Those Pricey Thakur Girls (20 page)

What a publicity hound. The man, Dylan thinks in disgust, probably wasn’t even in Delhi, let alone Tirathpuri, on the first of November. I have a good mind to lean over and yank at his beard.

‘Like I said,’ he says, ‘sources generally prefer to remain anonymous.’

‘I want my pikchurr,’ his guest says doggedly. ‘Or I will take my story to another paper.’

‘I think you’ll find that we’re the only ones who’ll print it,’ Dylan tells him pleasantly. ‘And we
will
check up on you, you know. This isn’t sensationalism. It’s responsible reporting.’

But the Sardar isn’t listening.

‘I’ll have Amreekan Chop Suey,’ he tells the waiter. ‘The one with the fried egg on top. Haan. And a Campa. And afterwards lychee with ice cream. Now Dhillonji, where do I begin?’

‘Why don’t you begin at the beginning,’ Dylan suggests, feeling rather like Alice in Wonderland. ‘Go on till you reach the end, then stop.’

‘Vul!’ His source aligns his cutlery neatly in front of him and assumes a lugubrious expression. ‘I woke up in the morning and heard shouting and screaming,
ladies
shouting and screaming. So I ran down, shirtless – you can click my photo shirtless, it will be more authentic – and kicking and swearing and abusing, pushed over this big crowd of mens all holding lathis and swords, and saved the izzat of three ladies, one-after-the-other.’

‘Wow,’ Dylan replies, pushing his tape recorder a little closer. ‘That’s, um, cool. Can you give me more details?’

‘Of course. The first lady was an older lady. Two men were voilitting her. The first one I gave a punch on the neck, he fell at once, the second one I kicked in the backside, he also fell. Then I knelt by the side of the lady and said, Don’t cry, bebe, I am here, your son is here (not that she was my mother, you know, Dhillonji, but I meant ki she was
like
my mother). Three fellows came up from the backside then, but I tripped them by sticking out my foot. Then with a roar I moved to the second lady –’

‘Yes, yes.’ Dylan has got the man’s measure now. ‘Uh, look, Sardar saab, this is a recording device, why don’t you continue speaking all your testimony into it, while I go finish off some other work I have to do?’

The Sardar nods obligingly, Dylan gets to his feet and strides out to the corridor outside Berco’s Chinese restaurant. It is drizzling, the air is clean and fresh and Connaught Circle, washed clean of dust and grime, gleams in the filtering sunshine like a large white Polo mint. Dylan stretches out, breathing in a great gulp of wet, fragrant air, and sighs. The hunt for his three key eyewitnesses, in spite of the occasional attention-seeker like the one demolishing
IP
-funded Chop Suey inside, is going well. The pressure on the government to do something about Motla is building. Things are looking up. Dylan feels optimism surge through his veins. Maybe I’ll take a little walk and buy some green guavas and have a chat with the shoeshine guy about life in general, he thinks. And just as he is setting off to do so, who should come walking down the road, past the vibrant background of balloon sellers and watch-repair men and aggressive Gujarati ladies selling cushion covers embroidered with elephants, her cream dupatta billowing in the breeze, her curling walnut hair likewise, but Debjani Thakur, lover of losers, who wouldn’t be friends-who-kiss with him.

She is with somebody, he realizes, even as he automatically ducks behind a pillar. A tall, smug young man, who looks, Dylan thinks uncharitably, rather like Clark Kent. Big glasses, bigger head. And he doesn’t even turn into a superhero at night, which really is the
only
redeeming thing about Clark Kent. And who the hell wears a suit in Delhi, in the afternoon, in the
monsoon
?

Clark Kent and Debjani go into Berco’s. Dylan immediately loses all interest in chatting with shoeshine boys. I’ll go in and share the questionable Surd’s Chop Suey, he decides. After all, I’m paying for it.

And so, as the questionable Surd tells tales of his bare-chested derring-do, Dylan tunes him out and tunes into the couple at the next table.

CK: Can I take this seat? More leg room. I am, by god’s grace, more than six feet tall.

DT: Of course.

CK: So I was saying, if you have not seen the sun set on an endless expanse of rolling ocean, you have seen nothing! Nothing!

DT: Really?

CK: It makes you realize how insignificant you are – an ant, a worm, a mere mosquito. Whenever I have the midnight watch, I look out at the ocean and tell myself that Dev Pawar, just because by god’s grace you earn (pause, modest laugh)
25,000
rupees a month, don’t think you are very great! The ocean is much bigger than you!

DT: That’s true.

CK: I can see the ocean from my 2BHK flat in Cuffe Parade too, by god’s grace.

DT: How nice. So you can feel humble there also.

CK: Yes. Waise, people tend to resent you when you have so much, but by god’s grace my friends never minded when I paid off my flat at age twenty-eight only. They jokingly said, yaar, we will take twenty years more to pay off our home loans, you are making us all look bad, we’re going to paint your face black. So I said, go ahead, yaar, by god’s grace I am
too
fair, so a little blacking will improve my complexion!

DT: You’re so right.

CK: It’s a little hot in here – the AC isn’t very effective – I hope I’m not sweating? Half my batchmates don’t get affected by the heat any more – the benefits of balding, you know! But I, by god’s grace, still have a full head of hair! No man in my family has ever gone bald. You can say that, by god’s grace, good hair genes are my
inheritance
! Along with my family home built on a 4,000 gaj plot in the best part of Bhopal, of course. But we are only talking about me. I want to talk about
you.
Tell me all about yourself, Debjani!

DT: Um, okay. Well I’m –

CK: Oh, look, the washroom is free. I’ll just freshen up. Please order whatever you like. By god’s grace, money is no object.

The oppressive aroma of aftershave lifts as he walks away. Debjani sits at the table, studying the menu, her face a carefully controlled mask. The minutes tick by and still no Dev Pawar emerges from the toilet.

‘Maybe he has the runs,’ a deep voice sounds in her ear. ‘Maybe, by god’s grace, he’ll die of ’em.’

Debjani gives an involuntary snort of laughter, lowers the menu and sees an unshaven and rather scruffy Dylan Singh Shekhawat looking across at her, his eyes gleaming with huge enjoyment.

The Brigadier’s son. Here. In Berco’s Chinese restaurant. Hope rises wildly in her chest. Is he following her? Then she takes in the pudgy man in the slipping turban sitting beside him. He isn’t. He’s here for Talumein Soup and American Chop Suey, like everybody else.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hi!’ she replies, her cheeks pink. ‘How are you?’

‘You should marry him.’ He grins. ‘D for Dev. He’s perfect for you. You’re a loser-lover and he’s a loser. It’s a match made in heaven.’

‘He
isn’t
a loser,’ Debjani retorts. ‘Didn’t you hear? He earns twenty –’

‘– five thousand rupees a month,’ Dylan finishes. ‘I think the whole restaurant heard.’

‘That’s quite good,’ the questionable Surd puts in, nodding wisely. ‘Has his own flat also. Suna maine – 2BHK in Tuff Parade. Waise, you must also be earning quite well, Dhillonji?’

Dylan shoots him an irate look. ‘Would you just continue with your recording?’ he snaps. ‘The battery in that contraption is about to die.’

The Sardar looks injured. ‘Okay, okay, no need to be a rude,’ he says austerely. He picks up the recorder, then turns to Debjani again. ‘But didi, you better clarify ki twenty-five grands is before tax or after tax.’

Dabbu nods faintly. She hardly knows what she’s doing. It is just so… incredible to see Dylan again. Just sitting there, radiating awesomeness. He makes all the men I’ve been meeting look like round, soft little atta dough boys, she thinks helplessly. Should I tell him I’ve been reading up those riots he’s so obsessed with? Why is he looking so unkempt? He needs a haircut and a shave. And is he wearing
chappals
? How lean and sinewy his feet look. They match his hands. Well,
obviously
they match his hands. It would be weird if they matched somebody else’s hands. How am I ever going to marry some Pawar when I could have had
that
?

‘So is he honest and kind and brave enough for you?’ Dylan enquires, jerking his head in the direction of the toilet. ‘Or have you given up on that too, just like you’ve given up reading news that’s even remotely accurate?’

‘You’ve been watching me read,’ she manages to remark, quite composedly. ‘Thank you. I’m flattered.’

Dylan’s lean cheeks redden. Of course he’s been watching her read. Every Friday night without fail. He dims the lights, locks the doors (he lives alone in Bombay, but why take a chance?) and glares at her moodily. Watching her lips move, her lashes flutter, checking obsessively for the appearance of more rings on her fingers besides the silver ladybird he know so well. Waiting for that moment at the end when she’ll look up, tilt her head slightly, flash the lopsided street-urchin smile that India loves, the one that always turns his stomach into a tutu-wearing ballerina, and say, ‘
That’s all from the news desk tonight. Goodnight
.’

But I
have
to watch her, he reminds himself quickly, because it’s important to keep track of the bullshit the government is feeding the people. They hire sweet-faced people like Debjani Thakur and make them say that the deaths of almost 4,000 Sikhs were caused by a spontaneous outpouring of grief. It’s sick.

‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he presses, his gaze half sarcastic, half ardent. ‘Are you going to marry him? That supposedly god-fearing, constantly self-congratulating, smug ass?’

Their eyes lock. Staring into those twin pools of Pears, he wonders how he will ever be able to look away.

‘That’s really none of your business, is it?’ Debjani says finally, sweetly. ‘You’d better eat your Chop Suey before it gets soggy.’

He starts to reply, but just then Dev Pawar comes back to the table.

He’s been primping, Dylan thinks, checking out Dev in disgust. He’s slicked back his hair, straightened his collar, tucked his shirt in tighter and – although Dylan can’t be hundred per cent sure of this – applied moisturizer. What a chick.

Dylan’s hands ball into fists, he deliberately turns his back on the now conversing couple and gives the questionable Surd his full attention.

‘Continue,’ he says.

But the Surd only looks at him out of shrewd gooseberry eyes.

‘You two had some chakkar?’ he asks sympathetically. ‘She left you, hain? And now she’s with Mr Tuff Parade? My Sunita left me too, but when she sees my photo in the
IP
and reads how brave I was, she’ll take me back. It’s a good plan.
You
better think of some good plan too.’

Juliet Bai and the Brigadier have discovered Pac-Man. They spend entire evenings in front of Dylan’s Apple Mac, bathed in a ghostly, tubelighty glow, taking turns at chasing and gobbling up Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, the four foul Japanese ghosts who have taken the civilized world by storm.

‘Get the banana, get the banana,
get
the banana, Bobby, uff, you died. My turn now – move,’ Juliet Bai tells her husband as she elbows him away and takes possession of the arrow keys.

‘You jostled my arm,’ he accuses her. ‘You’re
cheating
, Bobby!’

‘I didn’t,’ she replies, not quite looking him in the eye. ‘Now shush, let me concentrate.’

She has progressed to the third level, playing smoothly and surely, with the Brigadier watching her every move, when Dylan saunters into the room. He is impeccably dressed. Dark trousers, a light shirt, a narrow tie. His hair is cut and slicked back, his jaw smooth after months. Nobody looks at him.

‘Cherries! There are cherries! Get the cherries!’ the Brigadier cries, leaping up and down.

‘I’ll
die
if I go chasing cherries now,’ Juliet Bai replies tersely. ‘You just want me to die, I know.’

‘Um, hello, you guys,’ Dylan says.

But Juliet Bai is hearing only beeps, boinnnggs and bleeps. She continues to work the arrow keys. The Brigadier looks around and gives a surprised grunt.

‘Bobby, look, some stranger just wandered into the house.’

She ignores him. She is leaning forward, going for the kill, she has just reached the next level. The Brigadier is impressed.

‘Wah! Level four! Pinky’s on your tail – run, Bobby, run – you can
do
it – careful now!’

Abruptly, the
tunu tunu tunu tunu tunu
waaown
death knell sounds. Juliet Bai slumps back in her chair, her eyes suddenly blank.

‘Dead! And that too on the fourth level.’

‘Mamma,’ Dylan says plaintively.

She rubs her eyes and looks around.

‘Hoh! You shaved! Looking so handsome. Where are you going, sonna?’

‘Nowhere,’ he replies lightly. ‘I just wanted to talk to you guys.’