Those Pricey Thakur Girls (29 page)

‘Maneater,’ says Dadi-sa hoarsely, her kohled eyes snapping in her hawk-like face. ‘He’s a fool. Who is taller – you or him?’

‘He’s the tallest, Dadi-sa,’ Dylan replies, hoping this will make the old ladies more favourably disposed to the luckless Jason. ‘Six feet four.’

‘And therefore the stupidest,’ Dadi-sa pronounces. ‘The tallest boys are
always
the stupidest – the blood doesn’t reach their brains, you know.’

‘Only their balls,’ Philomina Bai agrees.

Dylan doesn’t quite know what to say to this.

The two old ladies regard him beady dissatisfaction.

‘What?’ he says uneasily.

‘Where’s
your
girl?’ Philomina Bai barks. ‘That pretty newsreader? Or was that just some story your mother made up?’

‘I don’t have any girl,’ Dylan replies shortly.

‘Just
many
many girls?’ Dadi-sa sniffs. ‘It’s your Christian upbringing, I suppose. You’ve grown up surrounded by loose-charactered Anglo-Indians.’

‘We
aren’t
Anglo-Indians!’ Philomina Bai retorts, grossly insulted. ‘We’re very high caste Brahmins –’

‘Nothing wrong with Anglo-Indians,’ Dylan puts in fair-mindedly.

‘We’re
Brahmins
,’ Philomina Bai continues hotly, taking no notice of this mild interjection, ‘who were ex-communicated 200 years ago for eating fish! And
you
shouldn’t talk. I watch Hindi movies – I know Rajputs are always driving about in jeeps looking for village girls to rape.’

Dylan is rendered speechless. But Dadi-sa has no such problem.

‘And have you seen
Julie
?’ she asks sweetly. ‘Waise, what a coincidence ki baat – Julie sounds just like Juliet, na?’

Dylan, thoroughly alarmed at the direction this conversation is taking, is relieved to see that the Colonel from Coorg has finally located his speech. Leaving the sparring matriarchs behind, he strides over to the mics and taps on one for silence. Philomina Bai and Dadi-sa have no choice but to lower the fingers they’re waggling under each other’s noses and subside.

‘Good evening, everybody,’ Dylan says, his deep voice lazily pleasant. ‘Thank you so much for coming, bearing gifts and looking so glamorous for our parents’ thirtieth anniversary celebrations. This is a big day for the Lobo-Shekhawats and we’re delighted to share it with you…’

Why does he have to sound so
nice
? Dabbu, cowering behind her parents, thinks despairingly. And look so handsome? I don’t remember him being
so
handsome. It isn’t fair.

She is standing with Anjini, who has nobly restrained her lovely hair into a tight bun and swathed herself in a large brown dupatta so Dabbu can ‘shine’. But maybe I should just open my hair and lose the dupatta, she thinks, looking at her little sister with satisfaction, because she’s shining
anyway.

Shining and pining is how Dabbu would put it. The situation, she thinks, drinking in the sight of Dylan Singh Shekhawat in his dark suit, cream shirt and striped tie, is as bad as ever. Thank god the Butt is hidden beneath the jacket. The sight of it encased in those fitted dark trousers might have made her weep. His hair is longer, curling crisply at the edge of his collar. It makes his jaw look stronger somehow. And she doesn’t even want to get into the extremely sexy way in which his lips are almost grazing the mic. She watches as the crowd heckles him good-naturedly, demanding he sing, and when he demurs, asking when he’s getting married and giving Juliet Bai grandchildren.

‘Keep it clean, people,’ Dylan rebukes the hecklers mock-sternly. ‘Now, Romeo and Juliet had a nurse as their go-between, but Rajput and Juliet had someone brawnier. I’d like to invite Colonel Rammiah from Coorg, who acted as coach, catalyst and matchmaker in
l’affaire
Lobo-Shekhawat, to give us a blow-by-blow account of their infamous elopement. Sir, the floor is yours!’

He hands the mic to the Colonel from Coorg and steps back into the crowd. The Colonel smiles around shortsightedly, opens a thick sheaf of papers and begins to read.

Well, that wasn’t so bad, Dabbu thinks shakily. I survived him talking on the mic and everything. But when is he going to come up and talk to
me
? Oh my god, supposing he doesn’t come up to me
at all
? Supposing he
ignores me completely
? Why didn’t I think of that before –
that’s
what he’s going to do! I am going to be completely and absolutely
humiliated
! Why did I even come to this stupid party?

Her head starts to spin, she takes a staggering step backward and a hand comes up to steady her.

‘Do take this chair, dear,’ a smooth voice entreats. ‘You look a little faint, like.’

Dabbu turns around. An older gentleman with silver hair and a striking resemblance to Humphrey Bogart is smiling at her gently. There is an unlit cigar between his fingers. He is wearing a dark coat, a rakish paisley silk scarf and exuding expensive aftershave and an indefinable aura of romance. Dabbu blinks, feeling hypnotized.

He puts his hands on her shoulders. ‘Sit,’ he says in a caressing voice.

Dabbu sits.

On the dance floor, the Colonel’s speech is going well. Under cover of the laughs he is getting, Dylan whispers to his brother, ‘What have you done with the church contingent? Father Charlie and Father Vaz? Are they okay?’

‘I left them talking to that hot sister of your newsreader’s,’ Ethan replies. ‘She’s gushing on and on at them about her favourite book – something called
The Thornbirds.
There are priests in it, apparently. They seemed pretty happy.’

Dylan goes very still. He knows that Ethan, though his expression is noncommittal
,
is waiting for him to ask if Debjani is here too. But he can’t. The words won’t come out of his mouth. So he just stands there, head slightly averted, pretending to hang onto the Colonel’s every word like he hasn’t heard the story of how Saahas met Juliet a hundred times before. He raises his glass of red wine when everybody does, drinks when everybody does and then claps as his father gets to his feet to reply to the toast.

The Brigadier has spent a lot of time writing his speech and delivers it straight from the heart, but Dylan barely hears a word – he is too busy
not
wondering where Debjani is. With the result that by the time the speech ends, he is extremely annoyed with her.

Presently, the cake is wheeled out. The plump pigeonesque girlfriend has been vanquished, Philomina Bai and Dadi-sa are flanking Jason and have firm possession of the matchbox. They light the thirty candles, beaming benignly at the ‘young’ couple, and as the Brig stands to one side, his nose suspiciously red, Juliet Bai blows them out with tears in her eyes and a very full heart.

‘Mujhe Jesu, look you after my boys,’ she prays fervently. ‘Keep Saahas healthy, cure Ethan’s acne, give Jason brains and make my Dylan happy again.’

There are cheers and clapping and the bearers step forward with beautifully packed plum cake slices for everybody. Dylan shoves his untasted into his coat pocket.

‘Is she also here?’ he asks casually.

Ethan, chewing steadily, is sensitive enough not to ask
who
. Instead, he says, with a slight tilt of his head, ‘Yeah, there, look.’

Dylan looks. Through the gay throng of people cheering and clapping around the dance floor, beyond the huddle of mandatory ayahs clutching the mandatory wailing babies, past the glowing candles and fern fronds and the delicately fragrant champas. And espies Debjani Thakur, lover of losers, at the other end of the lawn, standing with her side profile turned charmingly towards him, smiling up at that old goat Donny Noronha, who is holding one of her slim hands between his two sweaty palms and talking up an oily storm.

She is wearing a diaphanous leaf green and silver sari, and her hair, pinned back on one side with a single white rose, is like a dusky cloud about her shoulders. As she raises her wine glass, sips the deep red liquid and flashes that entrancing street-urchin grin, Dylan finds that his belly has rediscovered its talent for ballet. It raises itself up, flips over gracefully and then swoons over backward in an attitude of abject surrender.

‘Yeah, it’s her all right,’ he says indifferently. ‘Prise her away from Donny soon, will you? He looks like he’s about to ejaculate in his pants.’

Ethan snorts. ‘Prise her away yourself,’ he says, reaching for a chilled beer. ‘Are you man or mouse?’

Dylan plucks the beer from his grasp. ‘No drinking till you’re twenty-five,’ he says smartly. ‘Here, have a Campa.’

Presently, he sips the beer he has confiscated and moodily watches Debjani across the garden. Donny Noronha and she are now sitting side by side. They look amazingly intimate. The white rose drops from its place behind her ear and lands on the grassy ground. Donny pounces to retrieve it – like a famished mongrel after a dead rat, thinks Dylan irately. Rising, red-faced from the effort, he smiles and seems to be offering to pin it back for her.

Dylan swears and gets to his feet. He strides halfway across the garden, then checks himself abruptly, executes a right turn and approaches a circle of girls chattering brightly, sipping from their glasses of Rasna orange and beer.

‘Ladies.’ He smiles, looking the prettiest one straight in the eye. ‘It’s time to start dancing!’

And just like that, the party explodes onto the dance floor. The band kicks off with the latest chart-topper, UB 40’s ‘Red Red Wine’
.
Dylan’s partner is light on her feet and channelling the latest Madonna moves and soon all eyes are on her smoothly undulating, shoulder-padded black jumpsuit.

Anjini takes one look at her, drops her muddy brown dupatta, shakes out her hair and smiles encouragingly at a gangly young man hovering around the next table. He is at her side in an instant. Before heading off to the dance floor, she pokes Debjani in the ribs.

‘Stop
hunching
! Smile! And for heaven’s sake,
dance
!’

It’s all very well to say, Debjani thinks crossly, but somebody has to ask me!

‘My sister isn’t at all a snob,’ Anjini leans over and assures a handsome young man sipping a drink at the edge of the dance floor. ‘She likes people who aren’t overawed by how famous she is. And she loves this song!’

And soon Debjani is on the floor too, swinging somewhat unwillingly to ‘Get outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’, inches away from the girl in the clingy black jumpsuit.

It seems to Debjani that Dylan goes off the floor the moment she steps onto it. He escorts Jumpsuit back to her gaggle of friends and then goes over to Mrs Mamta to say hello even as Dabbu watches, outraged. They talk cozily for what seems like ages, until the Brigadier breaks it up by asking Mrs Mamta to dance. Left all to himself, Dylan loses no time in finding another partner and leading her to the dance floor.

‘Bastard,’ Debjani mutters under her breath as she sees them approach.

‘Sorry?’ says her partner.

‘I’m hot.’ She fans herself. ‘I’d like to sit down now.’

And she exits the floor, her pallu practically trailing across Dylan’s chest as she walks past him with her nose in the air.

And so it continues. Juliet Bai, closely observing this immature class seven type behaviour, starts to feel extremely frustrated. Until finally the band strikes up Phil Collins’ plaintive ‘Groovy Kind of Love’ and Dylan moves away from the bunch of cousins he has been chatting with at the bar and walks across the garden towards the Thakur sisters.

About time, Debjani thinks crossly as her heart leaps into her mouth, hits the back of her teeth and then sinks down to her chest to pulsate alarmingly between her ribs. I have sat through a never-ending church service that was
way
longer than anything we Hindus can ever be accused of, and Anji didi’s tied the naada of the petticoat so tightly it’s about to saw my body into two, and corns are burgeoning between my toes from these horrible too-small shoes, and my cheeks are aching from smiling at people I don’t know, and my mole has been mauled by about thirty strangers – but now all of that shouldn’t matter, should it, because Dylan Singh Shekhawat has finally deigned to saunter over and talk to me. Well, I’m
not
going to dance with him. Pompous little shit. I’ll say no. I won’t go. I’ll pretend I twisted my ank –

‘Shall we?’ Dylan smiles at Anjini.

Anjini gives an appreciative, throaty giggle. Dylan, who seems to have eyes for no one but her, leads her gracefully to the dance floor.

‘I assume you want to know the weather report?’ she asks him as they begin to dance. ‘It’s stormy and getting stormier.’

He raises his brows. ‘Oh, no,’ he says blandly. ‘It’s nothing like that. Just…’ He grins. ‘Age before beauty.’

‘Horrible boy,’ she says without rancour. ‘Don’t bullshit me.’

‘Well, I did want to ask her to dance, but she looked so snooty I thought, screw it.’

‘You mean you chickened out,’ Anjini says.

Dylan’s eyes kindle with sudden rage. ‘This isn’t funny.’

‘No?’ Anjini shakes with suppressed mirth. ‘Okay.’

They dance the rest of the song in silence and when it’s over, he escorts her back to her table. Debjani is sitting there, deep in conversation with Donny Noronha.

‘I hope you’re enjoying the party?’

His voice is distinctly surly. Debjani responds by looking left and right ostentatiously, as if to be sure he is indeed speaking to her. Her hair swirls beautifully with every move, the curls thick and glossy.

Surly and Curly. Anji stifles a smile. So
cute.

‘Me?’ Debjani asks, her eyes wide. ‘Are you actually speaking to
me
?’

Dylan’s lips tighten. ‘Yes,’ he says tersely.

Debjani smiles. ‘Yes, I’m quite enjoying myself. It’s a very nice party.’

‘Yes, lovely party,’ chimes in Donny Noronha suavely. He is sitting next to Debjani, a proprietorial arm around the back of her chair. ‘Er… shouldn’t you circulate, like? You’re the host, after all.’

Dylan just glares at him. Donny Noronha smiles back blandly and points at somebody behind Dylan with one negligent hand.