Daddy's Girl

by Swati Chaturvedi

  Once fully awake, Anju looked at Mr Nalwa suggestively; however, even the sight of Anju’s formidable double DD endowments as she willingly bent over him, failed to work. Pushing her aside wordlessly, he went to the bathroom of the Imperial hotel room they had checked into.

  Looking at himself in the vanity mirror, Arjun Nalwa decided he needed to get his mane of hair touched up. Then he changed into the soft white dressing gown hanging there and went out. He smiled apologetically at Anju, who seemed upset about being rejected. ‘Sweetheart, it’s the hangover,’ he assured her.

  ‘No, baby, it’s the stress, and that bitch is not helping either,’ said Anju, still lying naked in bed. She admired her breasts, which were a cause of never-ceasing wonder to her and which she used to trap men, who, after a while, never satisfied her.

  ‘Yes, you are right. She is not helping. And there is one asshole cop, Singh. He may be calling you and Subash, so handle it.’

  Meera was reeling under the 46-degree summer heat in Delhi, that made you feel blessed for having the fortitude to cope and for the efficacy of the air conditioning. She had left home despite having an ‘off’ from work, as her parents were fighting. The last dialogue had made her chortle out loud as her Ma demanded from Papa, why he was lying in bed waving his leg around. And her normally mild-mannered father had responded that it was because he did not have a tail like Gunny to wag. This retort had reduced Meera to a flood of helpless giggles and a target of her mother’s wrath.

  Driving around aimlessly, she called Singh and before he could even say ‘hello’ asked nervously, ‘I do not understand one thing: if he caught her and Babloo in the act, he could have confessed. Any father,’ Meera stumbled over her words, ‘would have reacted badly in a fit of rage.’

  Singh chuckled without a trace of mirth and replied, ‘Meera, in all cases of honour-driven crime, the trigger may be rage but the compelling motive is always to maintain the family’s or the clan’s pride and face. How can Nalwa admit it now and expose his whole family to shame? Also, how can he sully his own daughter’s name?’

  ‘Shame?’ questioned Meera. ‘What about avoiding a murder charge? Or did he not think he would be a suspect at all?’

  ‘He probably did, even though it could’ve been plain rage to begin with. He’s probably also gambling on the system to protect him,’ said Singh cynically and then hung up.

  Her mind in a whirl, Meera thought of calling her boyfriend. His distance from the case might provide her with a fresh perspective.

  Jai had other things, such as a big pizza deal, on his mind and was not pleased to be asked about the Nalwa murder case. ‘Oh no, please, Meera, what is this? You seem to have developed a mania for this sick case! What’s wrong with Vaidehi Aunty? Why can’t she stop you?’

  Irritated, Meera said, ‘Stop talking about my parents. Tell me what you think.’

  Jai refused to rise to the bait. ‘You are mad, you know? Now about tonight—no khoji patrakar, investigative journalism nonsense! It’s the wild party at the Khanna’s farmhouse where they have real French butlers and you, my Ms Amuse-bouche, are coming!’

  ‘Of course! Wherever there is free Cristal, you can count me in!’ giggled Meera, giving way to a different excitement.

  ‘There will be magnums and they are getting an exotic Brazilian dancer!’ he said excitedly.

  ‘Oh, so that’s what is more interesting and not the thought of meeting me after so many days!’ she said with mock anger. She was happy that Jai’s normal life intersected with her not-so-normal one, and every now and then provided the desperate relief she needed.

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ Jai replied. Then, he suddenly seemed distracted. ‘Okay, I have to go and meet the pizza people for my business. Dress sexy, babe!’ he said and hung up.

  Meera’s mind, chaotic at the best of times, was now veering between, ‘Do I have time to get my waxing done before the do tonight?’ and ‘How can you murder your child and still pretend to have a sense of honour?’

  She decided to find out about the latter first.

  Mr Nalwa looked up from his computer, where he was settling a corporate brief, and grimaced as he saw the nosy reporter’s name on the caller ID of his BlackBerry.

  He debated whether to ignore the call and then, frowning, answered it. ‘I did not know I would have the pleasure of speaking to you again so soon, Ms Meera,’ he said tartly.

  ‘Mr Nalwa, I need to see you,’ said Meera abruptly.

  ‘Why? Why would I meet the bottom-feeders like you, when all you want to do is rip me apart?’

  Displaying rare patience, which she only reserved for work, Meera said, ‘Mr Nalwa, we have been over this before. Look, I just want to meet you to understand something.’

  ‘Fine, come over at 7 p.m.,’ he said coldly and hung up.

  Meera felt unnerved by Mr Nalwa’s candour. He didn’t seem to flinch. For some reason, she had an almost visceral reaction to him. He filled her with unreasonable fear and made her skin crawl.

  Feeling more frightened than she cared to admit, Meera entered Mr Nalwa’s huge bungalow where even the air felt stale. This time, Mrs Nalwa opened the door and, after looking at Meera up and down as if she was a particularly odorous piece of garbage, led her to the living room.

  The couple presented a united front, sitting side-by-side on the couch and stared silently at Meera. She spoke first, ‘I am sorry to keep bothering you but I just had a couple of questions.’

  ‘You people always do,’ said Mrs Nalwa contemptuously. Tell me, I am just a housewife, but do all journalists dress like you?’ Blushing scarlet and caught on the wrong foot, Meera said, ‘I have to go for a party later and there would be no time to go home and change.’

  She desperately wanted to pull up the plunging Roberto Cavalli top, which she had on with clinging black Gucci trousers and stilettos.

  Meera had saved her entire salary for six months, often going without lunch and only buying petrol, to buy the ensemble, but she could hardly tell the contemptuous couple that.

  Satisfied with the effect of her words, Mrs Nalwa looked smug. Mr Nalwa sneered and said, ‘Journalists must be leading such exciting lives.’

  The sharp twinge of anger she felt made Meera rally and say blandly, ‘Unfortunately, not as exciting as lawyers and politicians, in my opinion.’

  Tired of the game, now that the victim was not cooperating and playing dead, Mr Nalwa said in an icy tone, ‘What is it now? Why did you want to see us?’

  ‘Mr Nalwa, I just wondered; I know that both of you said that there was nothing between Babloo and Ambika but did she have other boyfriends?’

  Mrs Nalwa, who had been staring at Mr Nalwa, glared at Meera, and said, ‘What would be the big deal if she had boyfriends and had sex? We are educated people. Sex is not a big deal in our circle. It may be for your third-rate, middle-class media and TV channels. In any case, you are a young girl . . . well . . . youngish. Tell me, do you listen to your parents? I don’t think so, looking at you dressed like this. You must be sleeping around all the time.’

  Mr Nalwa grabbed his wife’s hand and pressed it hard enough to make her suck her breath in with pain.

  Smoothly, he said, ‘As you can see, my wife is naturally very upset and your rude questions are difficult to take. But, she is right. Sex is no big deal.’

  A taut, prolonged silence ensued as all the three people in the room were stuck anew by the hollowness of that statement.

  Meera said, ‘You know, what both of you said is not different from what most parents would say. But the case here is different. What I do or other kids do is irrelevant. Ambika has been murdered and there are suspects. Questioning my morality or the media’s salaciousness is not going to change that. Sex with a boyfriend and sex with a cousin are two different ball games. It would be natural that you would be in a rage if you caught them. But, then you obviously can’t say that out loud, can you?’ Meera looked at Mr Nalwa straight in the eye.

  The silenc
e stretched like a tightrope pulled to breaking point. Mrs Nalwa, still holding Mr Nalwa’s hand, was the first to break. A tiny sob escaped from her large, round frame and she hissed, the hate naked in her eyes, ‘Shut up, you bitch! Shut up and get out of my house!’

  Mr Nalwa stood up and said, ‘My wife speaks for both of us. I better not hear from you again or I will complain to Bhagwan about how you are harassing me as the police’s stooge.’

  Meera got up and walked to the front door. Holding her head high, she said, ‘Mr Nalwa, I may be a lot of things but the one thing I am not is a police stooge. Goodbye for now.’

  As she walked out, she realized she was shaking. This was not the ordinary line of questioning that she’d followed before. She was still trying to control herself when her phone rang. Meera fumbled around her bag and looked at the screen. It was Rama Kaushik, the country’s powerful, Harvard-educated home minister who always wore a spotless white khadi kurta and pyjama in public.

  ‘How are you, irreverent young lady?’ he asked pleasantly.

  Recovering fast, Meera said ‘Fine and how are you?’ What was left unsaid was why on earth was he calling her, a mere mortal, when he had unrestricted access to God.

  ‘You clearly have more important people to talk to and meet, so you have been ignoring me,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But, drop in for a chat at 5 p.m. at my residence.’

  Intrigued by his smooth-as-silk lawyer’s patter, Meera cheerfully said ‘See you,’ while frantically wondering why he wanted to see her.

  Her phone rang again; this time it was Jai. ‘Where are you, yaar? We have to go the Khanna do. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘I am on my way home,’ she said. ‘Will you pick me up in forty minutes?’

  ‘Why? Where are you now?’

  ‘Not in civilization.’

  ‘Oh fuck, yaar. Okay. Is this your new phone? Is this the first call? Did I de-virginize it?’ he asked excitedly.

  Not wanting to break his dumb little heart, Meera said brightly, ‘Of course, darling. See you in a bit.’

  Now, Meera had to strategically go home, so that the boyfriend could pick her up, but not enter the house, to ensure Vaidehiji did not see what she was wearing and ask when she would return at night.

  Making a wry face, she put out the car lights as she waited for Jai. She put on Dire Straits and just let ‘Sultans of Swing’ wash her brain clean.

  ‘That’s an inviting picture!’ said the boyfriend, as he got into the car after graciously opening the door for her. ‘You’ve cleaned up nicely! Thank god that grungy, nosy-investigative-journalist look is gone.’

  Meera looked at him and thought he looked quite edible in his white shirt with the gingham cuffs. She suddenly realized with a rush that she wanted to be close to him and that she’d missed his affectionate compliments and caring. Music and cars were always a potent combination for her. She wordlessly angled her head and kissed him, tasting his tongue. She wanted more but, the cramped car seats and both their towering heights got in the way. After a final nibble on his delectable bottom lip, Meera breathlessly pulled away saying, ‘You drive now.’

  Jai provided some sanity to Meera in the shark-infested waters of journalism she had plunged into. She did not have to pretend with him. Her high spirits, exuberance and her occasionally bullheaded desire to take on the powers that be, to always take a stand and take risks attracted Jai to her.

  Taciturn and hugely shy by nature, he was unable to communicate easily, and Meera was the one person outside his family he had opened up to. This relationship was virgin territory for him but he was determined not to give up his fiery, bubbly, occasionally bewildering but very sweet friend.

  Her rages and flashes of temper were foreign to him, but then he remembered how painstakingly she composed his company emails and how a passionate moment in an elevator could dissolve into helpless laughter accompanied by his little snorts as they shared a joke nobody else got. The world, he thought as he drove, was goofy and grumpy in turns. He looked at Meera and she was completely transformed—her head thrown back and her fingers tapping to the music, she looked every bit a party girl.

  9

  Jai held her hand and looked at her occasionally with those sexy, big brown eyes of his while driving to the opulent Khanna farm, the only home in India designed by the famous architect Zaha Hadid. The farm boasted of three swimming pools—one of which was an indoor pool, surrounded by a rarely used library built with teak wood. They also had ten French butlers, which, they thought, distinguished them from the aam, common anglophiles among the filthy rich in India. No one knew what the source of Khanna’s immense wealth was. The ever-nosy Meera had once tried to find out but lost interest midway.

  By the time Meera and Jai reached their destination, the party was in full swing, with an actual mujrewali, a dancer from Pakistan, in one corner of the 10-acre Japanese garden. An exotic dancer from Brazil wearing three strategic strings, with a surgically enhanced body to die for, was somewhat incongruously dancing next to her.

  Meera spotted Bhagwan in earnest conversation with the American ambassador and ducked behind an orchid-festooned pillar. A cabinet minister, who fancied himself a poet and was a serial philanderer, leered at her as he broke away from a mob of sycophants, whose only job was to suck up to and flatter powerful politicians.

  God! I am literally in the court of the Sun King! thought Meera, as women wearing outfits that could roughly repay the entire debt of some sub-Saharan countries wandered around. Ever since the fitness craze had hit Delhi, the generous-sized Punjabi beauties had shrunk and now their giant heads on their shrunken bodies matched the lollipop-sized rocks they had on their fingers, ears and necks.

  Blinded by the glare of the jewels and the stunning beauty of the gardens, Meera and her boyfriend strolled around hand-in-hand, with Jai occasionally going into raptures about how soft Meera’s hand was, ‘It’s like cotton candy. What are you made of?’

  Suddenly Jai stiffened. ‘What a coup for the Khannas! Selena, the magnet who attracts all heads of state is here. My god, she is gorgeous!’ he said longingly.

  Meera looked up and saw the half-Italian, half-Afghani stunner. Rumour had it that she had dated the most eligible bachelor in the country for seven years. His commitment phobia had forced her to look elsewhere and now she was all set to marry a billionaire Egyptian royal. Wearing a simple white shift that only seemed to enhance her ethereal beauty, she smiled warmly at Jai and looked through Meera. As she walked towards them, Meera recalled that she knew Jai through a business connection. She watched as the exquisite beauty took her boyfriend by the arm and said, ‘Come, let’s get a drink. I so want to chat with you.’ And off they went, leaving her in the cold.

  Meera now left in a blinding red-hot haze of anger wanted to pinch herself to check if she even existed while feeling like an ugly cow in comparison to the head-of-state magnet. The gall of her and Jai just leaving her!

  Suddenly, a handsome boy came up to her and said, ‘Meera, right?’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Remember me? I am Angad, Ambika’s friend.’

  ‘Of course I do. What are you doing here?’ dimpled Meera.

  ‘My parents and the Khannas are friends. It’s nice to see you. I looked at your newspaper, but you never wrote anything . . .’

  ‘Angad, I am still working on it; it’s very difficult.’

  ‘Will you get me a drink? The French butlers don’t serve me. They’re not like our Indian guys who will do anything for baba,’ he said half-mockingly.

  ‘Well, maybe a glass of champagne, but just one,’ smiled Meera.

  His eyes lit up as he smiled and said, ‘Thanks! You are cool.’

  Summoning one of the French butlers imperiously, Meera took two glasses of champagne off the silver tray and walked off with Angad.

  Handing him the glass, she smiled teasingly and asked, ‘Where is your possessive girlfriend? Soma, wasn’t it?’

  Taking a giant sip which emptie
d half the glass, Angad said vaguely, ‘Oh, we broke up.’

  Hiding a smile, Meera said, ‘Was Ambika like this? Breaking up and making up?’

  ‘More than Soma. She was prettier and wilder. Yeah, I sometimes think she got the idea of taking guys home from her parents; they were never there, and maybe Babloo caught them and then forced her into doing him. Her parents were really fucked up,’ said Angad, gulping down the last of the champagne and looking longingly at Meera’s glass.

  Taking pity on him and recollecting how she was any-sip-of-alcohol obsessed at fourteen, she handed it over. Smiling at her, Angad continued, ‘She took me home once. I thought she wanted to make out but she kept on and on about her father and his relationship with some Anju DD.

  ‘Then we started kissing and their servant Babloo walked in on us. He got really upset and started screaming at her but, you know, not like a village relative but in a possessive kind of way. As if he was responsible for her.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Meera gently.

  ‘It was so long ago but he said something like, why did you get another boy? Or some shit like that,’ said Angad, his face flushed from the alcohol and the memory.

  ‘What did Ambika say?’ asked Meera, all her senses tuned to the young man.

  ‘That was the weird part. She did not scream at him like we would have. I mean, if my relatives ever spoke to me like that, I would give them hell. Well, I do that anyway, but it was strange that she just listened to him and then asked me to leave,’ said Angad, his eyes cloudy as if this still rankled him after such a long time.

  Meera looked at his disturbed face. It wasn’t the fault of these kids. Their parents were solely to be blamed. The poor dears were learning from experience.

  She sighed. ‘Okay, Angad, it’s been nice talking to you. You’ve been very helpful.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Like really, really helpful.’ He smiled, seemed relieved.

  She smiled too. ‘I’ll leave now. You don’t drink anymore, okay?’