(Don't ask me why. All I can say in my defence is that when I'm around him, I'm rendered unstable by a thick rush of Loathing tempered with Lust.)
But now, my miraculously clear mind told me, I'd pretty much ended up lashing out at myself.
Because Nikhil Khoda didn't give a damn who I kissed. Why should he? What went of his father's?
But something sure went of mine.
My father likes to believe he's 'broad-minded'. He's kept the same standards for Zoravar and me right through school and college. He's cool with the fact that I'm still not married. He's proud that I'm working. I think he knows I've had boyfriends and stuff, and the policy we've been following since I was about seventeen is that he doesn't ask me about it and I don't tell him about it. Of course, Eppa knows exactly what Zoravar and I are up to and I have a sneaking suspicion that she spills the beans to my dad and then he goes around fully clued in but pretending he doesn't know a thing. But it's pretty hard to play that game if your daughter's picture is in the paper, kissing some cricketer on the mouth. If that picture does come out, I will have put my dad in quite an intolerable position. His Standing-in-thee-Society will totally plummet. He'll be like the dad of that sixteen-year-old girl from DPS, whose jerk of a boyfriend released a raunchy mms of her.
Shit.
He won't be able to go to the club for a drink, even.
I sat around in office, a bundle of nerves till noon, when Monita came to me with two cups of coffee. 'Are you all right, Zo?' she asked me gently. 'And what are you wearing to work nowadays? Suits? Parandis? Kya baat hai?'
I grabbed the coffee cup, gulped it, and gave her the whole story. Halfway through, she got up and yelled to Neelo to join us. He ran in and sat around blinking, shaking his head in disbelief when Monita told him I had taken over where Emraan Hashmi had left off. 'You chicks, man,' he said finally, 'you're something else. Why the hell d'you kiss him if you don't like him?'
'So that he would win,' I said miserably, 'and so that bastard Khoda would lose.'
'This,' said Neelo with unnatural calm, 'is what is called becoming a victim of your own hype. So now you've started believing that whoever you kiss can win a cricket match, have you?'
'Of course not, you moron,' snapped Mon nastily. 'She just wanted Khoda to see her kissing somebody else!'
I jerked my head up. 'I don't give a damn about Nikhil Khoda!'
'Course you don't, baby,' said Mon pushing my parandi back neatly. 'Neelo, phone lagana, call Lokendar and find out what's happening there in the Kotla.'
Neelo nodded. He put his phone on loudspeaker and dialled. Aashiq banaya aapne played full blast in my cabin for a whole minute till Lokey finally picked up.
'Haan, Lokey?' Neelo spoke loudly. 'Match kaisa chal raha hai?'
I snatched the phone from him and heard Lokey squawk, 'Kaun, Neelakhshi?It got over little while ago. You won't believe it but Punjab have won, it's a historic win, a...'
I put down the phone slowly, saying nothing. My mind was churning crazily, cataclysmic music from saas-bahu serials was playing in my ears. So the Zoya ka magic chalega kya question had been answered decidedly. There was no question about it. For whatever reason, I was lucky for whomsoever I chose to support. Why, even Neelo and Monita were looking at me with something approaching awe.
And I had chosen to support Zahid Pathan, a yummy but too-young-for-me boy, from whom I had nothing but 'brotherly' vibes. A Mid-day picture of me kissing him was about to land on my desk any minute now.
And I had not chosen to support Nikhil Khoda, a man I was almost certainly obsessed with.
Thank God I am not the prime minister of the nation. With my powerful strategic mind, I would have totally band-bajaoed the country....
***
The Mid-day
page 1
Shanta Kalra.
NEMESIS IN PIGTAILS?
Any doubts that Nikhil Khoda may have had about the efficacy of Zoya Solanki, a junior advertising executive at AWB, Delhi, who was born on June 25th 1983, the day India won the cricket World Cup at Lords, as a lucky charm for whichever team she breakfasts with, were dispelled today at the Feroz Shah Kotla.
The odds were decidedly stacked against Punjab when Zoya arrived, pigtailed and peppy, to eat breakfast with them early this morning. She wished the Kings XI Captain Hharviindar Singh and his Aussie vice-cap, Kevin Astle before they went in to play. And seemed especially fond of Sangrur speedster, Zahid Pathan.
Punjab won the toss and decided to field first. And what a field day they had. Bullabaroo Butch Astle got South African opener Graeme Watson on the first ball itself - and Mumbai never really recovered from that scalping. Zahid Pathan took three quick wickets in the next 4 overs, and at the end of 10 overs Mumbai were 73 for 4. Skipper Nikhil Khoda stuck it as best as he could, hitting an incredible 63 off 14 deliveries, but he eventually ran out of partners at the other end. The IPL champions scraped together a sorry 133 all out at the end of 17 overs.
Punjab easily totted that much in 12 overs, with a sparkling 89 by skipper Hharviindar Singh, and a truly stupendous cameo by Pathan who hit three consecutive sixes in the last over.
Khoda, who has come out fairly strongly against the superstitious belief that Zoya brings 'luck' to the team, looked visibly frustrated when questioned and said he had no comments to make about his nemesis in pigtails. Instead he said that he would 'much rather take the opportunity to congratulate Harry and the Kings XI squad for pulling off a truly amazing win'. 'Gritty, gutsy cricket like this is oxygen for the domestic game,' he said.
Zoya's track record as a lucky charm is turning out to be both consistent and impressive, and is gaining attention in IBCC circles. It is clearly no longer being dismissed as sheer coincidence, as it was earlier even by this correspondent. 'We believe in her,' said Mumbai spinner Balaji, a player who has felt both the benign and blighting effects of Zoya's charm. 'She is specially blessed. The Board should give her some official status.'
Even coach Wes Harden who had said in an earlier statement that he didn't believe in lucky charms, as he'd never come across one that actually worked, admitted that the Zoya Factor was 'pretty damn astonishing'.
He even said he wouldn't rule out Balaji's suggestion out of hand. IBCC president Jogpal Lohia was present at the Kotla today, but was unavailable for comment.
***
There was a picture of me right in the middle of the article, with my face looking unbelievably chubby, and my hair all pulled back in that wretched parandi. I had this really nasty expression on my face and I seemed to be glowering at a figure wearing a Mumbai Indians uniform in the background.
Well, at least I'm not smooching Zahid! My father can still go to his club and drink with his cronies.
Thank you, God.
***
At office Sankar forwarded a mail to me. It was from the Zing! client (not idiot Ranjeet, but his boss Vaishali Paul, the top honcho at Zing! Co.).
Regarding your little miracle worker. Have just got off the phone with Nikhil who called to demand why Zoya's been taken off the account. I told him that it was because Ranjeet said she mishandled the situation in Dhaka.
He said quite nicely, but firmly that there was no mishandling and Ranjeet must've got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He wants her reinstated. Though no cricketer- even one as cute as this one-tells me how to do my stuff, I'm all for it. Zoya's good at her job and I don't know what Ranjeet was thinking letting her go in the first place.
He says she exceeded her brief but I think, by having her removed, that he exceeded his.
So we want her back, if she'll have us back.
And by the way, Sanks...
I think I smell a romance...
Hee hee hee
Vaishali
Honestly. This woman is a forty-year-old mother of two, a gold medallist from FMS and top Indian business person of the year, for the last three years in a row. Why is she talking like some Stardust junkie? (I was acting cool, but of cour
se I was totally flattered, I thought Vaishali Paul didn't even know my name.)
And wasn't it decent of Khoda to call her and get me my job back? And he did it today, which meant he couldn't be mad at me about how the match turned out today. Which in turn could mean:
a) that he was nursing a grand passion for me in his extremely hunky chest and was trying to woo me back from Zahid (ha ha ha);
b) that he was a decent guy doing a decent thing and had, maybe, a certain tepid concern for lesser beings like myself (pretty possible);
c) that he was scared of angering me, the High Priestess of Indian Cricket (somehow I didn't think so).
Whatever the reason, I was pretty grateful to have my old job back! No more housewife research - yippee! And then a new and daring plan entered my brain, fuelled by Vaishali's crack about smelling a romance. (Matlab, she's so clever and all, maybe she's right!)
I thought it might be a good idea to phone Khoda and thank him personally.
Hello, it's not like I was making up excuses. I had a legit reason to call and everything. And his voice was so warm and deep, my toes curled just imagining him say Hello....
Loathing 10%. Lust 90%.
'Hello?'
It wasn't Nikihil's deep drawl. It was a female voice. Husky and all. And it sounded familiar.
I said, my voice sounding high and unnatural even to my own ears, 'Uh, hello, can I speak to Nikhil-sir?'
'Can I take a message?'
And somehow, I was instantly convinced that the voice belonged to a certain supermodel from the Kingfisher calendar, whose legs the Bangladeshis had painted over, because they were too sexy to be seen. Not that I had any proof or anything. And I certainly didn't go, Excuse me, you are April and October, na? But I was just sure it was her.
'No,' I said. 'There's no message as such.'
And hung up.
And went home to my SEC D minus minus house in Karol Bagh.
***
9
Well, that was it for a bit really. I was a celebrity in the colony and at Tera Numbar but office life pretty much returned to normal. Zahid called me a couple of times but I felt too embarrassed to take his calls. Besides, I figured that if I didn't take his calls he'd understand I wasn't really in love with him after all and he could relax. A couple of days later, he messaged me saying he was off to Bombay to shoot for some bicycle he endorses. And that was the end of that.
A week later, Mon and I boarded an early morning flight and headed for Bombay. We took a cab to the Famous Studio at Mahalaxmi to check out the edit of her Shah Rukh film. (It was too long as usual, ninety seconds instead of seventy-five, and she was very worried about it.) As we inched by Worli Naka Monita screamed and pointed to a hoarding above us. I peered out of the window, almost bumping my head against the roof of the cab. It showed a chubby girl cartoon with wildly curling black hair standing nose to nose with a dark, scowling boy cartoon in India cricket blues. The girl was smilingly offering a slice of buttered bread to the boy. The line on top advised, 'Don't skip her breakfast, Skipper,' and underneath it a legend read, 'LUCKILY, BUTTERLY DELICIOUS - AMUL!'
I can't say I wasn't thrilled. Even though they'd painted me chubbier than I was, it sure beat obscurity, didn't it?
At Famous, Mon and I walked into the edit suite where PPK's boy, Kenny, was halfway through dubbing Shah Rukh.
'Shhh,' he said as we walked in, and from the darkness behind the mixer board Shah Rukh's trademark voice floated out: 'Heyy, Monita! Hey, Chubby Cheeks! Aren't you the new Lucky Charm, huh?'
'Shah Rukh's here?' I squeaked, wildly excited, whipping my head round to look at Mon with such force that I almost snapped my neck off.
'Well, his voice is here,' she said wryly, throwing open the door to the dubbing room to reveal a large, brown, man-mountain with little twinkling eyes and a bristly moustache, a headphone perched like an absurd hairband upon his balding head. 'Hi, Sohan!'
'Good afternoon, Monitaji!' said Sohan in a ringing Amitabh Bachchan baritone. Then he turned to me and said in perfectly flat, nasal Saif Ali Khan accents, 'And how are you m'dear?'
I clapped my hands in delight. 'Awesome! Who-who can you do?'
Sohan grinned. 'The question is not who-who I can do,' he said suavely, Pierce Brosnan's Bond voice sounding completely bizarre coming out of his benign Ravana face, 'but who-who I cannot do!' Then he took off his headphone, thrust out one meaty paw and said, in a completely ordinary slightly Marathi voice: 'Hello, I'm Sohan. You're Zoya, no?'
I nodded.
He grinned again. 'Very good, very good, like me, you have been blessed with a God-given gift!' Then he switched to an eerie Darth-Vader-talking-through-a-metal-box voice and bent almost double to rasp into my ear, 'Make sure you use it for evil, not good!'
'Uh...okay,' I said, somewhat bemusedly as he winked and said, 'Keep it up!' Then he turned to Kenny and started discussing how much he was planning to charge to dub the Shah Rukh voice.
Leaving Mon and Kenny to haggle with Sohan, I wandered out and skulked around in the seedy corridor, hoping to bang into people I knew.
Because that's the beauty of Famous Studio.
If you hang around there long enough, you will meet every possible person in the advertising industry in India. Its three dingy floors are lined with dirt-encrusted, paan-streaked corridors - with not one non-fused bulb in their AC-exhaust-filled passageways - that lead into swanky edit suites, designer animation houses, music studios and film production units. The permanent residents here are the post-production types: editors, sound engineers, animators. These unkempt insomniacs live on an unhealthy diet of Britannia Jimjam and Bourbon biscuits and cigarettes bummed off each other. They discuss the music of Led Zeppelin, the poetry of Rumi and the films of Tarantino - even as they cut thirty-second spots for Nirma detergent, Nestle Funbar and Tobu cycles. Occasionally they swap horror stories about insane deadlines, moron clients, turncoat agency types and tragically butchered would've-been-a-Cannes-finalist-if-they'd-let-it-alone films. When they're really bored, they even hit on visitors in a halfhearted kind of way. Because everybody else is, basically, only visiting. Film-makers, musicians, singers, agency people (and sometimes movie stars) come to Famous to direct/record/ approve/dub on a project-to-project basis.
There are tonnes of studios all over Bombay now, Monita had told me, really fancy, plush ones where you don't need to ask for the key before going to the loo, but Famous is Famous! 'It's the mother ship of Indian advertising,' Mon had declared.
I met nobody I knew in the corridors, so I came down to the ground floor and sat in the cafe (not as hip as it sounds, it's really a plants nursery that serves coffee and a lousy pizza) where I finally spotted a famliar face. Vishaal, our photographer from Dhaka, smoking a cigarette and managing to look intellectual as he gazed pensively upon a plate of rapidly congealing omelette-toast.
I waved at him through the smoke and he came alive, 'Farishta Sabun!' he went, sweeping me a bow, 'Zoya! Good to see you, yaar!'
'What you up to, Vishaal?' I asked after he'd made all the usual noises about my talisman status and so on.
'New Nike film,' he grinned. 'You're the brief for it, you know! It features Nikhil Khoda.'
'Oh?' I said. 'Cool. Big one for you, no? Celebrity film and all! Can I see it?'
'Sure!' he went. 'We're in Galactica B. C'mon, tell me what you think!'
So I went with him to Galactica B and saw the Nike film.
It was pretty cool.
He'd shot Nikhil against surreal backdrops. Burning, battlefield-like cricket pitches that dissolved into janam-patri parchment, that sort of thing. Nikhil looked totally hot, in a grey, distressed-fabric sweatshirt, very Neo from the Matrix, and was playing some big dramatic shots, wielding his bat like a broadsword. There was this voice-over, all echo-ey they'd made it, and what it was saying was:
You can believe in Lucky charms
A Goddess to keep you from harm.
A lucky number on your shirt.
Some extra vowels in your name.
You can believe in luck...
Or you can believe in yourself.
And just play your game.
Nike.
Just do it.
The Zoya Factor Page 12