A Scandalous Secret

Neha stood at the door to her spacious living room in Delhi, surveying the party that was now in full flow. It hadn't yet reached that freewheeling stage when people, mellowed by the fine wines and Scotches on offer, would start drifting around unreservedly, chatting without embarrassment or restraint to relative strangers. At the moment, most of her guests were gathered in small knots around the room, sticking to the people they knew, but loud bursts of laughter indicated that a good time was already being had. Waiters hired for the night were working the room with trays of drinks and canapÃ©s, and some kind of nondescript piano music was tinkling through the eight-speaker Bose system, Sharat's proud new acquisition. It would need to be turned off for the Divakar Brothers' live performance that would take place a little later on in the garden, but experience had taught Neha to keep things subtle at the start.

Virtually everyone invited had already come, even the customary stragglers who made it a point to arrive close to midnight, complaining about receiving three party invites for the same night. Whatever they said, Neha knew with quiet confidence that people did not usually turn down invitations to her famously lavish and elegant soirÃ©es
but, given the status of many of her guests, she was nevertheless touched when she saw such busy and eminent people turn up at her place so unfailingly.

Although smaller, more intimate dinner parties were a regular feature of the Chaturvedi household, Sharat and Neha held two large parties every year; one sometime before Diwali and the other a lunch in the garden at the start of spring. The hundred-odd invitations issued were carefully considered affairs, sent â everyone knew â only to the very influential or very well connected. The very point of them, Sharat sometimes said, was to allow people to relax and meet each other without the fear of journalists or paparazzi lurking around the corner. Yellow journalism had been the bane of many of their famous friends' lives and, horrifyingly, Neha had recently been hearing of parties where â without any warning â the press pack would descend, secretly invited by publicity-hungry hosts who wanted to be mentioned on the party pages of
The Times of India
.

At the Chaturvedis' parties, however, guests came safe in the knowledge that there would be no press presence â if one did not count people like Girish, that is: a golfing buddy of Sharat's who happened to be the head of India's biggest television channel. What the couple generally aimed to do with their list of invitees was ensure that guests were either among their own kind or thrown together with people it would be advantageous for them to meet. Both Neha and Sharat liked to be generous in this matter and, partially due to the understated and tranquil atmosphere of the Chaturvedi home, their guests' guards were often let down in ways that invariably led to the most exciting meeting of minds. Not everyone saw it like this, of course; and once, when a nasty piece appeared in a gossip magazine accusing Sharat of what the journalist
referred to as âcontrol freakery', Neha was tempted to ring up the editor to give him a piece of her mind. Sharat eventually dissuaded her from making that call but Neha had felt terribly hurt on behalf of her gentle husband, knowing as she did that the really gratifying part of the whole exercise for Sharat was when people he had helped called up later to thank him for the part he had played in their good fortune. âCompletely inadvertent and pure chance,' was the modest manner in which Sharat generally responded, although this too wasn't entirely true. He gave away far too often, and in often unsubtle ways, his total delight at having been involved in transactions that were important enough to make it to the national papers. Sharat's pleasure in the parties they threw was really very simple: he genuinely liked putting people together in fortuitous circumstances, hoping that some mutual good would come of their meeting, even if there was no particular or immediate advantage to him. He sometimes joked that he had probably been a marriage broker in his previous life.

Only this morning, Sharat had appeared on the veranda while Neha was overseeing the decoration of the garden shrubs with fairy lights. He had looked with pride at the pair of massive bottle palms that straddled the entrance to the sweeping driveway.

âRemember their names?' he enquired with a laugh.

âOf course,' Neha had replied absently, her attention now on the marigold flower chains that were being looped around the pillars running the length of the veranda. She had earlier tried explaining to the man on the ladder that the two faux Doric columns flanking the front entrance had to be exact mirror images of each other, the flower garland on the left spiralling clockwise
while the one on the right went anticlockwise. It was the kind of feature no one would probably notice, but attention paid to such seemingly insignificant detail was what made for a perfect evening, in Neha's opinion. It was also what led Sharat to call her âOCD' but he would be just as quick to admit how much he relied on her exacting standards.

âZurich and Americana,' Sharat grinned, still looking at the palms with his arms crossed over his chest and rocking on his heels, obviously continuing to enjoy the memory from five years ago.

The palms had acquired their names because they were a present from Arul Sinha, the head of global investments at Zurich Bank, who had sent them after a lunch party where he had struck a lucrative deal with American Steels. Neha remembered the glee with which Arul â a schoolmate of Sharat's youngest uncle â had greeted the news that Doug Fairbanks III was going to be at their lunch too. (âYou know
Doug
? Hey, you guys know everyone,
yaar
,' he had said, only pretending to be jealous given the vast spread of his own network of contacts.)

Neha cast a glance at the elegant palms whose fronds were a lush green in the morning sunshine. âI'm always astonished that these two giants didn't just survive, but even thrived in the heat of that summer,' she said. âDo you remember how they arrived in the middle of May, Sharat? Ten feet tall, and with such massive root balls, in the back of a truck? I used to expect every morning to wake up and find them all dead and shrivelled up in the garden. But just look at them now â and they're probably not even fully grown yet!'

Sharat laughed at the memory of that chaotic morning. âTypical Arul, that kind of attention to detail. Sending not
just a pair of palms but a complete team of labourers and gardeners who set to work planting them with some kind of crazy Swiss efficiency. I bet he even ensured that they would grow to identical width and height before shipping them over from China!'

âWell, whatever he did, it worked â our Delhi heat notwithstanding. If anything, they've grown a bit too big now, towering over everything else in the garden,' Neha said, turning her attention back to the flower wallah who was perched on his ladder awaiting his next instructions.

âI've always wanted to ask Arul if his business deal enjoyed as swift a growth as the trees, but that would be prying, I guess,' Sharat continued.

Neha smiled. She had no doubt that the deal would have been hugely successful, not just because of Arul Sinha's business skills but also Sharat's famed Midas touch. But he would be embarrassed if she said that, and now she was distracted by the large roll of black insulation tape that the flower wallah was using to tape the end of the garland to the pillar. â
Ooffo, yeh kya leke aaye ho?
' she asked, her voice exasperated as she turned to call for her own roll of imported extra-strong and, more importantly, colourless sticking tape.

It was Sharat's turn to grin. Neha was a fine one to joke about Arul's attention to detail. She was at least as finicky as the best Swiss bankers, and on the morning of their big parties, Sharat generally made it a point to stay well out of her way. He put an arm around his wife's shoulder and dropped a discreet kiss on her neck. âGoing to go have a shave. Got that meeting with Prasad, remember?' Sharat explained as he turned to go indoors, although Neha was by now too preoccupied to even register his departure.

He was still smiling as he walked down the corridor, thinking of Arul's typically flamboyant present. Generally, the gifts he and Neha received took more veiled forms, people's gratitude for useful introductions coming in subtle ways, via favours and preferential treatment and, quite simply, the kind of magical opening of doors without which life in India could be very difficult. Sharat recognized this and, in his customary pragmatic way, knew that the goodwill caused by his generous networking would do no harm when the time came for return favours to be called upon. Neha did not get this, though, remaining always a little discomfited by what she considered a mild form of nepotism even though she quietly indulged him whenever necessary. In a strange way, that was what Sharat loved most about his wife: she was exactly as she seemed. With Neha, what you saw was what you got. There was no hidden agenda, no gossip, never any secret deal-making, nothing underhand at all.

Neha surveyed the crowded drawing room again and flicked her eyes at a passing waiter, signalling that the Home Minister's wine glass required topping up. She couldn't help noticing as she walked on that the dapper politician was deep in conversation with V. Kaushalya, the rather comely head of the Indian Institute of Arts whom Neha regularly met for lunches at the Museum of Modern Art cafÃ© and who was beautifully turned out tonight in the most gorgeous cream silk Kancheepuram sari. Now, what interesting transaction could be brewing there, Neha wondered. It could just as easily be personal as professional, given the minister's reputation for enjoying the company of beautiful women and Kaushalya, an ex-Bharatanatyam dancer, still cut a stunning figure, even in her fifties.

Neha continued to weave her way through the room that was now full of the rustle of silk and organza, stopping to enquire after one elderly guest's health before steering someone else across the floor in order to make a mutually useful introduction. She had long grown practised at spotting pairs of guests who looked like they had got âstuck' and needed to be moved along. Although she had at first resisted Sharat's fondness for parties and gathering dozens of people around himself, Neha had to admit that, over the years, she too had gradually grown to enjoy the business of playing hostess and using her elegant home to its fullest advantage. Why, an art collection like hers was meant to be shared and admired, not stashed away. Not that she wished to draw attention to her wealth at all â God forbid! â but, in recent times, Neha had learnt to derive amusement from seeing herself referred to in the society pages as âthe legendary hostess' or âfamous socialite Neha Chaturvedi'. She, Neha Chaturvedi, who had been the class bluestocking with her nose firmly stuck between the pages of a book all through her school days! She wasn't even much of a cook but, luckily, she had never had to worry a jot about the catering arrangements, seeing that Jasmeet, her old school chum and best friend, was one of Delhi's best known food consultants and took able charge of all arrangements weeks before any party, making numerous trips to INA market to buy spices and condiments and sourcing the best fish that would be brought to Delhi in a huge refrigerator van from the Orissa coast.

Tonight, however â and perhaps for the very first time â Neha was having immense difficulty facing up to her hostessing duties. She had been nursing a headache all afternoon, despite popping two paracetamols with her
evening cup of tea, and was now feeling both nauseous and dizzy. As she recalled the reason for her distress, that now familiar cold hand squeezed at her heart again, robbing her of breath. This had been happening at regular intervals all day, sometimes at intervals of ten minutes, only disappearing briefly when the caterers had arrived, their purposeful colonization of her kitchen providing a temporary distraction from her unease. Even the arrival of her guests had not been diversion enough as Neha found herself listening to all the usual social inanities regarding Delhi's traffic and how long it was since they had all seen each other. She had listened and murmured assent and nodded politely but all conversation, even her own, seemed to be coming from a tunnel somewhere far away. Her mind, normally capable of focusing in calm and orderly fashion on the welfare of her guests, had behaved like a trapped bird all day today, flapping and darting frantically about inside her head. Once again, Neha felt her insides go deathly still as she remembered the reason. She could not help coming to an abrupt standstill in the middle of her drawing room, feeling for a millisecond like she might drown in the sea of conversation that was swirling around her. Was this what a panic attack felt like, Neha wondered, wrapping the
pallav
of her mauve Chanderi sari around her shoulders and trying to steady herself. Try as she might, Neha simply could not get on with the job at hand. She was only just about managing to keep the smile plastered on her face because, every so often, something would remind her of the letter and she would feel close to collapsing again.

It was incredible â the kind of thing that happened only in movies â but there, upstairs in her
Godrej almirah
, locked away in the secret compartment that housed her
diamond jewellery, was a letter with a British stamp that had arrived in the post that very morning. Luckily the maid had brought it in only after Sharat had left for an early meeting and so he had not been around to see her open it. He would surely have noticed her shock, for â however adept Neha had grown at masking her feelings behind an inscrutable smile, even from such a beloved husband â she simply would not have been able to cover up the sudden paling of her skin and lips, the trembling of her fingers as she read the scribbled lines and the dizziness that had finally caused her to crumple in a heap onto one of the armchairs on the veranda.

â
Dear Neha â¦
' the letter had started, in a scrawly, childish hand that was nothing like her own neat and precise handwriting.

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