' - Australia,' I said. My heart sank to my toes and then bobbed up again slowly.
They're going to lose, a little crab voice in my head whispered gleefully. You're safe. Basically, Harry and Shivee had to take us to 122 in 15 overs. But it was going to be tough.
'Besides, it may not rain after all, you know,' Rinku Chachi said. 'Nikhil is only anticipating every possibility. Or maybe it will rain just a little and they'll continue play after a while...'
But, then, when they were 99 for 13 overs, there was a flash of lightning and fat drops of rain started to fall. They kept playing, however. Jay told the viewers that the raindrops looked bigger on TV than they actually were, as the camera lens magnified them. In fact, it was really just a tiny drizzle. But the Aussie captain was going for the jugular. He was splurging all ten overs of the Punjab Kings XI star, Kevin 'Butch' Astle, on this bit of the game. The boys struggled to take it up to 117 in 14 overs, 121 in 15 and 130 in 16. Then the rain stopped, a bit of sunshine peeped through, and we all relaxed a bit. The required run rate, if a whole match was played, was only two point something.
'Maybe India will get lucky after all!' Beeru sounded exultant, but he spoke too soon. Because the cosmos, as Lingnath Baba would say, has its own sublime, immutable, incomprehensible logic. As Butch started his run-up for the first delivery of his last over, the rain lashed down with a vengeance. Huge fat drops practically obscured the players from our view as they made a dash for the pavilion. On the players' balcony, Nikhil Khoda threw down the back-scratcher-cum-fly-swatter and stalked into the dressing room, his face like thunder.
Meanwhile, Jay and Beeru went on to say, 'What bad luck! Brisbane never has rain at this time of the year. What bad luck, what bad luck, what bad luck...'
I should've been there for breakfast, I castigated myself self-importantly, quite enjoying the feeling of having been proved indispensable, again. I should've worn a plastic sack or something and just gone.
Then the anchor, reporting live from the field, grabbed Nikhil in the pavilion and shoved a mike in his face. 'Do you think you had bad luck today because of the Zoya Factor?' he yelled above the sounds of lashing rain.
Nikhil shook his head. 'No,' he said steadily. 'We failed to anticipate the weather collapse early enough, that's all.'
That hit me so hard in my smug little gut, I almost threw up. The sense of not being needed, of not being missed was dreadful. How could he anticipate a freak cloudburst? I thought savagely. How can he talk about me so dismissively? Doesn't he care about me at all?
I got up blunderingly, grabbed my wad of tissues and rushed out to the balcony to cry in the rain.
'Fuckworth-bloody-Lewis!' said Rinku Chachi with feeling.
The anticlimax was depressing. We'd all been hoping India would win this match and be clear till the semis so we could all relax for the next week. But that was not to be. The balding doc came to see me again in the evening and declared me well on the path to recovery. Then, around ten o' clock at night, when Rinku Chachi went into the loo for a long shower, I had the most unexpected guest.
I got a call from Reception. 'Ma'am, there's a gentleman to see you.'
Nikhil!
'I can't see anybody,' I said, 'I'm infectious, but please give him the phone.'
'Ma'am, he says he wants to come up and see you in person.'
'Huh? Okay...' I said, hesitantly. 'Send him up.'
Maybe it wasn't Nikhil. Maybe Lokey was there to inform me that the Sheraan-wali offer had gone up in smoke.
But it was neither.
Clad in three delicious shades of saffron, tinkling gently with various charms and amulets, his hairy halo aglow, Swami Lingnath Baba stood in the doorway, smiling benignly. 'Can we enter?' he asked, pinning me with his hypnotic eyes.
'Uh...sure,' I said. The fever had left me a little weak and the strong waft of incense emanating from him dissolved whatever little opposition I might have put up. I sat down on the sofa and looked at him blankly. 'Uh...should you not be at your ashram in Tundla?' I asked.
He made a graceful sweeping gesture with one hand. 'The world is a small place...' he said, weighing every word. Then he made a sudden forward movement and I jumped back, startled. 'You are still indisposed, Devi?' he asked as he grabbed my wrist, only to take my pulse, I realized after a moment with relief.
His hand felt cool and dry. No need to panic...yet, I thought. 'Yes,' I told him. 'But the doctor says I should be well enough for the next match.'
Lingnath nodded. 'That is well. Your gracious hand should always be hovering in blessing above the heads of our team.'
My gracious hand was twitching to slap him at that moment. I controlled the impulse and said dismissively, if not completely truthfully, 'No, no, I don't believe in this superstitious nonsense.'
'No?' Lingnath raised both eyebrows in gentle surprise. 'Even when today, the heavens themselves wept because you broke your breakfast appointment?'
'It rained, okay?' I said, blowing my nose. 'The heavens did not weep! And, for your information, the Aussie sportscasters have been calling them "showers of blessing". Now I've been advised total bedrest you know, so...'
'Of course, of course,' said Lingnath, getting to his feet gently and reaching into the deep pocket of his saffron choga. 'We had come only to give you some medicine to make you well.'
I looked at him in horrid fascination, fully expecting him to produce some crumpled little paper parcel full of human ash, or dried cow dung, or something. Instead, he pulled out a crisp silver strip of multivitamin tablets from his pocket and handed it to me. 'From Dieter,' he said. 'He was bringing them but we offered to deliver them ourselves.'
'Thank you,' I said shortly.
'We wished to see you in person...' He patted me on my head.
'I'm flattered,' I said.
'So that we could beseech you to stay vigilant in your post as the celestial guardian who will lead our team to victory.'
Vigilant celestial guardian? He made me feel like an antiperspirant. 'Okay,' I said blankly.
He waggled his ringed fingers before me. 'Forces of darkness are gathering around you,' he said sonorously. 'Pressure is building. I see much conflict ahead. Stand strong, Devi!'
'Okay, cool, I will,' I assured him. Then I asked 'Uh... Baba...?'
'Yes yes, speak,' he said, encouraging me on.
'Somebody told me that if I give all my good luck to the team, I'll be left with only bad luck in my personal life,' I said in a rush. (I couldn't believe I was sharing my fears with a god-man.)
He gave a hacking little laugh, took a deep breath, made mystical snatching hand gestures in the air and said splendidly: 'Balance is what keeps the cosmos in motion, Devi.'
The next morning a letter was delivered to me. I opened the letter and sneaked into the loo to read it:
Zoya,
As you won't take my calls, and may infect me with the flu if I drop in uninvited, I've decided the only way to get through to you is to write. How are you? Dieter tells me you'll be well in a couple of days, definitely well enough to make the breakfast before the Pakistan match, for which I'm really thankful. But what I really want to know is, are you well enough to see me today? If your doctor okays it, can you meet me at your hotel gym at ten o' clock tonight?
That shouldn't be too strenuous.
Message me if you can't make it.
Nikhil
The doc said I wasn't infectious any more and told me to just keep taking the multivits Dieter had sent me, as they'd keep my immunity up. 'But be very careful with your health now, Zoya,' he warned. 'You're a precious commodity at the moment, eh?'
Ya, ya, whatever. I stole a look at Rinku Chachi and asked him casually, 'I was thinking I might walk the treadmill in the evenings and do a light workout now and then...'
'Sounds good,' he nodded. 'Just be careful not to overexert yourself and give me a call if you feel at all sick, you hear?'
I promised him I would, and when he left, I peeped int
o Mon's room to borrow suitable sporty attire.
'What's with you?' she asked bluntly, lighting a cigarette. 'Exercise aur kya kya?'
I laughed and plonked down on her bed. 'Monita, you are my best friend in the whole world,' I said dreamily.
'Zoya,' she said, 'I'm very touched that you want to enact this princess-in-her-palace-amongst-her-confidantes scene with me, but it won't work if you don't confide. What's up with you, brat?'
I shook my head. 'Nothing! What's up with you? I've been ignoring you and the Monster so much lately.'
'You've been sick,' she pointed out, flicking ash into a matchbox. 'I'm fine. I talk to Aman daily, he doesn't seem to be missing me in the slightest, which is breaking my heart a little, I'll admit.'
'And Anand?' I asked thinking of her extremely-hot-in-a-fair-sanitized-banker-sort-of-way husband. 'Did you tell him about our girls' night out?'
She laughed a gurgling, deep-throated laugh. 'Yes. He was furious when he got his credit card statement for the month. He wanted to know why I was trying to turn the balance of payments between India and Australia upside down.'
'D'you miss him?' I asked, turning over onto my stomach, cupping my chin in my hand and looking at her intently.
She pushed some hair off my forehead. 'Yes,' she said simply. 'Of course I do.'
'So...'
'So, why one month away from him? Well, the financial year has come to an end so he's super busy and the kindest thing I could do was just keep out of his way. I'm bonding so much with Armaan though, he's been neglected so much because of work and his little brother, the poor baby...'
The poor baby was having a rocking time in the loo. We could hear him from the bed, splashing around and shouting, 'Shark! Shark! Ha Ha! Khooni Shark,' to the Barbies-in-bikinis he kept in the bathtub.
'But what's with the gymming?' Mon asked me. 'What's up with you?'
So I told her the whole sequence of events - Zoravar warning me against celebrity cricketer types, my conversation with Nikhil, and the fact that he'd now written me a note and wanted to meet me tonight. She pushed away the note I'd been trying to show her and looked at me in disbelief.
'Is that why you two haven't been talking?' she asked, in total disgust. She scanned the note briefly and chucked it aside. 'Zoya, you're one dumb choot.'
'Why?' I asked belligerently.
'I thought Nikhil was smarter but I have to say that he's one dumb choot too!' Mon leapt off the bed and starting pacing up and down the room, making an abrupt about-turn when she reached a wall. 'This whole concept of breaking people up into bits and pieces is totally chootiya-matic! "You love me because I'm lucky." "You love me because I'm a captain." It's such self-indulgent crap! It's like me saying, "Oh no, Anand only loves me because my boobs are so big! Hmmm...now would he have loved me so much if they were smaller? Oh! Oh! Not knowing will drive me insane! I will have to kill myself!"' She arched her wrist against her forehead in the classic tragedy queen pose of the fifties and glared at me.
I blinked.
But there was more to come. 'Look, being captain is part of who he is. And being lucky is part of who you are. Just leave it at that.' Mon stubbed out her cigarette with one shaking hand and said, 'The guy cares about you, period. I was watching his face when you were bitchy in the restaurant and it crumpled like Aman's did when he scrambled onto my lap and realized I was serious about weaning him. Why would he react like that if he's just after your'- she made a large vague gesture in the air -'Luck?'
'But maybe he's just saying that now,' I said, backing away as I spoke. 'Maybe he'll change his tune when the World Cup's over.'
'Fair enough,' Monita said, sitting down on the bed again. 'I'm not saying that isn't a possibility. But look, you have to go out on a limb a bit here. Don't you think he's worth it?'
'No one's worth my self-respect,' I muttered.
Mon sighed. 'You're just saying that because you've been hurt before. But that doesn't mean you should harden your heart, Zoya.'
Hurt before? Hello, that was the understatement of the century. I'd felt like a piece of used toilet paper by the time my second boyfriend had finished with me.
Mon said urgently, slapping me on the elbow, 'Listen, if you don't stand by him now, when he needs you the most, he may hold that against you later.'
I looked up, dismayed. I hadn't thought of that.
Mon said, very seriously, no hint of laughter in her eyes even though her words were pretty corny, 'His feelings for you will be tested later. But yours for him are being tested right now.'
'Oh please!' I said. 'That's just a twisted version of "sleep with me now to prove how much you love me and then I'll marry you afterwards".'
Mon shrugged. 'What's wrong with that?' she said. 'That happened with Anand and me, you know.'
Oh thanks, Monita. Now I feel like a totally prudish Karol Bagh type. 'But what about his countless conquests?' I demanded.
Mon shrugged impatiently, 'What, you want to end up with some loser "virgin type"?' she snapped. 'And, anyway, it could be worse. Imagine if you were up against one serious girlfriend rather than a gaggle he doesn't really care about?'
I shook my head in disbelief. Didn't she get it? I was obviously just another girl in the gaggle to him. Even if it wasn't my luck he was after, maybe he was just in it for sheer variety. As in, I'm so tired of beautiful babes. Lemme date someone plain and see what that feels like.
Mon said doggedly, 'You're not one of a gaggle. You're the special someone he's been waiting for all his life.'
'You're mad,' I told her frankly.
'I'm a romantic,' she said. 'You should be too.'
'Okay, okay,' I said, plucking my letter out of her hands. 'So you recommend I stop splitting hairs and swing into support-mode as far as Nikhil Khoda is concerned, and hope for him not to change his tune in case we lose or in case we win and he finds he doesn't need me any more?'
It was a hard speech to keep track of, but Monita stayed with me. 'That's right,' she said, nodding firmly. 'In agony-aunt-speak, Zo, you're not going to know whether he needs you because he loves you or he loves you because he needs you till after this shindig is over. That's not too long to wait, is it? Hey, at least you won't have to get a double mastectomy to find out if his love is true! Just trust in him and hope for the best.'
I nodded, smoothed out the note and read it again. 'It's pretty businesslike, isn't it?' I asked nervously, shaking it in front of her face.
Mon shrugged. 'He wants to meet you. Just take it from there.'
'So...I should kiss him, right?' I asked, just to be clear on this vital point.
Mon made an extravagant sweeping gesture with her hands. 'By all means.'
'What else should I do?' I asked eagerly.
'Anyth -' Her face crumpled suddenly. 'Oh shit, I'm supposed to be your chaperone! Oh God, your dad! Zo, don't you dare do more than kiss him, okay?'
That night I had a bad attack of oh-my-God-I-look-ugly-in-whatever-I-wear, changed my clothes a million times and didn't get down to the gym till twenty past ten. It took me a while to find, and a sign saying that the gym timings were from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. almost put me off, but then I saw that the door was ajar. I pushed it open and stuck my head in.
Nikhil was sitting at some strange-looking machine, doing some strange-looking exercises. He saw me in the mirror and kind of went 'hi' without smiling, so I walked in slowly and peered down at him. 'What are you doing?' I asked curiously.
'What does it look like?' he said irritably, panting a little between repetitions. 'I figured if you weren't coming at least I wouldn't miss my workout.' He released his grip on the contraption with a slight groan and all these silver coloured weights slid smoothly down to the base. He got up from the machine, wiped the back of his neck with a towel and headed purposefully for another strange-looking machine, without even looking at me.
I trailed behind him, not quite knowing what to do. Sports quota type, I thought resentfully. He looked like he might bit
e my head off if I tried to apologize.
Nikhil sat on the contraption, and started curling his legs up backward, from the knee. Huge stacks of silver coloured weights moved smoothly up and down again.
'I've come from across town, Zoya,' he said exasperatedly, a little later. 'You live here.'
Instead of just apologizing like a normal person, I was contrary enough to mutter, 'It's harder to be on time when you're close by. You keep thinking ki you've got time, it's right here, it'll just take a minute and then you get late. And then when I reached I got confused because the sign outside said this place is closed.'
The Zoya Factor Page 30