Liberated. Much like what Deepika was feeling right now. Liberated. But, of course, there was much more than just liberation that was compelling the silent smile on that pretty, oval face.
Deepika turned her gaze to the pyre inside which lay Jasmine Bhatia, offering a fiery penance for her life. She visualised the once-pretty woman’s face in her final moments. Deepika’s most potent memory was the dying woman’s bulging eyes—red and almost popping out of their sockets. The look of part-surprise–part-bewilderment, but mostly-terror, had quickly clouded Jasmine’s face when she had first seen Deepika with the knife, and had then slowly cemented itself over the following fifteen minutes of brutality. Later, as she lay dying on the marble bathroom floor, gargling on the blood and spit spewing from her mouth, it looked as if Jasmine was saying something, but the gasping sounds weren’t intelligible. What was she burbling behind that mass of red, frothy bubbles, Deepika thought. A final apology? A plea for mercy? Maybe it was admonishment. You couldn’t put anything past the bitch! Not that any of that would have mattered, anyway, for nothing could have affected Deepika’s serenity of the moment. The kind of peace that comes when one wakes up to brilliant sunshine after an endless night of grim reverie. Or maybe it was just the bizarre high that one experiences when one hits rock bottom, past which one knows there is nothing further to sink to.
Watching the final burst of embers as they incinerated Jasmine Bhatia’s earthly remains, Deepika smiled again. There was no remorse in the punishment she had dealt to the dead woman. If anything, in the end, it had felt good. Cathartic. Just. One could even call it… easy. Jasmine Bhatia had deserved what she got for what she had done to Ujjwal, Sumi, Jolly and countless others. And to Deepika herself. If anyone deemed taking a life was Wrong, then surely Deepika’s was a righteous Wrong, much superior and moral to the wrongful Wrongs that sinners like Jasmine Bhatia committed all their lives.
Deepika knew that if an opportunity arose where she had to fight Wrong with Wrong, she was going to do it again. And again. And again. And never once have Remorse come in her way or make her weak. In fact, she was convinced that her Lack of Remorse was going to be her most deadly weapon for the future.
That, along with her dazzling breasts and exquisite ass.
The Past was through. The Future beckoned. It was time to look ahead.
Yes, the past that bore the burdens of the Bhatias and the Bindras had been buried effectively. But now, 20-year-old Jazmeen’s future was yet to be charted, the next chapter of her life yet to be written. Luckily, in a megapolis like Mumbai, you can touch the sky provided you set your mind to it. Jazmeen had climbed away too far from the gutter that was her old life to ever look back. The only place to go from here was—up. The path to a successful future in a place like Mumbai meant finding new friends, especially ones with the right connections—and who could be better to source such new friends from than the man whose mind and manhood Jazmeen already held firmly in her hand?
‘Tell me, how much do you care for me, Toby?’ she asked him in a rare moment of solitude. They were alone in the car, returning from the Dadar sabzi mandi with a bootful of fresh vegetables. Rubina had chosen to stay home.
Jazmeen wasn’t sure what had prompted her question.
‘Do you even have to ask, meri Mukherji!’ Toby didn’t even shift his gaze from the road.
‘I am serious, Toby. Now that Leena is history and the money is here, where does that leave you and me?’ she asked.
It was the first time she had addressed the fate of their so-called relationship.
‘Moreover, teri Mukherji is Rubina, not me,’ she added, her voice so determined that it jolted Toby. His left hand left the steering wheel and took hers.
‘You have to give me time, Jazmeen. Rubina and I… we…she and I…’ he stammered.
‘…go a long way. She knows too much. She knows too much about you. I understand, Toby.’
‘Time is what we need. Things will start falling into place. Soon, I promise!’
Jazmeen smiled at him. Promises. What did they even mean to her? She had seen the loftiest of them being broken. Like the promise of her parents being there for her and her brother when they were growing up. Solemn. Unspoken. Permanent.
Broken.
She remembered her mother’s distorted face as it was fished out of the muddy waters of Pashwar Lake. Her body shook involuntarily and her mind snapped to the present. Toby was still talking to her. His monologue had drifted into a litany of bitter complaints about the lack of morality in his immoral trade. About how things were not going so well. About the masters, other than Rubina and her, that controlled Toby’s destiny. Jazmeen had never heard of these people before, but she was certain that they had an imperative role to play in his life. In her life.
In their destiny.
Slowly, Jazmeen had started to pay keen attention to what her lover was saying. Her mind had sensed an opportunity. An idea began to blossom and it took her a few more days of careful thought, research, and planning until it had taken concrete form. Her scheme was bold and dangerous, but Jazmeen already had plenty of practice in managing bold and dangerous plans.
It was a full three months after Leena Bindra’s death and two weeks after Toby had unknowingly shown her the path forward, that Jazmeen found herself standing outside the unassuming glass doors of a shapeless block of concrete pockmarked with graffiti and torn paper posters. She was surrounded by the usual cacophonous sights and sounds of a busy Mumbai street, but she was oblivious to it all, staring straight ahead with steely resolve. Her new future beckoned, and it led right through the doors of the Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing. Without further ado, Jazmeen took a deep breath and walked right in. She had a smile as she did so.
Bollywood. Dancing. Who knew that the unintended consequence of her action that day was going to yield to her the kind of impossible fame others merely dream of?
The net monetary gain from the defrauding of Leena Bindra was about Rs. 60 lakhs—and all of it was in Toby’s possession. Jazmeen had asked Toby and Rubina about the money just once but the response she had got from them about their supposedly combined riches was more ho-hum than definitive. Jazmeen did see some share of the booty—one lakh—but the rest of it was purportedly going to be invested in some ‘scheme’ that took in unaccounted cash and gave ‘faadu’ returns. Or so Toby said.
‘Let them feast on that pile of money, for all I care,’ Jazmeen had told herself, and then stopped thinking about the matter altogether. Money had not been the reason for her move on Leena Bindra anyway.
Barely a week after the owner of Hair and There had been consigned to the dustbin, Jazmeen had taken up a job at another beauty parlour in Prabhadevi. This one was called Miss India Elegance Centre—a one-stop shop for skin, hair, and even clothing needs—for the same kind of chubby women that had frequented her old employment at Chinchpokli. The owner of this place was a 50-year-old lady called Katy Katrak, with a hard-as-nails façade but an interior softer than marshmallow. Both women knew pretty quickly they were going to like each other immensely. In many ways, Miss Katy, as she liked herself to be called, reminded Jazmeen of her own dead mother. Soon, she had even started calling the older woman ‘Mamma’—but only because the latter had insisted.
Miss India Elegance Centre was firmly ‘Ladies Only’, and Jazmeen had no desire to convince Mamma to turn it into anything else. One time, when Rubina had asked her two partners-in-crime if ‘Gokhale’ was going to make his grand entry in Katy Katrak’s life too, Jazmeen had boisterously laughed off the semi-serious question.
Apart from Jazmeen, there was one other person whose livelihood had been directly affected by the closure of Hair and There, and when a job opportunity arose at Miss India Elegance Centre, Jazmeen quickly grabbed it for him.
‘I know how important it is to have a job,’ she told Sareen. ‘Why lose the skills you have already learned?’ She organised a meeting between her old assistant and her new boss. Within a week, th
e familiar face of Sareen was at the parlour being his usual quiet and helpful self, keeping the place clean, readying the beauty paraphernalia, assisting Jazmeen and the other stylists as they attended to customers, and running errands for Miss Katy. And yes, Jazmeen and Sareen even started an old ritual from their previous employment at their new jobs. Every evening at 5 PM, it became naashta time at Miss India Elegance Centre. Jazmeen could hear once again the slurping sounds of Sareen enjoying his tea from his plain white teacup. It felt strangely reassuring.
With her professional life sorted out, even if temporarily—and a little bit of money tucked away for a rainy day, even if just a fraction of what she was really entitled to—Jazmeen was now ready for things that were bigger and better. And bolder. Decidedly bolder things. When Toby’s idea had presented itself to her, not only had Jazmeen been ready for it, she was eager.
‘I have wanted to be a dancer,’ Jazmeen lied to the short and squat man seated in front of her, ‘ever since I was a little child.’
The man watching her intently preferred to be called Master Brandy, the owner of Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing. Master Sir had an extremely round face, quite as if the Maker had traced a three-dimensional circle with a compass and an HB pencil. His eyes were small, almost obscured by the pudgy flesh drooping down from his eyebrows and eyelids. In fact, pudgy described several parts of the man’s anatomy—from his cheeks and chin, his arms, along the torso, and down to his almost hairless thighs and calves which were on full display because he was wearing the shortest shorts Jazmeen had ever seen on a grown man. The man hardly looked like the ace dance instructor that he was. More like a recreational fisherman minus a hat. Or even a circus gymnast who had retired ten years ago and then had let himself loose on fried food.
Master Brandy was sizing up the hot item sitting in front of him. Her face was fresh and blemish-free. The hair looked stylish, like it had been professionally done. The girl was wearing jeans and an orange t-shirt with a large Hindi ‘Om’ on it. The motif was distracting because it kept making him look at the right and left sides of the top curve of the religious sign from where poked the ripest breasts that had ever visited his dance academy. The girl’s voice was just as pretty as the rest of her, even though the claims it was making were bullshit. Master Brandy had known enough girls to know when they were lying—he knew instantly that this one had not wanted to be a dancer since the day she had discovered she had legs. ‘She doesn’t use her hands to gesticulate her words,’ he had observed. ‘Born dancers do that.’
‘But frankly,’ he thought again, ‘does it even matter what she wanted to be before she grew those tits?’
They were seated in a brightly lit room, on a sofa that was made of purple velvet fabric. A few years ago, when it was brand new, the sofa might have even looked nice. Now, it just looked like it had been pounded by too many buttocks. Jazmeen had been ushered into the room by the receptionist and made to sit and wait on that purple velvet. Until Master Brandy had walked in, Jazmeen had had around fifteen minutes to ogle at the walls of the long and narrow ‘office’. Every conceivable inch of the whitewashed wall-space was covered with posters and photos featuring Master Brandy’s Dance Troupe’s performances at either a ‘Scintillating’ or a ‘Magnum Opus’ or simply a ‘Mega’ cultural or film event—such as the Sampoorna Kalakaar Awards, the launch of the D for Dancer reality TV show on Doordarshan, and the World Kabaddi Championships Opening Ceremony in Indore. On the far side of the room was a large glass partition with a view of the practice hall where several dancers wearing T-shirts and shorts or track-suits were flexing and contorting their bodies into multiple shapes. Jazmeen had stood and watched them in rapt attention until Master Brandy had strutted into the room and greeted her with an excited: ‘Hello, Baby!’
The interview had been going on for almost twenty minutes.
‘What is your ambition after you finish my three-month Beginner course? What do you want to achieve?’ asked Master Sir. He had already made the decision to take her in, his new questions mere formalities to make the pretty girl with melons hang around for just a little while longer.
‘Bollywood!’ Jazmeen said quickly.
‘Typical, boring answer,’ thought the dance instructor and almost grimaced. He was disappointed at the mundane response from the girl who had, until then, seemed vivacious and distinctive. Even intelligent.
‘You know Helen, Sir?’ Jazmeen asked, just as Master Brandy was about to dismiss her and direct her to the Fees and Payment counter next to the Receptionist.
‘Helenji? The dancer from the 1960s? Who doesn’t know Helenji? That’s what you want to be like?’
‘No.’
The man shook his head. ‘You young people don’t even know how brilliant she was!’
‘Of course we know, Sir!’
‘Then?’
‘You asked me what I wanted to achieve…’ Jazmeen started slowly.
Her listener had a frown, almost a scowl on his pudgy face.
‘I want anyone watching Helen’s old films to say, “Hey, that woman reminds me of Jazmeen”,’ she said.
Master Brandy was taken aback by the intensity of Jazmeen’s response.
‘That, Master Sir, is what I want to achieve. That is what I want to achieve—with you.’
‘Well, no one’s said that to me before, that’s for sure,’ he said to himself. The girl’s face was calm but her eyes shone with determination. Slowly, the scowl on his face disappeared, and he pursed his lips and nodded his head in appreciation.
When the interview finished, Jazmeen stayed on with Master Sir for an additional hour or so. He wanted her to go through a string of flexibility exercises under his personal supervision. His pudgy hands urged her slender fingers, painted toes and clear forehead to touch parts of her own body that they routinely never would have. Some exercises saw Jazmeen contorted on the floor, some stretched by the wall, and for others, she was either erect on her feet or upside down on her hands.
Needless to say, by the end of the hour, the instructor was delighted with what he had seen, and touched. Jazmeen had passed her first class with flying colours.
‘I will enjoy having this one around,’ were Master Brandy’s last thoughts as she left the room, with a vow to return three days a week for the next three months.
Jazmeen slowly settled into the rhythm of her new work-week. Her dance classes at Master Sir’s academy happened every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 3 PM. It was a convenient time to be away from the salon for there were hardly any clients in the afternoon. Katy Katrak had been most kind in accepting Jazmeen’s request to take two and a half hours off from work. In any case, Jazmeen was prepared to work extra hours on the other days to make up the time she was away at the dance academy. Having seen Jazmeen’s calibre and service to her customers for a few months now, Mamma was more than willing to offer her that kind of flexibility of schedule. Moreover, thought Mamma, the girl was too good to be working as a hairdresser anyway. It was only right that she learned a new art form and tried her hand in Bollywood.
‘I shall go to the cinema hall and see your first fillum when it comes out!’ she had announced boisterously.
‘But how will you recognise me among all the Extras, Mamma?’
‘Shut up, silly dikri! What Extras, huh? You will be the heroine of the film!’
It was about three weeks later, after Jazmeen had attended several intensive dance lessons, and after a particularly strenuous session that afternoon, that she first felt the physical effects of the relentless pounding on her young body. Her legs were getting sore. Her calves and ankles hurt. Her arms felt rubbery. Her back wouldn’t bend. And she was having difficulty turning her neck on either side. Toby noticed her wincing as she bent down to open the car door and take the passenger seat. He had driven to Prabhadevi to pick her up.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked. ‘Why are you walking like a limp beggar?’
‘Nothing,’ Jazmeen said dismissively.
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‘Did you fall or what?’ he continued.
‘Nothing, baba… I just hit my knee on a chair. Let’s go, I want to buy some pudina and oranges from the market. I want to try out a new chutney recipe.’
There was really no reason to tell Toby about her engagement with Master Brandy and his Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing. It wasn’t time yet.
The girls at the dance academy were by-and-large talented, and could easily be slotted into two distinct groups. One comprised the smart products of South Mumbai and its swanky suburbs. These girls travelled in chauffeur-driven cars, with their hair tucked nicely under fancy, colourful clips, and their taut fair skin covered under breathable, stretchable fabric courtesy Nike, Adidas or Puma. Most were good dancers, and regular at the academy too—possibly because a couple of hours of dancing gave them an opportunity to pull out the silver spoon from their mouths, cast off the pressures of being high-society from their shoulders, and be normal girls who could sweat and smell and be dirty.
Jazmeen got along very well with this group. After all, these girls reminded her of the life she once had in Faridabad.
The other group of girls was clearly less privileged. They were mostly from smaller towns and villages across the country, staying at a hostel nearby, supported by the charity and mercy of Master Brandy. Their expenses were recovered by Master Sir by using them for free in troupe performances. These girls came to Mumbai with dreams of making it big in Bollywood. Many had the talent, but not the looks. A few others had the looks but their talent was not going to take them very far. The clothing that this group wore was ordinary, secondhand fare bought from one of the many street markets in the city. These girls tried to keep up with the other group on fashion trends; obviously, the most they could do was buy identical colourful hairclips like their richer compatriots, but not much else. After all, plastic hairclips were way cheaper than Nike.
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