by Sonia Singh
Raveena walked back to the phone stand and waited. Only fifty minutes had passed, but she wasn’t about to twiddle her thumbs or stare at the cow lounging on the road just to kill ten more minutes.
So she called Griffin back.
For the first time, Griffin answered the phone without enthusiasm. His “hey, doll” was almost apologetic.
This was bad.
“Tell me,” Raveena said.
“Randy is definitely not being cool. He refuses to pay for alternate accommodations. He also said he needed to make use of his car and driver last night, and that’s why they couldn’t meet you.”
“And what about the promised first-class ticket?” she demanded.
“He said that by first class he meant traveling by plane, not a first-class plane ticket.”
“What was the alternative? Traveling by steamship?”
Griffin sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you, doll. Your role is legit, though. You will be playing the heroine of Randy’s film. I have the contract to back that up. But I do have some good news.”
Quentin Tarantino had written a role for a belly-dancing assassin in his new movie, and she’d be perfect for it.
The heat was obviously making her delusional.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I spoke with your mother.”
“Mom?”
“She says you have a distant uncle who lives in Bombay. She’s contacted him, and he’s agreed to let you stay with him for the duration of the filming.”
Distant uncle was right. Raveena knew that her mother’s cousin’s wife’s nephew’s grandmother had a brother who lived in Bombay. Leela had given her his address and phone number and ordered her to visit or at least call him while she was there. Apparently he was in his sixties and lived alone. Although she hadn’t seen her uncle in thirty years, Leela dutifully sent him a card every Indian New Year.
“Stay with an uncle I’ve never met?” Raveena questioned weakly.
“I’m sorry, doll. Either stay put or head to your uncle’s. Otherwise you can come back to LA. A role came across my desk this morning. They need someone to play Sacajawea’s sister in a made-for-TV movie about Lewis and Clark. They’ve got the kid from Small Wonder playing Sacajawea. The sister doesn’t have any dialogue but…” his voice trailed off.
Raveena closed her eyes and leaned her head against the booth. Then she opened her eyes and nearly screamed when she saw the dead fly guts sprayed all over the glass. She screamed again and wiped her forehead.
What should she do?
Part of her longed to go back to LA. Her spirit of adventure had been replaced with fear, anxiety, self-doubt and resentment.
Plus, she missed her mommy and daddy.
Maybe she’d go back, land the role of Sacajawea’s sister, and finally be noticed.
Right.
That was about as far-fetched as her curling up alongside the cow for a snooze on the road.
She’d come this far. This was still her best break. She thought of Anthony Quinn and took a deep breath. “I’m staying, Griffin. I’ll move in with my uncle.”
“Excellent.” Griffin sounded relieved. “Do you have the address?”
Raveena took out a piece of paper from her bag.
Heeru Punjabi
17 Portugal Road
Bandra
Bombay
It was time to meet the distant uncle she’d be spending the next six months of her life living with.
She wondered if he had a liquor cabinet.
Chapter 12
Raveena had never checked out of a place as fast as she did from the odious Officer’s Club.
In a burst of strength—she was channeling Bionic Woman—she grabbed a suitcase in each hand and dragged them down the stairs running, knocking the porter down in the process.
Once outside, she waited impatiently as the taxi driver struggled to fit her bags in the trunk. Finally, she elbowed him out of the way and did it herself.
And then with a resounding slam of the car doors, they sped away in a cloud of dust.
Uncle Heeru lived in a suburb of Bombay known as Bandra.
Bombay was divided into two sections: South Bombay, or the city, and the outlying northern suburbs. Bandra was the suburb closest to the city. Raveena knew this because she’d purchased the Lonely Planet Guide to India at Barnes & Noble before she left.
They drove along Turner Road, the busy Bandra thoroughfare, and then headed away from the shop-lined streets and tall buildings housing expensive flats.
They passed Catholic churches—Bandra had a large Indian Christian community—and veered towards the ocean, making a right along the famous Bandra Bandstand. According to the guidebook, at sunset the Bandstand would turn into a veritable lover’s paradise, with couples strolling hand in hand and venturing out onto the rocks to sit and be alone.
And then they were turning away from the water and heading up a winding street. The thick growth of trees on either side blissfully blocked out the unrelenting sun.
Between the trees, Raveena could see mountain cabin-like duplexes and stunning gated villas. She felt her spirits rise. Maybe staying with her uncle wouldn’t be so bad.
The driver had to stop and ask directions three times because none of the homes seemed to have numbers on them. After the third set of directions, the driver drove a few more meters, stopped short, made a sharp right and plunged down a dusty wooded drive.
He cut the engine.
They’d arrived.
Raveena looked out the window at her new abode and her mouth dropped open.
She quickly closed it because she didn’t want to look slow.
In front of her was a two-story faded gray bungalow that desperately needed an HGTV makeover. A wide wraparound porch encircled the house. The area around the bungalow was dark and heavily wooded with red oak, palm and mango trees. Hawks circled above and she could hear the cawing of hundreds of crows.
She paid the taxi driver, then went up three short steps and knocked on the heavy wooden door.
She had no idea what to expect, and Lonely Planet didn’t have any answers.
Chapter 13
From his second-floor bedroom, Heeru Punjabi watched the young woman exit the taxi.
This must be the niece from America, he thought. The one who was an actress. What was her name? Lavinia something or the other?
Heeru shook his head. What was she doing acting in a Bollywood film? Everyone knew the industry was a terrible place. Any decent young woman would refuse to work there.
Heeru knew either Nandini or Nanda, the two young sisters he employed as servants, would see to the guest, so he stayed in his room sprinkling bird feed onto the floor and along the windowsill. He considered all winged creatures godlike. Even if they did seem to defecate frequently on his head with abandon.
Heeru did not want this American niece of his staying with him. He did not like visitors. However, if he refused her room and board he would most likely return in his next life as a lizard of some sort.
Several gray pigeons and one pushy black one flew in and began pecking at the seed.
Yes, the film industry was a wicked place, and Heeru should know. He had once dreamt of becoming an actor.
Heeru continued to sprinkle seed and thought back to the year 1962.
The sixth of eight children, eighteen-year-old Heeru knew from careful study that he was the best looking of all of them. His four sisters had unfortunately inherited their mother’s propensity to put on weight and their father’s bulbous nose—which some had likened to a hard plum after the crows had picked at it.
Heeru and his three brothers were all slim like their father, but his eldest brother Arjun had already begun to lose his hair. Nanu, Heeru’s younger brother and the smartest of all the siblings—the school principal’s opinion, not Heeru’s—was favored with a fair complexion and hazel eyes, but had no dress sense or style—Heeru’s opinion, not the school principal’s.
Th
e remaining brother Jagdish was a lout, and Heeru’s mother blessed the day he had moved to Hong Kong to seek his fortune.
Definitely, Heeru was the only one with the potential to make it as an actor. Admittedly, he could have done with a fair complexion like Nanu’s—instead his skin was the color of toffee—but Heeru kept it glowing and radiant with nightly applications of his mother’s herbal face tonic. The tonic was expensive, and Heeru had to wait until his mother was asleep before sidling into her room and slipping the small bottle off her dresser.
Basically, Heeru was all set to pursue his dream of a career under the lights when something happened.
The incident involved the park where Heeru “rehearsed.” He regularly took the bus to a secluded park where he could practice being a film hero. He didn’t even consider practicing at home in his room, not with four prying plum-nosed sisters around. There in the park among the poplar trees he could rehearse in peace.
Heeru always wore the same outfit on these occasions. In his white slacks, matching jacket, red silk shirt and paisley scarf knotted dashingly around his neck, Heeru knew he cut a fine figure.
Then, with one arm around the tree trunk—pretending it was the ample waist of a lotus-eyed actress, Heeru would croon the latest melody, crinkling his eyes, moving his brows up and down and flipping the puff in his hair just like the latest heartthrob.
But then one day a group of young ruffians from the lowest rung of the caste ladder came upon Heeru embracing a tree and burst into loud laughter. They also made lewd gestures and called Heeru names, comparing him to mediocre actors he couldn’t stand.
Heeru was tempted to yell and remind them of their class, but his legs had a mind of their own, and he turned tail and ran. The youths, sensing some fun in their unemployed, poverty-stricken lives, decided to give chase.
Heeru ran and ran. He tripped and fell a few times, sobbing like any heroine in a chase scene running to save her virtue. By the time he climbed aboard the bus and dropped into his seat shaking, his favorite slacks were torn and covered with grass stains. He touched his neck and realized his paisley scarf was gone.
Heeru never rehearsed again.
For a moment, awash in the old memory, he looked wildly around, but the room was occupied only by pigeons, one of which was currently using his shoe as a toilet.
Chapter 14
Raveena followed a slender, dark-skinned young woman with a shy smile into the sitting room.
The young woman was dressed in a cotton housecoat with short sleeves. Her feet were bare. She indicated Raveena should take a seat and then disappeared into another room.
Raveena sat down on a lumpy white sofa, immediately sinking deep into the cushions. Directly above her were two ceiling fans. It was stuffy and muggy in the room, so she flipped the wall switch and the blades sprang to life on the fastest setting. Her long hair whirled around her face and the stack of newspapers on the coffee table blew across the room. Quickly, she flipped the switch back down, retrieved the newspapers and tried to smooth down her hair.
The young woman returned with a tall glass of water. “Safe,” she began and her smooth brow furrowed. Then with another shy smile she pointed at the glass and said, “Filtered.” Only, the way she said it made the word sound like “pilltered.”
Absolutely charmed by her sweet demeanor, Raveena accepted the glass of water. “Thank you.” The water was cold, and she practically downed the entire contents in one gulp.
The young woman smiled approvingly and disappeared again.
Raveena proceeded to sit alone in the room for the next twenty minutes.
Finally, she decided she may as well explore her new surroundings. In one corner of the room was a large wooden altar dominated by a white marble statue of Lord Ganesh, the remover of obstacles, along with small framed paintings of the Goddess Lakshmi and Lord Krishna. There was also a large photograph of a round-faced man with a black Afro dressed in an orange robe. She’d seen that same photograph in other Indian homes. The man was Sathya Sai Baba. She moved closer and saw there was a caption at the bottom of the photograph.
Hurt Never. Love Ever.
Made sense.
So Uncle Heeru was a Sai Baba devotee. From what she’d read, Sai Baba was considered an avatar of God. In front of eyewitnesses, he had raised the dead, materialized jewelry out of thin air, turned water into gasoline when his car ran out of fuel, made sweets appear directly into people’s mouths and managed to appear in two places at once.
Further examination of the altar was halted when she looked up to see another girl, shorter and darker than the first but dressed almost identically in a short-sleeved housecoat, staring at her. Raveena smiled but was pointedly ignored. The girl’s expression was decidedly sulky. Silently, she disappeared into another room and Raveena was once again left alone.
She returned to the sofa and stared at the large Toshiba television in the corner of the room. A black pigeon flew in through the open window, perched on the top of a bookcase and fixed its red gaze on her.
Raveena found this to be slightly unnerving and was about to get up and look for someone, anyone, when rapid footsteps sounded from the hall. All of a sudden a man came tearing into the room, stopped at the sight of her and ran his hands through his shock of thick white hair.
He was of average height, thin with a slight paunch, wore steel-rimmed glasses held together strategically with scotch tape and dressed in a faded white cotton shirt and what looked like a brand new pair of Levi’s 501 jeans. The jeans were too long and his feet peeked out from beneath the cuffs in brown leather Kolhapuri slippers.
Raveena stood up. “Uncle Heeru?” she asked tentatively.
He ran his fingers through his hair again, causing it to stand up in tufts. “Yes, you’re here,” he said. “Nice, ah, to see you again.”
“We’ve never met,” Raveena said.
His eyes darted right and left. “Yes, that’s right.” All of a sudden he tipped his head back and shouted, “Nandini! Nanda!”
From another room a female voice yelled back, “What do you want?”
“See to the guest!”
The two servants, one smiling and the other sulky, came into the room.
“Show Lavinia to her room,” Uncle Heeru said.
“It’s Raveena. And I wanted to thank you so much for letting me stay here.”
Uncle Heeru gazed at her blankly. She found this almost as unnerving as the pigeon.
“I just wanted to, umm, really thank you,” she repeated lamely. “I promise I won’t be any trouble. If I can be of help—”
“What is the time?” Uncle Heeru interrupted. Before anyone could answer he looked down at his bare wrist. “Where is my wristwatch? Thieves have stolen my wristwatch!”
“Nobody stole it; you lost it yourself months ago,” the sulky servant said crossly.
“Never mind,” Uncle Heeru said to no one in particular. “Nandini, take Lavinia to her room.”
The young woman with the shy smile came forward and gestured towards the stairs.
So this was Nandini. Raveena definitely liked her.
The other girl—Nanda—continued to stand there, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Go find Chotu and tell him to bring in the suitcases,” Uncle Heeru said to her.
Nanda frowned and fired back in rapid Hindi Raveena could barely follow. Something about Chotu stealing a potato.
This caused Uncle Heeru to pull on his hair, yell, and then run out of the room, his slippers clopping on the cement floor.
Nanda sniffed and turned away, skirt swirling.
Raveena followed Nandini up the stairs and into what would be her bedroom.
It was a large space. A double bed was covered in a pretty, red embroidered bedcover. Directly above it a ceiling fan slowly circulated the heavy humid air. Across from the bed was a window that ran the entire length of the wall. It was screenless, shutterless and, Raveena realized, pigeon-accessible. It was also facing the sun, which
meant sleeping in would be difficult. The walls were bare except for a Sathya Sai Baba calendar. The orange-robed man held his hand up in blessing.
Nandini crossed the room and opened the double doors of an ancient Godrej wardrobe. Raveena’s mother had had one just like it in India. Smiling, Nandini gestured towards the empty shelves. Raveena smiled back and nodded. Nandini then crossed to a door Raveena hadn’t seen. It led to a small guest bathroom.
Raveena was pleased to see the toilet was sparkling clean. There was a mirrored cabinet for her toiletries and an enormous green marble bathtub big enough for two people. Raveena was more of a shower person, but the bathtub looked fun. Not that she’d be doing any entertaining in it.
Raveena thanked Nandini and drifted towards the window. Looking down she could see into the courtyard. A young man was struggling with her suitcases. Chotu, she presumed, and continued to watch as Uncle Heeru came running out of the house and started shouting. Chotu shouted back. Uncle Heeru pulled at his hair again and stomped his foot.
Raveena’s mother had said something about the family regarding Heeru as a sort of swami.
If that were true—
He was the most stressed-out swami Raveena had ever met.
Chapter 15
The next morning Raveena was having breakfast alone when Randy Kapoor’s secretary called.
Nanda brought her the phone and silently handed it over.
“Thank you,” Raveena said.
Nanda’s expression remained sulky.
Nandini was definitely preferable.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, ma’am, I’m calling from Mr. Kapoor’s office. Mr. Kapoor would like you to meet him here at one P.M.,” a woman said in precise Indian English.
No wonder outsourcing was going to India. The professionals here spoke better English than Raveena did.