by Gauri Sinh
A murder mystery full of girls, gloss, gore and ghouls (!)
for the most important men in my life, all of whom love a tale with a twist!
Papa
A whodunnit saga from daddy’s not-so-little girl for her papa, because he’s bestest. And because I have an answer now for the continuing ‘phir kya hua’ family legend!
Chaitanya
Wrote a story about glamourettas, but eternally thrilled to be Cheerleader Number One of your ever-increasing fan club, you lead by example so.
and
Gautam
Front page pieces in a national paper that was pink, (how did I do it, the ‘showpiece of the family’?) and now a story featuring several such showpieces—dedicated to you! How the unmighty have risen from lovin’ candyfloss pink! Or then, because the love of a brother, teasing or protective, is most important in the grand scheme of things
Contents
Prologue Akruti
Four days to the finale …
1 Akruti
2 Akruti
3 Akruti
4 Akruti
5 Akruti
Three days to the finale …
6 Akruti
7 Akruti
8 Akruti
9 Akruti
Two days to the finale …
10 Akruti
11 Akruti
12 From the pages of Parvati’s Diary
13 Akruti
14 Akruti
15 Akruti
One day to the finale …
16 Akruti
17 Akruti
18 From the pages of Parvati’s Diary
19 Akruti
20 Akruti
21 Akruti
22 Akruti
The finale …
23 Akruti
24 From the pages of Parvati’s Diary
Finale night …
25 Akruti
26 Akruti
27 Akruti
28 Akruti
29 Akruti
Zero hour …
30 From the pages of Parvati’s Diary
31 Akruti
Epilogue Akruti
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
Prologue
Akruti
‘FAB-ULOUS! To die for!’ Sharmila Kapadia, choreographer for this year’s pageant, bellows into the mic, sounding highly appreciative as Niamat executes a perfect turn on the ramp. Niamat’s face flushes with pleasure—I can see it even at this distance.
I am so fond of Niamat. She is after all, my niece, the reason I am here in the family enclosure, watching this rehearsal-in-progress for the Miss India pageant 2018. Niamat is delighted to have me here watching. Her favourite auntie Aku, the most glamorous one in the family, she says.
I watch her closely, my sharp pride quite evident. Niamat wants this crown bad, it is obvious. I am thrilled at this open flaunting of her determination to best all, ambition is always healthy.
But, ‘to die for’? Can beauty really be that? And I am reminded of another time, another contest. I was barely twenty then, younger than Niamat is now. But it was where it all began, my current career.
I wasn’t the Akruti Rai then, not the way I am now. Though I thought I was, then, you see. Because I was already the country’s number one model, enjoying all the trappings that come with that kind of success.
In fact, I had known fame very young, very fast; even before the Miss India pageant began. The Miss India title was to be the crowning glory of my achievements; a stepping stone, not just to bigger recognition on world stage, but also, to filmdom.
I was in such a hurry to have it all, spoiled by what came early and without fuss. I had it planned. We tend so, towards a sense of entitlement when we taste unadulterated success. Instant celebrity without necessary toil allows us to believe ourselves invincible. And then, when it starts to go horribly wrong, we feel cheated, deprived, as if life itself has dealt us a cruel blow without warning.
Though really, there was an awful lot that went wrong, and gruesomely so, in that particular Miss India pageant. I wonder if it was sheer bumbling luck that things turned out as they did in the end. It is quite a story. Let me tell it, so you can decide for yourself.
Four days to the finale …
1
Akruti
‘BEGIN,’ Avi called out, imperious, and the music streamed through. It reverberated across the stage, thunderous in the open-air auditorium. Lajjo, uncharacteristically, had already begun walking towards me from her position at base ramp. She was almost at midpoint, though her walk and the music should have commenced simultaneously. It was unlike her to be so eager, to defy Avi’s meticulous cueing and choreography.
She swayed to the sonorous march, jerked once. A trifle ungraceful, that movement, but her catwalk was still sensuous. She sashayed up the ramp to join me at the very top. As she passed the ramp’s midway point, I turned, backing her advance, facing the audience seats now.
The nineteen other contestants held positions as she passed each, edging both sides of the long ramp in formation. I was alone right at the top, ‘head ramp’ in fashion parlance, waiting with the rest. Lajjo deliberately stretched time, using it to call attention to herself. Slow, languorous, her advance. Both she and I knew how precious time on centre stage could be. The lights had faded on cue to be replaced by a lone singular spotlight on her as she walked.
Finally I heard her step behind me. It was precisely timed, though my back was to her and I faced the audience—I needed to sense her arrival, turn automatically to join her. Do this without missing a beat, as if I had eyes at the back of my head. A complicated ramp move, only very experienced models got it correct. Avi, master choreographer, had immense confidence I would not fail him in this, and so far, at every rehearsal, I had proved him right.
Now too, I heard her arrival, over the beating drums of the musical march, though today it seemed a bit misplaced, her timing. I turned to face her. We were to match steps. But instead of turning with me, to peel away from centre as we had been taught, she stopped abruptly. We stood facing each other for a split second, centre stage. Bathed in the spotlight, my heartbeat echoed the drum roll of the music in that moment, every sense on high alert. What was Lajjo upto?
I can see her now, as she looked at that moment—face a mask, eyebrows arched, as if startled. I was taking it all in as if suspended in time. A moment of acute, febrile intensity because she was behaving so oddly: her surprised face, the sweat-patch dark and sticky on the front of her red velvet gown. ‘What she’s wearing is much too tight, perspiration shouldn’t be showing so severely on it,’ I had thought, slightly repulsed at the sight.
Then, as if in slow motion, her body toppled forward, collapsing onto mine, heavy in fall despite her slight form. I held her as she fell, my reaction automatic, noting in deep shock my hands reddening where they touched her bodice as they extended to catch her. That’s when it hit me violently, the stark horror of it—that wasn’t sweat on the front of her dress. It was blood, masked by the deep red velvet colour of the gown.
‘CUT the music, spot. FULL LIGHTS!’ blared Avi from the sound console a distance away, clearly in a rage because his stars hadn’t come through, obviously unaware of what had just occurred in the very midst of his precious sequence.
That was when I saw the blade. We all did, flashing silver in the harsh glare of the just-turned on stage lights. So thin it looked like a paper cutter, the light glinting off its metallic grip-edge. Only the handle showed, intricately carved, quite breath-taking as weapons go, I thought later. I couldn’t help thinking I’d seen that handle somewhere, but at that moment, it escaped me. The rest of the blade was
in Lajjo’s back, driven clean through her with great force, so it had nearly come out the other side, causing the blood to flow with such abandon that I had thought it sweat.
Lajjo, beautiful sensual Lajjo, the contestant labelled ‘Hot Chocolate’ for her lovely colour. The contestant I once thought most likely to win the crown if I didn’t, had now toppled over, lifeless on head ramp … Just moments back, Avi, in great admiration, had declared how her grace ‘killed’ him.
And here she was now, in grievous juxtaposition to his words, actually killed. Slain in a horrific, gory way, as in a bad horror movie. Audaciously, theatrically killed, with a carved silver blade in her back and blood all over the place. ‘Murder? At the Miss India pageant?’ I remember thinking, incredulous, as I held on to her, even in deep shock. Then pandemonium broke loose.
But let me go back a bit. It had started out as an ordinary day. Well, not that ordinary, considering that it was the Miss India 1995 pageant, a national contest. We were all finalists, vying for the crown and the attention and the considerable prize money that followed.
But ordinary as far as the contest was concerned—just another day of rehearsals. There were more nerves amongst us today, though. We were, after all, only four days away from the big day. Today we were rehearsing the sequence in gowns.
‘You kill me, really, you do!’ Avi’s voice had shrilled over the microphone, the pleasure in his cackle evident, even over the soaring crescendo of the penultimate strains of ‘Sabse khubsurat tum hi’, the chosen soundtrack for the finale sequence at the rehearsal. I recognized this particular timbre in Avi’s voice. I had heard it countless times, over so many years, in all our earlier ramp shows together. The strain of all-out effort giving in to deep pride as vision married the moment. And he foresaw in the now, a glimpse of the greatness of what might occur, if this very scenario recreated itself on D-Day.
Avi was all about the moment—getting it perfect, and getting all the credit for it later. As India’s top choreographer and event manager, he worked hard and seldom praised any model or star, save his pets, and everyone in the industry knew who they were. To all the rest (make that the rest of India), which included anyone who knew the beauty industry—they were the best in the business. Avi only ever concerned himself with the best. Like him, his pets too were mostly about getting everything right the first time; as if they could control the outcome. Mistakes were costly, and inconvenient to everybody—on ramp, in life. Better avoided if they could be, was his motto. And his charmed coterie swore by it.
‘Just, like that, hold for applause. RELEASE!’ Avi continued, concentration intense, senses honed, as if in preparation for the praise that was inevitable, given such fluid posture.
He was addressing Lajwanti Khan of course, lissom and languid on head ramp, like a graceful cat. Front and centre, posing as if she owned it, simpering at his words, as if she knew they were aimed particularly at her. She wasn’t alone; the other contestants, nineteen of them in fact, swamped her slender figure on both sides, edging the ramp in two lines behind her, all the way to stage. But it was justified, her arrogance. They knew it as well as she did. Even in the mammoth open air amphitheatre full of people connected to the contest, with the microphone echoing his every word to any who chose to listen—Avi had been talking only to her.
Her pose at the head of ramp eclipsed all those behind her. A feast for the eyes and senses, calling to mind a regal goddess living the moment granted her to the hilt. If she managed as seamless an execution at the finale itself … but I didn’t want to think so far ahead yet.
‘Avi, how is this?’ she asked, miming her sentence as she changed stance, exaggerating each word through expression, because Avi, at the sound console so far away, couldn’t hear her voice above the music. Obviously one didn’t need to look at Avi’s emphatic thumbs-up to know it was perfect, her form.
Lajwanti, or ‘Lajjo’, as we’d come to address her this past fortnight of training for the crown, was a diva. Make that Diva, with a capital D. She had done a few shows in her hometown of Hyderabad, but not enough to bring national recall to her name. Still, though she hadn’t reached the top quite yet, her confidence now made her seem as if she would soon.
In this pageant, she seemed incandescent, her sureness and poise and undoubtedly Avi’s whimsical favour winning her many votes in the smaller pre-contests leading up to the crown. She had grace and presence, along with the self-assurance that marks out a winner. She dearly wanted the crown, just as I did.
Let me add a bit of milieu to this aspiration we shared. Print ads circa 1995, the year we were in, more often than not featured those with milky white complexions. Also, if you had light eyes, it rather helped. Our world was one of illusion. Catering to market forces as it did, its reality was practical, if heart breaking in its irony. And whilst the hypocrisy (we are after all, a nation of more dark skin and eyes, than light) was awful, I was nothing if not a survivor. The rules were partial to my looks at the time, I milked the situation. And my rise as a glamour model was instant and legendary, first in print glossies, and television advertising, then, as I was noticed nationally, in ramp shows.
I wasn’t tall, not Amazonian like that girl Parvati Samant in this pageant, certainly not as tall as Lajjo herself. But I made the cut at 5’ 7’’. Sure, I had presence, and choreographers liked my sass. They also liked my instant recognizability, and thus marketability. So, I was ‘discovered’ as a ramp talent too, by Avi—Avinash Mahadeo—choreographer extraordinaire, as I knew him then, and together, we quickly became a startling success. No show was complete without us.
Most would call my rise to fame unbelievably quick—I had never really known much struggle. Nor the dark underbelly (falling prey to charlatans, or the casting couch) that could, and often did, cripple many ambitions of fledglings in the glamour business. The press, in fact, happily cemented my soaring career status with the title ‘nation’s sweetheart’ when they wrote of me. This transition—from newbie to super success, and the resulting press moniker—occurred so smoothly I assumed it a given with every new assignment.
There is a certain innocence that reveals itself, that cocoons a person when a rise is devoid of bitter struggle, devoid of the disillusion of compromise. So it was with me. I was young, successful, untarnished by any major hardship.
You might wonder at this point in my narrative, given all I had achieved, and so very early, why I would be interested in a beauty pageant title at all.
I have a one word answer for that question: films. I had conquered all three mediums—print, TV, ramp as a model fairly painlessly, and very young. To my mind, then, my next natural step was films.
But being an established name in the modelling business at the time was often not enough to have Bollywood’s dream merchants sit up and take note of you. Unlike today, the two industries operated quite independent of each other. Yet if you managed to transcend the catwalk, somehow got yourself into instant recall mode with most of India—why then, the movie business was happy to align itself with you. National visibility meant instant recall.
Thus in the 1990s, if you didn’t come from a B-Town family, or have an established Godfather therein, the easiest way to enter the movies was via a national beauty pageant.
Hence my presence here, at this Miss India 1995 pageant, despite having tasted intense, absolute success in the glamour stakes already. Did I ever consider the possibility of losing the Miss India title to another— worse—a novice? Did it cross my mind even once, the hit my supernova career would take, were I somehow to fail in this venture? I would be lying if I said no.
But here’s the thing—the benefit of competing still outweighed the risk of losing. There was no easier way to propel my career forward to tinsel town. Given that I had already bested all that modelling had to offer, I would stagnate without the momentum this contest promised. I figured I was prepared for the challenge, as equipped as I’d ever be. I hadn’t failed so far, why hesitate now? My confidence only underl
ined my untainted upward trajectory—I was never more ready for greener pastures than at this time.
And my ambition wasn’t subtle by any standards. The morning papers were proof enough of that—the lifestyle glossies loved that I had entered the contest this year, and splashed story upon story almost daily, all featuring me. The mega media conglomerate, Eye India, which owned the contest, loved the publicity my visibility built up. It was win-win for everybody. All I needed was the crown.
Lajjo, meanwhile, hadn’t had as meteoric a rise as I, even though she had been a model as well, before entering the pageant. Her dusky complexion might have had to do with the sparse success in print and on TV, though secretly, I envied her unblemished chocolate smooth skin, so different from mine. Now I watched Lajjo’s play for Avi’s attention.
Lajjo might have remained an underground sensation, a wonder only in her hometown, had it not been for the ramp world. Unlike print and television, the catwalk in India followed its own rules. And height and gait had paramount importance, held more sway certainly, than skin colour—which to me seemed more egalitarian.
You cannot change what you are born with, but you can stand up straighter, give the impression of being tall. And you can work on your walk, so as to appear elegant. Needless to say, a majority of the reigning catwalk stars were therefore, and blessedly so, dark-skinned.
Noyna, Svetna, Shital, Carolle, Netra … they didn’t need their last names to be recognized, they were known by just their first. All firmly established and sought-after on ramp, their skin a burnished brown. Whether this was thumbing their noses to the suits who dictated ads on TV and print, or whether it was just a sign of those times, a massive consensual effort by designers, choreographers and the ramp industry at large—it was gratifying to see. Because honestly, it can get monotonous if everyone I walk with on stage looks exactly like me.
So here we were, Lajjo and I, both products of our ambition and our age. And then, it was the best of times for the contest itself. 1994 had seen two Miss India winners win international titles. Their victory thrust both the national pageant and the media conglomerate into the world’s gaze.