Those Pricey Thakur Girls (21 page)

‘Most honoured, I’m sure,’ mutters the Brig as he pauses the Pac-Man.

‘I make 8,000 rupees a month,’ Dylan announces, ignoring this snide aside. ‘I’m not sure if you know.’

‘So much?’ Juliet Bai says in awe.

‘Don’t look so impressed, it’s all inflation,’ the Brigadier snorts. ‘Eight thousand doesn’t buy what 800 could a few years ago.’

‘I also get a small company flat, a petrol allowance, a medical allowance, a leave travel allowance and a month off a year,’ Dylan continues, ignoring both these remarks. ‘If I switch to another paper – which I don’t want to coz I like the
IP
, they have the only decent editorial content in the country, Hiranandani notwithstanding – I’m guessing I could jump to twelve a month, easy.’

They look at him, confused.

‘The media industry is poised at the brink of a major breakthrough. The government has started dismantling the Licence Raj, all kinds of new multinational brands are poised to be launched and the subsequent jump in advertising spends will see both television and print journalism boom.’

His parents gape at him. Dylan never talks to them about his work. He snaps if they so much as comment on any of his writing.

‘I’d also like to point out that, post-liberalization, many jobs that seem lucrative now will turn into dead-enders. Like, for example, nothing personal against it of course, the merchant navy.’

There is silence. Dylan appears to have said his piece.

‘Why,’ demands the Brigadier, ‘are you telling us this?’

Dylan squares his shoulders and meets his father’s eyes.

‘So you can go over to Hailey Road and tell Justice Laxmi Thakur that I want to marry his daughter Debjani.’

8

A
ll hell breaks loose the next morning when Chachiji, after brushing her beautiful silver payals carefully with toothpaste just like Anjini has advised her to, leaves them drying in the sun and stumps silently into the annexe kitchen to find the Hot Dulari seated in A.N. Thakur’s lap, tenderly being fed cucumber slices. She launches herself upon him with a bloodcurdling yell that awakens half of Hailey Road.

‘Now I know why you said never take them off!’ she screams. ‘Hai! You sick bastard! I am going to
kill
you – give me that cucumber knife!’

Ashok Narayan Thakur is a handsome man: tall, well built, always flamboyantly dressed. Growing up, his nieces idolized him. They loved the summer vacations they spent at Number 13 while their own house was under renovation. There was always something exciting going on. Sometimes Chachaji would summon a whole ice cream thela into the aangan and command the thela-wallah to hand out ice cream after ice cream till the girls cried enough. Sometimes it was chaat. On one memorable winter night, it was a charcoal tandoor full of juicy, red hot chicken tikkas. Of course they had no idea then that the bill for these extravagances was invariably picked up by their father. They hung onto their dashing Ashok chacha’s arms, letting him pick them up two at a time as part of his morning workout, blushed at his compliments and laughed at his pug-faced wife. It wasn’t till much, much later, when the whole sordid truth about his debts and his rumoured relationship with the Hot Dulari came out, that the girls realized that they’d been, to put it rather crudely,
had.

Now they watch wide-eyed from the kitchen window of the main house as Chachiji pushes her husband out of the annexe, screaming abuses at his face and hurling bottles of aftershave after him, to burst upon the cemented drive (like so many shattered dreams, Dabbu thinks fancifully).

‘You’ve ruined my life, A.N. Thakur!’ Chachiji cries while he begs her to keep her voice down. ‘May your soul rot in hell, you sick bastard! May you be eaten by worms! May termites gnaw at your…’

‘Anus,’ Eshwari completes with a grin. ‘She’s in full flow, isn’t she?’

‘Do you think this is the ghost of the Pushkarni taking possession of her?’ Anjini asks, leaning against the window frame interestedly. ‘Or is she doing this all by herself ? Either way, it’s better than
Buniyaad
.’

But Dabbu looks stricken. ‘It’s soo sad,’ she mourns. ‘I mean, poor Chachiji, married to a handsome but essentially cold man, starved of love and unable to have children. It’s…’

(just like my life, thinks Anji, slightly horrified)

‘…
horrible.
’

This is a new angle for Eshwari. She has always regarded her uncle and aunt in the same light as
Tom and Jerry
cartoons. The fact that they might actually have feelings is something that has never occurred to her. She wraps her mind around this new thought, frowning.

Finally, she says, ‘I think it’s really mean of Ma not to let the Ant and Chachiji live in the main house. I mean, just for a few months. The annexe is almost like a servants’ quarter.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the annexe,’ Mrs Mamta says, coming up behind them with the morning tea. ‘We could rent it out for 1,000 rupees a month tomorrow. It’s just the Ant’s antics that belong in a servants’ quarter.’

Eshwari chuckles, but Debjani frowns.

‘Servants have morals too, Ma,’ she says. As her mother bristles at this reproving tone, she quickly adds, ‘The sad truth is that Ashok chacha is a bit of a saanp.’

Mrs Mamta Thakur sighs. ‘That’s true. But you know, girls, your father’s entire family is like that only. My mother used to say he’s the white sheep of his family.’

Privately though, she can’t help wondering if there is any truth in Bhudevi’s constant insinuations that the Judge is having an affair too. Why else would he sneak off to Gambhir Stores to make phone calls? She has even asked him about it, but all she has received in reply is a blank look and a testy ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mamtaji’.

‘Why doesn’t he talk to Ashok chacha?’ Debjani asks. ‘Drill some sense into his head?’

Mrs Mamta shakes her head. ‘That toh is out of the question.’ She sighs. ‘He won’t even
talk
to AN.’

‘That’s really mature,’ Anjini says scornfully. ‘And what are we supposed to do if we see him? Or if he talks to us? Pretend he doesn’t exist?’

‘I don’t think that’s going to be an issue, actually,’ Mrs Mamta says. ‘AN will go scurrying off behind that Dulari, wait and see.’

Sure enough, the scene outside the annexe plays out exactly as Mrs Mamta predicts. The Hot Dulari emerges, beating her breast, protesting her innocence, accusing Chachiji of being a dirty-minded, insecure woman who thinks everybody wants to sleep with her husband and son. When Chachiji asks her why, if she is so pure, had she been sitting in another woman’s husband’s lap eating cucumbers, she raises a mighty ruckus, weeps noisily, invokes the gods to bear witness to her purity, and marches out of the back gate, calling down curses upon Chachiji’s head and utterly delighting the denizens of the lane behind Hailey Road. Ashok Narayan Thakur slinks off behind her a couple of hours later.

Chachiji is granted her wish: she is shifted into the main house, administered warm, sweetened doodh-double-roti and two Calmposes. She is just falling asleep, emitting little hiccupping sobs, her hand firmly grasping Debjani’s, when the phone rings. Eshwari enters the bedroom a little later.

‘Ma, where’s BJ, there’s a call for him. It’s the Brig.’

‘He isn’t home, Eshu, take a message,’ Mrs Mamta replies shortly. It has been an exhausting twenty-four hours and the Brigadier isn’t exactly her favourite person nowadays.

Eshwari vanishes, and then pops her head into the room again, her black eyes very round.

‘Ma, he wants to speak to you. He says it’s
urgent
.’

Debjani’s hand twitches inside Chachiji’s grasp. Chachiji’s lids flutter open instantly to reveal beadily, glittering eyes. What’s all this?’ she demands woozily. ‘He comes over every day, what does he need to say that can’t wait till evening?’

‘I’m coming,’ Mrs Mamta says, getting to her feet. ‘Dabbu, make sure Chachiji rests. I’ll go see what Saahas Shekhawat wants.’

The pretty floral-themed drawing room – Mrs Mamta Thakur’s pride and joy – is having to do double duty as a makeshift dormitory for her three grandchildren. By ten in the night, the children sit, freshly bathed and brushed, before the pot-bellied Weston colour TV, picking out all the nutritious vegetables from their Nirula’s cheese-onion-capsicum-tomato pizzas and flicking them through the window into the flowerbeds outside.

‘Anant mausa got me this doll from America,’ Bonu says importantly as she chews. ‘Look, she actually has a grown-up
chest
.’

A non-stop stream of little girls has been trooping into the house all day, wanting to look at Bonu’s new doll. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. It has two quite clearly defined breasts and the longest, thinnest legs in the world. Samar will never admit it, but even he is intimidated by its perfect, plasticky pulchritude.

‘What a stupid doll,’ he says. ‘It can’t even stand on its own feet.’

‘
You’re
stupid,’ Bonu retorts. ‘She’s smart. She’s a doctor Barbie. See her white coat? It can come off – all her clothes can come off, actually. Want to see?’

The boys shake their heads hastily. Bonu, slightly deflated, sits her Barbie upon her lap, leans forward and whispers impressively: ‘Dabbu mausi is getting married.’

‘
Really?
’ Monu’s eyes swivel to meet Samar’s questioningly.

‘Children should be seen and not heard,’ Samar replies smartly to cover for the fact that he doesn’t really know.

Bonu snorts. ‘If you’re so
grown up
, you should be in the adults-only meeting discussing Dabbu mausi’s shaadi. Why are you eating peeza with
us
?’

‘It’s not
peeza
,’ he tells her loftily. ‘It’s peedza.’

‘I like to pronounce things wrong on purpose,’ she tells him defiantly. ‘It’s my
style.
’

Samar’s long thin face creases into a disbelieving smirk. He reaches for another slice of pizza.

‘Who’s she marrying?’ Monu wants to know. ‘Nobody knows for sure, yet,’ Bonu explains knowledgably. ‘She has so many rishtas. Because she’s so famous, na. But it may be a…’ she lowers her voice, ‘
love marriage.
’

‘Ho ji!’ Monu is horrified. ‘Is she going to have a baby?’

‘You’re such a crack, Monu,’ his twin tells him pityingly. ‘Isn’t he, Samar?’

‘Samar
bhaisaab
.’

Bonu tosses her spiky head. ‘You’re no relation of mine,’ she says. ‘Not by blood, anyway. So I don’t have to call you bhaisaab.’

‘Are love marriages allowed?’ Monu wants to know.

‘Of course,’ Samar says confidently.

‘If only the poor Pushkarni had had a love marriage,’ Bonu says, shifting tracks slightly. ‘Her life might have been happier, no?’

They all look at each other. They have arrived at the topic they discus hotly every night, with the zeal of convent inmates reciting their bedtime rosary. The Death (and rumoured Resurrection) of the Pushkarni.

‘Does the Pushkarni really
take over
Chachiji?’ Monu asks Samar for the nth time.

Samar nods. ‘That’s what she says.’

‘Have you actually
seen
it happen?’ Bonu presses.

Samar purses his lips. ‘Not really,’ he replies doubtfully.

The twins stare at him, their eyes as large as dinner plates below their identical spiky mushroom haircuts.

‘What happens when the bhoot comes?’

‘Her eyes roll back,’ says Samar, ticking the manifestations off on his fingers. ‘She shakes her head a lot. And there is a smell. A very horrible smell that fills the room.’

This is met with a slight sense of anticlimax. Monu-Bonu look at each other doubtfully.

‘Like a fart?’ Bonu asks.

‘Worse,’ says Samar, deciding that if a story is worth telling, then it’s worth telling well. ‘Much worse. Like the fart of a hundred snakes that have eaten mooli. Like the fart of a dead pig who ate the hundred snakes that ate mooli. Like the fart of a dead pig who died in the Union Carbide gas tragedy after eating the hundred snakes that ate mooli.’

‘Dead pigs don’t fart,’ Monu points out. ‘And snakes don’t eat mooli.’

Samar quells him with a withering look. ‘And then she s
peaks
like the Pushkarni,’ he says. ‘Her voice becomes low and growly. Like a bear’s. I’ve heard her.’

The twins look at each other again. Samar is five years older to them, and they often get the feeling that he’s just messing with them.

‘What does she
say
?’ they ask cautiously.

Samar shrugs. ‘Stuff about how she was murdered, mostly. And how she came back for badla on her husband. And how she’ll never let the building in Number 13 be completed – she’ll kill the labourers off one by one.’

‘Cool,’ the twins breathe in awe.

‘I don’t know about that,’ Samar says. ‘Seems a bit unfair to the labourers. What did
they
do?’

‘You’re just boring,’ Bonu tells him. ‘I think it will be so fun if she starts killing people – okay, listen, should we put on the scary movie?’

They have a choice of two films to feed into the jaws of the shiny new VCR Anji has bought her parents:
Nightmare on Elm Street
or
Masoom.
Monu is keen on
Masoom
as everybody tells him he looks just like the little kid in the film. This is precisely the reason why Bonu would rather watch
Nightmare
. She thinks the kid in
Masoom
is a whiny loser – fair and green-eyed and weeping about his dead mummy and letting himself be bullied by a bunch of girls.

‘Put this one,’ Monu says, waving
Masoom
under Samar’s disgusted nose.

‘I want to see the scary movie,’ Bonu says.

‘Mummy said no scary movies.’ Monu frowns.

‘Mummy ka chamcha,’ his twin returns scornfully.

‘
My
mother bought the VCR,’ Samar says firmly. ‘And I’m older. So
I
get to pick the movie. And I say
Nightmare
.’

‘Yeah,’ Bonu agrees with him quickly.

But Monu is feeling mutinous. ‘No,’ he says, a look of stubborn stolidity settling on his face.

‘My VCR, my choice,’ Samar says.

But Monu comes back strongly. ‘The VCR may be yours but the house is mine. So you
don’t
get to choose.’

Samar, who is in the middle of wolfing down the last of his pizza, is so surprised to meet strong contradiction from this unlikely quarter that he stops chewing for a moment. ‘I’m the eldest grandson,’ he replies. ‘What do you mean the house belongs to you, you bloody Monu? It’s mine as much as yours.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Monu lisps stoutly. ‘
I’m
Justice Laxmi Thakur’s eldest grandson. When I grow up this house will be
mine
.’