THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘So you were there?’ he asks again. ‘In Tirathpuri? You saw what happened?’

  The Sardar(?) nods. ‘Oh, yes, I saw everything. You’ll put my pikchurr in the paper, no? Nice big one?’

  ‘Most people,’ Dylan says sardonically, ‘want to retain their anonymity. They’re worried about the safety of their families.’

  ‘Oh, I have no problems, ji.’ The Sardar shakes his head. ‘Why to be afraid? Of whom to be afraid? You didn’t bring a camera?’

  What a publicity hound. The man, Dylan thinks in disgust, probably wasn’t even in Delhi, let alone Tirathpuri, on the first of November. I have a good mind to lean over and yank at his beard.

  ‘Like I said,’ he says, ‘sources generally prefer to remain anonymous.’

  ‘I want my pikchurr,’ his guest says doggedly. ‘Or I will take my story to another paper.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that we’re the only ones who’ll print it,’ Dylan tells him pleasantly. ‘And we will check up on you, you know. This isn’t sensationalism. It’s responsible reporting.’

  But the Sardar isn’t listening.

  ‘I’ll have Amreekan Chop Suey,’ he tells the waiter. ‘The one with the fried egg on top. Haan. And a Campa. And afterwards lychee with ice cream. Now Dhillonji, where do I begin?’

  ‘Why don’t you begin at the beginning,’ Dylan suggests, feeling rather like Alice in Wonderland. ‘Go on till you reach the end, then stop.’

  ‘Vul!’ His source aligns his cutlery neatly in front of him and assumes a lugubrious expression. ‘I woke up in the morning and heard shouting and screaming, ladies shouting and screaming. So I ran down, shirtless – you can click my photo shirtless, it will be more authentic – and kicking and swearing and abusing, pushed over this big crowd of mens all holding lathis and swords, and saved the izzat of three ladies, one-after-the-other.’

  ‘Wow,’ Dylan replies, pushing his tape recorder a little closer. ‘That’s, um, cool. Can you give me more details?’

  ‘Of course. The first lady was an older lady. Two men were voilitting her. The first one I gave a punch on the neck, he fell at once, the second one I kicked in the backside, he also fell. Then I knelt by the side of the lady and said, Don’t cry, bebe, I am here, your son is here (not that she was my mother, you know, Dhillonji, but I meant ki she was like my mother). Three fellows came up from the backside then, but I tripped them by sticking out my foot. Then with a roar I moved to the second lady –’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Dylan has got the man’s measure now. ‘Uh, look, Sardar saab, this is a recording device, why don’t you continue speaking all your testimony into it, while I go finish off some other work I have to do?’

  The Sardar nods obligingly, Dylan gets to his feet and strides out to the corridor outside Berco’s Chinese restaurant. It is drizzling, the air is clean and fresh and Connaught Circle, washed clean of dust and grime, gleams in the filtering sunshine like a large white Polo mint. Dylan stretches out, breathing in a great gulp of wet, fragrant air, and sighs. The hunt for his three key eyewitnesses, in spite of the occasional attention-seeker like the one demolishing IP-funded Chop Suey inside, is going well. The pressure on the government to do something about Motla is building. Things are looking up. Dylan feels optimism surge through his veins. Maybe I’ll take a little walk and buy some green guavas and have a chat with the shoeshine guy about life in general, he thinks. And just as he is setting off to do so, who should come walking down the road, past the vibrant background of balloon sellers and watch-repair men and aggressive Gujarati ladies selling cushion covers embroidered with elephants, her cream dupatta billowing in the breeze, her curling walnut hair likewise, but Debjani Thakur, lover of losers, who wouldn’t be friends-who-kiss with him.

  She is with somebody, he realizes, even as he automatically ducks behind a pillar. A tall, smug young man, who looks, Dylan thinks uncharitably, rather like Clark Kent. Big glasses, bigger head. And he doesn’t even turn into a superhero at night, which really is the only redeeming thing about Clark Kent. And who the hell wears a suit in Delhi, in the afternoon, in the monsoon?

  Clark Kent and Debjani go into Berco’s. Dylan immediately loses all interest in chatting with shoeshine boys. I’ll go in and share the questionable Surd’s Chop Suey, he decides. After all, I’m paying for it.

  And so, as the questionable Surd tells tales of his bare-chested derring-do, Dylan tunes him out and tunes into the couple at the next table.

  CK: Can I take this seat? More leg room. I am, by god’s grace, more than six feet tall.

  DT: Of course.

  CK: So I was saying, if you have not seen the sun set on an endless expanse of rolling ocean, you have seen nothing! Nothing!

  DT: Really?

  CK: It makes you realize how insignificant you are – an ant, a worm, a mere mosquito. Whenever I have the midnight watch, I look out at the ocean and tell myself that Dev Pawar, just because by god’s grace you earn (pause, modest laugh) 25,000 rupees a month, don’t think you are very great! The ocean is much bigger than you!

  DT: That’s true.

  CK: I can see the ocean from my 2BHK flat in Cuffe Parade too, by god’s grace.

  DT: How nice. So you can feel humble there also.

  CK: Yes. Waise, people tend to resent you when you have so much, but by god’s grace my friends never minded when I paid off my flat at age twenty-eight only. They jokingly said, yaar, we will take twenty years more to pay off our home loans, you are making us all look bad, we’re going to paint your face black. So I said, go ahead, yaar, by god’s grace I am too fair, so a little blacking will improve my complexion!

  DT: You’re so right.

  CK: It’s a little hot in here – the AC isn’t very effective – I hope I’m not sweating? Half my batchmates don’t get affected by the heat any more – the benefits of balding, you know! But I, by god’s grace, still have a full head of hair! No man in my family has ever gone bald. You can say that, by god’s grace, good hair genes are my inheritance! Along with my family home built on a 4,000 gaj plot in the best part of Bhopal, of course. But we are only talking about me. I want to talk about you. Tell me all about yourself, Debjani!

  DT: Um, okay. Well I’m –

  CK: Oh, look, the washroom is free. I’ll just freshen up. Please order whatever you like. By god’s grace, money is no object.

  The oppressive aroma of aftershave lifts as he walks away. Debjani sits at the table, studying the menu, her face a carefully controlled mask. The minutes tick by and still no Dev Pawar emerges from the toilet.

  ‘Maybe he has the runs,’ a deep voice sounds in her ear. ‘Maybe, by god’s grace, he’ll die of ’em.’

  Debjani gives an involuntary snort of laughter, lowers the menu and sees an unshaven and rather scruffy Dylan Singh Shekhawat looking across at her, his eyes gleaming with huge enjoyment.

  The Brigadier’s son. Here. In Berco’s Chinese restaurant. Hope rises wildly in her chest. Is he following her? Then she takes in the pudgy man in the slipping turban sitting beside him. He isn’t. He’s here for Talumein Soup and American Chop Suey, like everybody else.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Hi!’ she replies, her cheeks pink. ‘How are you?’

  ‘You should marry him.’ He grins. ‘D for Dev. He’s perfect for you. You’re a loser-lover and he’s a loser. It’s a match made in heaven.’

  ‘He isn’t a loser,’ Debjani retorts. ‘Didn’t you hear? He earns twenty –’

  ‘– five thousand rupees a month,’ Dylan finishes. ‘I think the whole restaurant heard.’

  ‘That’s quite good,’ the questionable Surd puts in, nodding wisely. ‘Has his own flat also. Suna maine – 2BHK in Tuff Parade. Waise, you must also be earning quite well, Dhillonji?’

  Dylan shoots him an irate look. ‘Would you just continue with your recording?’ he snaps. ‘The battery in that contraption is about to die.’

  The Sardar looks injured. ‘Okay, okay, no need to be a rude,’ he says
austerely. He picks up the recorder, then turns to Debjani again. ‘But didi, you better clarify ki twenty-five grands is before tax or after tax.’

  Dabbu nods faintly. She hardly knows what she’s doing. It is just so… incredible to see Dylan again. Just sitting there, radiating awesomeness. He makes all the men I’ve been meeting look like round, soft little atta dough boys, she thinks helplessly. Should I tell him I’ve been reading up those riots he’s so obsessed with? Why is he looking so unkempt? He needs a haircut and a shave. And is he wearing chappals? How lean and sinewy his feet look. They match his hands. Well, obviously they match his hands. It would be weird if they matched somebody else’s hands. How am I ever going to marry some Pawar when I could have had that?

  ‘So is he honest and kind and brave enough for you?’ Dylan enquires, jerking his head in the direction of the toilet. ‘Or have you given up on that too, just like you’ve given up reading news that’s even remotely accurate?’

  ‘You’ve been watching me read,’ she manages to remark, quite composedly. ‘Thank you. I’m flattered.’

  Dylan’s lean cheeks redden. Of course he’s been watching her read. Every Friday night without fail. He dims the lights, locks the doors (he lives alone in Bombay, but why take a chance?) and glares at her moodily. Watching her lips move, her lashes flutter, checking obsessively for the appearance of more rings on her fingers besides the silver ladybird he know so well. Waiting for that moment at the end when she’ll look up, tilt her head slightly, flash the lopsided street-urchin smile that India loves, the one that always turns his stomach into a tutu-wearing ballerina, and say, ‘That’s all from the news desk tonight. Goodnight.’

  But I have to watch her, he reminds himself quickly, because it’s important to keep track of the bullshit the government is feeding the people. They hire sweet-faced people like Debjani Thakur and make them say that the deaths of almost 4,000 Sikhs were caused by a spontaneous outpouring of grief. It’s sick.

  ‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he presses, his gaze half sarcastic, half ardent. ‘Are you going to marry him? That supposedly god-fearing, constantly self-congratulating, smug ass?’

  Their eyes lock. Staring into those twin pools of Pears, he wonders how he will ever be able to look away.

  ‘That’s really none of your business, is it?’ Debjani says finally, sweetly. ‘You’d better eat your Chop Suey before it gets soggy.’

  He starts to reply, but just then Dev Pawar comes back to the table.

  He’s been primping, Dylan thinks, checking out Dev in disgust. He’s slicked back his hair, straightened his collar, tucked his shirt in tighter and – although Dylan can’t be hundred per cent sure of this – applied moisturizer. What a chick.

  Dylan’s hands ball into fists, he deliberately turns his back on the now conversing couple and gives the questionable Surd his full attention.

  ‘Continue,’ he says.

  But the Surd only looks at him out of shrewd gooseberry eyes.

  ‘You two had some chakkar?’ he asks sympathetically. ‘She left you, hain? And now she’s with Mr Tuff Parade? My Sunita left me too, but when she sees my photo in the IP and reads how brave I was, she’ll take me back. It’s a good plan. You better think of some good plan too.’

  Juliet Bai and the Brigadier have discovered Pac-Man. They spend entire evenings in front of Dylan’s Apple Mac, bathed in a ghostly, tubelighty glow, taking turns at chasing and gobbling up Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, the four foul Japanese ghosts who have taken the civilized world by storm.

  ‘Get the banana, get the banana, get the banana, Bobby, uff, you died. My turn now – move,’ Juliet Bai tells her husband as she elbows him away and takes possession of the arrow keys.

  ‘You jostled my arm,’ he accuses her. ‘You’re cheating, Bobby!’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she replies, not quite looking him in the eye. ‘Now shush, let me concentrate.’

  She has progressed to the third level, playing smoothly and surely, with the Brigadier watching her every move, when Dylan saunters into the room. He is impeccably dressed. Dark trousers, a light shirt, a narrow tie. His hair is cut and slicked back, his jaw smooth after months. Nobody looks at him.

  ‘Cherries! There are cherries! Get the cherries!’ the Brigadier cries, leaping up and down.

  ‘I’ll die if I go chasing cherries now,’ Juliet Bai replies tersely. ‘You just want me to die, I know.’

  ‘Um, hello, you guys,’ Dylan says.

  But Juliet Bai is hearing only beeps, boinnnggs and bleeps. She continues to work the arrow keys. The Brigadier looks around and gives a surprised grunt.

  ‘Bobby, look, some stranger just wandered into the house.’

  She ignores him. She is leaning forward, going for the kill, she has just reached the next level. The Brigadier is impressed.

  ‘Wah! Level four! Pinky’s on your tail – run, Bobby, run – you can do it – careful now!’

  Abruptly, the tunu tunu tunu tunu tunu waaown death knell sounds. Juliet Bai slumps back in her chair, her eyes suddenly blank.

  ‘Dead! And that too on the fourth level.’

  ‘Mamma,’ Dylan says plaintively.

  She rubs her eyes and looks around.

  ‘Hoh! You shaved! Looking so handsome. Where are you going, sonna?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ he replies lightly. ‘I just wanted to talk to you guys.’

  ‘Most honoured, I’m sure,’ mutters the Brig as he pauses the Pac-Man.

  ‘I make 8,000 rupees a month,’ Dylan announces, ignoring this snide aside. ‘I’m not sure if you know.’

  ‘So much?’ Juliet Bai says in awe.

  ‘Don’t look so impressed, it’s all inflation,’ the Brigadier snorts. ‘Eight thousand doesn’t buy what 800 could a few years ago.’

  ‘I also get a small company flat, a petrol allowance, a medical allowance, a leave travel allowance and a month off a year,’ Dylan continues, ignoring both these remarks. ‘If I switch to another paper – which I don’t want to coz I like the IP, they have the only decent editorial content in the country, Hiranandani notwithstanding – I’m guessing I could jump to twelve a month, easy.’

  They look at him, confused.

  ‘The media industry is poised at the brink of a major breakthrough. The government has started dismantling the Licence Raj, all kinds of new multinational brands are poised to be launched and the subsequent jump in advertising spends will see both television and print journalism boom.’

  His parents gape at him. Dylan never talks to them about his work. He snaps if they so much as comment on any of his writing.

  ‘I’d also like to point out that, post-liberalization, many jobs that seem lucrative now will turn into dead-enders. Like, for example, nothing personal against it of course, the merchant navy.’

  There is silence. Dylan appears to have said his piece.

  ‘Why,’ demands the Brigadier, ‘are you telling us this?’

  Dylan squares his shoulders and meets his father’s eyes.

  ‘So you can go over to Hailey Road and tell Justice Laxmi Thakur that I want to marry his daughter Debjani.’

  8

  All hell breaks loose the next morning when Chachiji, after brushing her beautiful silver payals carefully with toothpaste just like Anjini has advised her to, leaves them drying in the sun and stumps silently into the annexe kitchen to find the Hot Dulari seated in A.N. Thakur’s lap, tenderly being fed cucumber slices. She launches herself upon him with a bloodcurdling yell that awakens half of Hailey Road.

  ‘Now I know why you said never take them off!’ she screams. ‘Hai! You sick bastard! I am going to kill you – give me that cucumber knife!’

  Ashok Narayan Thakur is a handsome man: tall, well built, always flamboyantly dressed. Growing up, his nieces idolized him. They loved the summer vacations they spent at Number 13 while their own house was under renovation. There was always something exciting going on. Sometimes Chachaji would summon a whole ice cream thela into the aa
ngan and command the thela-wallah to hand out ice cream after ice cream till the girls cried enough. Sometimes it was chaat. On one memorable winter night, it was a charcoal tandoor full of juicy, red hot chicken tikkas. Of course they had no idea then that the bill for these extravagances was invariably picked up by their father. They hung onto their dashing Ashok chacha’s arms, letting him pick them up two at a time as part of his morning workout, blushed at his compliments and laughed at his pug-faced wife. It wasn’t till much, much later, when the whole sordid truth about his debts and his rumoured relationship with the Hot Dulari came out, that the girls realized that they’d been, to put it rather crudely, had.

  Now they watch wide-eyed from the kitchen window of the main house as Chachiji pushes her husband out of the annexe, screaming abuses at his face and hurling bottles of aftershave after him, to burst upon the cemented drive (like so many shattered dreams, Dabbu thinks fancifully).

  ‘You’ve ruined my life, A.N. Thakur!’ Chachiji cries while he begs her to keep her voice down. ‘May your soul rot in hell, you sick bastard! May you be eaten by worms! May termites gnaw at your…’

  ‘Anus,’ Eshwari completes with a grin. ‘She’s in full flow, isn’t she?’

  ‘Do you think this is the ghost of the Pushkarni taking possession of her?’ Anjini asks, leaning against the window frame interestedly. ‘Or is she doing this all by herself ? Either way, it’s better than Buniyaad.’

  But Dabbu looks stricken. ‘It’s soo sad,’ she mourns. ‘I mean, poor Chachiji, married to a handsome but essentially cold man, starved of love and unable to have children. It’s…’

  (just like my life, thinks Anji, slightly horrified)

  ‘… horrible.’

  This is a new angle for Eshwari. She has always regarded her uncle and aunt in the same light as Tom and Jerry cartoons. The fact that they might actually have feelings is something that has never occurred to her. She wraps her mind around this new thought, frowning.

  Finally, she says, ‘I think it’s really mean of Ma not to let the Ant and Chachiji live in the main house. I mean, just for a few months. The annexe is almost like a servants’ quarter.’