And then Raka gets busy perfecting some strange new manoeuvre in his MiG 21.
It is called steep-glide dive bombing and the technical whizzes have come up with it specifically to bomb airfields. It’s more dangerous than the old way, because it leaves the pilots exposed for a much longer time to the anti-aircraft guns on the ground. But it is much more accurate, apparently.
Juhi knows all this in full technical detail because she’s made Raka explain it to her again and again, late in the night when they’re both lying under the olive-green Army-issued mosquito netting on the double bed his parents have gifted them. Raka held out initially, telling her that his work was confidential, but she wormed it out of him with a mixture of weepy interrogation and steamy seduction. Now she wishes she hadn’t. She has nightmares – sometimes of Baaz, sometimes of Maddy, but mostly of Raka, wounded, groaning or dead in some muddy paddy field, white-faced and blood-smeared, burning like a rick.
Raka, of course, thinks the whole thing is a big fat joke. In fact, he’s been using his steep-glide dive attacks as unfair leverage in the bedroom.
‘Here’s your husband, safe and sound, after risking his life for his country!’ he warbles as he emerges from the bathroom every evening just as she likes him – fragrant, freshly shaved, with only a towel around his trim waist. ‘Show him you’re happy he’s home, madame wife!’
And Juhi does. But after he falls asleep, she lies awake and looks at his face, at those lips that curve upwards even as he sleeps, the rounded cheeks, the brave curl of moustache, and she worries and worries and worries.
Theirs is a runaway marriage – Baaz and Maddy had spirited her away from the back gate of her house while Raka created a distraction by letting her father beat him up in the front garden – and her family still hasn’t accepted it. If anything happens to Raka – her stomach roils at the very thought – where will she go, what will she do?
She has panic attacks in the afternoon, and tears fall fast upon the hem of the black dress she is shortening to wear to the next ball at the Sarhind Club. She spends hours praying for an overcast monsoon, which will ground all aircraft, and is ecstatic when Kalaiganga is rocked by thunderstorms in June and July and flight training gets cancelled. She quickly learns to expect the summons, brought to her quarters by a grinning airman, that Raka sir and the others are free for the day and request her presence at the airfield.
Life becomes a whirl of impromptu parties, full of music and dancing, laughter and banter, lovely food and drink. But the knot at the pit of her stomach never eases away entirely.
Diwali is early this year, and for some reason Juhi is convinced that once it is over things will get worse – much worse. She pushes this dark premonition to the back of her mind and focuses on keeping her Navratra fast devoutly, planting chrysanthemums in her little garden and taking Raka to the best tailor in Kalaiganga to be measured for a brand new dinner jacket for the festive season.
‘I’m getting a fancy jacket too,’ Raka tells Shaanu one day, when Juhi takes pity on the bachelor officers and invites them over for a home-cooked feast the day after Karva Chauth. ‘Watch out for me at the Winter Fete, brother!’
Shaanu, chewing busily, flashes him a pitying grin.
‘Nobody’s going to be looking at you at the fete, Raka,’ he says, swallowing. ‘All eyes will be on Juhi.’
Having said that, he heads for the kitchenette in search of more piping-hot puris, leaving Maddy and Raka to suffer a long soliloquy from their frog-faced commanding officer, Wing Commander Mohindar Dheengra, a middle-aged bachelor fondly known as Deengu because of his tendency to spin tall tales of bombs and bravery and beautiful female spies whenever his tissues have been well-irrigated.
Deengu leans one hip comfortably against the Aggarwals’ prized turntable, pins Maddy and Raka into place with his jewel-like, long-lashed eyes and holds forth hoarsely.
‘Look lads, you have to be mentally prepared for any eventuality! In ’65, I flew my Vampire in a silk Pathan suit instead of my IAF dungarees, with Pakistani currency jingling in my pockets. I had it all planned! If I got shot down over enemy territory, I was going to open a paan-ki-dukaan, find a beautiful begum to grind my qimam and father half-a-dozen infidel brats. Imagine my joy, when, after bailing out at 31,000 feet, I landed unhurt in a sugarcane field, to find a voluptuous beauty, bosom heaving, kneeling next to me…’
In the kitchen, Shaanu finds Juhi flushed pink from the heat of the kadhai, a cheesecloth apron tied around her waist. He hoiks himself up to sit on the countertop next to her stove, thus establishing a monopoly on all the hot puris emerging from the kadhai.
Sopping up spicy sabzi with a large chunk of puri, he tells her teasingly, ‘How pretty you look, Mrs Aggarwal! Any good news?’
She blushes rosily and rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t do nonsense talk.’
Shaanu grins and bolts down three puris with slurps of contentment while Juhi concentrates on frying up a new batch, her eyes wistful.
As he springs down from the countertop to wash his plate, she says, ‘Baaz, do you think there is going to be a war?’
Shaanu stops for a moment, then walks up to her and puts an arm around her neat waist.
‘Of course,’ he replies lightly. ‘Raka’s going to stride into the kitchen any minute now and accuse me of flirting with you. I will fight him off, because how dare he doubt your faithfulness? There’s gonna be blood on the kitchen floor, for sure.’
‘There will be blood on the kitchen floor before that, you bundal Baaz, if you give such stupid evasive answers,’ she retorts, waving a mehendi-decorated palm in his face. ‘You know exactly what I mean!’
He gives a vibrant, reassuring laugh and turns to the sink. ‘Sorry! And sorry to disappoint you, but there isn’t going to be a war. This is real life, not a Hindi film.’
‘But Raks says—’
‘Raks just wants to look more romantic in your eyes,’ Shaanu says firmly. ‘The poor fool.’
She looks deep into his eyes, letting the water run in the empty sink, even though his plate has been washed, dried and put away. ‘Swear?’
Shaanu nods.
‘Swear,’ he says steadily.
And then he turns off the tap and leads her back to her husband, profoundly thankful that he has no girl in his life, as such. Because of course there’s going to be a war.
• • •
‘Uh, there’s just been one small change, Yo Hi sir.’
The Chief Creative Officer of India’s largest advertising agency pushes back the bush of grey hair from his lean, raddled face and pinions the weedy account executive with a vulpine eye.
‘Eh?’ he growls.
He’s sitting in the best seat at Regal movie hall, bang in the middle of the first row of balcony seats. An ancient rickety fan circles above his head, ruffling his grey curls. The account executive edges closer to him obsequiously.
‘Uh, Yo Hi sir, you remember the script from the Freesia presentation, don’t you?’
Yo Hi, whose nickname, an abbreviation of Your Highness, was created only half in jest, deigns to remove the cigar from his mouth.
‘Of course,’ he says gruffly. ‘Come alive with the freshness of Freesia. The bikini-clad babe under the waterfall. What about it?’
The account exec licks his lips and launches into a clearly rehearsed speech. ‘Well, sir, as you know, LevarBaths loved the idea. They wanted us to shoot the film immediately. We contacted the best model coordination agencies, and you personally picked out a ravishing international model…’
‘Well-stacked,’ nods Yo Hi wisely. ‘Fair, with a mole on the upper lip. Yeah, I remember.’ He waggles his cigar impatiently. ‘Now play the damn ad. Let’s see how it turned out.’
Tharki old man, thinks the weedy account exec, smoothing his clammy palms along his pants.
‘Yeah well, turns out she was a bit of a washout.’ He giggles nervously. ‘Heh heh … no pun intended.’
‘Whaddyou mean washout?’ growls
the CCO. ‘Those titties weren’t padding. I can always tell.’
‘Oh no, they weren’t padding.’ The account executive gives another nervous giggle. ‘I can vouch for that personally! It’s just that…’ He gulps and wilts with relief. ‘Oh, here’s my writer! Let him tell you!’
He gladly hands over the reins to a chubby youth who has just stuck his head into the EXIT door. This smug fellow steps onto the balcony, smiling a little too brightly, and takes up the narrative.
‘To cut a long story short, sir, our ravishing heroine donned the emerald-green bikini and got into the waterfall readily enough,’ he begins glibly, ‘but then all hell broke loose. She kept slipping on the rocks, and when she got under the waterfall, the water pressure was too strong. She clutched at the rocks, but they crumbled away. So we got out a rope and tied it around her so she wouldn’t fall, and then the water-guys – who were locals and spoke only whatever freakin’ language they speak in the wilds of Kodaikanal – got a bit enthusiastic and tied it too tight so she got welts around her stomach. So then we had to wait an hour for the welts to fade. And then the sun went behind a cloud, so we had to wait some more. And then somebody thought it would be a good idea to give her a stiff drink, but it wasn’t, because the moment she got back under the waterfall she started shrinking against the rocks, alternately whimpering and snarling that the water was too cold, that the rope was chafing, that there were hairy black crabs crawling about in the rocks. And then these two jolly little snakes came wriggling up in the water – a big green one and a small brown one – and flickered their tongues at her, and she fainted.’
He pauses, risking a glance at Yo Hi to see how he’s taking this.
‘Snakes, eh?’ muses the CCO, steepling his fingers. ‘Why didn’t we think of snakes before? Snakes are sexy.’
‘Freesia is a clean, wholesome brand,’ puts in the weedy account exec hastily. ‘Snakes don’t fit—’
‘By then, of course, it was the middle of the afternoon and the DOP was getting gloomier and gloomier and muttering about losing light.’
‘And of course we had attracted a crowd,’ says the AE, rolling his eyes. ‘A bunch of toothless old women and horny young men plonked themselves on the ground behind the security cordons and began heckling our crew.’
‘Their first suggestion was to give her a drink to warm her up, which of course we were dumb enough to take,’ says the writer. ‘Next, they suggested I play the bathing beauty. They coarsely told me to take off my shorts and show ’em what I’ve got.’
Yo Hi gives a short laugh.
The writer clears his throat and continues with careful casualness.
‘Anyway, we’d taken along this still photographer chick to shoot some pics we could use for posters and hoardings – and someone from the crowd shouted out that we should try her only under the waterfall. So, with the supermodel fainting away and the DOP and client in hysterics, we did.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘The film’s ready, editing and music all done – d’you wanna take a look?’
There is a rather terrible silence.
‘It’s … not that bad,’ the AE ventures finally, timidly. ‘She has dimples.’
‘Small ones,’ adds the writer with scrupulous honesty.
Yo Hi’s eyes narrow.
‘And breasts.’
‘Small ones.’
Yo Hi’s eyes are mere slits now.
The AE guy reveals the final, most damning bit of news. ‘And she’s slightly, um, wheatish, sir.’
The silence now is absolutely dreadful.
‘But she was born in America!’ the AE continues heartily, like this can somehow compensate for the sin of wheatishness. ‘She’s really artsy. Shoots women in red-light areas and street kids and old people and cows and all that. She took on the Freesia assignment because she went broke buying this really fancy camera.’
‘And she wasn’t at all afraid of the cold or the snakes,’ puts in the writer. ‘Just went for it!’
The CCO leans back in his chair and jiggles one leg restlessly.
‘Show me,’ he says.
Gulping and breathing heavily, they gesture to the unseen technician in the projection room, then stand back to watch Yo Hi’s face, as narrowly as he’s watching the ad.
There are three cuts of the ad. As he watches the first cut, Yo Hi slowly raises his eyebrows and purses his lips.
‘Nice jingle,’ he says when it is over.
During the second viewing, he leans in closer to the screen, his elbows on his knees.
And through the third cut, he sprawls back in his seat and strokes his beard, barely looking at the screen at all.
When the screen goes dark, he gets to his feet, hitching his pants up by his jaunty red suspenders.
The two-man team looks up at him, their eyes agonized.
‘You dumb fucks,’ Yo Hi says mildly.
They quiver and quaver.
‘Sorry sir, sorry sir,’ they mumble, cringing. ‘We can reshoot, what’s there?’
Yo Hi throws out his arms.
‘You’ve stumbled upon an absolute star!’
‘You like her?’ They gulp in relief, collapsing against the backs of the rickety seats. ‘Really?’
‘Don’t you?’ he demands.
They sit up straighter. ‘Oh, ya ya,’ they say with belated cocksureness. ‘We knew, we had this gut feel that she was going to be good!’
‘Good!’ snorts the old man, who has launched a hundred advertising stars. ‘She’s great. Let’s run this!’
• • •
At Air Force Station Kalaiganga, which falls under the vital Eastern Air Command, the lengthening days and short hot nights are often enlivened with talk of war. Both the MiG 21 squadron and the HAL Gnat squadrons are eager for first blood, but at the moment all the action seems to be limited to the transport and heli-borne divisions, which are often called in to airlift refugees from the border areas. Still, all valuable aircraft have been put into blast pens and Combat Air Patrols are often mounted over the base, the buzzing of the constantly circling Gnats as irritating as the insect they’re named after. Army vehicles now move about with shrouded headlights at night, and war siren drills are held on a regular basis.
Needless to say, Shaanu is thriving in this thickened atmosphere. When he strides onto the tarmac at dawn for his morning briefing with his Wing Commander, good old Hosannah ‘Kuch Bhi’ Carvalho, he is a man who is where he wants to be, doing what he loves. The roar of the jet engines is music to his ears, the smell of aviation fuel intoxicating. In his flying overalls, helmet under his arm, his Flying College strut developed into a full-blown swagger, he looks (as his doting sisters tell him whenever he sends them a photograph) like a hero from a particularly heroic war movie. But alas, there is no heroine in the movie of his life.
‘Maybe he has a girlfriend. Somebody special, who has sworn him to secrecy,’ speculates Juhi as she slips on her earrings at her dressing table one evening.
Raka, who’s putting on his shoes, immediately looks up, extremely offended.
‘He wouldn’t keep secrets from us.’
‘Yes, because your lips are always sealed,’ says his wife, bouncing up to kiss him on his open mouth. ‘I know what you all do once you’re up in the air, connected by the R/T, on the supposedly flying missions. Chatter chatter chatter.’
‘Are you making fun of this lean mean fighting machine?’ Raka grabs her and spins her onto his lap.
‘Yes!’ she gasps, laughing. ‘Ow ow ow, stop it!’
He stops it, pulling her closer and placing a smacking kiss on her rosy cheek.
‘Maybe he’s in love with you,’ he says whimsically. ‘The poor bastard.’
‘That they all are,’ she says complacently and starts counting her admirers on her fingers. ‘Baaz, Deengu, Maddy…’
‘Maddy falls in love with every girl he meets.’ Her husband chuckles, rubbing his cheek against hers. ‘And Bundal Baaz, none.’
‘He’s a one-woman man
,’ says Juhi wisely. ‘Wait and see. When he falls in love, he’ll fall hard. Maybe it’s got something to do with him being, you know…’
She gives him a meaningful look.
Raka looks blank.
‘Short?’
‘Uff!’ Juhi tosses her head in disgust and gets off his lap. ‘Illegitimate!’
That evening, when they go to see a film in Calcutta, Raka brings up the subject with Shaanu.
‘What the hell were you doing all those years in bloody Chakkahera, man?’ he demands. ‘Why didn’t you lure some hot chamari into the ganna fields when you were fifteen?’
‘We don’t grow sugarcane,’ is Shaanu’s entirely pragmatic reply. ‘Only mustard and channa. And channa grows only about one foot high – if you go in there to have sex, people can see you.’
‘He’s just playing hard to get,’ Maddy says. ‘Building up this dark, romantique mystique…’
‘I’m fairer than you, fucker,’ Shaanu interjects.
But Maddy is on a roll.
‘Because what is gettable is … forgettable!’ He flicks his fingers dismissively, then pauses, impressed with his own rhyming skills. ‘Arrey wah! Say wah wah, you guys.’
‘You know what I think?’ Raka muses. ‘I think you’re sexually frustrated. That’s why you feel the need to do suicidal stunts in the sky. It’s like a release for you. That’s it! Baaz, your over-choosy, pent-up penis is going to get you killed.’
‘I’m not over-choosy.’ Shaanu’s grey eyes shine with conviction. ‘Just choosy. I mean, the girl should be special … and the first time should mean something. Aise hi thodi? Like gajar mooli?’
There is silence. Then,
‘Baaz’s penis … is waiting for Venus!’ Maddy says sagely.
Raka guffaws.
Juhi and Ishaan regard the two of them in disgust.
‘Animals,’ Juhi says. ‘Don’t let them corrupt you, Baaz. Here, have a sandwich.’
She smiles at him approvingly, opens her capacious handbag and produces a large plastic tiffin box, brimming with goodies.
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