THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘Antu, good boys go like that!’ Anjini snaps her fingers. ‘We can have a long engagement, of course.’

  ‘Do Antu others as you would have them do Antu you,’ the Judge pipes up, looking mighty pleased with his pun.

  ‘He means,’ Eshwari says helpfully to Anant, ‘that you and Anji didi got married when she was twenty-three too.’

  ‘I got that, Eshwari,’ Anant says patiently. ‘Still…’

  ‘Arrey, what is the need for a long engagement?’ Binni demands breathlessly as she re-enters the room. ‘Vickyji has explained everything to me. You follow your heart, Dabbu. I won’t put any emotional pressure. We don’t want you running away like that crack Chandu did! And don’t worry if you don’t choose Dev, I will give some excuse to the Pawars and manage everything!’

  Dabbu stares at her sister, stunned. ‘Really, Binni didi?’

  Binni nods vigorously. ‘Really.’

  ‘So that’s settled,’ the Judge says, his tone satisfied. ‘So now, Dabbu, what do you say?’

  The entire clan turns to Debjani. She looks around the room, her eyes going from Eshwari to her father to finally settle on Mrs Mamta Thakur, who smiles at her encouragingly.

  She throws back her head and sits up straighter, her cheeks flush a delicate shade of pink.

  ‘I choose Dylan,’ she says composedly.

  ‘Hello, could I speak to Debjani please?’

  Mrs Mamta Thakur smiles. The Shekhawat boy sounds a little nervous, which is just as it should be.

  ‘Hello, Dylan,’ she says warmly, mentally adding this new name to the roster of ‘her’ boys. ‘I’ll fetch her, just hold for a moment, all right?’

  She walks out to the verandah, bouncing a little with suppressed excitement, and beams at the gaggle of pretty sisters sitting there shelling peas. They look back at her questioningly.

  ‘It’s Dyllllan,’ she bursts out, trilling roguishly over the ‘l’s, her eyes dancing.

  Everybody instantly starts jumping up and down and squealing with excitement – so loudly that the dogs starts to bark in the sand pile outside. Mother and sisters push the stunned Debjani to her feet. She runs into the drawing room to get the phone, then races back to the door, very red-faced, and slams it shut behind her. They hear the sound of a latch being drawn.

  ‘Cow!’ Eshwari gasps. ‘Ma, I keep telling you we need to get an extension line!’

  But her mother isn’t listening. Sudden tears have risen to her eyes. She leans against a verandah pillar.

  ‘And so another one flies the nest,’ she reflects. ‘Enjoy these days, Dabbu.’

  Inside, Debjani picks up the receiver, her heart slamming madly against her ribs.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi,’ Dylan says, his voice unusually hesitant. ‘So, how are you?’

  She laughs. ‘I’m fine, I guess. And you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m good,’ he replies, sounding rather rueful. ‘I’m the laughing stock of my whole family, but that goes with the territory, I guess.’

  She doesn’t ask why. That would be coy, and Debjani doesn’t do coy. Instead she says, ‘This feels kind of weird.’

  ‘What?’ There is a hint of laughter in his voice, he is clearly starting to feel more confident. ‘That somebody wants to marry you?’

  He wants to marry me, Debjani repeats dazedly to herself. Dylan Singh Shekhawat. Writer of scathing editorials, owner of a dirty reputation, a strong, shadowed jaw and that perfect, perfect butt.

  ‘Not somebody,’ she replies honestly. ‘Just you. I mean, what happened? Don’t you want to flit from flower to flower and sip, without ever paying nectar tax?’

  ‘No,’ he replies, his voice warm and disturbingly intimate. ‘I want to make my proboscis exclusive to you.’

  Debjani determinedly ignores the curling effect these words have on her toes.

  ‘But why?’ she asks sensibly.

  He sighs. How much this girl can talk.

  ‘What kind of ring would you like? A ladybird? What are male ladybirds called, by the way? God, they must be messed-up creatures. Talk about gender confusion.’

  A ring.

  But that sounds so… final. Panic grips her belly, causing her toes to uncurl.

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ she asks again, her voice squeaky.

  Dylan realizes there is no dodging this question.

  ‘Well, it’s kind of hard to articulate, but I’ll try – I do these things much better non-verbally, actually.’

  ‘You’ll explain by getting physical with me?’ she asks suspiciously.

  ‘You have a mind like a sink,’ he replies candidly. ‘You know that big green mailbox you have hanging outside your gate? Just check it tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says, a surge of happiness making her almost dizzy. ‘I will. Goodnight then.’

  ‘Goodnight, Debjani.’ His voice is a caress. ‘Sleep well.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Anant’s voice is grave as always. And very distant. Anji blinks back sudden stupid tears.

  ‘To sleep on the chhat with my sisters,’ she replies tightly. ‘You can sleep down here with your son.’

  There is silence. Then, ‘Samar will be happier sleeping with Monu-Bonu in the drawing room.’

  ‘And I will be happier sleeping with Dabbu-Chabbu on the terrace. She could be getting engaged tomorrow – we have tons of stuff to discuss.’

  ‘Fine,’ Anant says. ‘If you don’t need me here, I’ll leave in the morning. I came because I thought your parents would think it odd if I didn’t stop at Delhi before taking the train to Allahabad.’

  ‘So you came only because you were worried about what other people would think.’

  ‘Well.’ There’s a faint hint of humour in his voice. ‘Somebody has to worry about what other people think. You clearly don’t.’

  ‘You find this funny?’

  ‘No,’ Anant says steadily, ‘I find this exhausting. I’ve worked like a dog all week, done large amounts of gift shopping for the kids, travelled twenty-six hours non-stop, participated in a three-hour-long war council about how to lasso another poor bakra into marriage with yet another one of your princessy sisters, and now I’m terribly jet-lagged and I just want to sleep.’

  ‘So you’re a bakra?’ Anji’s voice trembles. ‘And I lassoed you?’

  Anant sighs. ‘I’m tired, Anjini.’

  ‘Fine.’ She walks up to the door. ‘Sleep well and have lovely dreams about your office.’

  ‘Come away from the door, Anjini,’ he says, his voice curt. ‘People can hear you.’

  ‘So what?’ Anji snaps at him. But she does come away from the door and sits down on the edge of the bed in a whirl of sulky, scented satin.

  ‘So I lassoed, na,’ she says, her chest heaving. ‘Fine then, I’ll unlasso you.’

  Anant’s face is white. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  She looks away. ‘Just that as you’re so deeply unhappy with me, I should maybe just,’ she shrugs, ‘let you go.’

  There is a long silence.

  Finally Anant looks up. His eyes seem blind, opaque.

  ‘Fine,’ he says, his voice very low.

  He wants to leave me, Anji thinks wretchedly. Because I can’t have a baby, I suppose. How humiliating. And after all my attempts at goodness! I’ve done weeks of volunteer work at the Muskaan School for Mentally Challenged Children. I’ve stopped caring about being thinner than my sisters. I haven’t flirted at all. Well, barely. I’ve worn fully body-covering clothes. Well, most of the time. I’ve even fed Dabbu’s hideous, khujli-covered dogs! And it was all pointless. I didn’t chalk up any brownie points on that giant scoreboard in the sky. God didn’t hear my prayer. Anyway, that settles it, I will get my hair permed, after all.

  ‘And what about Samar?’ she demands, her voice shaking a little. ‘Have you thought about him? How will he feel?’

  ‘He’ll recover,’ Anant says evenly. ‘And anyway, we can share custo
dy.’

  Custody. The word lies out in the open between them, like a dirty diaper nobody wants to pick up. Then Anjini raises her chin. Anant must never know that the ten days she has spent here have been so agonizing that at times she thought the pain may drive her mad. That she spent more than an hour getting ready in Eshu’s bathroom for him today, that her hair has been freshly shampooed and set using her twenty-four faithful pink sponge-rollers, that her négligée is new.

  ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Just stay here till tomorrow. Brigadier Shekhawat’s family is coming to tea and Ma and Bauji would like you to be there.’

  Anant nods. His face is a mask, devoid of all emotion. ‘I’ll leave day after morning then.’

  Anji shrugs indifferently.

  ‘Okay.’

  The next evening, on Dylan’s last day in Delhi, the Shekhawats drive down in their trusty Maruti 800 to meet the Thakurs. It is an extremely distinguished looking, though nervous little party. It is their ‘first time’ after all, something Juliet Bai has repeated ad nauseam.

  ‘Stop saying that, Bobby, you sound like Ethan trying to get laid,’ her husband says. ‘And Jason, stopping kicking me with your bloody long legs!’

  ‘Don’t swear on such an auspicious day, Bobby,’ his wife entreats. ‘How much I tried to stop this wretched boy from eating when he was younger. Just grew and grew and grew and now he doesn’t fit anywhere!’

  Jason subsides, muttering. Ethan, on the other side of his mother, fusses with his shoes and smooths down his hair. The Brig shoots a disapproving look at his Bruce Lee T-shirt. One fellow looks like a giraffe and another fellow looks like a thug.

  ‘Why are you carrying a Swiss Army knife to your brother’s rishta?’ he demands. ‘Going to stir your tea with it? Fool!’

  ‘I want to make a good impression,’ Ethan explains. ‘It’s my coolest thing.’

  Then he pulls a solemn face, clears his throat and says ponderously: ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to mourn the sad demise of Dylan Shekhawat, a lusty, full-blooded player whose passing will be lamented in lacy boudoirs across the land…’

  ‘Shut up, rat.’ Dylan twists Ethan’s ear amiably.

  ‘Ethan, did you call your math tutor and cancel today’s class?’ his mother asks from the front seat.

  ‘No,’ Ethan mutters, rubbing his ear. ‘But don’t blame me, blame your malgado. He’s been prowling around the phone the whole day, waiting for it to ring, but the newsreader never called. If I fail in math it’ll be her fault.’

  ‘She didn’t call?’ their mother asks worriedly. ‘Isn’t that bad, Dylan?’

  ‘No, it’s good,’ Dylan replies serenely.

  Juliet Bai fidgets with her pallu. Ek toh this Dylan also! So much fuss to make up his mind… First saying no and huffing off. Then, when the girl’s family moves on and gets a good rishta from someplace else, rushing back and saying yes. And expecting her and Saahas to sort out everything double quick! Thank god the Judge and Mrs Mamta were still open to the rishta, though Mrs Mamta hadn’t been able to resist mentioning the merchant navy officer’s salary to the Brigadier when he had called. Oh Lord, let this tea party go off well, with no unpleasant surprises from either side.

  Dylan, unaware of his mother’s interior monologue, is keeping up one of his own out loud. He is starting to feel a little sick and his palms are clammy.

  ‘Okay, here we are – Number 16. Lord, just look at the number of women in that family! One can only pray we get out of this unscathed. Mamma, wait, let me get your door for you. You don’t want Moti and family to destroy your sari.’

  But Moti and co. have been banished today. 16 Hailey Road is looking its finest. Eshwari has picked masses of sunflowers and jasmine and set them about in vases all over the verandah and living room. Anjini has baked a Dundee cake. Binodini has laid a plate of Catburies èclairs upon the table. There are freshly fried namak-paras and little Monaco biscuits topped with baked beans, boiled egg and tiny florets of coriander. Not a bowl of Maggi in sight. The Judge is hovering over the gramophone in the drawing room and Debjani is pacing up and down the kitchen garden at the back of the house, dressed in her bootcut jeans and a pastel Kashmiri kurti, trampling Mrs Mamta’s painstakingly grown pudina plants to pulp.

  Debjani is in a state of complete panic. She had run down to the mailbox early in the morning expecting a long love letter (her first) and found a gift-wrapped package containing a bottle of Anais Anais and a note that reads Keep smelling good in terribly untidy, cramped handwriting. Which is romantic, of course, but not very enlightening. What happened, she had wondered, staring blankly at the bottle, to all that talk about Pears soap? How come he’s switched to perfume? And the note is definitely corny – so corny, in fact, that she hasn’t told her sisters about it.

  For a moment, everything Dylan has done so far seems suspect. Kicking her dog, kissing her in that high-handed fashion, telling her his intentions aren’t serious and then wanting to marry her. And as an explanation for this weird see-sawing behaviour: a bottle of (admittedly expensive) perfume.

  I should have talked to him more and marvelled at the squareness of his jaw less. Oh god, I don’t know anything about him! Suppose he’s mean with money? Suppose he’s a wife-beater or an alcoholic and has a debauched lifestyle in Bombay? After all, his own father said he doesn’t offer any guarantee for him. Suppose this wanting to be engaged is just an elaborate ploy to get me to kiss him some more and then dump me?

  Inside the house, the Thakurs and the Shekhawats are sizing each other up. Things aren’t too awkward, because the two husbands have been fast friends for over ten years. Even Juliet Bai and Mrs Mamta Thakur, though not intimate, have nothing but goodwill towards each other. So it’s really Dylan, the rogue son from Bombay, who gets the full force of the Thakur clan’s Critical Evaluation Scanner and reels under the impact.

  That fat chick is definitely wishing me dead, he thinks wryly as he smiles vaguely around the room and sits down on a flowery couch between his brothers. She must be sister number two, B-something, the bearer of the Pawar rishta. No wonder she looks hostile. Anjini looks as temptingly like a pastry as ever. The hubby doesn’t look like he has much of a sweet tooth, though, pity that. Samar and Eshwari have done a bunk just when I needed them – and where in god’s name is Debjani?

  ‘So what kind of writing do you do?’ Anant is asking.

  ‘Editorials,’ the Judge answers before Dylan can even open his mouth. ‘This Sunday he said that all this excitement around the opening up of the economy is misplaced, that it’s going to split the country even more sharply, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer, and in ten years’ time, we will end up with two entirely separate Indias – a tiny one that will be a clone of the first world and a massive one that will be sitting in the gutters. It was well argued.’ He nods encouragingly at Dylan, who feels touched and, knowing the Judge’s intellectual prowess, gratified.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Anji pulls a face. ‘I’m all for opening up. We’ll get Coke again in India, imagine that!’

  ‘How old are you, Dylan?’ Mrs Mamta asks with her sweet smile.

  ‘He’s twenty-eight,’ Ethan promptly replies. ‘Jason is twenty-five. And I’m fourteen.’

  Why isn’t anybody letting me speak? Dylan thinks, frustrated. How will I slay them with my killer charm if they don’t let me get in a word edgeways? He smiles at one of the B-sister’s cherubic infants. It takes its fingers out of its mouth long enough to say, ‘I’m fairer than you,’ and then subsides.

  And that, Dylan thinks resignedly, is that.

  ‘Is there a lot of money in journalism nowadays?’ asks B-sister’s husband, a man whose teeth remind Dylan of the coconut scrapers everybody uses back in Mangalore.

  ‘Well,’ Dylan says slowly, not very sure if Vickyji expects him to whip out his salary slip. ‘There’s a –’

  ‘Because I’m a businessman, you see,’ Vickyji informs him. ‘I’m thinking ki maybe, if it is profitable, I could
start a magazine-shagazine? Not boring news and views, but something pataka – with pictures of foreign models and all. We could be partners.’

  ‘I do volunteer work at Muskaan School for Mentally Challenged Children,’ Anji says hastily, obviously feeling his remark needs to be compensated for somehow.

  ‘Where’s Debjani?’ Juliet Bai asks.

  ‘Just coming,’ Mrs Mamta says serenely, as if she is completely unaware of the panicked trampling of the pudina plants in the back garden. ‘Eshwari’s gone to get her.’

  If she comes in with a tea tray, Dylan thinks, looking down at his meticulously polished shoes, I’ll stab myself in the head with Ethan’s Swiss Army knife and end the pain. This whole situation is too medieval for words.

  But it is Eshwari who brings in the tea. Debjani wanders in a little later, holding Samar’s hand and looking decidedly pale.

  ‘Debjani!’ ejaculates the Brigadier, a little too loudly and heartily, revealing his ‘first time’ status for all to see and pity. ‘Come, beta, sit with Dylan. Move from there, you duffers.’

  ‘Hello, uncle.’ Debjani flashes a ghost of her street-urchin grin and folds up obediently next to her suitor.

  An odd silence follows. Ethan fiddles with his Swiss Army knife and clears his throat meaningfully, looking at Eshwari. She gives a start. ‘Hi there,’ she grins. His entire face turns as pink as the tips of his pimples.

  ‘Do you go to Modern also, beta?’ Mrs Mamta asks kindly.

  Ethan shakes his head gloomily. ‘St Columba’s. It’s a convent school. No girls.’

  Meanwhile Samar looks dreamily out of the window and Binni smiles politely around the room, thinking how hard-faced the half-Isayee fellow is. His hands are huge, she frets. And we know what that means. Kha jaayega hamari Dabbu ko. He’ll eat her up in the bedroom only.

  And then everybody starts to talk at once. Anjini asks Dylan what he makes of the Shah Bano case. The Judge immediately answers for him. Ethan asks Samar Vir how old he is. Vickyji asks Jason how tall he is. Anant tells Juliet Bai he considers Goa a lovely holiday spot. She replies that she isn’t from Goa but from Mangalore. The Brigadier smiles foolishly at Mrs Mamta and tells her how lovely she is looking. And then Juliet Bai exclaims rapturously, ‘What a lovely beauty spot, ba!’