THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘You wanted to see me, Hira?’ he asks in his deep, pleasant voice.

  ‘Come, come, Dylan,’ Hira says hospitably. ‘Mr Motla was asking for you.’

  Dylan crosses his arms across his chest and nods. ‘Hello.’

  Motla, sitting next to Varun Ohri on Hira’s low sofa and thus at a slight height disadvantage, puts down his Shiv Sagar mausambi juice glass and gives Dylan the full blast of his creepy rictus.

  ‘Mr Motla had some questions,’ Hira says, assuming a sombre expression. ‘He was wondering how, um, reliable our sources are. How accurate.’

  Dylan glances briefly at Motla, and back at Hira.

  ‘Just our sources, generally? Or…?’

  Hira’s eyes seem to twinkle. But his voice is very grave.

  ‘Specifically, he’s anxious to know about those two interviews you conducted. In response to his, er, suggestion, shall we say.’

  ‘Well, he is uniquely placed to vouch for them,’ Dylan says lightly. ‘He can judge their accuracy better than anybody else in this room, surely?’

  Motla’s smile grows a little fixed, but he ignores this jab.

  ‘That’s just it,’ Varun comes in smoothly. ‘He says they’re, er, rubbish.’

  ‘The sign on the door says Balance,’ Motla smiles persuasively at Dylan. ‘But your stories are unbalanced. Why don’t you ever print my side of things?’

  ‘Because…’ Varun begins.

  ‘Print it now.’ Motla smiles inexorably. ‘Explain how that IAS fellow is an embezzler and a liar. And this poor chap from Canada, I did not want to make this public because it is so sad, but the truth is that the deaths of his children have driven him mad. His mind has become completely… what is that word? It has become…’

  ‘Unbalanced,’ Hira supplies, his eyes twinkling quite openly now. ‘Like our stories.’

  Motla eyes him suspiciously.

  ‘That’s right,’ he says grudgingly.

  Dylan realizes that everybody is looking expectantly at him.

  ‘What?’

  Varun Ohri mops his forehead.

  ‘I’m sorry, I must be very stupid,’ Dylan continues, his voice carefully neutral, ‘but I don’t understand what you want. What do you want?’

  ‘I want you to leave me alone,’ hisses Motla. ‘I have been given a clean chit by the Special Investigation Commission – you cannot put me on trial again in your newspaper like this.’

  ‘Or?’ Hira prompts.

  ‘Or…’ Motla spreads out his hands. His smile grows even more distressed. ‘Or things will get nasty. Licences may be revoked. And your paper may have to be shut down.’

  Whoa, this cat doesn’t pull his punches, Dylan thinks. Talk about unsubtle.

  ‘Try to understand,’ Motla continues. ‘Outside forces are trying to destabilize our country, weaken it from within. They would love to see us fail. And so, putting doubts in the minds of loyal citizens, making them suspicious of senior leaders like myself – that is an irresponsible and unpatriotic act.’

  What crap, Dylan thinks, disgusted. But I should check out the insanity angle on that guy from Canada, see if it has any factual basis.

  ‘And I did not expect this from you, Shri Hiranandani,’ Motla continues smoothly. ‘You are, after all, a friend of the PM. Have you no consideration for his party?’

  Hira gets to his feet and draws himself up to his full height.

  ‘This newspaper does not compromise, Mr Motla,’ he says loftily. ‘We print the truth, wherever we find it, no matter who it incriminates – and we suffer the consequences without flinching.’

  Silence.

  ‘Well, it’s a free country.’ Motla smiles, getting to his feet too. ‘I had just hoped you would see things from my point of view. But it is all right. The juice is sour, by the way, so I apologize for not finishing it. Goodbye!’

  He glides out of the room, teeth still bared in that death-defeating smile, leaving them staring after him in stunned silence. Presently, the schwoonng-schwoonng of his VIP siren floats up to their ears.

  Hiranandani gives a crow of delight. ‘Wasn’t that fun! That’s why I left England to work in Bombay. Sleazy politicians storming into my office, cajoling and threatening, giving me the chance to look heroic and act incorruptible. Thanks for giving me this opportunity to make such a noble, my-paper-is-not-for-sale speech, tiger. Now go out and keep writing your soul-stirring, shit-stirring little pieces. Fancy going out for lunch, VO? How about we hit Copper Chimney?’

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Varun replies weakly.

  Dylan pauses awkwardly by the door. ‘Hira. Thanks.’

  ‘All in a day’s work.’ Hiranandani makes a dismissive gesture. ‘I never could stand that philistine. He studied in a kendriya vidyalaya, you know, an actual kendriya vidyalaya. Can you credit it?’

  ‘That’s really not the poin –’ Dylan starts to say but Hira has already put on his spiffy little jacket and is heading out of the door.

  ‘Just get me one last eyewitness now, Dylan baby,’ he sings out as he exits, ‘and we’ll nail the Motla.’

  ‘Can’t we take a holiday?’ the Judge asks his wife wistfully in their bedroom one morning, as the winter sun coaxes the harshringar tree into blossom outside. ‘Just you and me. We’ll run away for a week – go to Gulmarg, ride those little tattu horses, hire fur coats and eat cherry buns.’

  ‘Those cherries always get stuck in my teeth,’ Mrs Mamta replies as she combs her rippling hair.

  ‘And make a little F for Falguni,’ he continues. ‘How about that, huh, Mamtaji?’

  She laughs. ‘I’m fifty-six years old, LN!’

  ‘I want to make you happy,’ he says restlessly. ‘There was a time when I could. Now you want things I can’t give – like happy marriages for your daughters and babies for Anji and god alone knows what else.’

  ‘I don’t want anything,’ she replies, giving his hand a squeeze. ‘Don’t stress, LN. What’s got into you?’

  ‘This mess with Dabbu, I suppose,’ the Judge says gloomily. ‘And the not talking to Ashok, and the constant thuk-thuk and dust and drilling going on next door. When will that wretched building be completed?’

  According to Chachiji, the answer is never. She is convinced that the Pushkarni will never let a building block – gracious looking though it is, and rich with plaster of Paris detailing and many curlicues and pillars – replace the old bungalow where she lived and died.

  ‘She haunts it,’ she tells the wide-eyed children, who hang on to her every word, in the drawing room late at night. ‘She walks there after midnight. You know that labourer who fell off the scaffolding and broke his leg last week? She pushed him. And she’s going to push many, many more.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Samar asks her in a hushed whisper, even though he knows the answer.

  Chachiji strokes his hair off his forehead and gives the weirdest little cackle.

  ‘Because she told me,’ she says. ‘She comes upon me sometimes, you know. She gets into my body and suddenly I crave food I don’t like, and sing songs I’ve never heard, and know things that haven’t happened yet.’

  Monu takes his thumb out of his mouth.

  ‘Do you know what questions will come in the class two final exam?’

  Chachiji nods nonchalantly. ‘Ya, of course. Just bring me the books, I’ll close my eyes, invite the Pushkarni into me, and she’ll tick the questions you need to study.’

  The twins are thrilled. Samar, however, is concerned that the old lady is losing it.

  ‘I think you should move with the times,’ he counsels her sleepily. ‘Anji-ma says a small flat will be easier for you to keep clean, one desert cooler will be enough to keep it cool, and you’ll have so many nice new neighbours to play with!’

  Chachiji sniffs. Ashok Narayan has been singing the praises of the new flat too, rabbiting on about Italian marble and built-in teak woodwork and fancy bathroom fixtures. But Chachiji would rather squat over an Indian-style potty in a bungalow t
han perch elegantly upon an English-style WC in a matchbox-sized flat.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ she tells Samar fiercely. ‘I’ll never step foot in that tiny flat! A.N. Thakur can just move in there alone and hire a cook to cook for him!’ She shoves the hapless Samar’s head hard into his pillow. ‘Go to sleep now!’

  Mrs Mamta, petrified that she may have Chachiji living in her annexe forever, starts to extol the many virtues of the flats every day. Anjini and Eshwari go over to scout around and come back with glowing reports of the genuine teak shelving in the kitchen and the dazzling light that comes in through the French windows. Chachiji takes in all this rhapsodizing quietly, an inscrutable expression on her bulldog face. And one week later, when Samar rushes into the annexe to tell her that his kite has got cut over the construction site and the workers are refusing to hand it back to him, she gets to her feet and announces abruptly that she will go over and retrieve it.

  When she returns, a whole hour later, she is head over heels in love with ‘Hailey Court’, which is the proposed name of the building complex. She stumps into Mrs Mamta’s kitchen, asks for a cup of tea and starts to list the many glorious features of her new home.

  ‘The floor is like mirror! The doors are white! There’s a slit in the front door for letters, can you imagine? The servants’ quarter is bigger than our old master bedroom! And the kitchen sink is made of steel – actual stainless steel – I saw the sticker, it says twenty-year guarantee!’

  ‘So lucky,’ Mrs Mamta murmurs, sliding a cup of piping hot, sweet tea across the table. ‘My sink is old and cracked and made of cement, I have to clean it with a toothbrush every day...’

  And so Chachiji starts to believe that the social ignominy of having to sell the family home can perhaps be lived down, and that she may have landed on her feet after all. She perks up enough to go over every day and watch the labourers as they do the ‘finishing’ at Hailey Court. Many a skinny brown construction worker, clad in vest and striped underwear, whistling to the music on his transistor, has looked up to find Chachiji’s beady gaze fixed upon him. ‘Properly do, you!’ she says sternly. ‘You missed a spot there. See, the marble isn’t sparkling as it should.’

  The Judge and Mrs Mamta start to hope that the A.N. Thakurs will be out of their annexe in two months’ time.

  ‘And about time too,’ says the Judge in the privacy of his bedroom. ‘Why is that Eshwari always stuck to the phone nowadays, Mamtaji? Doesn’t she get enough time to chat with her girlfriends in school?’

  ‘It’s boys, LN,’ his wife replies. ‘Though, of course, it’s always a girl when I pick up the phone. Aunty, can I talk to Eshu please? And right after saying that, they hand the phone over to their brother. I can’t believe they think I don’t know. I wasn’t born yesterday.’

  ‘Why don’t you stop it, then?’ the Judge demands.

  Mrs Mamta shrugs. ‘Eshu is a sensible girl.’

  The Judge doesn’t reply, but privately he decides to ‘take Eshwari in hand’.

  The next morning, an article on the science page of the India Post catches his eye. He reads out the headline.

  ‘Sex during the teenage years can make you stupid and depressed.’

  Eshu blinks and puts down her cornflakes spoon. ‘What?’

  ‘A study was conducted on 800 hamsters,’ her father continues matter-of-factly. ‘Where forty-day-old male hamsters (equivalent in age to human teenagers) were made to mate with adult female hamsters in heat. After mating, when put into a pool of water, the hamsters showed no inclination to swim vigorously, which is a sign of depression. The dendrites of their brain showed less complexity too. The hamsters that did not have sex, however, swam vigorously in the water and had very complex dendrites.’ He looks up at Eshwari meaningfully. ‘See!’

  ‘See what?’ she demands.

  ‘You know what!’ He frowns intimidatingly.

  Eshwari sighs. ‘BJ, you’re being gross. And what kind of sickos carry out these experiments, anyway? Sitting around in lab coats, egging on hamsters to copulate – I mean, get a life, right?’

  ‘That is not the point. The point is –’

  ‘I got the point, BJ.’ Eshwari rolls her eyes. ‘And I’m a really vigorous swimmer. I even have some Delhi state swimming medals. Why don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Oh, he trusts you,’ says Mrs Mamta moving in smoothly to sit at her husband’s side. ‘He was just reading this article aloud because… because we should all read the news and be aware of what’s happening around us, no, Dabbu?’

  ‘Hmm?’ Debjani, who has been staring vacantly into space, says blankly.

  ‘Nothing,’ Mrs Mamta sighs. ‘Where are you off to, Eshwari? It’s Saturday.’

  ‘Interact Club work,’ she replies. ‘Bye, you guys.’

  The Judge frowns. ‘You’re always going out,’ he says austerely. ‘Something or the other all the time. Basketball, Western music, Interact…’

  But Eshwari is already out of the room and in the corridor.

  The room suddenly feels very silent. The Judge still isn’t speaking to Debjani.

  ‘And you, Dabbu?’ her mother asks. ‘What are you doing today, beta?’

  But before Debjani can reply, Eshwari sticks her head back into the room. ‘Oh, BJ, Old Mr Gambhir said to tell you that his phone bill has come. He said you would understand.’

  ‘Oh… ah!’ the Judge nods. ‘Fine, I’ll, um, talk to him about it. You better hurry, Eshu.’

  ‘Okay. Bye!’

  Mrs Mamta turns back to Debjani. ‘Well?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much.’ She shrugs. ‘I’ve already read the news twice this week, so I’m free. If you guys are done with that newspaper, can I have it?’

  ‘Why don’t you get a job, Dabbu?’ Mrs Mamta asks gently.

  ‘I don’t need it,’ she points out, sensibly enough. ‘I’m making 4,000 a month just reading the news. It’s more than enough. And I do voiceover work. Besides, I don’t feel like going anywhere nowadays.’

  ‘It’s not right to cut yourself off from the world like this,’ her mother says worriedly.

  ‘I’m not cut off, ’ she replies shortly. ‘Just give me the newspaper.’ ‘There are some interesting news articles in there nowadays,’ the Judge says to the teapot.

  ‘Don’t I know it?’ Debjani addresses the fruit bowl. ‘Old Mr Gambhir shakes them under my nose every time I go there to buy even a Rin ki tikia. He clearly thinks Dylan Shekhawat is some kind of hero. He’d award him with an honorary Sikh turban if he could.’

  ‘Really?’ her father grunts, still talking to the teapot. ‘And what do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s disgusting that even the kirana shop owner knows what goes on inside our drawing room!’ she flares up. ‘Gossiping is rampant up and down this road. It’s ridiculous!’

  Mrs Mamta hurriedly hands her the newspaper and starts to sift through her mail. Debjani pursues the headlines. Presently, Mrs Mamta gives a low exclamation. Debjani and the Judge both look up.

  ‘I’m sure Old Mr Gambhir doesn’t know about this,’ Mrs Mamta says, producing an elegant cream and gold envelope and placing it on the dining table. ‘At least not yet.’

  Debjani picks up the envelope, addressed in neat type to Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur, Mrs Mamta Thakur and Fly. She opens it and slides out a pale gold card with cream lettering, upon which is painted a single white champa flower.

  A Mangalorean lass and a Rajput knight

  Eloped one day on an Enfield bike

  There was no celebration

  Which is an abomination

  Thirty years later, please help us put that right!

  ‘It’s the invite,’ Debjani says unnecessarily, suddenly feeling like she’s about to burst into tears. ‘It’s on Friday the twenty-seventh. And it’s not just for you and BJ, Ma. The envelope says and Fly.’

  ‘Will you step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,’ the Judge murmurs, only half whimsically. Then he nods at the teapot. ‘So, do
you want to go?’

  ‘Call for you on line two, darling!’ The high-pitched voice of the thin Parsi receptionist pierces through glass and wood partitions alike, reverberating through the office. ‘Pick it up!’

  Dylan immediately stops his frenetic typing and reaches for the phone. Varun Ohri looks up.

  ‘How do you know she was talking to you, bastard?’ he demands aggrievedly. ‘You’re the only darling in office or what?’

  Dylan grins, motioning for him to be quiet. ‘Yes, hello… speaking.’ His expression changes, becomes intent. ‘Yes, ma’am, this is the real Dylan Singh Shekhawat. You’re calling from? Delhi! No no no, actually that happens to be perfect – I’m travelling to Delhi tomorrow.’

  Varun, intrigued by the edge of excitement that has crept into Dylan’s voice, listens in shamelessly.

  ‘Day after tomorrow, one o’clock. At the United Coffee House in CP. Yes, I know it. I’ll be there.’

  He puts down the phone and turns to Varun. His eyes are blazing.

  ‘This could be it! She’s twenty-two – which makes her eighteen during the time of the riots – an adult witness. And a genuine resident of Tirathpuri! She lived in Block 32 she says, Room Number 12. My god, I know that room! It’s on the first floor, right above the area where the rioting was thickest. She saw everything but her father wouldn’t let her testify before the SIC. But he just died – so she can come clean. She’ll speak only to me, she says. I have a good feeling about this, VO!’

  ‘Good for you,’ Varun responds. ‘Though she sounds a bit of a cold-blooded little cow calling you before her father’s ashes have even cooled. Did she talk about money?’

  Dylan shakes his head. ‘No, but she’s the real deal, I can tell!’ ‘Whatever,’ Varun grunts. ‘Just be careful. Hira might have acted all chilled out when Motla paid us his flying visit, but there’s pressure from marketing to close down your little party. So keep the mess-making sanitary, okay?’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Dylan nods vigorously. ‘I’ll be meeting her in the afternoon at a public place. She said she’s thin and fair, with long hair.’