‘Uptown Funk’ plays uncontested on the speakers for a while.
Stylin, wilin’ living it up in the city,
Got chucks on, with Saint Laurant,
Gotta kiss myself, I’m so pretty!
I’m too hot (hot damn!)
Call the police and a fireman
I’m too hot (hot damn!)
As the Uber turns on to Aurangzeb Road, Kashi picks up his phone and dials a number.
‘Hey. We’re outside. Come.’
Walli and Kalra wink at each other.
‘Hey.’
‘We’re outside.’
And then both together, moaning. ‘Come!’
They collapse into waves of laughter, then sober up quickly as Bambi emerges from the massive gates, wearing a tight little body-con black dress, her soft brown hair a mass of loose, floating curls.
‘She got even hotter,’ Kalra says, awed, peering out of the window. ‘I didn’t think that was possible. Dogs, you said she’s single and not too picky, right?’
Quickly, he looks at Walli. ‘There’s not enough space, fucker, get in the front seat.’
Walli protests, but Kalra practically shoves him out, then smiles up at Bambi.
‘Hey, Todi! Get in here!’
Bambi smiles. ‘It’s … Kalra isn’t it?’
‘Madam, jaldi karo, please,’ the Uber guy says in a surly voice.
Bambi gets in and the ride resumes.
Wedged in between Kashi and the door, Bambi reaches out to shake hands with both Kalra and Walli. They exchange artificially effusive greetings and then a slightly constrained silence descends on the car. ‘Uptown Funk’ reigns supreme again.
Girls hit your hallelujah (whoo)
Girls hit your hallelujah (whoo)
Girls hit your hallelujah (whoo)
Cos Uptown Funk’s gonna give it to ya!
Saturday night are you in the spot,
Don’t believe me, just watch!
‘This is a frickin’ all time low,’ Bambi mutters to Kashi after a while. ‘You and me partying with the Ghia-Lauki gang! My social cred is utterly destroyed.’
‘You have no social cred.’ He smiles down into her eyes. ‘All you do is work and vegetables.’
She winces. ‘Wow, harsh!’
‘You made me drink a glass full of that beetroot juice,’ he reminds her. ‘That was harsh!’
‘Shit!’ She looks stricken for a moment, then recovers. ‘It was really good beetroot, okay? And beets grow really shallow, you know – I doubt the roots touched what was … uh … lying beneath.’
‘I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind,’ Kashi replies.
‘Sorry,’ she says contritely.
Walli pipes up from the front seat. ‘Uh, Dogs … why are we going to this party again?’
‘We are going,’ Kashi raises his voice to explain patiently for the nth time, ‘because ACP Bhavani wants us to zoom in on a bugger called Aryaman Aggarwal and get him to talk.’
‘About what?’
Kashi throws up his hands. ‘Anything! I’ve already shown you guys his Insta pics. If you spot him, point him out to Bambi and me – and we’ll take over the convo. Kindly do not exceed your brief. That’s all you need to do tonight.’
‘Hello, we wanna do more than that tonight!’ Walli says meaningfully.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ chimes in Kalra. ‘Set us up with some nice friendly girls with very low standards, okay, Todi?’
Bambi looks at their hopeful faces in disbelief, then turns to smile at Kashi. ‘So nice of you to let your animals ride in the car with us. You’re such a kind guy – must be all the nice TVVS values you picked up in your childhood.’
As all three Doscos protest loudly, the Uber turns off the main highway and plunges into the darkened lanes of Chhatarpur.
‘So what do we do with Aryaman once we find him?’ Bambi whispers to Kashi.
He flashes her a mock-sinister grin and whispers back, ‘We charm him with our worshipful juniors vibe, and try and figure out who he could’ve bumped off and dumped in the kitchen garden.’
‘What!’ Bambi gives a delighted little gurgle of laughter. ‘But that’s wild! Like a whodunnit movie! Bhavani thinks Arya’s the murderer?’
‘Or his mum, more likely.’
‘Ah.’ Bambi takes a while to digest this.
‘You don’t think it likely?’ Kashi asks.
Bambi shrugs. ‘He’s an official weirdo. He’s had a bad rep for years, but even then, killing a whole human being and burying them sounds a little too high-energy for him. He’s pretty lethargic. As in, constantly stoned.’
‘Well, he would have had Guppie Ram ji’s help,’ Kashi replies.
She gasps, wide-eyed. ‘What?’
He nods. ‘Yeah, that’s what the ACP said – they’ve found a video recording of Guppie Ram ji talking mysteriously to Leo about a body he helped somebody bury in the kitchen garden.’
‘What? OhmuhGod, Kash! They dug up the kitchen garden because of something Guppie Ram ji said? He was their source?’ She shakes her head. ‘Wow, didn’t you tell them that Guppie Ram just like, made shit up all the time? Remember when he told us a huge-ass cobra bit him, and he sucked out the poison himself, and it turned his tongue blue, when actually he’d just been eating jamuns?’
‘And he said Katrina Kaif and Johnny Lever were sitting in the Rose Garden and we both went running like idiots to see, and it was just gorgeous Urvashi Auntie and ugly Mukki uncle!’ Kashi recalls. ‘Yeah, he always exaggerated the fuck out of stuff.’
She nods. ‘Which is why he was nicknamed Guppie Ram. His real name was Ram Gopal.’
‘But they really did find a dead body there, Bam.’
She shrugs. ‘Even if they did – it doesn’t prove that Guppie Ram’s story of helping somebody bury a murder victim there was true! He could’ve just found a couple of old bones there while he was digging about the garden! And then he made up a whole story just to take the piss out of Leo. I can just see him doing it!’
‘Hey!’ Walli calls plaintively from the front seat. ‘I think we’re circling the same area again and again. Provide some direction, bro!’
They reach the party house fifteen minutes later, guided more by the loud house music than the GPS. It is a poolside rave at Sia Kapoor’s farmhouse in Chhatarpur, a location Bambi and Kashi remember well from a bunch of over-the-top birthday parties Sia had thrown in their childhood.
‘I hate Sia Kapoor,’ Bambi mutters as the guards at the gate wave them through. ‘She hugs me so hard every time she sees me – it’s like she’s trying to stab me to death with her super-pointy boobs.’
‘I like her already,’ Kalra says happily. ‘But this farmhouse is so extra, bro! Is her dad an arms dealer?’
Bambi frowns. ‘He makes steel, I think,’ she says doubtfully. ‘She is so going to pass out when she sees me. I haven’t attended any of her dumb parties for years! Listen, I hope you guys are wearing costumes underneath? These guys just throw you in the pool randomly sometimes. But it’s heated, so that’s okay.’
Saying which, she tugs her dress lower over her luscious little butt, flat palms the massive double doors and walks into a huge lobby.
As anticipated, the Ghia-Laukis do almost pass out at the sight of Bambi Todi entering the party hand in hand with Kashi Dogra. Sia Kapoor, lounging in the lobby on a fibre-glass couch, dressed only in a flame-orange bikini and too many pearls, staggers to her feet, clearing mascara out of her eyes.
‘Ohhhhmyyyygawd!!!’ she screams. ‘I am so dhanya! I am so blessed! I wish I had rose petals to scatter at your feet, ya! Look who’s heeeeere, guys! Bambi Todi and Kashi Dogra and some cute Doscosssssss!’
Slapping palms and kissing cheeks all around, they enter the massive beach-style farmhouse, all hung about with fairy lights and exotic tropical blooms. Bollywood music
is pumping on the speakers and there is a huge glass bar where, back in the old days, a bouncy castle used to be.
‘So not my scene, bro,’ Bambi mutters fervently into Kashi’s ear, and he registers the last word with a slight shock. He’s not sure he is spiritually evolved enough to not resent being bro-ed by his ex.
‘Mine neither,’ he whispers back. ‘D’you want a drink?’
She nods. ‘Sprite. Can you bring it to the pool? Where’d your friends go?’
They look around, and realize that Walli and Kalra have already been swept up into the party – one is at the centre of a group of lonely looking girls who are clearly hanging onto his every word, and the other is being applauded for potting a difficult shot by a gang of jocks at the pool table.
‘Hmm, nice,’ Bambi concedes, reluctantly impressed. ‘At least they don’t need babysitting!’
Saying which, she twists her hair into a casual topknot, then reaches down, grabs the edge of her black dress and pulls it up and off in one smooth move. She chucks it on a chair already festooned with assorted garments and walks to the pool dressed in a black-and-pink halter-topped bikini and a slim black anklet.
Kashi stares at the slender, cinnamon body till it dives gracefully into the crowded pool to a chorus of welcoming whoops, then turns around to get his drink. The tips of his ears are flaming red and his throat is dry.
‘Two Sprites, please.’
He walks with the cans to the pool, and looks around for Bambi. She is sitting right across the pool, with her feet dangling in the water in the centre of a gaggle of joint-smokers, giggling and splashing and holding forth in a high-pitched voice that he can immediately tell is not very natural.
‘Shut uppppp!’ she is saying to a muscular man with shiny, emerald-green fingernails. ‘You – and all the other gay guys were the ones with a crush on Jaibeer Kanodia! I just said I was crushing on him out of sheer queer pressure!’
‘Well, we turned out to be right about him, didn’t we?’ the guy retorts. ‘JK was on the spectrum! He came out with a vengeance and is currently the hottest mechanical engineer in the Bay Area!’
‘Bam, your drink!’ Kashi holds it up from across the pool.
She takes a drag from somebody’s joint and stares at him with strangely shining eyes. Then she raises one solemn arm.
‘Guys gimme a beat.’
They oblige at once, and she turns back to look at Kashi, swaying a little.
‘Un-dress! Un-dress! Un-dress! Un-dress!’
‘Unbelievable.’ Kashi mutters under his breath. She always claims to hate this scene – and she even does – but whenever she ends up with this crowd she feels the need to be the absolute throbbing heart of the party.
Staring across the pool, Kashi feels a sudden intense dislike for the entire chanting group, including Bambi – so rich, so privileged and so utterly spoilt.
Then he remembers his Goa abs, lurking under his vee-neck tee.
Very deliberately, he raises his arms and tugs it off.
The gang across the pool whoops loudly.
Locking eyes with Bambi across the water, Kashi unbuttons his chinos, drops them and kicks them aside.
‘I can die now! Maine Kashi ke darshan kar liye!’ he hears somebody declare as he dives into the pool and the water splashes around him, shutting off all sound.
Reaching the other side, Kashi pulls himself up and sits down beside Bambi, shivering a little. The night air is definitely a bit chilly.
‘Arya at eleven o’ clock,’ she whispers in his ear urgently.
Surprised at her totally sober voice – she has clearly been fake-inhaling the joints – he looks as casually as he can in the direction she has indicated. Yes, there he is – across the pool, sitting with his legs dangling in the water and staring at the waves like a zombie.
‘No hurry,’ Kashi whispers back to her. ‘We’ll get to him in a bit.’
‘So you guys are like, back together now?’
Sia Kapoor is very drunk. She’s lying on her back on the Italian mosaic floor by the poolside, her long legs propped up on a deckchair, surrounded by most of the people Kashi and Bambi went to junior school with.
There’s a chorus of general snickering at her question, and some low-key cheering. The TVVS batch of 2012 has always been unhealthily obsessed with Kashi Dogra and Bambi Todi – it’s the price you pay for pairing off early, when the rest of the class is still hanging out in clearly demarcated ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ groups.
Bambi is sitting next to Kashi, their thighs almost touching through their towels, but at this question she straightens up like she’s received an electric shock, saying hotly, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sia, get a li—’
Kashi’s arm descends around her shoulders, holding her firmly to his side.
‘Yeah,’ he says calmly. ‘Bam and I are friends again. We’re gonna stay friends for life.’
This is met with a cheer that is not low-key at all. The TVVS gang appears disproportionately pleased. Sia Kapoor’s face spasms oddly. She looks, suddenly, close to tears.
‘I’m so glad,’ she says fervently. ‘When I see you guys together, I feel like everything is okay with the world. And the world is just so fucked up, you know? There’s like so much competition, and all these pushy chicks from Ghaziabad, and horrible men who stare at you if you’re showing even a little side-boob, and my favourite boy bands keep splitting up, and my favourite brand of mascara just got discontinued, and it’s so hard to remember to eat healthy and sleep on time and work out, and then there’re pandemics and terrorists and crippled people and poor migrant workers whose kids spend their whole year looking forward to eating just one McDonald’s vanilla cone on their birthday!’ She lets out a long, shaky breath. ‘It’s too sad, ya – school was really the best time of my life!’
‘Wow, that’s deep, Sia.’
‘You have so much soul.’
‘C’mon, I’ll show you some midget porn. That’ll make you laugh.’
Sniffling, Sia allows herself to be led away. The group, considerably sobered, breaks up and wanders off to get a drink or swim. But Kashi and Bambi continue to sit and stare at the dancing water.
‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking …’ he says slowly, ‘that my girlfriend won’t like us sitting like this. And so …’ Very reluctantly, he lifts his arm off her shoulder and slides a little further along the deckchair. Continuing to hold on to her hand, he grins at her. ‘This is safe, I think.’
Bambi sticks out her tongue. ‘You’ll never be safe from me, Kashi Dogra.’
His brown eyes glow. ‘That,’ he admits, ‘is probably true.’
He stares at her across the space that divides them, feeling suddenly, idiotically happy.
‘Hey, I read up on that case you won,’ she says. ‘Good job, Kashi!’
He gets the uncomfortable look he always gets when people praise him, and glances away at the pool. ‘Thanks.’
Bambi continues to stare at him, her eyes warm and approving. ‘You got all those jhuggi dwellers their rights – it was awesome.’
‘I had a lot of help,’ he replies. ‘I worked with this really committed NGO – they did all the research.’
‘I want to help people too.’
He turns to throw her a smile. ‘Cool!’
She hugs her knees. ‘No, no, I’m serious! I have this whole plan and shit!’
‘Tell me.’
She hesitates, then shakes her head decidedly. ‘No. You’ll judge me.’
‘T’fuck!’ He laughs. ‘When have I ever been judgemental about the shit you do, Bam?’
It is she who turns away to gaze at the pool now. ‘You don’t know half the shit I’ve done, Kash.’
A cool gust of wind swoops down on the poolside, causing goose-pimples on their flesh. Bambi gives a little shiver, rubbing her palms on her bare arms. ‘Where’s m
y dress?’
A little later, towelled and dressed, they start looking around for Aryaman Aggarwal. When they finally spot him, he is passed out on a deckchair, under a pile of damp towels, lying flat on his back, staring up at the stars blankly.
‘Shit!’ Kashi pulls back. ‘The guy is wasted.’
‘Standard Arya,’ Bambi whispers with a shrug. ‘Everybody agrees that he’s practically a vegetable. Into really hard drugs, and living totally in la-la land. Apparently can’t even get an erection any more.’
‘He didn’t seem that bad at Cookie auntie’s exhibition,’ Kashi says.
‘He’d cleaned up for the uncle-aunties that day,’ she replies. ‘This is much more his default setting.’
She says it so casually that Kashi gets angry. ‘This is nobody’s default setting! How can you be so callous, Bambi?’
‘Wow! Please forgive me for having no sympathy for privileged, entitled losers. Shit happens to everybody, that doesn’t mean you develop a drug habit! You’re supposed to suck it up, and soldier on, not become bitter!’
The catch in her voice betrays her emotions.
He squeezes her arm. ‘Sorry.’
She stays rigid for a moment then, wordlessly, lets her head drop sideways onto his shoulder.
As he feels the soft, scented weight land on him with a trustful sigh, Kashi is conscious of so many complex emotions that he feels his head might explode. Automatically, from sheer muscle memory, his arms goes about her waist.
Kiss her.
She wants you to.
She always has.
They stay like that for what seems like an eternity.
Finally, Kashi straightens up.
‘C’mon, let’s do this,’ he says briskly.
He strides down the poolside and stands beside the supine Aggarwal.
‘Aggarwal? Hey, Aggarwal!’
Bambi rushes up behind him, bends down and smacks the prone figure smartly on his shoulder. Aryaman Aggarwal grimaces and stirs. He manages to prop himself up onto one elbow, and agree, in a very bleary and slurry voice that yes, he is indeed, probably Aryaman Aggarwal.
‘It’s meee!’ Bambi does her little dancing-on-the-spot routine. ‘Bambi Todi! Your junior from Red House!’
Club You to Death Page 23