Those Pricey Thakur Girls (18 page)
Read Those Pricey Thakur Girls Online
Authors: Anuja Chauhan
‘Meet him and turn him down,’ Anji advises. ‘Good for your ego and good for his soul. Tab se girls reject kar raha hai, he has it coming. You can do it with a clean conscience.’
‘Arrey, but he says he likes her already!’ Binni avers. ‘From his side it’s a yes!’
‘He said that for Gayatri’s Anju too,’ Mrs Mamta says soberly. ‘After he saw her photo. But when they met and she smiled – though her mother had warned her not to – just one flash of her purple masoodas was enough to make him run backward out of the house and onto a ship bound for Dar es Salaam.’
‘You just don’t want to meet him because
I
got the rishta,’ Binni huffs, her eyes filling with tears. ‘You think ki I don’t know any people worth knowing. That I only know Hindi medium types.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with Hindi medium types!’ Eshwari protests.
‘Oh god, Binni didi!’ Dabbu looks upset. ‘I just don’t… never mind… uff! I’ll meet him, if you insist – but no sulking if I turn him down, okay?’
‘Okay, okay.’ Binni face turns sunny instantly. ‘I’ll phone and let them know tomorrow. That’s settled then! Ma, what’s for dinner? My maids eat early.’
Mrs Mamta sighs. The house is bursting at the seams. Monu-Bonu drink three litres of full-cream milk between them every day. Voti has just had another litter of ugly puppies and needs daily calcium supplements. Add to that Samar’s prodigious appetite and Anji’s penchant for putting the week’s ration of eggs into her hair, and it has become impossible for her to balance her budget.
Later, in the privacy of their bedroom, she tells the Judge that she isn’t
too
averse to the Dev Pawar rishta. The boy seems nice and keen, the family is good, and as Debjani’s gums are exactly what gums should be, things should go smoothly.
‘It’ll be worth it just to see the expression on Saahas Singh Shekhawat’s face,’ the Judge muses. ‘He’ll know then how much in demand my girls are!’
‘Don’t be childish, LN,’ Mrs Mamta cautions. ‘It’s a question of Debjani’s entire life.’
‘And in return for getting us this grand rishta for Dabbu, I suppose Binni expects us to forget that she’s actually filed a case against me in court,’ the Judge says. ‘When are we going to talk about that, I would like to know?’
‘I thought of bringing it up,’ Mrs Mamta admits. ‘But then I thought, she’s here for quite a few days, we’ll discuss it by and by. Why rush these things?’
‘That’s what you said when your precious SIL number two swallowed up all the money from the sale of the Kanpur plot,’ the Judge says gloomily. ‘That money should have gone to all five girls. Instead, he talked us into
loaning
it all to him to invest in his wretched business. Now if we ask about it, she shouts and screams and gets an asthma attack. And now she wants her one-sixth hissa! That girl, I tell you, she’s turning out to be just like her uncle Ashok.’
Mrs Mamta touches his shoulder. ‘Don’t say things like that. You know it’s her husband who pressurizes her. We’ll just have to deduct that Kanpur money out of her one-sixth share in this house. That’s the simplest way.’
‘Why couldn’t Shekhawat’s son have been less of a harami?’ the Judge grumbles. ‘I actually liked the fellow. Even though he took so long to choose which house was trumps, and ate up
all
the peas in the Maggi. But I suppose we have to open ourselves up to the idea of this Dev Pawar. Oh, well. D for Dabbu, D for Dev.’
He gets up, pulls on his kurta and starts to shuffle out of the bedroom.
‘Where are you going
now
, LN?’ his wife asks, surprised. ‘It’s so late.’
‘Oh, just for a little stroll,’ he replies offh andedly. ‘I want to clear my head.’
‘He said, let them have a good time tonight.
But the party ends at dawn.’
In the little town of Puttur in South Kanara, behind a shiny plywood desk in a tiny, clean white-washed office, I finally find Anandam Dhas, a man I have been searching for, for several months.
A native of Jamshedpur and a rank holder in the IAS entrance exam, Dhas used to be a high-profile officer serving in Delhi and poised for bigger things. Why is he now cooling his heels in the interiors of Karnataka?
‘You know the answer as well I as do.’ Dhas shrugs as we sit down to glasses of chilled buttermilk and a plate of sliced apple. ‘I was unfortunate enough to be present at Hardik Motla’s infamous briefing to his officers on 1 November – and stupid enough to talk to the press about it afterwards.’
Why did you choose to give the interview anonymously? Another fatalistic shrug. ‘To protect my job and my family. And I was hoping that my speaking up would motivate my other colleagues to also come forward.’ He smiles wryly. ‘Safety in numbers, you know.’
So what did Motla say exactly?
Dhas shakes one leg restlessly, shuffles the papers on his desk. Then he turns to me suddenly, and his words come out in short bursts, like rounds of machine-gunfire.
‘He said the whole piece. Everything that’s been reported in the press. Everything. Get the anger out, it is required, it will prove cathartic – keeping it inside is unhealthy in the long term. We listened quietly, agreed to take no steps to stop what was basically state-sponsored genocide, but finally somebody asked him how long the pogrom would be allowed to continue. He said, after thinking about it for a while, ‘Let them have a good time tonight. But the party ends at dawn.’
He described it as a party?
‘Oh, yes. Absolutely. Those were his words. Ten people heard him. Eight men, two women.’
Did you speak to your colleagues privately? Ask them to come forward?
‘Yes.’ Dhas looks whimsical. ‘But they chose to move forward instead. Everyone’s been promoted. Need I say more?’
So why haven’t you been promoted? You haven’t come forward with this testimony either?
‘Somehow word got out that I was the anonymous source. Maybe I have some of my colleagues – the ones I was trying to convince to testify to the press along with me – to thank for that.’
Why have you decided to speak to us openly today? ‘Well, I had high hopes from the Special Investigation Commission. I suppose I was hoping the truth would come out without my having to get involved in the outing. But it didn’t. So now I’m telling it like it is. Openly.’
Is this revenge? Because your career has languished?
‘Oh, no.’ Anandam’s smile, earlier so wry, now bursts out wide and cheerful. I get the sense that some massive weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He looks like a mischievous boy. ‘This is just self-preservation. You see, if I keep my anger and my bitterness and my disappointment with the system inside me any longer, it may give me cancers.’
DSS
‘S
ix eggs and one bread please, Gambhir uncle.’
Old Mr Gambhir is hunched over the
India Post
, his forehead furrowed, his index finger slowly moving between the lines of text, his lips forming each word of Dylan’s article laboriously. Young Mr Gambhir is nowhere in sight.
‘Er, Gambhir uncle?’
The old man looks up, his eyes glazed. ‘Kya?’ he demands querulously, no hint of recognition in his eyes.
‘Namaste.’ Eshwari grins amiably. ‘Six eggs, one bread. So sorry to disturb you.’
He stares at her for almost a minute, then nods, folds up the newspaper carefully and dodders away to the back of the store.
One of his grumpier days, Eshwari thinks, leaning against the white Kwality ice cream refrigerator, drumming her fingers against it lightly.
‘Oh, hey, Steesh!’
‘Hello,’ Satish growls as he shuffles up, dragging his chappals. ‘There oughtta be a law against parents. Who the hell kicks you out of bed this early on Sunday to fetch… shit! What did she want?’
What an unlovely, unwashed sight, Eshwari thinks, looking him over with a shudder. If only the class eight chicks with brand-new tits could see him now. They’d get over crushing on him instantly. That reminds her.
‘I wanted to ask you something.’
But Satish is busy having a crisis. ‘Shit, help me, Bihari, I can’t remember what Amma asked me to get. Coffee? Condoms? Cockroach killer?’
‘Soap maybe?’ Eshwari hazards pointedly. ‘Deodorant? Nose plugs for herself ?’
‘I’ll walk back with you and ask her again,’ he says. ‘Here, lemme carry your stuff. What did you want to ask me?’
Eshwari tosses her bouncy ponytail and assumes a mysterious expression. ‘Nothing important.’
She has heard that one Gitika Govil, a class nine lovely, confessed during a party game of Truth and Dare that she has hormonal stirrings for Satish Sridhar. This Gitika is hot stuff – she is known as GG amongst the class twelve boys, which stands not for her name but for her Golden Globes which bloomed suddenly and spectacularly halfway through class seven. Half the graffiti in the girls’ toilets in Modern School is dedicated to her. The Bihari and Manipuri hostellers, whose life’s ambition it is to one day hold the coveted Golden Globes award, duck into this forbidden zone the moment school empties out and scribble heartfelt sonnets to her in scratchy ballpoint pen.
Gitika Govil ke mammay mahaan
Unpe tika hai Hindustan
Young fold mountains, world’s most high
I will climb them by and by!
‘Must be
something
, I know that look,’ Satish says, raising his voice to be heard above the manic
khatakhatakhata
of several portable generators. ‘Phew, all I can breathe are diesel fumes! Ask me, I’ll tell you the truth, promise.’
Eshwari gives him a sidelong glance. ‘Had fun at the weekend party?’
He looks at her curiously. ‘Yeah, it was funnish, I guess. Bunch of girls with shoulder pads and plastic earrings singing along to “Like a Virgin”, desperately trying to act like they aren’t virgins.’
‘I heard you found someone
special
there.’
He goes still, in a very filmi, over-the-top way. His eyes start to dance. ‘Whoooooo?’
‘Gitika Govil. Are you guys going out?’
Satish immediately assumes an air of self-important nonchalance. ‘I don’t know. Let’s see.’
‘There’s still something left to see?’ Eshwari says incredulously. ‘Knowing you, you must have seen
everything
she’s got by now.’
‘Don’t be crude,’ he replies primly. ‘You girls think south Indians can’t think of anything but
that
.’
‘Don’t lump half the country with your personal randiness,’ Eshwari replies tartly. ‘
You
can’t think of anything but that.’
Satish sobers up. ‘I know you think I’m an animal, Bihari, but I’m not. I’ll take it slow with GG. She’s a sweet little thing.’
‘So you
are
going out with her.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘And you’re in love with her?’
‘Uh huh.’
The electricity comes back just then, and the generators quit throbbing. Things are suddenly very quiet.
‘Well, this
is
a turnaround,’ Eshwari marvels. ‘The beast has acquired a heart. Rather than just a private part.’
Satish’s eyes gleam. ‘And if she gets me
so
turned on that I lose my head and am in danger of surrendering my all to her, I’ll cool myself down by thinking of
you.
You’ll be my very own visual cold shower. Good plan, huh?’
Eshwari’s eyes widen in outrage.
Satish grins.
‘Actually, I think it’s a really good match,’ she says. ‘I mean, she’s what – twelve?’
‘Fourteen,’ he growls.
‘And your mental age is ten. So you should suit each other perfectly. Of course s
ome
people might say she’s too old for you, but I’m not one of them.’
Satish comes to a dead halt, slapping his hand against his forehead. ‘
Of course!
I was supposed to buy Green Label chai. Thanks for reminding me, Bihari.’
‘How?’ she asks, puzzled.
Satish’s face splits into a huge grin. ‘By turning green.’
She continues to look at him, still confused.
He snickers. ‘Must be envy.’
‘Babejani, did you hear last night’s bulletin?’ says Amitabh Bose as they both sit in high chairs getting their make-up done. ‘The one read by Sameep and yours truly? Wasn’t it shocking?’
‘Well, yes,’ Debjani agrees. ‘It was terrible.’
‘It was the stuff of horror films,’ he shudders. ‘Harrowing! Really, standards have fallen so
low
in this country. Of course, I don’t mean you, darling.’
A little puzzled, Debjani tilts her head.
(Don’t moving, madum.)
‘You mean the report on the earthquake in Manipur, right?’
He beams. ‘Exactly.
(Don’t moving, sir.)
So you noticed too?’
‘Well, it was kind of hard to miss. The footage was so graphic. Over 1,000 dead – and 300 villages annihilated, I believe.’
‘Only,’ he leans in close and she can smell mint on his breath, laced with cigarettes and hunger, ‘that clown Sameep said
aanhylated.
And then he went on to say that rescue operations were undervay. Under
vay
! And one had to keep a straight face while listening to him say this. He
has
to know someone big in the ministry – that’s the only explanation for a Neanderthal like him reading prime-time English bulletins. But contacts or no contacts, if he keeps this up, he’ll be shunted down to Parliament News.
Aan
hylated indeed!’
And Dabbu realizes that, for Amitabh Bose, the bigger tragedy is not the death of a thousand Manipuris but the mauling of the English language. No wonder Dylan was practically grinding his teeth at me that day, she thinks suddenly.
‘Really, my dear, the trials of this job! One deserves a hardship allowance to compensate for sitting under those hot lights listening to Sameep Chaddha speak.
Ob
original!
Yoo
rope!
Pidi
gree! And once there was a devastating avalanch
ay
and over 3,000 people
piri
shed. Luckily one wasn’t reading along with him that night – one would have died laughing.’
‘Haha,’ she says weakly.
‘Also,’ his tone grows conspiratorial, ‘his natural voice is a reedy treble. That baritone is entirely assumed. It slips sometimes, like a loose pair of knickers.’
‘Really?’
Amitabh Bose nods.
‘Now, when
yours truly
was born,’ he says, throwing back his shoulders. ‘And yours truly cried, as babies are wont to do, yours truly’s grandmother, who was seated in the next room, enquired of the nurses why heavy furniture was being dragged about
. That’s
how deep yours truly’s baritone was!’
‘My sisters love your voice,’ is the only thing Debjani can think to say in reply. ‘They think you sound like Cliff Richard.’
Amitabh Bose nods, accepting this tribute like it is only his due. ‘A word of advice to you, darling,’ he says. ‘Your smiles are getting to be a little – now what would be a good word to use here –
gratuitous.
Never show too much teeth. Newsreading is serious business. You don’t want to come across as frivolous. We should look like we
care
. Ah, I’m done, thank you, dada.’
The old make-up dada, moving on to a line-up of muscular young women who are there to sing a rousingly patriotic Hindi song, smothers a thin smile. So AB is getting insecure about little Debjani Thakur. The make-up dada wants to tell Debjani to smile as much as she likes, that the nation loves her smile, but he doesn’t. The nation will make its wishes known soon enough, he thinks.
And the nation does. Mrs Mamta is peeling a large green lauki in the drawing room when it happens. The monthly viewer’s feedback show
Aap aur Hum
is on. A popular announcer reads out letters from all over India to a senior DD director and he answers them at length. The first letter, from Pritam Rawal, Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, bemoans the fact that the late-night Western music programme
Hot Tracks
is damaging Indian culture and is a bad influence on the youth. The director replies by assuring her that Indian culture is extremely robust and that in any case all objectionable portions of songs – kisses, displays of bare thighs, underarms, navels and immodest dance movements – are rigorously censored. The second letter from Shahid Imtiaz, Hyderabad, says that the serial
Ramayana
is communalizing the country, to which he smoothly replies that the Ramayana is not religion but culture, and provides archetypes of the ideal husband, the ideal wife, the ideal brother and the ideal friend, which are instructive to everybody, regardless of their religion. And then she reads out the third letter, from one Satinder Singh, Bokaro Steel City, which says:
Congratulations on discovering the talented and beautiful newsreader Debjani Thakur. She is a breath of fresh air in the newsroom. Her English is too good, her smile is like warm sunshine, she is so modest, and I am a deewana of the mole on her chin and the rose in her hair. Please give her more opportunities to read, why only Fridays?
To which the DD director smiles and starts to make some reply, but Mrs Mamta doesn’t hear it, she jumps to her feet, scattering lauki peels everywhere, and runs to get the Judge, to get Gulgul, to get everybody, the dhobi, the chowkidar, the chinkie Mother Dairy token-wallah, and tell them how famous her Dabbu has become.
‘Promise me you and Steesh didn’t write that letter,’ Debjani tells Eshwari as they get ready for bed that night.
‘It was from
Bokaro Steel City
,’ Eshwari replies, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m not even sure where that is. Anyway, it’s not like you got
one
fan letter. You must’ve got loads
,
so they read one out, kind of representative of all fifty. Why can’t you just be happy?’
‘Oh, I am happy,’ Debjani assures her. ‘Only, it feels so unreal. In a nice way, though. In a
really
nice way. Oh, Eshu, d’you think
he
would have seen it?’
‘Who?’ Eshwari grins. ‘Satinder Singh from Bokaro Steel City? Hundred per cent. Maybe he’s young and juicy and a millionaire and next month he’ll propose to you via
Aap aur Hum.
That’ll show Amitabh Bose.’
At which Debjani hits her on the head with a pillow.
‘Ow-ow-ow!’ Eshu groans. ‘You meant the one-faced snake? How was I to know? I thought you were done with him!’
‘
And
… the next school to come on stage is… Modern School, Barakhamba Road! Give them a big hand, everyone!’
‘What the hell does that mean, give them a
big hand
?’ Satish grumbles as he slides behind the drum set to tepid applause on the darkened stage of Kamani Auditorium. ‘Are they going to present us with a giant Godzilla hand wrapped up in red wrapping paper? This compère’s such a penis.’