A Bollywood Affair (25 page)

“Not tonight, Ridhi. Tonight I have a lot of studying to do.”

“Mills, at least come up with a new excuse. And when are you going to start eating again? Look at you. You’re wasting away, honey.”

“I’ll pick something up at the union. I really have to study. Two papers due next week.”

“Are you ever going to tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened. Hey, can you call Sara and let her know we made it back safe and sound? So she doesn’t worry.”

Ridhi handed her the phone. “Here, you do it. And while you’re at it, why don’t you call her son and tell him to come fix the mess he’s made.”

Mili dialed Sara’s number and went into her bedroom. Sara answered, all bright and cheery. Mili hadn’t ever heard her sound this strong.

“Mili, I have wonderful news. You’re not going to believe this. Samir’s asked Kim and me to move to India with him. He wants to take care of me. Can you believe that?”

Mili’s heart twisted so tight in her chest the pain made her breathless. Sara sounded so excited, Mili could not believe this was the same woman who had barely been able to talk on the phone two months ago. Two long, painful months. The parched pain of unshed tears tore at her eyelids, jabbed at her throat. She swallowed and forced herself to speak. “Of course I can believe that. He’s trying to be a good son.” And that wasn’t a lie.

“Mili, he’s not just a good son, he’s a good man. Can’t you forgive him for whatever he did?”

Mili squeezed her dry eyes shut. Her throat felt like she was swallowing nails. “There’s nothing to forgive, Sara.”

“Child, don’t wait until it’s too late. Lost time is lost forever.”

It was already too late. Their time was never theirs. How could she lose what was never hers? Why, then, did it hurt like this?

“Sara, can I call you later? I have a paper to finish.”

Sara let her go without another word. Mili stared out the window. Cruel sunshine pierced her tinder-dry eyes. Her yellow bike stood wedged between two other bikes in the stand. She had come home from school one day the week after he left and found it repaired. The seat replaced, the brakes fixed, the handle unbent. There had been no note, nothing to tell her who had done it.

One of these days she’d walk it to the Dumpster. One of these days when she could bring herself to touch it.

The studio complex was a two-hour drive from Samir’s flat in a north Mumbai suburb. But his driver and he had been stuck in traffic for two hours and they were barely out of Karjat. Samir was so restless he couldn’t sit in the car one more second. He had gone over the screenplay for the hundredth time, tweaked the dialog, called the dialog writer and ironed out every nuance of the Hindi translation.

He had called Lawrence so many times his set tech was no longer answering his calls. His AD wasn’t taking his calls either. Neither was his executive producer. “Sam, this is my twenty-ninth film in Mumbai and I swear to God, I’ve never been more well prepared for a film. You cannot do anything more until shooting starts. It’s Navratri. Everyone needs time to celebrate the festival season from now until Diwali. If you don’t stop calling people, they are going to drop out of the project. I’m turning my phone off now. I’ll see you on set first thing Monday.”

And she really did turn off her phone. Because when he thought of something else and called her again in five minutes, she didn’t answer.

As for his driver, Samir loved the man; he had been with Samir for seven years now, but Samir could not discuss the three girls he was three-timing one more time without strangling his scrawny, red-scarf-covered neck.

“Javed, I’m going to get out and start walking. Pick me up when the traffic jam clears.” He opened the door and got out of the car, feeling like a swimmer breaking water and gulping air.

Javed stuck his head out of the car. “Sam-Sir, have you gone crazies? What are you doing?”

“I’m walking, boss, what does it look like I’m doing?” Samir threw over his shoulder.

“But we are one hundred and fifty kilometers from home.” For some reason Javed pointed to his watch as he said it. Another time Samir would have made fun of him for it.

“I know. So hopefully you’ll catch up before I make it all the way back.” He held up his cell phone. “I’ll stay along the road. Call me when you start moving.”

Javed smacked his head with both hands and looked heavenward in response.

Samir had walked for two hours before Javed made it to him and picked him up. It was another two hours before they got home. The last person Samir expected to see when he let himself into his flat was his mother.

“Baiji? What are you doing here?”

“
Arrey,
what kind of question is that for a son to ask his mother? It’s my son’s house. I’ll come and go as I please.”

He quickly bent down and touched her feet and she pulled his face to her and kissed his forehead.

“I’m sorry.” He hugged her and found it hard to let her go. “I didn’t mean to be rude. Of course, you come and go as you please. All I meant was that you should’ve called me so I would have picked you up at the airport. When did you get here?”

“This morning. Your housekeeper let me in. Then that cook of yours tried to bully me into letting
him
cook. But I set him straight. He’s going to do the cutting and chopping and cleaning. I will be the one doing the cooking. No way is some strange man cooking for you when I’m here.”

Samir had tried to get his mother to come and stay with him for years. But she never visited him. She hated Mumbai. It felt like a foreign land to her. She’d been here only once five years ago when he’d moved into this flat and that was it. He was the one who went to see her. She found Virat’s military cantonment housing much more restful. And since Rima had come into the family her preference for Virat’s home had only doubled. “When you get married I’ll come stay with you,” she liked to say. “I need female company now. I’ve spent my entire life with you boys. Now I need some softness in my life.”

“Don’t you want to know what I cooked?” she asked, searching his face.

“Actually, Baiji, I’m not hungry. I already ate.” He smiled. He really was happy she was here. He didn’t want her to think he wasn’t. But he couldn’t bear the thought of food right now.

“Chintu, I have been waiting for you for dinner and I’m starving. You will eat something.” She gave him a stern look but he saw the worry it masked and his heart squeezed.

He washed his hands and sat down to dinner.

His mother had cooked all the things he loved: dal and potatoes and spicy
kadhi.
He tried really hard to enjoy it.

“Are you going to tell me what the matter is?”

“Matter?”

“See. Usually if I asked you one question you gave me three different answers in one breath. Now I get ‘matter?’ What is that?”

He shrugged.

“And there’s a beard growing on your face. And your cook was right. You’ve lost too much weight.
Beta,
what happened in America?”

“Nothing, Baiji.” Nothing had happened in America. It had all just been nothing.

“Since when do you lie to your mother? Is it Sara? Are you regretting not meeting her sooner?”

He did feel bad that Sara hadn’t been part of his life before and he felt guilty that he had spent so much time hating her. But he didn’t regret not reaching out to her sooner. And that was because the amazing woman watching him eat had never let him feel motherless. Even now, Sara was Sara. In a weird sort of way he loved her. Finding her was like unwrapping a gift he had not wanted and being surprised by how different it was from what he had expected.

But his love for Baiji was alive, definitive. It was wrapped up in the edges of the sari she had used to wipe crumbs from his mouth, to dab tears from his eyes. It was wrapped up in the hands she had used to wash and bandage not just a tattered back but scraped knees, to roast rotis just the way he liked them. It was a real and tangible love, tied up in memories and experience, in a face so familiar it didn’t have to speak its worry to communicate it.

“Baiji, actually there is something I want to discuss with you.” He got off his chair and squatted next to her.

She pushed his hair off his forehead. He hadn’t realized how long it had grown. “I’m listening,” she said.

“I want to bring Sara and her sister Kim to India. Kim is too old to go on caring for Sara by herself. They have no one else. What do you think?”

She pulled his face to her belly and kissed his head. “You stole the words from my heart,
beta.
It’s the best idea. It’s the only idea. If we don’t take care of her, who will?”

He laid his head on his mother’s lap. Her warmth, her strength seeped into him and for a few moments the incessant raw ache inside him let up. “Thanks, Baiji.”

She continued to stroke his head. “
Beta,
I’m so proud of you for having the strength to go see her. You’ve made me proud of how I raised you. Thanks for turning into this man.”

If only she knew what kind of man he had really turned into. The kind of man who had to be threatened and dragged to see his sick mother. The kind of man who killed innocence and had no idea how to fix it.

“Samir, do you think they can get here before Diwali? Maybe we can have Diwali here this year. All of us, because if we go to Rima’s home it will be hard to keep her off her feet. Let’s have Virat and Rima come here instead. What do you think?”

“Yes, Baiji, let’s do Diwali here.”

She lifted his face off her lap and peered into it. “So what else is the matter,
beta?
”

“I’ll try to get the lawyers to expedite the paperwork.” It was all he could say.

 

People loved to rant about bureaucracy in India and how it was impossible to circumvent. But if you knew the right people things worked like clockwork. It took one phone call to his lawyer to set the wheels of Sara’s visa in motion. She had talked to Kim and Kim had seen no reason to refuse.

“Sam,” his lawyer said in his courtroom baritone, “since I have you on the phone, I need Virat and you to sign a few more papers for the Balpur property to finish executing your grandfather’s will.”

“Sure. Send them over.” The sooner he had nothing more to do with the bastard the better.

“And you brothers still want to do a split, right? You get the
haveli
and Virat gets the lands?”

Virat had given him a choice. Something had made Samir choose the
haveli.
“Yes. And once the split happens we can do whatever we want with our share, right?”

“Of course.” He sounded taken aback. “Were you interested in selling? I can look for buyers if you want to sell.”

“No, I don’t need a buyer. But there is something else I need you to do for me.”

 

Ridhi barged into Mili’s office and dragged her to the union for lunch. “I want to actually see you eating.”

“Isn’t there anything interesting on TV today?”

“Very good! There’s some of that old snark. I miss you, Mills. Come back to me.” She waved her hands like a Bollywood chorus dancer beckoning her audience.

“I’m right here, Ridhi. Stop being such a drama queen.”

“You’re not right here. You haven’t been right here since your stupid Romeo left. I swear if I get my hands on him, I’ll kill him.”

Mili groaned. It was going to be a long lunch hour. They picked up their sandwiches and waited to find an empty table. The union was packed today.

“And speaking of your stupid Romeo, his lawyer’s been trying to reach you on my phone. He said you could call back even if it was late.”

Mili nibbled her sandwich. It tasted like cardboard. She thought all the legal stuff was taken care of. Why was the lawyer calling again? Her stomach wobbled. Would this nightmare ever end? She took the phone Ridhi was holding out and dialed.

“Hello, Ms. Malvika. How are you?” She always felt like she was in a courtroom scene in a film when she spoke to the man. It was a good thing he used her first name. Now that her marriage was officially “void,” she no longer knew what her last name was.

“I’m fine, Mr. Peston, thank you. I thought the annulment case was closed. Did I miss something?”

“Oh no, no. The marriage matter is all very fine and done. This is about the
haveli
in Balpur.”

Mili’s stomach turned over. She thought she had made it perfectly clear to Naani that she was to drop that blasted court case she had started. Naani had tried to convince her to fight for her rights. But there were no rights because there had been no marriage. At least in that Samir had been right. Because if it had been a marriage then its loss should have hurt at least a little. And it wasn’t the loss of her marriage that hurt.

Mili still couldn’t believe Naani had done something so awful in the first place without even letting her know. If Naani hadn’t sent Virat those legal notices, if she hadn’t petitioned for Mili’s share in Virat’s property, things might have been different.