‘How?’ Juhi asks Tinka, her tone rather hostile. ‘What did you say?’
Everybody turns to look at Tinka. She hesitates, risking a glance at Shaanu. He is sipping his drink and smiling and looking at her – well, everybody is – but there’s something in his eyes that makes her heart sort of … trip. Like when you’re running down the stairs and you miss a step. Which is silly because hearts don’t run down stairs.
‘Nothing, actually,’ she confesses. ‘I was surprised myself. He just suddenly said, run! Go!’
There is general protest at this.
‘No! There’s got to be more!’
‘You kicked him again, didn’t you? Or bribed him?’
‘Duped him!’
‘Smooched him!’
‘I did none of those things!’ Tinka retorts with spirit. Then she turns to Shaanu. ‘Why did you let me go?’
They all turn to look at him. Silence falls over the table.
‘Because…’ His eyes rise to meet hers like she is the only person at the table, that curious, glowing light back in their Kota-grey depths. ‘Because in your own mixed-up way, you were the bravest person I’d ever met.’
‘Balls!’ Maddy and Raka blurt out in one voice and then have to apologize furiously to the ladies, their faces bright red with embarrassment. Then, indignantly, they put forth their own bravery credentials, but Shaanu just ignores them, continuing to look at Tinka until she looks away, her pulse quickened.
He looks away too, sipping his drink, and good-naturedly tells his mates to pipe down.
‘Did you get into a lot of trouble when they found me gone?’ she asks him a few minutes later.
A peculiar expression slides across his face for a moment before he shakes his head. ‘Of course not.’
Tinka frowns, ready to take this further, but just then somebody stumbles up to their table and addresses her in a breathless voice:
‘Ma’am, uh, hello ma’am! Raka sir, please could I get an introduction?’
Tinka looks up to a see a gangling young sardar with a beard too straggly to cover his many pimples gazing down at her with bashful lust.
Raka looks slightly exasperated, then shrugs.
‘Miss Tehmina Dadyseth. Flying Officer Dilsher Singh, the baby of our battalion.’
‘CouldIpleasehaveadance?’ the young sardar says determinedly.
‘She’s having a drink, Dilsher,’ Raka starts to say, but Juhi puts a hand on his arm.
‘Bichara Dillu! Raks, don’t break his heart.’
‘Yes, ma’am!’ says the sardar, his eyes fixed avidly on Tinka. ‘Please, ma’am!’
She really hates me, Tinka thinks, as she smiles and gets to her feet. I wonder why.
Dilsher Singh’s hands are clammy, just as she expects them to be. Holding her too tightly, he gallops her to the dance floor and starts jumping awkwardly to the beat, grinning at her enthusiastically. Tinka endeavours to match his ‘steps’.
‘Poor Tink-a-tink-a-tink,’ Kainaz murmurs, watching from the table. ‘Ah well, at least it’s not a waltz. One must be grateful for small mercies.’
She turns to Maddy.
‘Are you the coffee plantation Subbiahs?’ she demands and when he nods, continues unimpressed, ‘I’ve had your coffee, it’s muddy. The Robusta isn’t very robust and the Arabica isn’t very…’
‘Arabic?’ Maddy hazards.
‘Aromatic!’ She frowns. ‘Don’t you know anything about coffee?’
‘No,’ he admits sheepishly. ‘We have managers on the estate. They do all that.’
‘It’s about six hundred acres, isn’t it?’
Maddy is looking embarrassed now.
‘I think so,’ he says vaguely.
‘And you’re an only son?’
‘Er, yes.’
‘So you’re loaded!’ Kainaz looks at him with such open approval that he starts to squirm. ‘Go get Tinka off the dance floor!’
Ishaan’s eyes smoulder at this, over the brim of his glass, but he doesn’t say anything.
Maddy shakes his head hastily.
‘Ma’am, I’m too much of a funk to tackle the fire-breathing Dilsher! For that you have to wheel out the big guns, like my friend Baaz here!’
He claps Ishaan, rather frenziedly, on the back.
Ishaan puts down his glass and locks eyes with the older woman.
‘Permission to proceed, ma’am?’
The challenge in his gaze is unmistakable.
Kainaz tucks the hot pink dahlia into her hair more securely and sniffs.
‘You hardly look the type who requires permission.’
Maddy laughs nervously. Raka and Juhi join in.
Ishaan continues to look at Kainaz enquiringly.
‘Oh go, go!’ she says crossly, waving him away.
Shaanu smiles, nods and gets to his feet.
On the dance floor, the music has changed to the slower, swingier ‘Oh, you can kiss me on a Monday a Monday a Monday’. Tinka is getting reacquainted with Dilsher Singh’s moist hands. His notion of the foxtrot is to take two enthusiastic steps forward, then two enthusiastic steps backward, all the while staring at her hungrily like she’s a juicy pineapple pastry.
‘I’m a MiG Fighter,’ he informs her for the third time as they lurch together, back and forth. ‘MiG Fighters are Number One.’
‘That’s great,’ she responds.
‘We have split-second reflexes,’ he assures her. ‘Split second. We move like greased lightning across the sky!’
But not across the dance floor, she thinks privately as he hauls her back and then forward again, like a piece of furniture he’s trying to manoeuvre around a tight corner.
‘Wow!’ she says dutifully.
‘The gourmint of India trusts me to fly a machine that costs eleven lakh rupees. Eleven!’
‘How nice.’
He looks down at her, nettled by these tepid responses.
‘That’s the Mukti Bahini major over there,’ he nods. ‘Macho da.’
He gets a reaction now. Tinka chokes.
‘Excuse me?’
Dilsher gives her a naughty, wannabe-dangerous grin.
‘Haha. Sounds dirty but there’s a squeaky-clean explanation.’
‘Really?’
Dilsher Singh nods confidently. ‘Ya. See, the West Pakistanis have this notion – not totally wrong, because being Punjabi myself, I know where they’re coming from – that Punjabi Pathans are a macho, hatta-katta, mardaana martial race. They look down on the East Pakistanis for being sissies, all Ravindar sangeet and rasgullas. But the Muktis insist ki they are as brave and as macho as the Pathans. So now, though his official name is Maqhtoom da, we call him—’
‘Macho da,’ Shaanu says curtly, appearing out of nowhere. ‘Yeah, that was for you. Run along, half-pant. This dance is mine.’
For a moment, Dilsher looks like he wants to argue, but then he releases Tinka from his clammy hold.
‘I suppose that on the dance floor, at least, Gnats can score over MiGs. But not,’ he holds up one dramatic finger, ‘in the sky.’
‘Kat le.’ Shaanu smiles, his grey eyes glinting dangerously.
Dilsher Singh turns to Tinka and flashes her a cocky smile.
‘Later,’ he says meaningfully, reducing her to uncontrollable giggles, and swaggers away, seeking whom he may devour.
Shaanu watches his retreat with grim satisfaction, one arm coming up to circle Tinka’s waist.
‘Cocky little bugger. Pitega ek din. What’s so funny?’
She shakes her head, convulsed with laughter.
‘They say it’s your own faults that you dislike the most in other people.’
One dark eyebrow flies up at this.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh!’ She tries for nonchalance, fighting the inexplicable confusion she’s feeling at being in his lean, muscular arms (not that she can see his muscles, per se, he’s covered adequately by his dinner jacket, but she can sense them belo
w, lurking) and says as naturally as possible, ‘Just that, you must’ve been like him once. In your pimply phase.’
‘I never had a pimply phase.’ He looks mock-outraged. ‘My sisters used to put multani mitti on my face, so I never got any.’
Tinka finds this confession rather charming. No man she has met till date has ever confessed to using beautification products. And he took half the sawdust out of his boxing bag so his kid sisters wouldn’t get hurt, she remembers. Jimmy would never have done that.
Ishaan continues to protest. ‘Hey, you met me back then, you know I wasn’t that cocky!’
‘That’s true.’ She nods, suddenly serious. ‘You were nice. Thank you so much for all your help. I don’t exaggerate when I say you saved my life.’
The tips of his ears turn a little red.
‘It was nothing.’
They move to the music in silence for a while and Tinka discovers what all the ladies at AFS Kalaiganga know already, that Flying Officer Ishaan Faujdaar is a dreamy dancer. In her heels she is practically the same height as him, and this, she tells herself, is what is making their eye contact so disturbingly potent.
‘Can you really nail a guava from forty feet?’ she asks him as the silence starts to get awkward. ‘Ten times out of ten, with the sun in your eyes?’
‘Who says so?’ he asks, eyes widening.
‘Your family. They regaled me with tales of your bravery on the train.’
‘Ah, my family!’ Shaanu looks rueful.
‘Yes.’
He ducks his head uncertainly. ‘Uh, I have some memory of telling you, back in ’68, that my family speaks only English at home…’
‘I don’t remember,’ Tinka says promptly, embarrassed for him.
But Shaanu perseveres.
‘And that we’re very rich and nobody drinks. Well, that’s all untrue. We’re not very rich, we speak Haryanvi and Chimman Singh really appreciates the booze quota.’
His eyes had slipped away from hers while he was speaking, but towards the end of this little speech they come back, raking hers painfully to see how this revelation has affected her.
‘So what?’ she says bluntly. ‘My father speaks perfect English, and he’s nuts.’
His fingers grip hers harder.
‘Really?’
Tinka gurgles.
‘Oh, yes, he’s really nuts!’
‘That’s not what I meant!’ he says seriously.
‘I know,’ she replies, sobering. ‘I mean, speaking English isn’t proof of anything. And your sisters are great.’
‘Yes.’ His eyes glow with pride. ‘They are. I’m sending the little ones to a good convent school now. I want them all to have careers.’
‘Sneha wants to teach, she told me.’
‘Yes. I’m not a…’ his eyes study her face again as he pronounces the word with careful pride, ‘chauvinist.’
‘That’s so good to hear!’ Tinka says approvingly. ‘Do you know, most men don’t even know the meaning of that word? They have to look it up in a dictionary.’
‘Asses,’ Shaanu says lightly and, then, as the music changes to a happy, reggae beat, whirls her away from him, then spins her back deftly, his eyes sparkling with enjoyment. ‘This song reminds me of you.’
‘Daddy is a doctor,
Mother is a debutante,
Pillars of society,
Living in a mansion,
Somewhere in the country
And another in Chelsea.’
Tinka gives a peal of laughter that carries above the music and causes several people to turn around and smile.
‘I’ve never heard you laugh!’ He has to raise his voice above the music. ‘It’s nice.’
‘You’ve met me only once!’ she shouts back. ‘And God knows I didn’t feel like laughing that day.’
‘Twice,’ he corrects her as he jerks her close, her back against his chest, as they rock to the beat together.
‘Freedom is a rich girl,
Daddy’s little sweet girl,
Freedom is a sunny day,
Freedom what would you do, if I said I loved you.
Freedom, would you run away?’
‘But somehow,’ his lips brush her ear, his voice low, ‘I feel like we know each other really well.’
He spins her away, and when she turns, his hand is there to grasp hers, and so are the intense grey eyes, stabbing hers, seeking confirmation.
‘Don’t we?’
‘Freedom come,
Freedom go,
Tells me yes, and then she tells me no,
Freedom never stay long,
Freedom moving a-long.’
Now it is Tinka who forgets to dance. She stands still, thinking back to him sitting opposite her in that Jonga, wincing from her crippling kick, listening to her rant, laughing with her and finally letting her go. She thinks of last night’s dream.
Then she colours, shakes her head and looks away, pointing and smiling.
‘Look, everybody’s on the floor!’
Too soon, Shaanu thinks with savage regret even as he acknowledges Raka and Juhi’s arrival on the dance floor with a cheerful wave. Much too soon. What the hell is wrong with him? What kind of prize idiot trots out a cheesy line like that to a girl he’s just met? He’s not even sure he means it.
Maybe the two dud missions to Garibpur-Boyra have got me all wound up, he rationalizes. I want to make up for that anti-climax by planting a jhanda somewhere today. Shit, maybe Raka and Maddy are right, maybe I’m too primed and too pent-up and I should just lure somebody, anybody, into a sugarcane field and get it over with…
The music kicks into a higher gear, the dancing gets faster and talking becomes impossible. Fifteen minutes later, very out of breath, they all head for the bar for refreshments, where they find Old Kuch Bhi Carvalho lurking on a bucket stool, chowing down pork chops and swilling rum, with all the air of a sociable crocodile presiding over the jungle watering hole.
‘Hullo hullo!’ he greets them, eyes agleam. ‘What a pretty little lady! So light on her feet! And wearing a dress the colour of a well-mixed shandy! Introduce me, Chakkahera!’
Shaanu makes a brief introduction and turns to the bearer to order more snacks. Carvalho, whose keen eyes miss nothing even when he is three large pegs down, immediately takes it upon himself to issue a glowing character certificate to Ishaan.
‘We call him Baaz because he’s our least-worst Fighter,’ he declares, clapping Ishaan on the back heartily. ‘Least-worst!’
‘Whoa.’ Shaanu straightens his jacket. ‘Um, thank you, sir.’
‘That’s quite a recommendation,’ Tinka says smilingly and catches Juhi looking at her with that hostile look on her face again. Tinka raises an eyebrow enquiringly and Juhi flushes and looks away.
Carvalho isn’t done. He points a bony finger straight at Tinka’s nose.
‘Let me tell you one thing, my dear. If you want to break Pakistan into two clean pieces, this is the man for the job!’
‘Sir, please,’ Ishaan protests, embarrassed but also rather touched.
‘What is this, sir – little bit of Pakistani dismemberment we are capable of doing also!’ Raka laughs.
Carvalho’s fiery gaze swivels to him.
‘Maybe, Aggarwal Sweets, maybe,’ he concedes. ‘But I don’t need to flatter you in front of pretty girls any more!’ He nods gallantly at Juhi. ‘You’re already married!’
Juhi blushes prettily, Raka kisses her hand and leads her away for a dance.
Carvalho turns back to Tinka.
‘Baaz here’ – he pats Shaanu on the back again – ‘he’s the man.’
‘Heartbreaker, Pak-breaker!’ chimes in Deengu from beside him.
‘I don’t want to break Pakistan into two pieces, actually,’ Tinka replies smilingly.
‘His science is gol, ekdum gol, zero! But his instinct is sharp! Instinct, that’s the ticket! Judgement! Audaci—what did you say?’
Tinka puts down her glass.
>
‘I said I wouldn’t want to break Pakistan – or any other country – into two clean pieces.’
‘Yes yes, I heard.’ Carvalho’s face assumes a pained expression, one which any hostess who has ever placed a vegetarian dish in front of him would recognize.
‘She’s a pacifist, sir,’ Shaanu informs him.
‘Pah!’ Carvalho rocks back on his heels. ‘We’re all peace-loving folk here! Arrey, even I don’t want to break Pakistan into pieces! It is they who are intent on self-decapitation!’
‘What’s this?’ enquires a soft voice from behind them, and Tinka turns to come face to face with Macho da, a lanky brown character with a sad monkey face, romantically long curly locks of hair and, incongruously, a pair of sunglasses on his nose. He is holding a very dark whiskey-paani in his hand. ‘Is there a pacifist on the loose?’
Everybody in their little circle makes room to accommodate the Mukti.
‘This young lady here shudders at the evils of war,’ Carvalho says in a tone so patronizing that Tinka burns with indignation. She is about to make a cutting reply when she remembers that he’s Ishaan’s boss and Ishaan is her host.
‘Surely you agree that war is horrible?’ she asks instead, her eyes travelling from officer to officer.
There is an awkward silence. All the slickly Brylcreemed IAF Fighters look at one another shiftily. In the end Deengu bites the bullet.
‘Yessssssnnno,’ he says.
Tinka raises her eyebrows. ‘Yes-no?’
He nods. ‘We’re fighting, which is terrible – to get the Bangladeshis their freedom, which is non-negotiable! No, boys?’
Everybody nods solemnly.
‘O ya ya, absolutely!’
They’re just boys with toys, Tinka thinks, disheartened. With nicknames like Baaz and Raka and what not. They’re living inside a Commando comic, high-fiving and back-slapping and shouting Gott im Himmel! and Schweinhund! and Die Nazi Dog! It’s no use talking to them.
‘Sure.’ She shrugs and turns away.
She’s staring at the bottles placed on the bar counter, her eyes bleak, when she senses somebody coming up behind her. Thinking it must be Ishaan, or perhaps her aunt, she turns around.
‘Joy Bangla,’ Macho da says wryly.
Huh?
That’s the war-cry of the Mukti Bahini, she knows, and also their way of greeting each other. Is he saying hello?
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