The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay

by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

  Samar laughed.

  Zaira mentioned the new film she was working in, and how much she was learning from her co-star, Shabana, a childhood idol, but went on to confess abruptly that she was bored of Bollywood and was considering an extended hiatus.

  ‘You sound harried.’

  ‘The director’s a harami,’ she complained as she laid the table, ‘but I can work around that.’ It was the politics of her milieu she deplored, the hankering for fame, the unremitting bitchiness, the shabby, sexual treatment of women. ‘It’s getting to be very toxic.’

  Over dinner, in the dim cast of tea lights, she spoke some more about her new film. ‘I’m enjoying the role…but one of my co-stars is a real pain in the butt.’

  ‘Who’s this unfortunate person?’ Samar asked with concern.

  ‘Bunty Oberoi.’ She uttered the name with disgust.

  ‘Why haven’t I heard of him?’

  ‘No one has. He’s this two-rupee model out of Bangalore. Thinks he’s a stud on the ranch but if there was ever a bigger slice of cheese in pants, then Allah help me.’

  Bunty Oberoi, the supporting male lead in Zaira’s film, scouted publicity at the drop of a hat: he was not a media whore as much as a one-man photo-op brothel.

  ‘What’s Bunty done to steam you up? Bollywood is all about the hustle to start with, Zaira, and you’ve been around the block a time or two; so why’re you knocked for a whammy?’

  ‘Maybe that’s why I need a break from Tinseltown.’

  ‘Time out?’

  ‘More like a long leave of absence.’

  ‘All because of Bunty?’

  She opened her mouth to say something, but what she wished to say was too large and messy for words. Fame, which she had come to loathe, had broken her, cut her up, turned her into a series of cosy little codes; she was now the idea of herself. Actually, she was the idea of Zaira, whatever that had come to stand for. She did not believe fame had made her familiar; if anything, it had left her alarmingly anonymous, generic even, and she suffered ubiquity by default rather than by design. ‘I want to travel for a bit.’ Even to her own ears her comment sounded annoyingly lame.

  ‘Are you sure your exit plans don’t have anything to do with Malik Prasad?’

  ‘Oh, I wish I could blame this phase of mine on that psycho!’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But Malik’s been out of my screen for so long I’m almost certain he’s over me.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’

  ‘I haven’t heard a squeak from that lafanga in weeks. Thanks to his dad!’

  Minister Prasad had apparently ordered his son to keep out of trouble: with election season round the corner the last thing the minister needed was a ready scandal for a round of mud-slinging in Parliament.

  ‘I’d watch out if I were you.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said distractedly. ‘I’ve watched out for myself long enough. Gets to you after a while, yaar.’

  After dinner, they sat in the travertine balcony watching the sea being glazed by the rippled, pearly hue of moonlight, the beach almost abandoned.

  She told Samar that as part of the promotion campaign for her new film she had been roped in to make an appearance at the Maya Bar, a spanking new haunt in Juhu.

  ‘What’re you going to do at Maya Bar?’

  She tried to avoid answering his question. Then, hesitantly, she said, ‘Don’t laugh. I’m playing a celebrity shaker. I know its ridiculous, but I can’t get out of it now.’

  Samar looked flabbergasted. ‘Why did you agree in the first place?’

  ‘I didn’t want to let the production team down.’ Besides, if she resisted, she would be written off as a stuck-up bitch. So the middle ground was to make an appearance, mix a few martinis, hang around until the paparazzi got their shots and check out as soon as she could. ‘Even so, I’ll be stuck manning the bar with Cunty Oberoi.’

  ‘Oh, you poor thing!’

  ‘And he loves to ham it up in front of flashbulbs. I’m counting on you to rescue me, Samar.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll be anything but bored at Maya; Leo said it’s dandy.’

  ‘Well, tomorrow night is the closing of the Bombay Fashion Week: so I’m expecting it to be Moron Central.’

  The crowds at Maya Bar would be friends of the owners, fashion designer Tara Chopra and her mother, Nalini, a society bee. In addition to Tara’s designer chums, Bunty Oberoi would invite his fellow ramp rats.

  ‘That certainly doesn’t sound like a fun night out.’

  ‘Do you blame me for wanting to take a break from Bollywood?’

  ‘Why don’t you bail out of this stupid celebrity bartender shtick.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late now.’

  ‘Just cancel.’

  ‘I hate bailing on my commitments to my producers.’

  ‘You don’t need to feel responsible about such stupid things.’

  ‘You’re being dismissive about my work, I’ll have you know.’

  ‘So you can diss Bollywood and want to quit it, but I can’t call a spade a spade?’

  She was silent, sulking, and he decided to back off. ‘Have you asked Karan to come too?’

  ‘Yes, and thank God he’s agreed.’

  ‘Well, I’m surprised; I’ve hardly seen him since he took up with this Rhea chick.’

  Zaira looked as if she had just chewed something bitter. ‘That woman gives me the creeps.’

  ‘My guess is she likes to play rough and tumble.’

  ‘Well, she certainly sets the rules, and they seem to be going through more rough than tumble. Karan doubts she’ll ever leave her husband; apparently, she’s besotted with the hubby.’

  ‘Perhaps she really is.’

  ‘Then why fool around with our Boy in Ban Ganga?’ She felt her mood lift; the huff passed.

  ‘It could be that the steam in her marriage ran out?’

  ‘And, I suppose, no one should underestimate the charms of an older woman. But I have to give credit where it’s due: Rhea’s had quite an impact on Karan’s work.’ Having recently viewed Karan’s photographs, thuggish, mesmeric, galvanic, she was all the more convinced that Karan was going to be a star in the world of modern Indian photography. ‘But no matter what she does for his art, I don’t want to see him on the sidewalk, bleeding and broken.’

  ‘Why’re you so downbeat about their affair?’

  ‘Do you really think Rhea is going to leave her swanky pad and her hedge-fund hubby for a struggling shutterbug?’

  ‘I don’t really get what makes them click.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a mind thing,’ she said. ‘Particularly since Karan tells me she’s no cover girl.’

  ‘But we both know Plain Janes work so much harder!’

  They hooted aloud. Then she covered her mouth with her hand and sobered up. ‘We’re awful! Why are we giving the poor woman such a hard time?’

  ‘Particularly since we haven’t even met her!’

  ‘But if I don’t gossip, my blood sugar dips, yaar.’

  ‘Likewise,’ Samar said, standing up to leave. ‘Thanks for dinner, hon. I had the time of my life.’

  ‘Maya Bar, tomorrow.’

  Gripping her palms in his, he said, ‘I hope Karan comes through without a scratch.’

  ‘I hope so too, Samar. No one knows what to do with this idiot heart.’ She reached forward and gave him a fierce hug, then pulled back, turned him around and gently patted his back, a gesture to urge him forward.

  On the ride back to Worli, Samar was almost giddy with good cheer.

  No great nugget of wisdom had been uncovered, no insuperable angst resolved; they had only whispered wisecracks and gossiped mercilessly. He was seeing her after weeks and to be reunited was the acknowledgement of an affinity that was larger and far more satisfying than romantic alliance. He thought it an awful thing that friendships did not encourage fervent, undying, outrageous declarations of love. As far as he was concerned, he wanted to thrust his head out of the ta
xi window and let all of Bombay know he had had dinner with his best friend. He would shout that he adored Zaira’s elegance and wit, and that she was his.

  However, by the time he had reached home his elation melted into a pool of sorrow. As he entered his bedroom he felt that he need not have come home, that he could just as easily have spent the night at Zaira’s. A love unassaulted by desire was not a lesser love; a love strong enough to arc over petty concerns of the body—well, that was something. What filled his heart with sadness was not that he had been denied the chance of a life with Zaira but that he had decided to be sincere to his desire and chosen to honour its circumference. And because Zaira lay outside this circumference, she had eventually found her place in the centre of his life. He was glad for this, but there was something inherently unfair in his being unable to turn off one switch and turn on another. To love one. And desire another. Treading quietly so as not to wake Leo, he stood a while at their bedside, studying the shape of his lover in repose, the creases Leo’s body formed under their blanket. The bed is an island, he thought; briefly, the sadness of being marooned left him when he heard the sea outside, pushing wave to shore.

  When Zaira woke at three in the morning, it was with a smile on her lips and an ache in her heart. She sipped at a glass of red wine before setting off for a walk on the beach on impulse. A casual breeze, warm and lazy, moved through the coconut palms, rustling the long green fronds. She heard the odd cricket chirping in the background.

  She felt heady, light, at peace at this sprawling, sacred hour.

  At 4.30 a.m., under a sky unclipped by dawn, she passed a madwoman in a purple satin gown reclining on the beach. A little way from the madwoman, a lovelorn junkie stood at the edge of the sea, yelling obscenities at the amber hare reposing in the fat moon.

  Like a stone sinking into the stillness of a pool, Zaira found herself slipping with involuntary force into the tender darkness of nostalgia.

  Years ago, as a struggling actor, she had had to fend off directors and producers who tried to get it on with her. Their touch sickened her and she would take to the beach to erase its filth. The scene at dusk was unforgettable, a tangerine sky stretching over her: overweight housewives jogging with the menacing air of migrating wildebeest; a beggar and his more glamorously decayed consort, an armless retard blowing enormous spit bubbles, crouched in the sand; an obese Labrador barking mournfully at the surf.

  Then, as now, Zaira was subsumed with an amazement for life: not her own—never—but for life, the thing in itself.

  Life, the beating-fast heart of a sparrow; a new leaf in spring.

  Standing at the edge of the sea she allowed the water to gather at her ankles, and the silk of shifting sand beneath her feet made her toes curl with pleasure.

  You cannot ask for more, she thought as the last lengths of moonlight draped her with a feeling as light as the wings of butterflies.

  No, you cannot ask for more.

  Part 2

  9

  ‘Slap yourself, madarchod!’ Minister Chander Prasad thundered into the phone. ‘Again! Harder—until you stop babbling like a madman and make some sense.’

  Calls at 2.00 a.m. seldom brought good news, and the nation’s Minister for Labour and Employment braced himself for what was to come.

  ‘I have,’ Malik Prasad whimpered.

  ‘Well, do it again!’ the minister roared. ‘Slap yourself ten more times, you son of a bitch! Then call me!’ He rose from the bed and walked to his study.

  He sat at his desk, switched on a goose-neck lamp and poured himself a drink.

  When the phone rang again Minister Prasad had downed two shots of Black Label and was several shades calmer for it. ‘Now speak clearly. What time did you leave for Maya Bar?’ He was in his study now, sitting at his desk in very low light, his notepad and pen ready before him.

  ‘It must’ve been twelve-thirty.’

  ‘What time did you get there?’

  ‘Around one o’clock. The place was packed, Dad. All high-flyers. Models, designers, the works…’ Malik had locked his bedroom door from inside. He sat on the marble floor in pitch darkness, his knuckles pale from dread.

  The minister took another gulp. ‘Why did you go in the first place?’

  ‘I’d heard Zaira was going to be there as a bartender for the night. I was desperate to see her.’

  ‘A bartender! Why would Zaira have to work as a bartender?’

  ‘It was not for real, Dad,’ he explained. ‘It was part of a promotion campaign for her new film.’

  At Maya Bar, behind the counter, in a dazzling white-and-silver strap dress that highlighted her fluted shoulder blades and hugged her curves, Zaira had looked lovely and frightened.

  ‘Oh.’ The minister had never understood the flashy set; he had never wanted to. ‘Who was with you?’

  Malik mentioned a friend from America who had tagged along. ‘I went with Lucky.’

  ‘Your friend from school?’ The minister remembered Lucky Singh because his father had been a member of Parliament, famously gunned down a few years earlier on the steps of Parliament House. ‘That tall thin boy with very long curly hair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But hadn’t he moved to San Jose?’ The minister’s recollection was correct. Lucky Singh, like his father, had had a host of cases filed against him by the time he was twenty-one. Lucky had not moved to San Jose: he had been exported there.

  ‘Lucky was in town on holiday. We decided to go out and celebrate.’

  The minister wondered why on earth his son kept such shoddy company, but it came to him that perhaps the boy had no choice.

  ‘I entered Maya. I wanted a vodka with soda.’

  ‘All right.’ Minister Prasad took notes with secretarial diligence.

  ‘I went up to the bar and greeted Zaira. She looked right through me, Dad. Then I asked her for a drink and…’

  ‘And? What did she say?’

  ‘She said the bar had closed and she couldn’t serve me alcohol.’ Malik was whining now. Paranoia had broken through his dread.

  ‘And?’

  ‘I—I took out my gun and I shot at the ceiling.’

  ‘What? Are you mad or what?’ The minister didn’t really need an explanation: he could practically smell the powder his son had snorted.

  ‘She was acting so damn pricey, Dad. She turned me down simply because she thought I was a nobody. She was treating me like I was one of the losers who hang around in a corner at a party. She thought she could throw her star power around and…she thought she was the…’ He paused in his hysterical rant and, a moment later, blurted out a confession.

  ‘You shot her?’ The minister stood up in a fit, accidentally knocking over a metal pen holder on his desk. ‘You shot her!’ The pens scattered across the floor and rolled about haphazardly.

  ‘I didn’t mean to!’ Malik wished his father wouldn’t sound so scandalized. ‘I meant to shoot generally in her direction. I was upset; I thought…I thought she would be scared. I’m not a nobody. She had no right to ignore me in front of that crowd, Dad. I had taken enough from her.’ He was still reeling from her rejection; the reality of her death was yet to sink in.

  ‘Shut up, behenchod! Do you know what you’ve done?’

  ‘I shot Zaira in the head.’ He collapsed in sobs. ‘I shot her in the head.’

  ‘All because she refused to serve you a drink?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I really didn’t mean to.’ The vision of Zaira pleading for Samar after slumping to the floor in a ruined heap flashed before Malik’s eyes. Then his father’s growl broke through.

  ‘Do you have any idea how this is going to affect my career?’ Minister Prasad felt sick to his guts; he wanted to beat his son. ‘Saala chutiya!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dad…I’m so sorry…’

  Then, picturing his son in an apartment in Bombay, bawling over some Tinseltown tart, his tone softened. Although he had no specific interest in his son’s life, he could
empathize with the boy’s circumstances. The minister knew well what it entailed to be so blatantly rejected; he also knew of the consequences of doing something stupid and cruel in the wake of an insulting public rebuff. ‘Now, now, Malik…’

  ‘Dad…please save me…I can’t believe this has happened.’

  ‘Malik, compose yourself…stop crying…’

  ‘Only you can save me, Dad.’

  In his son’s voice Minister Prasad caught the traces of a humiliation he knew inside out. Decades ago, he had come to Delhi as a young man, earnest and fiery, determined to make his name in public office. Having assumed the capital to be a level playing field where only political success mattered, he was shocked to see members of established political dynasties enjoy key walk-on roles in a scene in which he had to fight for the part of a bit player. His naivety received a further jolt once he was elected member of Parliament. His new title gave him power, even wealth, but social acceptance still eluded him. He approached the India International Centre for membership but they did not even consider his application without a file of glowing references. He tried to join the Delhi Whisky Society; they said they were taking no new members, which he knew was a cover-up. When he tried to get into Über, a well-known restaurant in Greater Kailash, the door attendant stalled him and said that he could not enter because he was wearing slippers. Minister Prasad had gone to Uber with a bunch of his chamchas, and to be turned away in their presence had been the last straw. To think a bloody doorman had the guts to turn him away! He decided he had put up with enough snobbery, and from now on it was going to be an eye for an eye. The very next week the door attendant at Über, who had stopped Minister Prasad, was run over by a speeding truck. There were no witnesses to the accident. The police did not even consider it could have been anything other than a freak mishap.

  Now, as he listened to Malik’s sobs echoing in an empty flat in Bombay, his son’s embarrassing rejection jolted him back to the days of his own youth, its terrible, insolent struggles. A part of him believed that someone as powerful as he ought not to feel slighted by such small society types, but another part, embittered and furious, was determined to equal the score on behalf of his son.