Pretty Vile Girl

by Rickie Khosla

  Jazmeen got along very well with this group too. After all, these girls reminded her of the life she once had in Faridabad, too.

  Jazmeen was surprised by how much she had started to like spending time at the academy. The ninety minutes of focused solitude every other day of the week was refreshing. It helped her shed the monotony of convention and rid her of the ire of the past. Not to forget, the annoyance of Rubina’s grating voice. The rapt concentration and repetition involved in practicing her steps was meditative—helping her focus on the next moves she needed to make in life.

  As much as she enjoyed these introspective breaks from routine life, Jazmeen was nothing less than shocked at the utter relish she felt when she danced! That dance would give her such pure delight she could have never imagined when she had first stepped into Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing. She had loved it from the very first day of practice, and that love had only grown as she gained more proficiency in the art form. The dance taught at the academy was mostly Modern Western, but Master Sir would frequently mix it up with plenty of contemporary Indian and Fusion as well. No matter what form though, its impact on Jazmeen was always electric. The pulse of the music, how it became one with every sinew of her body, and then how sound and muscle ebbed and flowed, together, in perfect harmony, charting an intricate tread of the feet, of aesthetic gestures of the hands, and the dramatic expressions of the face, was exciting and exhilarating beyond belief! No step that Master Sir threw at her seemed beyond her stride, and no posture he challenged her to contort to seemed beyond her reach. If anything, the harder the dance, the more determined it made the student. In a matter of days, it was clear to everyone that Jazmeen was the best that Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing had ever had.

  Jazmeen loved looking at herself in the full-length mirrored walls of the practice hall when she was in motion. It was as if she was entranced by her own grace and movement. When she danced, the other watchers in the room were transfixed too—and none more so than the pudgy man under whose tutelage the voluptuous girl was transforming into a seductive swan.

  Master Brandy was starting to fall for his most apt pupil.

  Four weeks before Jazmeen’s three-month Modern Dancing Diploma course was about to end, Master Brandy made his move.

  ‘Have you thought of what you want to do after the Beginner course is over?’ he asked one evening. Jazmeen had just nailed a tricky Paso Doble dance step and looked visibly happy. There were four other girls in the practice hall (all belonging to the ‘Less Privileged’ group) but they were a distance away and seemed preoccupied practicing group choreography to a Bollywood song.

  ‘No, Master Sir,’ Jazmeen replied. ‘I still have four more weeks.’

  ‘That is true… but you should consider the Advanced Program. You are so good! It wouldn’t make sense for you to stop now.’

  ‘Hmm…’ she said as non-committally as possible. She reached out for her towel and started to scrub off the sweat on her neck and back.

  ‘Frankly, I don’t really want you to leave the academy,’ Master Brandy said, a bit distracted by the movement of the towel. Jazmeen had lifted her right arm, and the moist mop was blotting the trails of perspiration on the underside. The black T-shirt that she wore daily was loose, and the cuts for the arms were even looser. At the angle where her raised arm was at right now, Master Brandy could see the side of Jazmeen’s pink bra. She moved her mopping action to the other arm, uncaring of what the man could see.

  ‘I think I have learned a lot in the past two months,’ she said slightly evasively.

  ‘Yes, you have—but see, with a thing like dance, the sky is the limit,’ her teacher said, sounding absurdly clichéd. ‘There are new things to learn all the time.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘What does she mean by that—“Yes”?’ the pudgy man thought.

  ‘So, will you stay on for the next level?’ he persisted.

  ‘See, I like coming here and working with you,’ Jazmeen said as she took the towel to work on her long and bare legs, ‘but it does impact my job. I mean, to be away from work for 2–3 hours three days a week…’ she let her voice trail off.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Plus, the fees. I’m sure the fees for the next level will be even higher, na?’

  ‘Arre, why do you worry about fees, Baby? Deserving girls like you should never have to worry about fees!’

  Jazmeen stopped her towel action and straightened her body to face her teacher.

  ‘You mean I should not worry about fees—just like those girls?’ she asked quietly, pointing with her eyes to the four girls engaged in group thumkas on the Devdas hit ‘Dola re’. Master Brandy’s gaze followed Jazmeen’s, but promptly snapped back at her. His pleasant visage thus far started to get clouded.

  ‘You are comparing yourself with those fools?’ he sounded almost hurt.

  Jazmeen giggled.

  ‘You are special, I hope you know that!’ Master Brandy added.

  Jazmeen remained quiet for a few moments, but her lips still retained a smile. Her eyes now seemed to gush with naughtiness.

  ‘Do you mean “special”—generally speaking, or “special”—to you?’ Jazmeen finally said flirtatiously, toying with the man.

  ‘Oh, come on! You must know how I feel about you these past few weeks?’

  ‘No, not at all, Master Sir,’ she said, as she sat on the bench next to the wall and put her towel by the side. ‘Frankly, I thought you were gay.’ Then she proceeded to lift up both her arms to the back of her head, freeing her hair from the clutches of a plain rubber band and letting them fall around her face. Not once, though, taking her eyes off the man who had winced at her last words. Master Brandy was no fool in the matter of girls and quickly brushed aside her playful sting.

  ‘Now you are just being a bitch, aren’t you?’ he said staring directly into her eyes. His look conveyed pure lust, and the tepid smile on his lips meant that he had understood the cat-and-mouse game of hers and was just as keen to play along. In fact, had there been no one else in the room, he would have simply grabbed her hand and placed it on his crotch to prove that he was anything but gay.

  Jazmeen smiled and then shrugged her shoulders. ‘What do you want me to say, Master Sir?’

  ‘I just want you to say “Yes”, that’s all.’

  The two kept staring at each other for several moments, almost unblinkingly. Meanwhile, Jazmeen trussed her hair back into a brand new ponytail and ‘fixed’ her T-shirt by seductively dabbing it down with her palms, focusing mainly on the top half of the damp garment. Then, she got up slowly from the bench she was sitting on. Master Brandy, who had been crouched on his knees meeting her eye level, rose to his feet too.

  ‘I think I’ll go take a shower now,’ she said slightly huskily, but otherwise betraying no emotion.

  The man merely nodded, but did not step back to give her room to walk away. The playful siege made Jazmeen laugh again, like the tinkling sound of a cold ice cube hitting the insides of an empty glass.

  ‘So, you just want me to say “Yes”?’ she asked in the voice of a woman who had almost been disarmed.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But “Yes” to what?’

  ‘To whatever you want to, Baby.’

  Rubina Peter had stopped complaining about the presence of Jazmeen in her life. Doing so felt like a lost cause with Toby, and only ended up making her sound like a constantly whiny bitch. Even whiny bitches have some self-respect! Sometimes, she would try to convince herself that the only reason Toby had Jazmeen around was so he could keep an eye on her—after all, she knew everything about the Leena Bindra fraud. What if Jazmeen went to the police with that information? That was always a possibility since Toby hadn’t given her more than a mere fraction of what they had stolen together as a team.

  But within seconds, Rubina would dismiss her own interpretation of why Jazmeen was still around in their home and their lives. ‘Keep an eye on her, my foot!’ she would say to he
rself in disgust. ‘All the horny bastard wants is to keep an eye on those boobs and that booty, that’s all. Bloody fool!’

  However, of late, Rubina’s intense anger appeared to be ebbing somewhat. Much of it had to do with how Jazmeen had willingly taken over the responsibilities of managing their house. Not in a long time—in fact, not since Jazmeen had moved in—had Rubina had to bother with the cleaning and the cooking and the laundry and the groceries. Not once. Jazmeen took care of it all, and uncomplainingly at that. And she managed it despite having a full-time job, while the busiest chores of the day for Rubina were things like brushing her hair and filing her nails. There really wasn’t much to complain about life with a naukrani like Jazmeen around.

  It was a slow Sunday afternoon at home. Jazmeen wasn’t around, busy at the salon. Rubina was filing her nails, as usual. Her man was sitting in front of her having tea that she had made.

  ‘Your tramp’s birthday’s coming up next month,’ she said suddenly.

  ‘Oh! When?’

  ‘December 4.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So, what are you buying her as a gift?’

  ‘I haven’t thought about it.’ Toby was lying when he said that. In fact, he had been thinking about Jazmeen’s birthday for several weeks now. It could be a perfect day to make her happy with a gift. It hadn’t taken much for him to notice how fatigued Jazmeen had been looking these past few days. Tired—even slightly distracted. On the surface, she was pretending to be as cheerful as ever, but Toby knew that there was something amiss. Her daily routine had seemed unchanged—she was going to work as usual, and leaving the salon in the evening on time. ‘Maybe she doesn’t like this work anymore,’ he had mused. A few times, he had even badgered her to tell him if she was unwell; but she had just dismissed his concerns with a shrug and a laugh.

  ‘She is slipping out of my hands. I can feel it. I wonder if there is someone else?’ Toby wondered. ‘After all, who wouldn’t want to make those tits his own?’

  Then, one time, with a fright—‘Maybe she’s pregnant!’ But that didn’t make sense—why wouldn’t she tell him if she was?

  He wondered whether Rubina had sensed a change in Jazmeen, too, but he thought it best not to ask.

  ‘She does a lot for us around the house,’ Toby mumbled after a short pause. ‘Maybe we should get her a Rs 1,000–1,500 type gift. Something fancy.’

  His idea made Rubina stop her busy chore and look at him admonishingly.

  ‘Shouldn’t we just get a maid for Madam? From England?’ she said loudly, filling the airwaves with her nasal spew and making Toby angry.

  ‘Why do you always take things the wrong way? Am I lying when I say that she does a lot around the house? Fuck, if she hadn’t been around, you would be in the toilet right now wiping our shit stains with your pretty hands!’

  ‘Is that why you are making sure that she hangs around then? Because you don’t want me to have to wipe your shit from the toilet with my hands? Or is it because you would rather have her wipe better things from your naked body one day? Preferably with her tongue?’

  Toby was enraged, but knew that the only sensible thing to do was to thwart the fight by simply shutting up. It was getting increasingly difficult to handle Rubina and her temper. Something needed to be done about it—but what? He couldn’t dump the bitch. She simply knew too much about his affairs.

  ‘Oh, what I wouldn’t do to kick her out of my life right now...’

  If Toby hadn’t felt so discouraged at his love-triangle type situation, he might have even laughed at his own misery. But all he could do was sigh and quietly sip his tea, looking away from the lunatic sitting across from him as she went back to filing her nails. He was sure he did not love Rubina anymore, but she was stuck in his throat like a bone he could neither spit nor swallow.

  Toby’s thought slowly drifted to his other lover—the one who was not at home right now, but had been silently by his side all this while. The one he had always treated so dismissively. The one he had even cheated from.

  The one who now seemed to be slipping through his fingers!

  Toby decided right that second that he was going to buy Jazmeen a birthday gift worth Rs. 5,000.

  ‘That will show her how much I care!’ he thought.

  They were alone in the academy premises. She was sitting on the purple velvet, just as she had while waiting to see him for the first time almost three months ago. He was just a few feet away, pulling out a bottle of Smirnoff from the cabinet under the work desk. The desk itself was bare except for a landline phone, a small brass figurine of a naked dancer, and two empty glasses.

  ‘Are you being considerate just to me, or is this something you do with your other girls too?’ Jazmeen asked Master Brandy as he unscrewed the vodka bottle. She had already showered after practice and looked dew-fresh in a plain T-shirt and a denim skirt. It was past 6 PM on a Monday, and with Katy Katrak’s salon closed for its weekly off, Jazmeen didn’t need to hurry back. Neither did home beckon with any urgency, since Jazmeen already knew that Toby and Rubina were going to be out for an evening show of the latest Salman starrer at Plaza. Rubina had pointedly not asked Jazmeen to join them, which suited the latter just fine because she had more important things to do anyway.

  Things like sitting with her horny dance instructor and drinking his vodka.

  ‘I don’t have to be considerate to anyone,’ Master Brandy said as he gave Jazmeen her glass and plonked himself on the couch next to her. His short shorts rode up another half-inch, its legs cupping his crotch and making him look even more obscene than he normally did. Jazmeen’s eyes noticed the transgression only fleetingly, thus avoiding an involuntary bout of the chuckles.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked instead.

  ‘These girls don’t need me. Some have fathers who own BMWs. And the others…’ he paused for just a second before completing his sentence, ‘they have plenty of sugar-daddies who keep them very happy.’

  Jazmeen raised her eyebrows in surprise. Master Brandy matched her gaze but said nothing. Both sipped their drinks. It was not the first time that Jazmeen was having alcohol, but this was her first vodka. With Toby and Rubina, it was mostly beer. There had been whisky once with Toby; she had hated it.

  Jazmeen discovered she liked vodka.

  ‘I have always wondered about some of these girls…’ she said as she twirled the ice cubes in her glass.

  ‘Well, you know that I do pay for their boarding and lodging at the hostel…’ the man started slowly and paused.

  ‘Because you are Gandhiji?’

  Master Brandy laughed. Then he nodded gallantly.

  ‘You could say that, you know. These girls are nothing when they come to me. Just worthless rags who have either run away from home or who have been kicked out by their people. Or simply clinging to ludicrous dreams of making it big in Mumbai,’ he shook his head. ‘Well, it is I who makes their lives in Mumbai.’

  ‘How? Films? Junior Artists?’

  ‘You mean Bollywood?’ the man suddenly laughed loudly. ‘For these pieces of shit? No one at the studios would want to even wipe their ass on them. Yeah, maybe some of them do end up becoming background dancers, but, no… mostly no.’

  ‘Then?’

  Master Brandy could tell that his audience sounded intrigued. He looked at her bosom as it rose and fell with her breathing. He looked down and tried to visualise what lay under that skirt of hers. The cold, frosting glass in her hand had dripped a couple of drops on the denim around her crotch. ‘God, she is hot!’ he thought as he gulped the rest of his drink.

  ‘Why does a nice little girl like you want to know about the ugly side of Mumbai?’ he said simply, as he got up to pour himself another drink.

  ‘You think I’m a nice little girl?’ Jazmeen laughed her tinkling laughter.

  ‘What else am I to think? Girls have “opened” themselves up to me for a lot less than a fee waiver and a glass of vodka,’ he said only half-jokingly. ‘But you…” />
  ‘Yes, what about me?’

  ‘I think you won’t let me touch you for as long as you are here,’ he said smilingly.

  ‘I am here for another week, am I not?’

  The man was about to pour himself a new drink. He stopped and looked up at Jazmeen. His eyes appeared hopeful, almost beseeching her to elaborate.

  ‘A lot can happen in a week—don’t you think, Master Sir?’ she elaborated.

  Most of the underbelly of Mumbai—and a surprisingly large portion of its exposed side, too—lives an ugly truth. It is especially ugly for those who travel to it from far-flung places, with big dreams and nothing more than small change in their pockets. A startling number of these new settlers are young women and girls brought into this large ghetto by a salacious network of pimps. Girls, many of them, unmoored by the artificial dazzle of Hindi films. Perhaps an earnest remark of ‘You were born to be a heroine!’ by a clueless childhood friend is enough to make them run away from home and family and invest their all in a city that promises nothing in return. Kind of like a sense of distorted confidence that begins life as a tiny seed in a fertile mind, but soon erupts into a raging tropical jungle of wishful thinking under the sunshine of youthful optimism. When such clueless girls reach Mumbai, some are promptly swallowed by the streets. Others, however, fare slightly better.

  These are the ones who are usurped by the likes of Master Brandy.

  Many years ago, the pudgy man with rhythm in his step and commerce in his mind realised that he could make a lot of money by teaching his natural-born talent to others. The dance academy Master Brandy started took off from the day its shutters first opened. At first, all the girls who came there were local. There were plenty of interested boys too, but Master Brandy had soon realised that he didn’t sync with his own species, and so, the words ‘Ladies Only’ was added under the large sign of Bollywood Academy of Modern Dancing outside the door. Soon, he started getting enquiries from ‘outstation’ girls. Some had real talent but most were rubbish. But the one thing that they all possessed was determination. The determination to make it big. And to do so, they were willing to do whatever it took.