I don't know. But, I think someone is. And I need to know who’s involved.”

The next day, Rishi returned, nervous but determined.

“I spoke to her in the pantry,” he said. “I said you mentioned the predictive module.

She paused, then said it was promising but needed validation. She didn’t say it was hers.”

Anand frowned. “Did she seem surprised?”

“Not really. More... guarded. Like she was trying to figure out what I already knew and why I was asking.”

Anand wasn’t satisfied. He planted a conversation in the cafeteria, loud enough for Priya to overhear. He spoke to a colleague about a new client segmentation model using behavioral clustering. Two days later, the model appeared in a slide deck presented to the VP of Sales.

This time, he confronted her.

They stood in the hallway outside the conference room, the hum of air conditioning masking the tension.

“You’ve been busy,” Anand said, voice low.

Priya turned, her expression unreadable. Half smiling she said, “Busy is relative. What are you getting at?”

“That clustering model. You presented it as part of your roadmap.”

“No, I didn’t. It was in the shared folder. I assumed it was vetted.”

“It wasn’t. It was bait.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Sorry? What do you mean? You planted it?”

“I had to. My ideas are being lifted.”

She crossed her arms. “This is so wrong. You think I’m the mole?”

“I think you’re the common thread.”

Priya exhaled, her voice steady. “You are out of your mind. You’re totally wrong. And if you’d bothered to look deeper, you’d see that.” She left.

That evening, Anand waited till most of the office was empty. He met Neelam Arora, the COO and explained to her. Neelam knew Anand was a no-nonsense kind of person. After discussing data integrity, she approved him temporary access.  

He reviewed access logs. Priya hadn’t opened the predictive module file. She hadn’t downloaded the clustering notes. Someone else had.

The id that came up was Kunal Verma. Director of Business Development. Tall, very fair, slick, charming, always in motion. He wore blazers even in Pune’s heat, spoke in buzzwords, and had a knack for being in the right room at the right time. Anand had dismissed him as harmless show off. He was wrong.

Digging deeper, Anand found that Kunal had forwarded the clustering notes to the VP, citing “team brainstorming.” The predictive module had been emailed to the CTO from Kunal’s account, with no attribution.

He called Priya and asked her to meet him the next day before leaving for office. Next morning they met at Café Peter near Deccan Gymkhana, a quiet corner table away from the crowd.

He started the conversation directly. “I owe you an apology,” he said, stirring his tea.

Priya raised an eyebrow. “That’s rare.”

“I thought you were leaking my work. It was Kunal.”

She leaned back and paused. The she said, “He’s probably been doing this for a long time. My ideas were also taken like this. I did confront him once. He said it’s all ‘collaborative synergy.’”

Anand exhaled. “We need to stop him.”

They devised a plan. Priya would create a decoy roadmap—filled with half-baked ideas, strategic dead ends, and one particularly absurd feature: a blockchain-based driver rewards system. Anand would plant it in the shared folder, mark it “Q4 Innovation Pipeline.”

Priya suggested that he take Neelam in confidence. Anand agreed.

Within a week, the feature appeared in a pitch deck Kunal sent to the CEO. Following this Anand and Priya requested a meeting with Neelam.

In her office—glass walls, a teak desk, and a brass statue of Saraswati—Neelam listened, arms folded.

“This is serious. Do you know that you’re accusing Kunal of intellectual theft,” she said.

Anand nodded. “We have evidence. Access logs, timestamps, email trails.”

Neelam frowned. “Kunal’s been with us for years. He’s brought in major clients. Are you sure this isn’t a misunderstanding?”

Priya leaned forward. “We planted a decoy. He took the bait. The blockchain rewards system—it was never real. He pitched it as his own.”

Neelam’s expression shifted. “Show me.”

They walked her through the logs—how Kunal accessed the decoy file minutes after it was uploaded, how he forwarded it to the CEO, how he never credited the source.

After thirty minutes, Neelam’s scepticism gave way to concern.

“I’ll escalate this to the board. In the meantime, I’m granting you full access to system logs. If there’s more, I want to know.”

Over the next week, Anand and Priya uncovered a pattern—Kunal had been lifting ideas from multiple teams, repackaging them, and presenting them as his own. The board acted swiftly. Kunal was reassigned to a non-strategic role in client onboarding. The official memo cited “realignment of responsibilities.”

Anand and Priya never spoke of the sting again. But something shifted.

Their rivalry softened into respect. They began to collaborate—tentatively at first, then with growing ease. The next quarter, they co-authored a proposal for a new analytics suite. It was approved unanimously.

One evening, as they walked out of the office, to the ground floor cafeteria, the sky over Pune was streaked with orange and indigo. The city pulsed with quiet energy—rickshaws weaving through traffic, college students spilling out of cafes, the scent of roasted corn in the air.

Priya said, “You know, I used to think you were paranoid.”

Anand smiled. “And I thought you were too quiet.”

She looked at him. “Turns out we were both watching the wrong shadows.”

He nodded. “Oh yeah! But now we know where the light is.”

Just then, Neelam called them back into the building. A new client—a major logistics firm from Indonesia—had requested a custom analytics module. And she wanted Anand and Priya to lead the pitch.

They stood up and as they walked back in, the glass doors reflected their silhouettes—no longer rivals, but a team forged in fire.

And in Pune, where tradition and ambition danced in the same monsoon breeze, that mattered more than winning.