Authors: chetan bhagat
‘I’ll
inform the gate,’ I said.
‘You will pay
cash?’
‘Yes. Why, you
take credit cards?’ I said.
‘We do, for
foreigners. But cash is best,’ Vinod said.
I asked my maids to
go to their quarters and not disturb me for the next four hours. I
called the guard-post and instructed them to let the white Indica in.
I also told them to inform me if anyone else came to meet me.
The bell rang all
too soon. I opened the front door to find a creepy man. Two girls
stood behind him. One wore a cheap nylon leopard-print top and jeans.
The other wore a purple lace cardigan and brown pants. I could tell
these girls didn’t find western clothes comfortable. Perhaps it
helped them fetch a better price.
The creepy man wore
a shiny blue shirt and white trousers.
‘These are
fine?’ he asked me, man to man.
I looked at the
girls’ faces. They had too much make-up on for early afternoon.
However, I had little choice.
‘They are
okay,’ I said.
‘Payment?’
I had kept the money
ready in my pocket. I handed a bundle of notes to him.
‘I’ll
wait in the car,’ he said.
‘Outside the
campus, please,’ I said. The creepy man left. I nodded at the
girls to follow me. Inside, we sat on the sofas.
‘I’m
Roshni. You are the client?’ the girl in the leopard print
said. She seemed more confident of the two.
‘Yes,’ I
said.
‘For both of
us?’ Roshni said.
‘Yeah,’
I said.
Roshni squeezed my
shoulder.
‘Strong man,’
she said.
‘What’s
her name?’ I said.
‘Pooja,’
the girl in the hideous purple lace said.
‘Not your real
names, right?’ I said.
Roshni and Pooja, or
the girls who called themselves that, giggled.
‘It’s
okay,’ I said.
Roshni looked
around. ‘Where do we do it?’
‘Upstairs, in
the bedroom,’ I said.
‘Lets go
then,’ Roshni said, very focused on work.
‘What’s
the hurry?’ I said.
Pooja was the
quieter of the two but wore a fixed smile as she waited for further
instructions.
‘Why wait?’
Roshni said.
‘I have paid
for the entire afternoon. We’ll go upstairs when it is time,’
I said.
‘What do we do
until then?’ Roshni said, a tad too aggressive.
‘Sit,’ I
said.
‘Can we watch
TV?’ Pooja asked meekly. She pointed to the screen. I gave them
the remote. They put on a local cable channel that was playing Salman
Khan’s
Maine
Pyaar
Kiya.
We
sat and watched the movie in silence. The heroine told the hero that
in friendship there is ‘no sorry, no thank you,’ whatever
that meant. After a while, the heroine burst into song, asking a
pigeon to take a letter to the hero. Roshni started to hum along.
‘No singing,
please,’ I said.
Roshni seemed
offended. I didn’t care. I hadn’t hired her for her
singing skills.
‘Do we keep
sitting here?’ Roshni said at three-thirty.
‘It’s
okay,
didi
,’ Pooja said, who obviously loved Salman too
much. I was surprised Pooja called her co-worker sister, considering
what they could be doing in a while.
The movie ended at 4
p.m.
‘Now what?’
Roshni said.
‘Switch the
channel,’ I suggested.
The landline rang at
four-thirty. I ran to pick up the phone.
‘Sir, Raju
from security gate. A madam is here to see you,’ he said.
‘What’s
her name?’ I said.
‘She is not
saying, sir. She has some packets in her hand.’
‘Send her in
two minutes,’ I said. I calculated she would be here in five
minutes.
‘Okay, sir,’
he said.
I rushed out and
left the main gate and the front door wide open. I turned to the
girls.
‘Let’s
go up,’ I said.
‘What? You in
the mood now?’ Roshni giggled.
‘Now!’ I
snapped my fingers. ‘You too, Pooja, or whoever you are.’
The girls jumped to
their feet, shocked by my tone. The three of us went up the stairs.
We came to the bedroom, the bed.
‘So, how does
this work?’ I said.
‘What?’
Roshni said. ‘Is it your first time?’
‘Talk less and
do more,’ I said. ‘What do you do first?’
Roshni and Pooja
shared a look, mentally laughing at me.
‘Remove your
clothes,’ Roshni said.
I took off my shirt.
‘You too,’
I said to both of them. They hesitated for a second, as I had left
the door slightly ajar.
‘Nobody’s
home,’ I said.
The girls took off
their clothes. I felt too tense to notice any details. Roshni clearly
had the heavier, bustier frame. Pooja’s petite frame made her
appear malnourished.
‘Get into
bed,’ I ordered.
The two, surprised
by my less than amorous tone, crept into bed like scared kittens.
‘You want
us
to do it?’ Roshni asked, trying to grasp the situation.
‘Lesbian scene?’
‘Wait,’
I said. I ran to the bedroom window. I saw a white Ambassador car
with a red light park outside. Aarti stepped out, and rang the bell
once. When nobody answered, she came on to the lawn. She had a large
scrapbook in her hand, along with a box from the Ramada bakery. I
lost sight of her as she came into the house.
You are a strange
customer,’ Roshni commented.
‘Shh!’ I
said and slid between the two naked women.
Roshni quickly began
to kiss my neck as Pooja bent to take off my
belt.
I started to count
my breaths. On my fiftieth exhale I heard footsteps. By now the girls
had taken off my belt most expertly and were trying to undo my jeans.
On my sixtieth inhale came the knock on the door. On my sixty-fifth
breath I heard three women scream at the same time.
‘Happy birt...
Oh my God!’ Aarti’s voice filled the room.
Roshni and Pooja
gasped in fear and covered their faces with the bed-sheet. I sat on
the bed, looking suitably surprised. Aarti froze. The hired girls,
more prepared for such a situation, ran into the bathroom. ‘Gopal!’
Aarti said on a high note of disbelief.
‘Aarti,’
I said and stepped out of bed. As I re-buttoned my jeans and wore my
shirt, Aarti ran out of the room.
I followed her down
the stairs. She ran down fast, dropping the heavy gifts midway. I
navigated past a fallen cake box and scrapbook to reach her. I
grabbed her elbow as she almost reached the main door.
‘Leave my
hand,’ Aarti said, her mouth hardly moving.
‘I can
explain, Aarti,’ I said.
1 said don’t
touch me,’ she said.
‘It’s
not what you think it is,’ I said.
‘What is it
then? I came to surprise you and this is how I found you. Who knows
what ... I haven’t seen anything,
anything,
more sick in
my life,’ Aarti said and stopped. She shook her head. This was
beyond words. She burst into tears.
‘MLA Shukla
sent them, as a birthday gift,’ I said.
She looked at me
again, still shaking her head, as if she didn’t believe what
she had seen or heard.
‘Don’t
get worked up. Rich people do this,’ I said.
Slap!
She hit me hard
across my face. More than the impact of the slap, the disappointed
look in her eyes hurt me more.
‘Aarti, what
are you doing?’ I said.
She didn’t say
anything, just slapped me again. My hand went to my cheek in reflex.
In three seconds, she had left the house. In ten, I heard her car
door slam shut. In fifteen, her car had left my porch.
I sank on the sofa,
both my knees useless.
Pooja and Roshni,
fully dressed, came down by and by. Pooja picked up the cake box and
the scrapbook from the steps. She placed them on the table in front
of me.
‘You didn’t
do anything with us, so why did you call a third girl?’ Roshni
demanded to know.
‘Just leave,’
I told them, my voice low.
They called their
creepy protector. Within minutes I was alone in my house.
I sat right there
for two hours, till it became dark outside. The maids returned and
switched on the lights. They saw me sitting and didn’t disturb
me.
The glitter on the
scrapbook cover shone under the lights. I picked it up.
‘A tale of a
naughty boy and a not so naughty girl,’ said the black cover,
which was hand-painted in white. It had a smiley of a boy and a girl,
both winking.
I opened the
scrapbook.
‘Once upon a
time, a naughty boy stole a good girl’s birthday cake,’
it said on the first page. It had a doodle of the teacher scolding me
and of herself, Aarti, in tears.
I turned the page.
‘The naughty
boy, however, became the good girl’s friend. He came for every
birthday party of hers after that,’ said the text. The
remaining album had pictures from all her seven birthday parties that
I had attended, from her tenth to her sixteenth. I saw how she and I
had grown up over the years. In every birthday party, she had at
least one picture with just the two of us.
Apart from this,
Aarti had also meticulously assembled silly memorabilia from school.
She had the class VII timetable, on which she drew horns above the
maths classes. She had tickets from the school fete we had in class
IX. She had pasted the restaurant bill from the first time we had
gone out in class X. She had torn a page from her own slam book, done
in class VIII, in which she had put my name down as her best friend.
She ended the scrapbook with the following words:
‘Life has been
a wonderful journey so far with you. Looking forward to a future with
you - my soulmate. Happy birthday, Gopal!’
I had reached the
end. On the back cover, she had calligraphed ‘G & A’
in large letters.
I wanted to call
her, that was my first instinct. I wanted to tell her how amazing I
found her present. She must have spent weeks on it...
I opened the cake
box.
The chocolate cake
had squished somewhat, but I could make out the letters:
‘Stolen: My
cake and then my heart,’ it said in white, sugary icing, with
‘Happy birthday, Gopal’ inscribed beneath it.
I pushed the cake
box away. The clock struck twelve.
‘Your birthday
is over, Gopal,’ I said loudly to the only person in the room.
♦
Even though I had
promised myself I wouldn’t, I called Aarti the next day.
However, she did not pick up.
I tried several
times over the course of the week, but she wouldn’t answer.
Once she picked up
by accident.
‘How are you?’
I said.
‘Please stop
calling me,’ she said.
‘I am trying
not to,’ I said.
‘Try harder,’
she said and hung up.
I wasn’t
lying. I was trying my best to stop thinking of her. Anyway, I had a
few things left to execute my plan.
I called Ashok, the
Dairtik
editor.
‘Mr Gopal
Mishra?’ he said.
‘How’s
the paper doing?’ I said.
‘Good. I see
you advertise a lot with us. So thank you very much.’
‘I need to ask
for a favour,’ I said to the editor.
‘What?’
the editor said, wondering if I would ask to suppress a story. ‘I
want you to hire someone,’ I said. ‘He’s good.’
‘Who?’
‘Raghav
Kashyap.’
‘The trainee
we fired?’ the editor said. ‘Your MLA Shukla made us fire
him.’
‘Yeah, hire
him back.’
‘Why? And he
started his own paper. He did that big Dimnapura plant story. Sorry,
we had to carry it. Everyone did.’
‘It’s
okay,’ I said. ‘Can you re-hire him? Don’t mention
my name.’
The editor thought
it over. ‘I can. But he is a firebrand. I don’t want you
to be upset again.’
‘Keep him away
from education. Rather, keep him away from scandals for a while.’
‘I’ll
try,’ the editor said. ‘Will he join? He has his paper.’
‘His paper is
almost ruined. He has no job,’ I said.
‘Okay, I will
call him,’ the editor said.
‘I owe you
one. Book front page for GangaTech next Sunday,’ I said. ‘Thank
you, I will let marketing know.’
♦
A week after my
birthday Bedi came to my office with two other consultants. They had
a proposal for me to open a Bachelor of Management Studies course.
Dean Shrivastava also came in.
‘MBA is in
huge demand. However, that is after graduation. Why not offer
something before?’ Bedi said. The consultant showed me a
presentation on their laptop. The slides included a cost-benefit
analysis, comparing the fees we could charge, versus the faculty
costs.
‘Business
Management Studies (BMS) is the best. You can charge as much as
engineering, but you don’t need facilities like labs’ one
consultant said.
‘Faculty is
also easy. Take any MCom or CA types, plenty of them available,’
said the other.
I drifted off. I
didn’t care about expansion anymore. I didn’t see the
point of the extra crore we could make every year. I didn’t
even want to be in office.
‘Exciting,
isn’t it?’ Bedi said.
‘Huh? Yeah,
can we do it some other time?’ I said.
‘Why?’
Bedi said. Then he saw my morose face.
‘Yes, we can
come again,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s meet next week. Or
whenever you have time.’
Bedi and his
groupies left the room.
‘Director
Gopal, are you not feeling well?’ the dean said.
‘I’m
okay,’ I said.
‘Sorry to say,
but you haven’t looked fine all week. It’s not my
business, but I am older. Anything I can help with?’
‘It’s
personal,’ I said, my voice firm.
‘You should
get married, sir. The student was right,’ he chuckled.