Those Pricey Thakur Girls (9 page)

She shoots him a nasty look, but before she can say anything, Dylan interjects hastily.

‘So how’s the love of Jason’s life?’

Juliet Bai wrinkles up her nose. The pressure with which she is massaging Dylan’s temples grows. ‘Wretched girl! Pudding face! Such round-round shoulders she has, like a simpering dumpling. And so shameless! Cheh! He brought her home, introduced her, your dadda and I said hello – what else to do? Then he took her to his bedroom, as cool as you please, and they were locked in there for hours. Just imagine, with your dadda and me at home! Such shamelessness! I didn’t say anything – you know how much that Jason can shout – but the next day, when he went off to college, I quietly took my screwdriver and unscrewed the bolt from the door in his room. Next day, he came home with madam and headed straight for his room. I let them go, they shut the door and then, such a yell, such
cursing
, like you’ve never heard! Jason came jumping out, his face black with anger, mujhe Jesu, what a tantrum! You have no right, he shouted. I told him, I’ve got a right –
and
a left – and I’ll give you both if you don’t stop treating my home like some cheap hotel.’

‘Mamma,’ Dylan says mildly, ‘you always dramatize things. They were probably just listening to music. Jason’s too much of a funk to make a move.’

Juliet Bai snorts, yanking so hard at his hair that he groans in protest. ‘Which is a good thing! Don’t talk like it is very great to have the guts to
make a
move.
Half Jason’s problem is that he’s trying to be as
gutsy
as you.’

‘Yeah, that’s right, blame me for everything, you always do,’ Dylan says resignedly. ‘What about Ethan here? Why hasn’t he given you any grandchildren yet?’’

‘
He
only lives for Inter-school Western Music Competitions,’ Juliet Bai says dismissively. ‘No conversation, no communication. I feed him and wash his clothes and pray for him. Bas.’

She glances at her youngest son as she says this, but he’s busy fine-tuning his guitar, holding it close to his ear.

‘And you and Dadda?’ Dylan asks next. ‘Is everything good between Bobby and Bobby?’

She gives him a little push. ‘Dadda and I are fine
,
we walk together in the park every morning. He even comes with me for morning Mass sometimes. Why you asking so many questions, sonna?’

Dylan shrugs, closes his eyes. ‘Just. I miss you guys in Bombay sometimes. That’s all.’

My eldest, Juliet Bai thinks, brimming over with sudden affection for the large male lounging in her lap. My malgado. Such a nice boy. So responsible. When he was small, he used to go on his cycle and do all my vegetable shopping for me. Always got back the exact change. And he never wasted any food, ate everything on his plate, and if the others wasted, he forced himself to eat their left overs too. I only had to look at him and say, It’s
wasting
, sonna, and he would eat it. Such a good boy – not like these rascals, Jason and Ethan. But sometimes he takes his sense of responsibility too far.

‘Stay out of trouble, sonna,’ she tells him. ‘Why must you only take the government to task? Rest of the journalists have no duty or what?’

Dylan doesn’t reply. Below her fingers, she can feel his temples tense.

‘So many positive things are happening in India,’ she continues. ‘Write about that. We’ve got such a handsome new PM – he’s going to dismantle the Licence Raj, do science and technology initiatives, take us into the twenty-first century!’

‘Mamma, the twenty-first century is a
time
, not a place,’ Dylan points out, his eyes still closed. ‘We don’t need a PM to take us there. We’re gonna get there anyway.’

‘You know what he means,’ she says crossly. ‘You’ve come here to poke around in Tirathpuri and do more stories on the Sikh massacre, haven’t you? Tell the truth.’

‘No,’ Dylan says steadily. ‘The Special Investigation Commission has been doing all that. I’m just here to get people’s reactions to the findings of the SIC.’

‘My friend Gurvinder Singh was pretty happy about the Sikh massacre,’ the incorrigible Ethan volunteers. ‘His mother made him cut off all his hair. All the chicks think he’s hot now.’

‘Ethan, don’t talk about stuff you know nothing about,’ Dylan says curtly.

Ethan smirks and strums his guitar. Dylan glowers.

‘There’s chicken biryani with raita for dinner,’ Juliet Bai says quickly.

‘Awesome.’ Dylan relaxes, sinking back into her lap. ‘I hope the chicken has at least ten legs, coz I’m gonna eat seven.’

‘Chickens should get married to centipedes,’ Ethan pipes up. ‘Then there would be legs enough for all of us.’

‘Dylan should get married,’ says Juliet Bai. ‘Then he won’t be homesick.’

‘No,’ Dylan says wryly. ‘Then I’ll just be
sick
.’

‘No nice girls in the
India
Post
office or what?’

‘No, Mamma,’ Dylan tells her solemnly. ‘No nice girls in the
India Post
office. Only bad-bad girls. In tight-tight clothes with loose-loose morals who will corrupt me and give me –’

‘
AID.
’ Juliet Bai nods knowingly.

‘I was going to say a bad reputation, actually,’ Dylan says, startled.

Juliet Bai takes no notice of him. ‘They told us all about AID in school, so we could counsel the boys. It’s a terrible sickness. The Devil’s own disease, they say. See how sick and miserable that Rock Hudson is looking – all because of AID only.’

‘He… just… wanted… to… get...
laid
,’ Ethan hums softly to himself, fingering his strings. ‘But he ended up with
AID
. Oh, it’s just so
sayd…
and now he’s cold and…’

‘Dead,’ says the Brigadier, walking into the room, looking pale. ‘Gulab Thakur just told me. Poor Balkishen is no more.’

‘No more!’ Juliet Bai gasps, her hands clutching her breast. ‘How? Was he that ill, Bobby?’

The Brigadier pulls at his moustache. ‘He missed three card sessions in the last year. Obviously he was gravely unwell.’

So now there is a permanent vacancy in the Judge’s kot-piece group, Dylan muses. Debjani Thakur is missing a partner.

There is silence. Ethan has put down his guitar.

The Brigadier squares his shoulders. ‘I have to go over to Balkishen’s,’ he says abruptly. ‘Dylan, you drive me.’

He turns and leaves the room.

Dylan rises to his elbows and looks around, a half-comical ‘why me?’ expression on his face. Ethan cackles.

‘This is all Mamma’s doing,’ he says virtuously, starting to strum his guitar again. ‘She has being praying to the Lord for ages to break up Dadda’s kot-piece gang. She wants him all to herself to coochie-coo with. And look what miracles her prayers have wrought! First, Laxmi uncle and his younger brother practically came to blows. And now Balkishen Bau has fallen dead!
What
, Mamma,’ he sing-songs, shaking one bony finger at her reprovingly, ‘this is
not
good what you are doing!’

‘Horrible boy,’ his mother replies uneasily. ‘Go do your homework.’

The Brigadier reappears, wearing a white kurta-pyjama. ‘Come, Dylan,’ he says. ‘Will you come, Bobby?’

She shakes her head. ‘But I’ll send food, Bobby. They won’t be in any state to cook just now. There’s the chicken biryani – I’ll pack it. Dylan, get off my lap and go get the car keys.’

‘Well, at least you’re going where the chicken biryani’s going, Dyl,’ Ethan says as Dylan gets to his feet with a small groan. ‘Maybe you’ll score a couple of mouthfuls.
I
get to eat bread-butter and Lobster.’

‘Pour a bucket of water into the cooler,’ his mother says, putting her head into the room. ‘And then go and study – all my friends say that since I left school you’ve turned into a duffer.’

‘Isn’t it rather morbid of them to be playing cards when their friend’s ashes have barely cooled?’ Dylan asks his mother the next day, as she propels him towards the car where his father is already sitting and waiting. ‘Or at the very least, slightly indecent?’

‘It’s been two days,’ she tells him. ‘Trust me, for them that’s a
lot.
Thank you for filling in like this, sonna.’

‘It’s the least I can do,’ Dylan returns piously. ‘Poor Dadda.’

This earns him a smacking kiss on the cheek, and now here he is, sitting in the deceased’s chair, wondering what to call trumps.

‘Spades,’ he announces finally.

Beside him the Judge gives a smug little grunt. The Brigadier chuckles. Dylan looks across the table to see how his partner has taken his call. But Debjani is hiding behind her fan of cards. All he can see of her are slim fingers and the silver ladybird ring.

Fantastic, thinks Dylan. At this rate, by the end of the month, I might just find out what her sun sign is.

‘Um… that’s a really unusual ring you’re wearing,’ he ventures.

‘Thank you,’ the Judge grunts. ‘It’s my wedding ring. Entirely ordinary, really.’

Frustrated, Dylan wonders if Debjani has even registered that there has been a change in players. She seems entirely oblivious to his existence.

But he needn’t worry. Dabbu
has
noticed that D for Dylan is back. She could tell you what he is wearing with her eyes shut – a casually snug grey T-shirt that hints at a lean, muscled body and jeans with some rather tantalizingly faded bits. She knows he has a strong jaw and an easy pleasing manner and laughing dark eyes that seem to be seeking hers. She hasn’t forgotten how flirty he is. And how she got goosebumps when he said her name. Her mother told her that Juliet Bai is always bemoaning the fact that her eldest son has the morals of a tomcat. And he dared call
her
a cat! He’s just out to make a summer conquest, she thinks dramatically, something to vary the Bombay flavour. Well, I refuse to make a fool of myself over him. I refuse to make a fool of myself over
any
guy.

And so she drags her mind determinedly back to her woes – the sniggers she’s been hearing in the AIR corridors, the pitying looks she’s been attracting from her neighbours on Hailey Road ever since that wretched article appeared. How mortifying it is to know her father is right, that the good opinion of others matters a great deal to her. Will DD even call her to read again this Friday? How easy it would be for them to replace her, just as easily as her father has replaced Balkishen Bau with the Brigadier’s son.

And then abruptly, and to her surprise, she realizes just how much she is missing the big brown
hmmm hmmming
presence of Balkishen Bau across the table. Balkishen Bau would never have said ‘spades’ like Dylan has just done. He was the only one among the four players who insisted on calling the four houses by their Hindi names: hukum, paan, eent and chidi. He did it mostly to irritate the other old men, Debjani always felt, because he thought they were too anglicized. Sometimes he even pretended he didn’t understand the English terms. And always, after he called trumps, he would wink roguishly at Dabbu, to indicate that the two of them were going to blow the others away. And he loved the way she read the news. He said she was Thee Best. And look at her, so fickle, already forgotten him, sitting here hyper-aware of the Brigadier’s cute son, even
glad
that he’s taken Balkishen Bau’s place. A guilty lump starts to form in her throat.

With the result that when Dylan finally manages to catch her eye, he finds them suspiciously red-rimmed. A little later, he notices that her shoulders are shaking. And when his hand happens to touch the card she has just discarded it is damp, he is sure of it. Debjani Thakur is weeping behind her cards.

He slips a hand into his jeans, extracts a large blue checked handkerchief and, on the pretext of reaching for the devilled Maggi noodles, drops it gently into her lap.

Debbie stares down at the folded cotton square in disbelief. Is this harami tomcat behaviour, she wonders, confused, or just plain niceness? Whichever it is, she can’t afford to be picky. She picks up the blue handkerchief and blows into it vigorously.

Hearing the sound of snot being evicted so energetically, Dylan smiles, feeling absurdly happy.

At eight o’clock, he carries the table into the drawing room and sets it down. Debjani lingers, watching him, obviously feeling some sort of explanation is due.

‘He would have said hukum,’ she offers finally. ‘Not spades.’

‘Sorry?’ Dylan asks.

‘And he would have scraped a card across his warts. And winked at me. He was kind and sweet and I’m sorry I said that his balgam rattled and that he was
ugly
!’

Dylan, recalling the homely-looking old gent he had seen lying in state at the electric crematorium yesterday, finally makes the connection. ‘You mean Balkishen Bau.’

At the sound of his name, her eyes start to well up again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dylan says hastily. ‘Er, I can say hukum too, would you like that?’

She smiles at that, a wonky, watery smile. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says. ‘I’m not a baby.’

Dylan feels his belly do its now familiar head-over-heels ballerina flip. It is definitely time to go home.