Those Pricey Thakur Girls (24 page)

‘Where’s Debjani?’ Juliet Bai asks.

‘Just coming,’ Mrs Mamta says serenely, as if she is completely unaware of the panicked trampling of the pudina plants in the back garden. ‘Eshwari’s gone to get her.’

If she comes in with a tea tray, Dylan thinks, looking down at his meticulously polished shoes, I’ll stab myself in the head with Ethan’s Swiss Army knife and end the pain. This whole situation is too medieval for words.

But it is Eshwari who brings in the tea. Debjani wanders in a little later, holding Samar’s hand and looking decidedly pale.

‘Debjani!’ ejaculates the Brigadier, a little too loudly and heartily, revealing his ‘first time’ status for all to see and pity. ‘Come, beta, sit with Dylan. Move from there, you duffers.’

‘Hello, uncle.’ Debjani flashes a ghost of her street-urchin grin and folds up obediently next to her suitor.

An odd silence follows. Ethan fiddles with his Swiss Army knife and clears his throat meaningfully, looking at Eshwari. She gives a start. ‘Hi there,’ she grins. His entire face turns as pink as the tips of his pimples.

‘Do you go to Modern also, beta?’ Mrs Mamta asks kindly.

Ethan shakes his head gloomily. ‘St Columba’s. It’s a convent school. No girls.’

Meanwhile Samar looks dreamily out of the window and Binni smiles politely around the room, thinking how hard-faced the half-Isayee fellow is. His hands are huge, she frets. And we know what
that
means. Kha jaayega hamari Dabbu ko. He’ll eat her up in the bedroom only.

And then everybody starts to talk at once. Anjini asks Dylan what he makes of the Shah Bano case. The Judge immediately answers for him. Ethan asks Samar Vir how old he is. Vickyji asks Jason how tall he is. Anant tells Juliet Bai he considers Goa a lovely holiday spot. She replies that she isn’t from Goa but from Mangalore. The Brigadier smiles foolishly at Mrs Mamta and tells her how lovely she is looking. And then Juliet Bai exclaims rapturously, ‘What a lovely beauty spot, ba!’

Debjani stiffens at once, but it is Anjini who answers with a sparkling laugh:

‘Isn’t it? When it first appeared, she was six, you know, aunty. We thought she’d drawn it on, because she was a big fan of Dabbu – Randhir Kapoor, you know – and some of his heroines had a mole just like that!’

Debjani rolls her eyes. Dylan’s light up with amusement.

‘It’s lovely,’ Juliet Bai says.

‘That reminds me of a family joke,’ the Judge says affably, as he passes around the Monaco biscuits. ‘When I went on a foreign trip to Malaysia, my wife insisted we get passports made for the whole family – in case they all decided to accompany me on the trip, you know. Well, the trip didn’t materialize, but we did get a new family surname in the bargain – the Molons. Tell them, Debjani.’

He nods encouragingly at his fourth daughter, his eyes full of affectionate pride.

Debjani is mortified. What is the need for BJ to bring up Malaysia like it’s something great? She knows the Brigadier has been on several foreign postings – probably the boys have travelled abroad too – besides, the Molon joke is not very funny at all.

‘Tell no, Debjani!’ Juliet Bai entreats her.

‘Well…’ Debjani begins reluctantly. ‘Passports have this “distinguishing marks” column, you must be knowing that, of course. And we noticed that the officials had put mole-on-lip, mole-on-chin, mole-on-nose, mole-on-cheek for all of us. So Eshwari, who was ten at the time, said it was like we were a Chinese family. The Molons. She was Molonneck, the other girls were Molonnose and Moloneye, BJ and Ma were Moloncheek and I, of course,’ she concludes, red-faced, ‘was Molonchin.’

‘Haha!’ The Judge beams around the room. Everyone laughs politely.

Kill me somebody, Debjani thinks, looking down at her hands.

‘I would be a Ziton,’ Ethan pipes up after a pause. ‘But my last name would keep changing – one day Zitonnose, one day Zitoncheek, one day Zitonnose
and
cheek. And Dyl would be a Scaron. Scaronchest, you know…’

‘Ethan, shut up,’ Dylan growls as Eshwari instantly goes
oooh
and throws him a naughtily speculative glance. He then realizes that these are the first words he has spoken so far. Way to go, he thinks resignedly and reaches for some Dundee cake.

Ethan and Eshwari reach for the last piece of baked-beans-on-Monaco together. ‘Same pinch,’ he grins.

‘You take it,’ she says.

‘No, I meant same pinch because we’re both the youngest. Youngest are coolest, don’t you agree?’

‘What rubbish!’ Anji instantly pretends to look offended. ‘Eldest is best, no, Dylan?’

Dylan, who is chewing on cake, can only nod.

‘But in the Bible, youngest is best,’ says the irrepressible Ethan, thrilled to be talking to the hottest woman in the room. ‘David was the youngest of his brothers. So was Joseph. So was Jacob.’

But Anji waves away Joseph and Jacob. ‘In the Ramayana, Ram is eldest and best.’

‘And he inherited the whole kingdom,’ Samar speaks up suddenly, glaring at the twins from within the safety of his father’s arms. ‘He didn’t give anybody one-sixth hissa! And if you’re the eldest of the eldest of the eldest, that makes you even more special, right?’

Anji and Anant look at Samar, horrified. Binni’s face is like thunder. The twins, sensing a storm, squirm uneasily. Then the Brigadier laughs. ‘Of course. Being eldest is a huge responsibility. Right, Dyl?’

Dylan nods. He turns to Samar and says seriously, ‘The eldest has to be
first
in all the responsibilities and
last
in all the fun stuff.’

Just like me, Anjini thinks sentimentally. I’m always having to do that. You know, I really
like
this Dylan Singh Shekhawat!

Juliet Bai smiles around the room.

‘It’s our thirtieth wedding anniversary this year,’ she says brightly. ‘How many years have you and LN been married, Mamta?’

‘Thirty-three,’ says Mrs Mamta.

‘Thirty-four,’ says the Judge at the same time.

They get into a little argument. Juliet Bai keeps going.

‘In our community, we usually have a big celebration on the twenty-fifth anniversary. But Saahas had a surgery that year, so we couldn’t celebrate. The boys are planning a big thirtieth for us now, I believe.’

The boys look shifty. Eyeing them, Dabbu doubts that they’ve planned anything at all yet.

‘It has always been my fondest hope,’ Juliet Bai confides, now in full form, ‘that our grandchildren walk down the aisle in front of us scattering flowers at our thirtieth anniversary Mass.’ Her eyes twinkle. ‘There won’t be enough time for
that
to be arranged, unfortunately! Not even if we marry you both off today!’

Debjani closes her eyes, feeling like a prize cow. This is the stuff of nightmares. She wonders if the nice Mrs Shekhawat is next going to ask if her periods are regular.

But Juliet Bai is pursuing another chain of thought.

‘How well matched these two are,’ she muses, half closing her eyes and looking at the hapless couple upon the couch with artistic pleasure. ‘Dylan, of course, is tall and sinewy and muscular – his veins actually
show
, you know, that’s a sign of extreme fitness.’ She starts pointing out fine details the Thakurs might have missed. ‘Notice his strongly corded neck, leading up to the jaw of a cowboy, to the mouth of an angel, and to eyes that –’

‘Mamma, this isn’t an art appreciation class,’ Dylan’s angelic mouth mutters through gritted teeth.

Juliet Bai starts. ‘Sorry,’ she says apologetically. ‘And Dabbu is so pretty too! That hair, and those long, curling lashes! They always look so pretty when girls drop or raise them. So innocent! Some people say it’s a flirtatious habit, but I don’t know. My mother always said, never trust a person who doesn’t blink. Who just
stares
and
stares
. Like a snake, you know?’

‘Bobby, now you’ve set everybody blinking,’ the Brigadier chuckles. And everybody does blink for a while. Except Debjani, for whom these words have touched a forgotten chord. She frowns, puzzled. She has heard this particular theory before. But where?

While she is puzzling over this, she realizes that the moment she has been dreading has arrived. Dylan is addressing her directly.

‘Debjani,’ he says formally, and his voice is as toe-tinglingly deep and warm as she remembers, not at all the voice of a wife-beater or a miser-drunkard. ‘Are you sure you’re okay with the –’

And that’s when it clicks.

My grandmother always said, never trust a person who doesn’t blink.

Debjani gasps.

‘You!’

He raises an eyebrow, amused.

‘Uh, yes, me. I’m sorry, were you expecting somebody else?’

Everybody laughs, like this is a bit of a good joke. The Brigadier and Mrs Shekhawat turn away and start speaking to the elder girls, looking more relaxed.

But Debjani has turned pale. She says, her voice unsteady, ‘It was you – you wrote that article, you’re Roving Eye!’

Dylan frowns. ‘Yes, but –’

‘Not that article again,’ the Judge mutters. ‘I thought we had moved on from that.’

‘Oh my god.’ Debjani shakes her head. ‘I’m so
stupid…
Of course it was you!’

Mrs Mamta leans forward. ‘Dabbu, relax, all that is behind you now, you stress too much about that arti –’

‘No, Ma, BJ. You guys don’t understand. He
wrote
it.’ She whirls to look at Dylan. ‘Didn’t you?’

His dark eyes look apprehensive. ‘Uh, you want to go into this now?’ he asks. ‘I mean, here? Can’t we do this later?’

‘
Later?
When? After we’re engaged?’

‘Dabbu.’ The Judge’s voice is perplexed. ‘There must be some confusion. And if he wrote it before he met you, what difference does it make?’

‘But he deliberately
lied…
’ Her voice has risen sharply. She stops, trying to calm herself. ‘He misled me.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Dylan admits swiftly. ‘But then I explained…’ He frowns. ‘Didn’t you check your mailbox?’

She stares at him, stunned. ‘You think
that
makes up for it?’

Dylan goes rather white about the mouth.

‘Well, yes,’ he says, his deep voice growing perceptibly cooler. He is speaking now in the dangerously neutral tone that everybody in the
India Post
office recognizes and does their damnedest to avoid. ‘But obviously you don’t agree.’

The room full of people suddenly goes very quiet. Juliet Bai, who was talking to Anjini and Binni, stops and looks around. The Brigadier puts down his quarter plate of baked-beans-on-Monaco and asks uneasily, ‘What’s all this?’

‘It’s our first time,’ adds his wife.

‘Leave it, Dadda,’ Dylan says testily. ‘It’s nothing.’

‘Then why is Debjani asking if you have a roving eye, sir?’ demands his father. ‘Explain!’

‘Uncle, it’s just a column in the
India Post
,’ Eshwari hurries to explain. ‘Nothing cheap.’

‘Well, that’s quite a good joke, then!’ the Judge ploughs ahead valiantly. ‘And by the way, I told Dabbu the critique there was only fair. On
all
counts. So, do you write this column on a regular basis?’

‘No, sir,’ Dylan replies. ‘It’s my boss’s column. But he was tied up that day so he told me to write it, which is irregular but not illegal, because it isn’t his own byline but that of a created entity called Roving Eye.’ He shoots an uneasy glance at Debjani.

But Debjani has turned to ice. Her brain has started reciting a well-remembered litany.
Wide-eyed. Breathless. Naïvely overwhelmed
.

She says, her voice high and thready, ‘I don’t want to do this any more.’

‘I think you two should talk alone,’ Mrs Mamta Thakur says hastily.

‘Yes, good suggestion, Mamta.’ Juliet Bai nods in relief.

‘I don’t want to talk to him!’ Debjani bursts out.

There is a stunned silence in the room. Nobody quite knows what to say, the break with all known social etiquette is so complete. The Judge makes a heroic effort.

‘Now, Debjani, don’t D for dither, hehe…’

‘Bhaisaab,’ Mrs Mamta cuts in, touching the Brigadier gently on the elbow. ‘Come, let us step outside for a bit.’

Everybody backs out of the room, the children reluctantly leaving last. Debjani’s mother shuts the door on the two of them, her face impassive.

‘I assume this is your warped notion of revenge?’ Dylan says quietly.

Debjani stares at him in disbelief. ‘You’re calling
me
warped?’

‘Well, you’ve got your money’s worth, that’s for sure,’ Dylan continues in the same, oddly quiet voice. ‘You’ve managed to insult me thoroughly, turning me down in front of both our families – my mother, my little brothers. Rather a personal revenge for what was, at best, a purely professional attack.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Debjani replies, plunging her fingers into her hair and massaging her throbbing head. ‘All I know is that you lied to me. Clearly we know
nothing
about each other.’

‘I thought I knew you,’ he says heavily.

Debjani turns towards him involuntarily, but his eyes stop her. They are suddenly as blind and impersonal as TV static.

‘But obviously that
you
was some idealized bullshit I made up inside my own head. I should have realized that someone who doesn’t bat an eyelid when reading about the deaths of thousands of human beings but cries when a pie dog dies must necessarily be petty and small-minded.’

‘I
do
care about people!’ Debjani replies, stung. ‘And animals can’t speak up for themselves. And
what
did you just call me?’

‘You heard.’

Debjani feels sick. Like there is a stone in her stomach. Her cheeks are hot, her throat is tight and dry. But he’s the one in the wrong, she thinks confusedly. So why does it feel like I’m in the dock?

Dylan laughs. ‘I just realized something.’

‘
What?
’

‘I couldn’t quite put a finger on it till now. But I finally get it. Why you like dressing up and sitting inside a box and talking at people who can’t talk back at you.’