Spice and Secrets

by Suleikha Snyder

  She sat up straighter, folding her hands tightly. Davey, who usually caught her slightest change in demeanor from the booth and instantly barked criticism into her mic equipment, didn’t even notice. He simply reached for his drink, his flinty eyes thoughtful and distant. “So, where are we on Priya appearing on the show with Rahul? Him signing on to her picture has everyone buzzing, and they haven’t even put the first shot on tape yet. We need to make this happen.”

  She replied with the self-possession of someone who had been on the spot for years. “I believe her exact words were, ‘When hell freezes over’. At least, that’s what her assistant told my assistant.”

  “Then we’d best order an ice truck.” His hungry, wolfish smile lit up his entire face. He looked too goddamn handsome for his own good, wearing ambition like some men wore a sharp suit and tie. “We need the exclusive first look at Khoon. Us. Not Karan, not Simi. Not any of those bloody American Bollywood programs. This is our get, Sunita. I know you can do this. Don’t you dare let this get away from us.”

  Us was such a deceptive word…so full of promise, na? A lump suddenly lodged in Sunny’s throat, and she tried to wash it away with her whiskey. She had not been part of an us in a very long time. A we? Nahin. And nothing was ours except the life she shared with her son. Now here was Davey Shaw, making them out to be partners in this grand scheme.

  “Itne asaan nahin hain. It’s not that easy,” she murmured, before realizing she was responding to her own thoughts and not his. Damn it. He was challenging her in a whole different way, without even trying.

  “Yes, it is, Sunita.” Davey just stared at her with those disturbingly canny blue eyes…like he was seeing straight into her. Perhaps he was. Because his next words, too, seemed to echo her private ones: “You just have to trust me. And trust yourself.”

  Trust? What was that? She could only shake her head. And the rest of herself as well…for caring about his ideas, and for growing suspicious of his mobile phone, and for being charmed by his posh good looks. “Gadhey,” she hissed, smacking her palm down flat upon the tabletop.

  “I beg your pardon. I am not an ass,” he gasped, faking insult.

  No, she was. It was stupid, completely stupid, to let this man get to her. To let him crawl under her skin with his smart smile and his network domination dreams.

  And, yet, there he still was. Treading entirely too close to her soul.

  Rahul liked to mentally plan his dinners. It wasn’t so different from directing, from producing—a matter of plotting, of gathering all the necessary ingredients, and framing them in just the perfect way. It was calming, especially when Nina was causing her standard dramas. He thought of the repetitive motion of his knife slicing through tart onions. He imagined the sizzle of five spice, paanch-phoron, in oil. He thought of Bengali fish curries, Goan ones, too, and imagined what might work as a dessert. Kheer was simple, basic. Every nation had a recipe for rice pudding, na? Sweets like gulab jamun and rosgolla were time-consuming, involving the boiling of syrups and the shaping of balls.

  “You keep your hands off my balls!” he could imagine Shaw quipping, which was, in and of itself, another welcome distraction from the theatrics of his life. From waiting. From wondering. But it was never a distraction from Priya, na?

  Where are you? She’d sent him the brief message some hours ago. No “hello”, no “how are you?” Nothing but three tight words. He’d actually pictured her expression when he wrote her and told her that his plans for the evening involved bar hopping in Santacruz—really just one jump, to the lounge at the Grand Hyatt. Anticipating her arrival at China House was excruciating. Then, finally, he had the pleasure of seeing her expression in person. The private I-deck area was supposed to be tranquil, relaxing, a nice getaway, but she blew into China House like a storm, all rage and rain and cloud-colored silk. And it seemed she was well prepared to dampen his parade.

  “What in the hell is wrong with you, Rahul?” Priya was incensed. Infuriated. Positively livid. And completely beautiful.

  “Could you be more specific? There’s just so much, I don’t know where to begin.” He made himself at home watching her pace back and forth, seething so palpably that it nearly rolled off her in waves.

  “Yeh kya bakwas hain? What is this bullshit?” she demanded of him in a startlingly good imitation of Trish Chaudhury at her diva peak. “How could you get Ashraf fired? Get him back this instant.”

  “Sorry.” He shrugged, sipping calmly at his gin and tonic. “It’s in the trades already, and KK can’t wait to relaunch our jodi. He is very excited.”

  “We don’t have a jodi! One film does not a pairing make.” She stopped in place, her eyes spitting barbs like a spear gun. “Wasn’t Bihar enough baadla? Haven’t you had your revenge?”

  “I’m not interested in revenge. I just want to act again, and who is a better costar than Madame One-Two Punch?”

  “Trishna,” she answered automatically. “Sonia, Ash, Kareena, Katrina, Priyanka. Angelina Jolie. Hazaron heroine hain is duniya main. There are countless heroines at your disposal, na?”

  “But there’s only one you,” he pointed out.

  That shook her. He could tell. But she refused to acknowledge it, to allow him a point at all. “I am the negative role. You will end up with the sweet girl. Probably Ananya. She is very close to signing.”

  “Scripts can be rewritten. I have Ravi and Rajat working with KK on some revisions. I will take a look at it also. Perhaps our hero will end up with his ‘khalnaika’, after all.”

  The news did nothing to mollify her. “You’re crazy. All this just to…to what? Recapture our childhood? Stroll down memory lane? Kya chathe ho, Rahul? What do you want from me?”

  “I’m a filmmaker, Pree. And the picture of our lives together barely began before it was shelved. I just want a proper ending to the story.”

  She went as pale as milk. “I can drop out,” she said haltingly. “The deal is not final yet.”

  “No, you can’t.” Rahul gave her a grim look. “Heroes can swap out, no problem. We lose nothing. But you know just as I do that there are a dozen girls lining up to take your place in the spotlight. Tomorrow, you will be hawa, your name will be nothing. This is your shot. They won’t give you another chance.”

  Twin spots of color bloomed on her cheeks. Cold fire. “I won’t give you another chance. Samjhe? It will not happen. Our story is over.”

  “Jhoot maat bolo. Don’t lie, Priya,” he chided her. “Of all your changes, that one suits you the least.”

  Anything she might have said in response was lost as Sam came stomping into the lounge. Every word out of his mouth that wasn’t somehow related to his ex-wife was a “fuck” or a “shit”. Vikram was close behind him, murmuring things that were less profane and more soothing. By the time Rahul had sussed out that Sunny didn’t want Jaidev spending Diwali with his two daddies, Priya had slipped out.

  But she wouldn’t slip away. That was a promise.

  Chapter Seven

  “Please don’t be a bitch about this, Sunny.” Sam’s voice burst forth from the mobile speaker, his message calmer, more reasonable, than he had been the night before. Probably Viki had written him a script. “We still have months to think about it. Just be cool. Let us spend the holiday with Jai. You don’t want to make this ugly. Samjhe?”

  Wasn’t it already ugly? Had it not been a train crash since before Jai was born? It was a little bit mad to curse at a telephone, but Sunny did exactly that as she deleted the voicemail and walked into the front room of her flat. A grand, sprawling affair that took up an entire floor of one of the fancy new Versova hi-rises, she’d paid for it herself. Not one note of Sam’s money had contributed. She’d worked for this, na? She’d earned it. Hadn’t she also earned a little peace? But nahin, Sam had to toss a bomb into the center of her life, insisting that because his vicious cycle of rehab and relapse was over—for now—he deserved more time with Jai. Maybe Viki believed the leaf had turned over. She couldn
’t. The cost was too high.

  Jai was curled up on the sofa, studying, a plate of pakoras that Usha had left for him sitting untouched on the glass-topped coffee table. Her nokrani was a godsend—part housekeeper, part cook, all lifesaver. Sunny didn’t like keeping a full staff, relying only on Usha and her driver, Hari. Sam would say she didn’t like relying on anyone, and perhaps that was also true. But he’d taught her that lesson, na?

  They’d run around partying gloriously for six hot months when she was nineteen. She’d thought he hung the stars even though all her girlfriends told her that he was cheating on her—with boys, no less—but she hadn’t cared, craving only the next rush, the next drink, stumbling around with him at two a.m. only to wake up alone. Sam Khanna was the kind of guy you happily wanted to be almost arrested with. And, God knows, she narrowly escaped that fate three or four times. Until she fell pregnant, and everything changed. She’d grown up almost overnight, knowing she wanted her child more than anything in the world. Sam had married her out of duty, to give Jaidev a last name and his own budding career as a hero some sort of validation. A hero didn’t knock a girl up and leave her, na? Those few months of marriage had been even more disastrous than their running around…and Sam had, eventually, turned screen villain.

  But she saw so much of him in Jai…that same charisma, the biting wit, the silken dark hair that was almost too beautiful for such a serious face. It was frightening, sometimes, how Jai was a pocket version of his pocket papa. But he was her son also, with her broad mouth and thick eyebrows and loud, joyous laugh. He was everything to her. Her child, her best friend, her salvation. She was not going to play with his life.

  “Mom, what’s your problem?” Jai’s sigh was a dramatic noise better suited for the theatre. He set aside his schoolbooks with an equally staged flourish. Already a perfect junior artiste, she knew it wasn’t long before he would ask to be in films.

  “What problem?” She perched on the edge of a chair, setting her mobile aside on the just-wide-enough arm. “I don’t have a problem.”

  “Yes, you do. Lots of them. Maine sab sunliya. I heard everything. This house is not that big, and there’s an echo.” He pulled a face, making her wonder just how much he’d overheard in the two years they’d lived here. “Papa’s doing great. Viki Uncle makes him happy. Why can’t you be happy, too?”

  In his world, that was all it came down to: a romantic ideal of happiness. He didn’t care about safety or security; he was shielded by school uniforms, by Hari ferrying him all over Mumbai, and by the playground of Sam’s posh house in Bandra. Sunny willed herself not to clench her fists as she plucked a line of dialogue straight from the Desi Mother’s Handbook. “Of course main khush hu! I have you, na? I don’t need anything else.”

  “So untrue, Mom!” He huffed, picking a pakora from his plate and chucking it at her. “You’re so negative. All you do is work. You need a life! After all, zindagi na milegi dobara. You only get one chance.” God help her, he was using movie titles to spout philosophy. “If you had more fun, I could go be with Papa and Viki for Diwali, and you wouldn’t be so lonely.”

  It was unsettling to know that your child was smarter than you…that fooling yourself was an easier task than feeding him a PR sound byte. Sunny bent to pick the fallen bhaji off the carpet and place it on an end table for later disposal. “Jai, don’t disrespect me,” she told him coolly. “I have ordered my life how I want.”

  Her budding actor didn’t buy her line delivery. Deep down, neither did she.

  “Then rearrange it. Make room.” He shrugged off her attempt at discipline, cheerfully changing the topic. “Shaw-saab seems like a nice guy, no? You might like him very much. I might like him very much.”

  Sure he might, but there was no way Jai was ever meeting Davey, no matter how sweetly he wheedled her. Her home and her work were alag, separate, and no amount of Jai suggesting that Shaw-saab become her Bachelor No. 1 was going to change that. “Your father seemed like a nice guy also,” she pointed out, which earned her an expressive scowl.

  “Mom, that’s bilkul unfair. You know I love Papa.” Jai was the most sensible of them all, having decided quite some time ago to never listen to his mummy-daddy’s petty comments about one another. He only saw the best sides of them both. He would see the best side of Davey Shaw as well, no doubt. “You ought to love someone, too.”

  She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. The cost of that was too high as well…wasn’t it?

  “Didi, khokon bari aashbe?” When are you coming home?

  It was a question she couldn’t answer, not with her upcoming filming schedule. Were Shonali’s cheeks fuller? Had she added a fourth centimeter to Anita Didi’s fabled three? A fist squeezed Priya’s heart as she memorized every detail on the computer screen. “Amake bhoole jaoni tho?” she asked, hoping her voice wasn’t as wobbly as her innards. Five was such a delicate age, so many new things to learn…so many old things to place away in boxes. Though she knew it wasn’t possible, she woke each day with the fear that Shona wouldn’t remember her. After all, Shona believed her real mother was a lost princess who had abandoned her beneath a mystical tree, on a magical mountain. Who was Priya but an elder sister who made films and lived far away?

  “Na, Prithu Didi, na!” The daughter she couldn’t acknowledge insisted in a high, sweet screech. “Shona will not forget you!” Baba was teaching her English, successfully, and he hadn’t yet corrected her habit of speaking of herself in the third person, like she was the Queen of England. “Tumi Shona ke bhoolo na!”

  Her forget Shona? “Never,” she whispered, slouching against the sofa cushions, absorbing the heat from the laptop into her skin as though it were Shona’s arms around her. I will never forget you. I will keep you in my heart always. You, and not your father.

  Priya was still lost in those sentiments when Shonali wandered away, singing bits of a Bengali folk song, and her sister returned to the webcam. Anita’s eyes were the mirror of hers—dark brown and thick-lashed—except that they were shrewd and canny where Priya’s, not for lack of trying, conveyed only innocence. “Now tell the truth, Prithu,” she said briskly. “What is really going on in Mumbai?”

  “N-nothing, Didi! Just work!” Coming from Anita, her childhood nickname always discomfited her, reminding her of that girl who no longer existed. Of course Anita lived to throw her off her game, in that competitive/protective way that only an older sister could manage.

  “And how is the ‘work’ with Rahul?” she asked Priya, as though she was examining one of her class-nine girls.

  “There is no working. The shooting for Khoon isn’t until after Diwali.” Months away. Practically centuries. So, then, why was Rahul constantly at her heels? Round every corner that she turned? She couldn’t stand to see the answer in Anita’s eyes…or to feel it in her own heart. “Didi, I have to go. Rakhi?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she ended the call and shut her laptop. Would that she could shut away Rahul Anand just as easily.

  Chapter Eight

  KK’s script was flimsy at best, penned by some second-gen Bolly brat who had big ideas but no talent to back it with. As a boy with a similar background who had proven his worth, Rahul was willing to be generous…and happy to have his guys, Rajat and Ravi Chandra, rewrite nearly the entire story. It was the least he could do after KK got him on the picture, na? A thank you, really.

  With a few tweaks, Rohit, the college boy with a grudge against the judge who’d jailed his innocent father, became a corporate lawyer gunning for the CEO who’d ruined his parents in a Madoff-style financial scandal. After a few keystrokes, the judge’s innocent daughter vanished from the pages entirely…and the bad girl who accepted the hero’s dark intent, oh, she came directly into the spotlight. Ishika, Rohit’s perfect partner in crime. They loved one another and hated one another…dark, destructive, but somehow pure. They plotted their vengeance in bed over martinis and cigarettes.

  Ishika’s big item number would be the film’s cl
imactic point, the backdrop for the CEO being framed for her gruesome—completely staged—murder. It would be shocking. It would be delightful. And Priya would be a fucking revelation. This, Rahul knew in his bones. KK’s film would launch her into the stratosphere…and, God willing, back into his arms.

  As if determined to ruin his fierce burst of ambition, his mobile buzzed with an SMS. Nina’s number. Probably some crass comment about whatever young stud she was “auditioning” in her office and if he wanted to offer a second opinion. She seemed to have a GPS dedicated to only his whereabouts. Everywhere Rahul turned, she was at his heels. Like a pampered dog, groomed to the point of absurdity, with a juicy bone. He’d tried locking her out of his office only to have the cleaning staff give her a spare key. It was like working with a stalker.

  “Arré, beta, don’t be dramatic!” his father dismissed when he brought up such concerns. “She is family, she is business. Compromise!”

  Ha. The only compromising Nina was interested in involved positions. Much like those ghatia bastards from the restaurant, she had her very own, very used, casting couch. And she had a cushion reserved for him. The very idea made him ill.

  Rahul struggled for a cleaner imager, something pure to scrub the filth from his eyes, and, like always, he returned to Priya. That night in the hotel. Free of makeup, of costumes, of defenses…at least for a moment or two. And for a cherished moment or two, she’d been wholly with him. Making love to him, taking him into her, kissing him the way she had when he’d first taught her how.

  He would have that again. He would have that forever.