No, it wasn’t bad at all. It was saner than his own impulses to ring up Sunita’s son, who was a stranger to him and, per his mother’s wishes, would likely remain a stranger to him forever. How is she, Jai? Does she miss me? Does she regret doubting me? Can she ever open herself to anyone? But what was the point of asking “How is she?” when he already knew the answer? Not mine. Never, ever mine.
Chapter Twenty-One
Priya had not touched one drop of hard alcohol in nearly four months. She was not naïve enough to think that one tiny dose of vodka had pushed her into bed with Rahul in Premnagar, but the sweetness of that burn had no place in her strict diet, in her exercise regimen, in the center of the control she gripped so tightly when she lived in Mumbai.
And, somehow, all of that control had still slipped from her fingers, na? All of her restraint, all of her attempts to maintain discipline…for what? So she could hear the man she had loved for years call her a cold bitch and condemn her the same way her parents had condemned her that terrible first night back in Kolkata?
“How could you do this to us?” Ma had asked, bewildered, as if carrying Shona in her belly was a group activity.
“Aar ke jaane? Who else knows?” Baba had demanded, his sympathy and revulsion mixing like oil and water. “We must fix this. Keep quiet. Keep cool.”
She had kept quiet. She had kept so very, very cool. I’m sorry. Don’t punish me. I won’t disappoint you again. True to her word, she had never strayed. Never. Not in six years. She had willingly denied her own child, smiling every time Shona called her grandmother Ma and answering to Didi like it wasn’t stabbing her in the heart. She had channeled all her vices into fiction for the cameras. She had sacrificed her feelings for Rahul, every base desire to be touched and kissed and held. And, again, for what? To simply be dismissed as an irresponsible, characterless brat once more?
Control was worthless. Control was bakwas. Bullshit.
Priya dressed for a night out in the city: a red dress so short and so bright it bordered on vulgar, and bold makeup that emphasized her stupidly deceptive cow eyes and her traitorous lips. She called a car to take her to the hottest club in Bandra, into the seething hotbed of Who’s Who that she had so studiously avoided when she first returned to Mumbai. Grabbing a center stool at the bar, she ordered the most blatantly alcoholic, ridiculously obvious cocktail she could think of. Pale orange, with two colorful stir sticks and a sword lined with cherries in a tall, tapered glass.
If all she had was lies, at least she could come by her vamp role honestly, na?
The first hour and the first drink both went by too quickly, and without incident. Sam Khanna dropped in for a quick pitch meeting—”Club soda for me, booze for the other bastard!”—and said his hellos, but the bar’s other patrons gave her a wide berth. The three junior artistes at a table ten meters away and the flock of models slamming back vodka and Red Bull were hesitant to approach her. The rare Rose of Bengal, blooming suddenly in their midst. What if one breath bent her petals? What if she broke?
“Goddammit,” she whispered, resting her forehead against the cool, sweating side of her second cocktail.
“Such language, Priya. Chee! People will think you have no character.”
The voice was unmistakable. It crawled up her spine like a spider.
Nina Manjrekar, the choreographer of her misery. Priya raised her head, meeting smug triumph in the garish, purple-lipped smile and narrowed eyes. The woman stood far too close…but why not, na? Since she’d already crossed so many boundaries? Priya swallowed, tasting liquor, tart juice and anger.
“How did you find out?” she demanded. “I worked so hard to keep her away from everything in Bombay. How in the hell did you learn about Shona, you terrible, miserable bitch?”
The word Rahul had tossed at her so carelessly…she flung it at Nina with full force. But Nina didn’t even flinch. “You think distance keeps secrets? Cho chweet,” she simpered. “One or two telephone calls, an investigator sent to your neighbors…and, bas, I learned the Roys had a little girl they took from an anarth ashram seven months after you left Mumbai. Two grown daughters and the sudden wish to adopt an orphan girl? You know I was not born yesterday.”
No, she was hatched. Spawned. Pieced together from corpses like Dr. Frankenstein’s creation. Priya swayed in her seat, barely kept her legs wrapped round the rungs of the barstool. “You’re evil,” she whispered. “You’re purely, totally evil.”
“Nahin. I’m practical.” Nina didn’t look insulted in the least. No, she was proud of her repulsive behavior…and she leaned forward as if imparting some great wisdom from her library of dirty dealings. “If you’re going to whore yourself in Bombay, little girl, learn what the rest of us do: use a condom.”
Priya’s fingers reacted while her brain was still picking through the disgusting words. She tossed the contents of her glass into Nina’s plastic face, dousing her in sticky pineapple juice, sharp mango-flavored vodka and God only knew what else. Now all the eyes in the room were upon her, murmurs rising over the disco beat of the music.
She stumbled from her seat, grabbing her bag while Nina was wiping her Botox-puffed cheeks, and turned toward the doors…only to find them blocked.
“Oh, Pree. What are you doing to yourself?”
This voice, this face, too, was unmistakable.
She spied Sam over his shoulder, looking apologetic and sympathetic. Neither of which she needed right now. Not after everything else she’d endured. Priya set her jaw and raised her chin. “Nothing you have not already done, Mr. Rahul Anand.”
“Priya’s here, man, and she looks like shit.” Before Sam had even finished the sentence, Rahul had disengaged the call and headed for his car. Follow-ups via SMS had informed him that Priya was on drink number two, that Nina had just walked into the bar…and that the two women were “going a round”. All of which had pushed his foot more firmly to the accelerator as he wove through late-night traffic. When he finally walked into the club, the first thing he registered was that Sam was wrong: Priya didn’t look like shit. Not by a long shot. She looked stunning. Stunning…and stunned. Her soft brown eyes were wide and addled, and her knees wobbly beneath the tight hem of her red mini. Behind her, Nina was screeching expletives and clutching a fistful of bar napkins.
The sigh escaped his lips before he could remember he was still quite livid. “Oh, Pree. What are you doing to yourself?”
Her posture instantly steadied, and her gaze gained clarity as she sharply dismissed him. “Nothing you have not already done, Mr. Rahul Anand.”
Had he done this to her? Truly? Rahul felt Sam’s hand on his shoulder, offering a manly squeeze of comfort before he slipped past to go tangle with Nina. There was almost a look of glee on Sam’s face…and far be it for Rahul to deny him such a pleasure. Particularly when he had more pressing matters to deal with. “Just what do you think I did, Priya, besides devote myself to winning you?”
She laughed, a choked noise that had no joy in it. “Nahin, you did so much more than that. You held up a mirror…showed me what a lying churail I am, how hateful and heartless I can be…so I am just living up to the expectation.”
Each sentence sliced at him. But it was Priya who bled. As if she were peering into fragments of the looking glass and cutting herself on the shards.
“God knows, they’ve been weighing me down for six years…the mistakes I made. First in loving you, in falling pregnant, in being the worst sort of shameful. Then, in not trying to find you, in not telling you, in not trusting you. See, you and Ma and Baba are finally in agreement, Rahul: I’m not a good girl. Main kabhi heroine nahin banegi. I’m the vamp, not the ingénue. Why not finally enjoy it? I have no responsibilities, na? I have no one holding me back. I don’t have a child at home…I’m not anyone’s mother…” The self-condemnation ended on a keening sob that was a thousand times worse than her joyless laugh. “I’m not her mother. Rahul, I’m not her mother.”
He caught her in hi
s arms as her knees buckled, and it was pure instinct to carry her across the club’s threshold, away from the audience of gossipmongers who were likely already tweeting the drama. Even if they couldn’t have heard her agonized whispers, they had seen enough. They had seen too much. And Rahul…he’d been so blind. All his visions of her as ice, as some untouchable goddess, as some fortress with impenetrable defenses…he’d filtered them through his own lens. Seeing only what he wanted to see.
“Shhh. Shaanth, Priya. Calm down. It’s okay.” He murmured nonsense reassurances against the sweep of her hair as he strode with her across the car park. She turned her face into the hollow of his throat, drenching his collar in her tears. Each drop on his skin was like the sting of acid. He was supposed to be angry. He was supposed to be hurt. And, yet, all he wanted to do was take Priya’s pain away. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, baby. You’re not a churail. You’re not a bitch. And in every way that matters you are Shona’s mother.”
“Don’t.” She shuddered, loosening her hold on him, sliding from his embrace so her feet again touched the ground. “Don’t be kind to me, Rahul. Because you cannot be her father.”
“I can be anything I want to be. But right now, just let me be here for you.”
The request came too late. Priya’s eyes were drying, her fractures swiftly bandaged. She shook her head, resolute in her distance. “If you want to lower yourself to consorting with lying bitches, Rahul, Nina is still inside. Just leave me and go. Leave me the hell alone.”
Never again.
Even when he hated her as much as he loved her, the last thing he planned to do was leave.
So, she did it instead.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Her limbs were leaden, each joint seemingly crying for mercy as she forced herself up to touch her knees again and again. Eighty-nine. Ninety. Ninety-one. Her heart had no discipline but in this, at least, she would persevere. Here, at least, she had control. Rahul had fed—overfed—both her body and her soul, and now she would burn it all off. Shed him just as she’d shed kilos after bringing Shona into the world.
He’d rung her several times since that night at the bar, even come round to her flat, only to have the watchman turn him away. She knew it was only a matter of time before he consulted a vakil and pulled her parents into court to establish his rights. Before the news exploded all over the gossip magazines and websites. Before that eventuality, she had to return to Kolkata, to explain to her family what she hadn’t been able to say properly over the telephone. Shona, I’ve seen your baba. He does exist. He’s not a story or a myth. She’d seen him, held him and loved him all over again. Lost him all over again.
Rahul’s ravaged features, his grief and his fury, were like a weight around her neck. She wore his accusations even as Anita battered her with questions over the mobile line, and her replies tasted like bitter herbs. “Shoja bari aaschi. I am coming straight home,” she assured. “I need to speak with Baba and Ma face to face. And Shona also.”
She would have to reconcile not only Baba and Ma’s deception, but her own failures. As a daughter. As a mother. As a lover. And then she would make reparation as best she could…and move forward. Khatam. Shesh. Finito. Pick a language, it was all the same: over.
Kabir made the arrangements for her flight, for a car to pick her from the airport in Dum Dum Cantonment and take her to her parents’ home. He did it all without questions, without judgment…which was fortunate, since all Priya had for herself was enormous boxes of both. But there was one thing she chose to do herself: tell Sunita Khanna, in person, that all of the drama did not reflect on her show, on her goodwill.
They met at Chai-Coffi, nodding hellos to familiar faces that Priya wasn’t entirely sure she would see again: Farzana’s choreography assistant and his intimate friend, The Raj’s music producer, Nicky Kohli, sitting red-eyed and alone with a sheaf of papers, tapping out music with his fingertips…Ananya, who would perhaps grab the role in Khoon that she’d wanted so badly after all. Seeing each of them was like seeing goodbye made flesh.
“Don’t act like you’re not coming back!” Sunita-ji snapped before they even took their seats. “No one knows anything. The gossip has not spread. And if it does? What is the big deal? What is the worst that could happen if the world finds out about Shonali? I am divorced, and I have a career, na?”
“As a talk-show hostess. Not a heroine,” Priya pointed out. She was only in demand as an item girl and, at twenty-five, she was already old. Most actresses didn’t work past thirty, even while heroes continued to dance and romance well into their fifties. Men aged gray, dyed it away, and their naikas stayed the same age. As Rahul had said so long ago at China House… “There are a hundred desperate girls without scandal, without babies, who will happily take my place tomorrow.”
This was met was a shrug and a careless wave of the hand. “And so what? If acting is such a dream, you can do it anywhere. TV, theater…kitne sare options hain.”
It was like hearing an old cassette tape. “That is what my parents said to me before I left Kolkata.” She rubbed at her eyes wearily. “Both of the times.”
In Sunny-ji’s countenance, it wasn’t weariness so much as regret. “Perhaps they are right,” she murmured, staring off beyond Priya’s shoulder to somewhere in the past. “They want what’s best for you, even when they hurt you. Even as you hurt them, too. My parents were long gone when I partied with Sam. They never knew how bad I was. How ghatia. When I fell pregnant…I was so glad they didn’t live to see my shame. Now? I wish they’d lived to see my Jai.”
An answering bitterness welled up within Priya along with memories. “When Shona was born…I was under anesthesia. I didn’t hear her cry. The doctors didn’t even let me see her straightaway. Last, Sunny-ji. I saw her last, long after everyone else, and I was so frightened that Ma and Baba sent her to be adopted.” Priya hadn’t thought of that day in so long. Those early hours of fear laced with grogginess. The fear that had followed, however, was as crisp as the ice water on the table in front of her. “For the first three years of her life, I slept holding Shona close to me, terrified that one morning I would wake up to find her gone. So, I behaved. I became a good girl again. I lived in gyms and acting classes and voice lessons. Miss Perfect, na? Because I was too weak to do what you did and raise my own child. You’re different—”
“Not so different, Priya,” Sunny cut in gently. “I am afraid also.” It was clear that the admission cost her something great. Her proud shoulders bent, and she cast her gaze downward, at the tabletop. “I don’t trust. I don’t take chances. And what happened? Main har gayi. I lost. I lost Shaw. Don’t make the same mistake with Rahul, with your future.”
But she had Shona’s future to consider, too…and, that, she couldn’t afford to lose. “He could take her, Sunny-ji…and if he doesn’t take her, my ma and baba could cut me from her life, from their lives and from Anita Didi, too. What then? If I have no career and no Shona…where is my future then?”
“You don’t know that Rahul will fight your parents for custody. Sam didn’t fight me and, yakin karo, believe me, he is far more volatile than Rahul. Rahul is calm and cool. He does not act from emotion, na?”
Oh, but that was where Sunita was wrong. Rahul could act from emotion in hundreds of ways. With his lips at the base of her throat. With his thumbs tracing the slope of her breasts, cresting her nipples. With his thigh sliding against hers. In this, he didn’t use his taqat, his brain. Nahin, he used every other weapon at his disposal but that.
Perhaps her skin betrayed her thoughts: the Rose of Bengal in blush pink. For Sunny-ji laughed quietly and reached across the table to pat her hand. “You’re not fighting Rahul at all, Priya. Darling, you are fighting yourself.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
After conversing with Priya, Sunita felt like she was balancing on a roof’s edge. She’d felt the girl’s pain so acutely and seen, too clearly, her reflection in those absurdly pretty eyes. Darling, you are fightin
g yourself, she’d observed…only realizing later how those words were just as appropriate for her own condition. In the end, it was Jai who pushed her completely over the railing. Nahin, shoved. In a totally disrespecting way. “Jao, Mom,” he directed when she came home from her afternoon outing. “Go say sorry to Mr. Shaw. If you don’t, I will move in with Papa and Viki Uncle.”
Her jaw dropped, mouth hanging open like the gaping maws of a fish. “That is blackmail. Who taught you that?”
Jai, turned out handsomely in his school uniform, simply sprawled in a chair like he had no cares in the world besides tormenting his mother. “I watch a lot of movies. Who taught me that?” he countered with a cheeky smile.
Hai Bhagavan, this entire time she thought she’d been raising a son, and it turned out that she’d raised a comedian instead. An impertinent one, at that. Jai glared at her, in a perfect imitation of Sam at his most villainous, until she grabbed her bag and exchanged the ladies’ chappals she’d slipped into for her proper shoes. “Why are you doing this to me, beta?” she asked as she rang Hari to come back from the garage. “Why is this so important to you?”
“Because you’re important to me, Mom, and Mr. Shaw is important to you.”
The truth of it was like a punch. Like the vodka shots she no longer touched. Davey was important to her. No, he’d somehow become bloody essential. She craved his sharp smile, his cool eyes. She missed his darlings. She even missed him calling her Rani Sahiba, despite her realizing ages ago that he’d stolen it from a StarPlus serial. She reached out for him in the darkness, though he’d never shared her bed. Shaw had, in short order, melded with her until she barely knew where she ended and he began.
It was this that carried her, choked and hushed and hopeful, from Versova to Juhu. To his door. She’d come to him so disarmed once before…made a choice to cross one threshold. Now, after all of this, would he even let her in? Her closed fist shook as she knocked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Each louder, more frantic, than the last. Until, finally, he threw the door open.
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