‘Kung fui, stop,’ Tinka says hastily. ‘Please, I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of expat Bombayites. Actually,’ she continues, perhaps a little too offhandedly, ‘I’m meeting some officers from the station for drinks this evening.’
Kainaz Dadyseth puts down her glass.
‘Really,’ she drawls, jewel-like eyes gleaming. ‘And what officers are these?’
Tinka shrugs. ‘I met them at the train station.’
Kung fui jiggles the ice in her glass vigorously. ‘Bachche, you can’t go around picking up strange young men at train stations. It’s so unbecoming. And Air Force officers are a very mixed bunch. They used to be exclusive, but with all these wars, they’ve started recruiting them straight out of the sugarcane fields. Some of them are wealthy ex-royals, certainly, but many of them are country bumpkins.’
‘Fui, don’t talk like Ardisher, please!’ Tinka rolls her eyes as she wriggles out of her slacks and heads for the shower. ‘This boy is nice – he’s the one who helped me run away to you that night.’
Kainaz sniffs, her hooked Parsi nose well up in the air as she enquires, ‘What is he?’
This sounds both vague and rhetorical, but Tinka understands exactly what her aunt wants to know.
She leans against the bathroom door.
‘He’s a Jat,’ she replies.
‘A jhat?’ Kainaz raises delicately arched brows. ‘You mean a pubic hair? Chhee, don’t be crude, darling.’
‘You know exactly what a Jat is, Kung fui. Don’t be a snob.’
Her aunt sips her whiskey-paani.
‘Darling, have some pity.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, haven’t you rubbed your father’s nose in the mud enough? First you ran away from the wedding, leaving him red-faced at the Agiyari practically! Then you did that ad. Now you’re getting all dolled up to go canoodle with some impoverished Jat.’
‘He’s not impoverished. At least, I don’t think so. There was some talk of a haveli.’
‘My dear, not one of those rundown, so-called havelis!’ Her aunt shudders. ‘It’ll turn out to be just a hovel, I bet. A hoveli.’
‘Besides,’ Tinka continues, ignoring this crack, ‘this is not a romantic outing!’
Kainaz fui responds to this statement with a cackle of such disbelief that Tinka is goaded into slamming the bathroom door shut in her face and standing under the shower for a good twenty minutes.
When she emerges she finds that a clingy, sleeveless maxi of flame-coloured georgette, which she believed to be hanging in her wardrobe in Bombay, has been laid out on the bed for her. Matching strappy sandals are on the floor while a pair of dangly diamond earrings glitter inside a velvet box on the dressing table next to a vanity case loaded with expensive cosmetics.
Tinka raises an eyebrow.
‘I was thinking of wearing just a sweater and slacks.’
‘Rubbish!’ declares her aunt. ‘All that is okay for the refugee camps, this is Sarhind Club, people we know may actually be there – don’t go down dressed like some middle-class frump who has to do ads for money.’
Tinka sucks in her breath, exasperated.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, fui!’
Kainaz’s tone grows wheedling.
‘Darling, dress up … it soothes my old eyes to see you look beautiful.’
Tinka relents. Besides, the thought of appearing before Ishaan in these clothes is somehow very appealing.
‘Are you planning to scare the Jat off?’ she asks as she drops the maxi over her head. ‘Because I don’t think he’s the type to be intimidated by wealth.’
Kainaz Dadyseth tugs the maxi lower, making Tinka’s head disappear.
‘What Jat, darling? I’ve forgotten about him already.’
Tinka’s head emerges from the dress.
‘It does feel good to wear stuff like this again,’ she admits, grinning a little breathlessly.
Kainaz smiles in satisfaction. The flaming orange sets off Tinka’s glowing brown limbs and tousled cap of dark hair perfectly.
Tinka slips on her sandals and walks to the mirror.
‘I’m too brown,’ she says with vague dissatisfaction.
She must really like this boy, Kainaz thinks, surprised. She never worries about her complexion.
‘This obsession with fairness is very lower class, darling,’ she says firmly. ‘Draupadi was as dark as Dabur Chyawanprash, remember, but that didn’t stop her from snaring five husbands. All for the price of one mother-in-law too.’
‘I meant my lipstick,’ Tinka says exasperated. ‘I needed a brighter shade. Ah, here it is.’
‘These Haryanvi peasant types are very highly sexed, waise,’ Kainaz says knowledgeably as she watches Tinka apply the bright pink lipper. ‘I hope…’ She pauses, sips her drink, then continues delicately, ‘Has he recognized you from your ad, by any chance?’
Tinka’s eyes narrow in the glass. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘I’m trying to say that maybe he thinks you’re a modern khayalat ki ladki.’ Her aunt emphasizes the word like it’s dirty. ‘In other words, easy.’
‘Understood,’ Tinka replies tightly. ‘Now that you’ve got that off your chest, should we go downstairs?’
‘I don’t want to tag along,’ says her aunt in a prim voice that isn’t at all convincing.
‘Oh, please.’ Tinka rolls her eyes. ‘All this finery cannot go to waste.’
Kainaz preens.
‘True.’
Tinka laughs, leans over and hugs her fiercely. ‘I’m glad you came,’ she confesses. ‘You’re my Mercury.’
• • •
‘Gentlemen, action has picked up at the border. This is Garibpur village, located in the northwest part of what we now call Bangladesh but what most of the world and the United Nations still persist in calling East Pakistan. Within Garibpur lies the Boyra salient – vital for us, as it includes a highway that links India to the major Bangladeshi city of Jessore. The West Pakistani forces are intent on wresting it from our grasp, but our 14th Punjab Battalion and the Mukti Bahini are in position, hanging on to it tight.’
‘Sir!’
Ishaan is having an eventful day. He had reported to the base in the morning expecting to fly his routine training sortie, but then Hosannah Carvalho had bounded into the briefing room and started doing his best impoverished panther impersonation, pacing up and down, his eyes agleam with battle-lust. There is a chance for the 34 Gnat Squadron to prove its mettle today, and everybody is leaning in, keenly absorbing the briefing.
‘Basically, a snarl of men, machinery and tanks are slugging it out in foggy conditions. The West Pakistanis have numerical superiority and, logically, are in a position to decimate our intrusion, but the 14th Punjab has dug in its heels and is acting recalcitrant. The West Pakistanis have Close Air Support from a posse of F-86 Sabres, powered with front guns and air-to-air Sidewinder missiles, which are strafing our people brutally. There have been over thirty casualties. You need to sit tight, maintaining Stand By Fire readiness level, and as soon as I give the order to scramble, get cracking and knock those Sabres out of the sky.’
‘Yes, sir!’
This rousing briefing is followed by a complete anti-climax. Shaanu and his fellow Gnatties – Janardhan, Gonsalves and Mansoor (nicknamed Jana-Gana-Mana for obvious reasons) – spend the morning in the ops room, chafing in their G-suits, passing time by playing Scrabble, waiting for the order to scramble.
By lunchtime, they’re starting to get claustrophobic.
‘MUZJIK, behenchod, what the fuck is a MUZJIK? You’re just making up shit now,’ says Jana, scowling over the Scrabble board, shuffling his O and A tiles.
‘It’s a sort of Russian peasant,’ replies Gana loftily. ‘Look up the dictionary if you don’t believe me.’
But the dictionary has been confiscated, because the last time the Gnatties played, somebody had hit somebody else over the head with it.
‘You can’t u
se Russian words!’
‘I make ZA,’ says Shaanu calmly, putting down a single tile.
‘Hain? What’s a Za? There’s no word called Za.’
‘It’s Russian for king. I thought you knew Russian.’
‘That’s czar, Chakkahera. C-Z-A-R!’
‘Superb, I have C and R too. Thanks, brother, that’s 160 points!’ Shaanu says, delighted.
‘Hello, wait, there’s no space for an R! Where you gonna put your R?’
Shaanu is just telling Mana, in the choicest Air Force language, exactly where he plans to put his R, when the scramble order sounds.
‘Streaks to scramble. Streaks to scramble, now!’
Very excited, they storm out through the door, race onto the field, buckling on their Gs, clamber into the waiting Gnats and drop into the cockpits.
‘Vector to Garibpur!’ barks Carvalho on the radio from the main briefing room. ‘Baaz is middle finger. Go go go!’
The four Gnats rise, stubby steel bullets in the afternoon sky, in a formation that resembles the tips of the four fingers of a human right hand, and, with Shaanu in the lead position, start pelting for the border.
Seven minutes later, they are circling over the salient, triumphant and breathless.
‘We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!’
Radio silence.
Then the Forward Air Controller’s voice sounds over the R/T, bleak and crackly. ‘You’re late, boys. They’re gone.’
‘What!’
The Gnats scan the skies. Nothing.
Just flat grey sky and, below, through the gloom of fog, the humped shapes of tanks, some friendly, some not.
As the enemy ack-acks start to fire, they wheel around and head home, thoroughly out of temper.
‘ZA isn’t a word,’ says Mana in a subdued voice as they circle over Dum Dum to land.
‘Shut up, piss finger,’ Shaanu growls. ‘Two one za two, two two za four. Of course it’s a word.’
And everybody is too disheartened to even snark back.
Three hours later, right after they’ve polished off a heavy conti lunch of shepherd’s pie and apple crumble, they have to scramble again.
‘What the…?’
‘You think the Muktis are just having fun with us?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past them. They’re Pakistanis, after all. East or West, Pakistanis are a pest…’
‘C’mon c’mon c’mon!’
They race out to the jets again, Carvalho comes roaring out, shouts the same instructions and they zoom back to Garibpur. They make it in six minutes flat this time, but when they circle over the salient, the voice of the FAC crackles through the milky fog like déjà vu.
‘Late again, ladies,’ he says grumpily. ‘I told you not to bother putting on make-up and sexy lingerie. We find you fuckable anyway.’
‘They’ve gone?’ Shaanu can’t believe it.
‘Long gone, Gnattie,’ says the FAC. ‘Strafed us good too. We lost ten good men just now.’
‘Shit!’
‘So traipse off back to base and leave me to defend the ruddy IAF to these bloody landlubbers, while being feasted on by mosquitoes.’
‘Sorry, brother,’ Shaanu says soberly. ‘Let’s just circle around for a bit, lads. Eyes peeled.’
But the Sabres have melted away.
As the enemy anti-aircraft guns start to spurt again, Shaanu gives his formation the order to head home and the Gnats fly back to base against the setting sun, too deflated to wisecrack, and wearily call it a day.
FIVE
Kainaz Dadyseth practically purrs with pleasure when she descends the staircase and sets eyes on Shaanu and his friends, waiting in the foyer for Tinka.
‘What a delish batch of Brylcreem Boys!’ she murmurs. ‘Which one is yours, darling?’
‘The one in the middle,’ Tinka replies, then hastily clarifies, ‘He’s not mine.’
Her aunt ignores this disclaimer, already scanning Shaanu with a critical, experienced eye.
‘Very decorative,’ she decrees finally. ‘But beware, my dear, fair boys are vain. Their mothers tell them they’re handsome about a hundred times a day so they grow up absolutely insufferable.’
‘His mother’s dead.’
‘Ah, good,’ Kainaz replies, her glittering eyes now taking in Shaanu’s companions. ‘Who are those others with him? The tall boy is handsome now, but he’ll age badly – fat will pack onto those high cheekbones and he’ll end up looking like a chipmunk. And Chubby Cheeks will only get chubbier. Anyway, he’s taken. See how proprietarily that plump piece of nonsense is clinging to his arm.’
‘Behave yourself, Kung fui,’ Tinka hisses. ‘Those are his friends, and I think they were there that night at Popo uncle’s orders. They helped me get away. Be nice!’
‘Popo!’ Kainaz snorts. ‘Popo’s a fool. And peeing in a bedpan now, I believe! Poor fellow,’ she adds in a conscientious afterthought. Then, as Shaanu approaches them, she inclines her head regally. ‘Hullo, hullo, Ehsaan and party. How nice to meet you…’
‘It’s Ishaan,’ Shaanu corrects her, his smile wavering. He has had to rush back and shower, then round up his friends, none of whom had been feeling particularly enthusiastic, and then make the long bike ride to Calcutta, all in order to spend a little quality time with Tinka. And she repays him by bowling this total googly – this formidable lady with the disdainful nose and the throaty smoker’s voice, oozing rich Parsi khandaniyat from the tip of her arrogant silver head to the straps of her glittering silver stilettos.
He looks at Tinka, his eyes communicating comical consternation, and falters again. Because she too looks so … rich tonight. More than just rich – alien. Like a glamorous being from another world, sparkling with diamonds and clad in a long flame-coloured dress of unusual cut that Juhi is staring at with open envy. Not at all like the red-skirted bandariya from Jodhpur or the blithe sprite under the waterfall.
‘Meet my aunt,’ says this intimidating new Tinka. ‘Kainaz Dadyseth. And Kung fui, this is Flying Officer Faujdaar.’
Shaanu steps forward, suddenly convinced that his dinner jacket is too bright, his carefully tailored camel-coloured jodhpurs too clichéd, his hair too sleeked back, and that if he opens his mouth, all that will emerge is chaste Haryanvi.
‘Hullo, ma’am.’
His English sounds stilted to his ears, his sophistication superficial, the cover of his IAF fighter status paper-thin. He has never felt more inadequate in his life.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ sniffs the old lady. ‘What a pretty jacket. I have fluffy bedroom slippers in that exact same shade.’
Clearly the Dadyseth women specialize in camel-kicking men in the nuts on the first meeting, Shaanu thinks as he reels from this blow. His disheartened, doubt-filled eyes meet Tinka’s and her face scrunches up into a grin, and suddenly, she’s a familiar implet, just with expensive dangling earrings, and everything becomes all right again.
‘Well, don’t you two look familiar!’ Tinka addresses Maddy and Raka gaily.
They immediately push forward, grinning, introducing Juhi and claiming old acquaintance with Tinka. Then the smiling doormen open the big double doors and the group enters the Anchor Bar.
The bar is unusually full tonight, lined wall to wall with elegant people sipping elegant drinks. When this happens, the club management opens the double doors to the pillared terrace outside and sets out little tables with candles glowing inside glass holders. Plump, resplendent bearers move at a stately pace through the crush, like benign red-and-gold bumblebees. There is a live band, and several couples are on the dance floor, circling to
‘Weeeeeee … ’ll drink a drink a drink
to Lily the pink the pink the pink
the saviour of … the human ra-a-ace…’
‘Where’s the family?’ Tinka asks Shaanu as naturally as she can. She’s finding it hard to look at him, suddenly consumed by this illogical fear that if they make eye contact he’ll know about the stupid drea
ms she had last night.
Besides, he’s so intensely … there. Walking beside her, beckoning to the waiter with a crooked finger. All in a relaxed way of course, but there’s something about his sauntering that suggests incredible energy, carefully contained.
He likes her, Juhi is thinking meanwhile. This ajeeb, snooty general-ki-beti from Bombay. Hey Bhagwan, he tried to pull out a chair for her and missed! His hand just clawed the air and fell away! He is so nervous! Hamara Baaz!
‘Sneha’s sleeping it off,’ Shaanu says as he successfully draws out a chair for Tinka on the second attempt. ‘I got her and Pitaji a suite at the Mess. The brats are in my rooms, swinging from my boxing bag. I had to empty out half the sawdust so nobody would get hurt.’ He picks up the laminated menu card and offers it to Tinka. ‘What’ll you have?’
Tinka immediately has a vision of him all sweaty and shirtless punching the crap out of his punching bag. She blinks.
‘What fun,’ she says. ‘Uh, a shandy please. Beer and Fanta.’
She sits back and tunes in to Raka, who is in full flow, recounting their first meeting at Jodhpur Station. Kainaz Dadyseth is listening, enthralled.
‘He picked you up and carried you off the train? Tinka!’
‘I kicked him where it hurt,’ Tinka assures her aunt.
‘Good!’
‘So there was Baaz all doubled up and too much of a gentleman-cadet to swear! And when he had recovered enough to speak, all he said was…’ Raka drops his voice to a soft, soulful entreaty. ‘Ma’am, be gentle, I hope to have children someday!’
Everybody bursts out laughing.
‘Oh, poor Baaz!’ says Juhi, shooting a reproachful look at Tinka. Tinka gets the distinct feeling Juhi doesn’t like her.
‘Hey, I didn’t kick him that hard,’ Tinka protests, turning pink. ‘You’re exaggerating!’
But Raka sticks to his guns, laughing.
‘No no, you did!’ He turns back to Kung fui. ‘So we left him with her, the poor injured soul, and went in to tell WingCo Poncha the mission had been accomplished. But when he came hurtling out, relieved and happy, we found that Tinka here had somehow persuaded Baaz to let her go!’
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