He retreated, without turning his back to us, as sure-footed and silent as a cat. When he vanished Mon giggled, really loudly - one of those snorty, through-the-nose giggles.
'Shut up!' I whispered. 'Shut up, Mummy,' Armaan whispered too, delighted that somebody else was being yelled at for a change.
Red-faced and contrite she nodded, and then looked up, eyes fully round. Armaan and I both turned to look at what had just walked through the door.
I'd read articles that had described Jogpal Lohia as 'vulpine', so I'd imagined him to be like Amitabh Bachchan in Sarkar. Brooding and droopy-eyed and exuding power from every pore, you know?
The man in the doorway looked more like a warthog. He had massive, gently undulating nostrils peering coyly out from above a huge walrus moustache, large, startled-looking eyes and a trapezoid grey beard that came halfway down his chest. He was chewing gum too, his beard moving busily, but somehow he managed to make it look like he was chomping paan. 'Zoya!' he chuckled, folding both hands into an extravagant namaste. 'How are you?'
I shook my head, clearing it. 'I'm fine, Uncle,' I said dazedly.
He nodded, breathing heavily, his nostrils going big-big-big and then small-small-small. Then he turned to Mon and Armaan and greeted them politely. Armaan nodded vaguely, he probably thought he was meeting Pumba from The Lion King. Then, noticing that a tray of chilled Zing! had just been borne into the room, he brightened up and reached for it with both hands, reverentially, the way people reached for blessed prasad in temples.
Mon glared at him, her face above her (still slightly crumpled) sari quivering in reproach, but before she could say anything Jogpal boomed in his strange Bikaneri-Yankee accent: 'So! Ladies! How are you? How are you finding Australia? Are you enjoying?'
Yes, we assured him enthusiastically. 'We love cricket! Thanks for sponsoring our trip.'
Then Jogpal sprawled onto the sofa and, without any preamble, started telling us the story of his life.
It was pretty interesting, actually. He was a self-made man, he told us. He had spent his childhood playing cricket and looking after his uncle's grocery shop. A cricket scholarship got him into college where he did a B. Com and then joined a detergent company and started selling kitchen cleaners door to door. It was while pushing detergent that he met his wife-to-be. She opened the door when her mum was out and the young Jogpal came in and cleaned the gunk off the kitchen sink and wormed his way into her heart for ever. A runaway marriage followed as her folks were very rich, and from a different caste. But after the first bouncing baby was born, the father-in-law set Jogpal up with a grocery business and adopted him as his son.
'My wife is my good luck, ladies,' Jogpal said. 'Everything has turned to gold since I met her. Business went up and up, my sons look after it now and I am free to pursue my first love, cricket.'
'So were you a batsman, Uncle?' Mon asked, smiling at him.
Lohia slapped the table so hard, she jumped. 'What batsman-shatsman!' he demanded. 'I was all-rounder. Batting, balling, fielding - I was good in all.'
Armaan, of course, zoomed unerringly onto the one juicy word in that sentence. 'Balling,' he repeated happily. 'Balling. Uncle is good at balling.'
Lohia nodded benignly at Armaan, humming to himself a little and then suddenly said, 'Tell me, Zoya, I found you a good business opportunity through my friend Tauji. You are pursuing it?'
I nodded. 'Yes, thank you,' I said.
'Don't mention,' he said graciously. 'I myself was feeling very bad that Board is not giving you any fee without a contract, so I organized this instead. It will be good for everybody concerned.'
Wow, he's a nice guy, I thought, surprised. I told him as much and he waved his hands about. 'No, no,' he said, 'it is my duty to look after all the children, that's all.' Then, turning his nostrils on Mon, he asked suddenly, 'Monita, you like music?'
It was rather unexpected. We'd been brushing up on our cricket GK in anticipation of meeting him. We both nodded, very relieved, blithely unaware of the horrible trap he was setting for us.
'Sure,'we chorused. 'We love music.'
'Nothing like music,' Jogpal said. 'Music is our culture, our soul, our heritage. Who needs alcohol or doctors when they can have music, I say? Music is life.'
He then glanced at one of his hovering minions, who bowed respectfully and went out of the room, to return in a little while bearing a strange looking string instrument and a bow. While we gaped open-mouthed, Jogpal took the instrument, placed it solemnly on his lap and set bow to string. He nodded at us over the stem a couple of times, cleared his throat and announced in a hushed, intense voice, 'Raag bhairavi. On the sarangi.'
And then he started to play.
Very badly. Very, very badly. And if that wasn't enough, he started singing too. It was a poignant little song about the cowherdess pining for Krishna and Jogpal attacked it with full gusto.
'The sun is setting,
The cows are fed
Only I am hungry,
Krishna Krishna, you are my bread
I am a timid tremulous deer
Wandering hither and thither
Slay me with your lotus-smile
Oh my navy-blue hunter...'
It was like a bad dream. The little song had just eight lines, but Jogpal warbled on, repeating the words again and again, scraping his bow across the sarangi strings enthusiastically. Mon and I somehow managed to keep our faces straight, but Armaan started to giggle and fidget. A quick-thinking minion smoothly slid a huge bowl of potato chips in his direction and he grew still and just crunched steadily through the whole recital.
Jogpal cunningly kept varying the tempo, so we'd keep thinking the end was near but whenever we got our hopes up, he'd slow down again, toss one little curl off his forehead with an almost feminine gesture, and keep on going. A good twenty-five minutes had passed before he hit the high notes with an awful flourish, his nostrils working overtime: 'Oh slay me with your lotus eyes, my navy-blue hunter!'
And then he dried up, teary-eyed, flushed and obviously expecting applause.
We clapped enthusiastically.
Jogpal smiled modestly and took a delicate sip of water. 'So did you like my song, beta?' he demanded of Armaan, his Yankee twang coming and going in waves. With a gracious wave of the hand, he indicated that the sarangi was to be taken away. Monita and I perked up instantly.
Armaan surveyed Jogpal solemnly over the rim of his third Zing! glass for a bit and then asked, 'Now can I sing a song?'
Jogpal looked a little taken aback, he obviously hadn't thought of himself as a mere opening act. 'By all means. Of course of course...' he said with fake heartiness and Armaan nodded quietly, hopped onto his feet, wiped the golden-brown Zing! moustache off his upper lip, clasped his hands together and chirruped:
There's a bear in there
And an elec-tric chair
There are hand grenades
And people with AIDS
Come on inside
Commit soo-cide
Welcome to Gay School...
Welcome to Gay School...
Monita muttered something incoherent in Bengali, moved as far away from her son as she could, and started fanning herself with her pallu. Her whole attitude was one of I-disown-this-demon-child-he-has-so-not-emerged-from-my-womb.
I gave a stupid, nervous laugh. 'It's a social service song,' I told a stunned Jogpal. 'Armaan bete, very nice, ab Zing! piyo, drink your Zing! '
Armaan nodded, and after giving Jogpal a triumphant 'beat-that-if you-can-you-amateur' look, promptly disappeared behind his Zing! glass.
'Arrey, by the way,' Lohia said, swivelling his nostrils towards me with a whistling sound, 'your papa phoned me today, Zoya.'
I almost spilt my drink. I'd been nodding politely, wondering how quickly we could leave, and this remark caught me off-guard. 'How come?' I asked, with a sinking heart, but I knew already.
My dad had basically bypassed Rinku Chachi and rolled out the big guns. Or
maybe she knew. Hey, no wonder she'd passed up dinner with Jogpal Lohia this evening!
With a numb feeling of inevitability, I watched him pull out the photo of the nanga Pathan and me from a file and put it down on the table. Then he looked at me, his nostrils suddenly resembling the bores of a double-barrelled gun and inquired mildly, 'What is this?'
Armaan instantly leaned forward to have a look. Monita looked from the chubby old warthog to me and stood up smoothly. 'Armaan,' she said, 'let's go look at the view from the balcony. You can see the bridge and everything.' She made him put the picture down, taking a quick look at it herself, and then they moved away.
I looked Jogpal in the eye and said, 'It's Zahid and me. So?'
Lohia frowned. 'So? So? That's what your papa wants to know,' he said. 'I told him, "Colonel Saab, Zoya is like my daughter too." I told Zahid also ki...'
'You spoke to Zahid about this?' I squealed, horrified.
He nodded. 'Then what?'
Oh my God, how horribly embarrassing!
'But, bacche,' said the Lohia, breathing heavily, 'have I not been a good host? Are you not staying in the best hotels? Three members of your family are travelling with you! Why you're doing all this?'
'All what?' I demanded hotly. 'I haven't done anything! And as you rightly said, three people are travelling with me. It's their job to look after me - not yours!'
'But it is also your papa's job, no?' he said simply. 'And he requested I find you and connect you on the phone to him so that you both can talk.'
Oh my God. I can't believe that my dad would gang up with this, this...Lohia on me. Rinku Chachi... she knew too. Only Zoravar was on my side. I knew it had been a bad idea to put my phone off!
I stood there, smoking gently, as Lohia punched the familiar number of the house in Karol Bagh on his fancy cellphone.
Really, how old did Dad think I was?
'Haan, Colonel Saab?' Lohia said, lumbering to his feet. 'Zoya wants to talk to you.' He handed me the phone, and actually had the gall to smile at me.
'Hi, Dad,' I said, as calmly as I could.
'Zoya.' He sounded angry, anxious, affectionate, all at the same time. He even sounded, I thought, embarrassed, like maybe he was feeling he'd overreacted a little by getting Lohia involved. But the embarrassment was evenly balanced out by a defiant tinge of why-the-bloody-hell-shouldn't I-overreact. The moment I heard his voice, I felt terribly homesick. I knew exactly where he was standing, in the pillared veranda, speaking on the cordless phone. It would be late afternoon in Delhi, the prettiest time of day to hang out in the lawn. Eppa and Meeku would be running around in circles on the grass, and Dad would be trying to keep his voice down so that Anita Chachi didn't overhear and go all I-told-you-so.
'Why aren't you using that new phone I gave you?' he demanded.
I felt instantly guilty, remembering how sweetly he'd given it to me at the airport, and how good I'd promised to be. I mumbled something about switching it off for the flight to Sydney and forgetting to put it on afterwards.
'I called Rinku a million times when I couldn't get through to you, but she's such a coward...she just kept saying wrong number, wrong number! ' my dad fumed. 'Must've seen that photo, I suppose.'
I felt a sudden surge of affection for my Rinku Chachi. 'Uh, Dad, the photo.... It's nothing, kuchh nahi, okay?'
'If it was all so innocent, why have you been avoiding my calls?'
'I haven't,' I said, untruthfully. 'It's just that I haven't figured out how to use that new phone properly yet....' Then as calmly as I could, I told him how I had gone bungee jumping just before the picture was taken. 'That's why I was looking so excited and hanging on to Zahid so animatedly.'
Bad mistake. 'Bungee jumping?' Dad exploded. Across the room, Lohia, who was humming horribly to himself and trying to look invisible, jumped a little. 'You could've been paralysed for life! Those things are dangerous. What is that bloody Rinku doing?'
'Dad, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Relax, I'm fine, nothing happened.... They even took a video, I'll mail it to you, okay? I'm not seeing Zahid or anyone else. You can ask Lohia Uncle. I just see them all for fifteen minutes every five days or so. Honest!'
I was fibbing, of course, there was no way I was going to tell him about my 'NZ' bracelet and all the close dancing I'd been up to, or how good Zahid's gorgeous washboard abs had felt under my fingers. But I did make a promise to myself, right there and then, to keep my distance from the cricketers for the rest of my stay. After all, my propitiousness was directly proportional to my purity, according to old Lingnath whose picture was grinning at me from the wall across the room. And from the way Dad was yelling, my being disowned by my only living parent was directly proportional to my purity too....
To calm him down, I started telling him about Sydney and the match and our fancy hotel.
'Okay, okay, don't you try and manage me,' he said at last, with bad grace. 'And keep your phone on, I want to be able to get through to you at a moment's notice, suna tumne?'
'Haan, haan, Dad,' I promised. 'Love to Eppa and Meeku.'
He muttered something in reply and hung up.
Feeling extremely stupid, I walked across the room and handed the phone back to Lohia.
The evening ended pretty soon after that. Lohia had to go out for some high-profile dinner, so we cleared out of his ornate suite fairly early.
Mon was fully mortified about not having kept a closer watch on me. The first thing she did after getting into the car on our return was to message her number to my dad and assure him that she'd pick up his calls 24/7.
They all slept late the next morning but, of course, I had to be up bright and early for breakfast. I'd set the alarm for six a.m., but I needn't have bothered. Zoravar woke me up at five-thirty in the morning, calling from Poonch. 'You alive, soldier?' he yelled down the line.
'Yes,' I said grumpily. 'Thanks for the warning.
' 'Anytime,' he shouted.
'And listen, just for the record, there's really nothing going on between Zahid and me.'
'Never thought there was!' he yelled. 'Now what about the other guy? You know, Kuptaan Saab? Don't bullshit me, now, I know you like him, Gaalu.'
'Well...' I giggled happily, looking at the pretty gold bracelet on my wrist, 'it seems he likes me too!'
There was absolute silence at the other end; just the wind whistling through the mountains of Poonch. I'd just started worrying that a Pakistani sniper had put a bullet through my brother when he finally said, very quietly, 'Really? How d'you know?'
I told him all about my dinner date in Brisbane. Well, not all, but most of it.
He heard me out and then said urgently, 'Gaalu, look I've gotta go, but listen, ask yourself why this guy's being so nice all of a sudden? He's surrounded with hot babes constantly, why's he training his sights on you?'
I started to protest but he cut me off. 'He's a good captain, I'll grant him that. Maybe sucking up to you is part of his winning strategy. Fair enough. But keep your defences up. Guys keep using you all the time - and I don't want you to become collateral damage, okay?'
'Zoravar, listen,' I started to say, but he'd hung up, leaving me absolutely shattered.
I sat down on the loo floor, thinking, Oh thanks, Zoravar. Obviously, I am so damn ordinary, so damn boring, so damn ugly that no one could possibly like me just for myself. There would have to be an ulterior motive, wouldn't there?
And thanks for reminding me I've been a dumpee twice before.
As if I've ever forgotten it....
The first time hadn't been so bad, actually, I'd come out with nothing more than a slightly bruised ego and a real appreciation for heavy metal music. (The dumper in question had played bass guitar in a Delhi University band called Hymen Busters and had dumped me for the husky-throated lead singer. In his breaking-up speech he'd confessed he was only going out with me because Dad had let the band practise on our terrace.)
But the second time - that had been bad.
M
y second dumper, with his sexy Bangalore drawl, his Hubba Bubba grapefruit-flavoured deep kisses and his brooding intellectual brow had destroyed me utterly when he wrote to me from Columbia University (where he'd got a scholarship basically because G. Singh had pulled a lot of strings) that he felt the two of us should give each other 'space'.
We'd been going out for four years. I'd met him at a college social, he'd just walked up and said hello, we'd slow-danced to Enrique Iglesias's 'Hero' and then sat on the college steps and chatted for hours. He was super-bright, had maxed the CAT and gone to Ahmedabad for his MBA. (Unlike me. I'd got mine from some shady place in Ghaziabad.)
The Zoya Factor Page 22