by Sonali Dev
It took every ounce of strength she possessed to climb into the tub and turn on the shower. With every sharp, spraying droplet Vikram’s fingers dragged across her body, gentle, then insistent. His lips, his tongue, his smooth sliding skin caressed every inch of her. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned up the heat until her skin scalded and all feeling disappeared except the stinging burn of the water hitting her.
When she stepped into the living room, weaving on her feet from the heat, she saw takeout food boxes sitting on the dining table. DJ had even laid out a couple of plates. A tremor of gratefulness quivered through her hard, frozen insides. She sat down next to him. He muted the TV and forked some food on her plate. They ate in silence, watching the stiffly dressed news anchor on TV move her lips to stories that flashed in vignettes behind her. Suddenly, Ria’s face splashed across the screen and DJ punched up the volume.
“. . . Film star Ria Parkar was mobbed outside Mumbai airport on Sunday,” the anchor said in formal, literary Hindi. “Sources have confirmed that the fiercely private star was returning to Mumbai after a closely guarded vacation overseas. Ms. Parkar was taken to the hospital where she is said to be recuperating from her reportedly severe injuries.”
They both stared at the TV.
The newswoman picked up the sheaf of papers in front of her and tapped them on her desk, straightening the already neat stack in a practiced, professional-looking move. “The star is scheduled to appear in Shivshri’s next magnum opus Piya Ke Ghar Jaana—PKGJ, which is slated to release next month. She will also be starring in their next film, StarGangster, which commences shooting soon.”
As she signed off, asking the audience to stay tuned for news on the earthquake in Bangladesh, the promo for PKGJ came on.
“You’ve got to love this business.” DJ stabbed his noodles with disposable wooden chopsticks. “Bastards. Not bad for hospital food, ha?” He lifted a clump of noodles at Ria in a salute and shoved them into his mouth.
Ria continued to chew, the oily spiciness jabbing at her taste buds. She swallowed to clamp down on the food, but it edged back up her throat. It had nothing to do with the news, her body just wasn’t ready for food. Sometime soon she would work her way up to being upset. Right now she was just glad to find the strength to go on chewing.
As it turned out, it would have been a better idea not to eat. The meeting with the director was a disaster. Ria ended up spending the entire afternoon trying to keep the food down. She had never finished reading the script and her churning stomach made it impossible to keep her mind on anything anyone was saying. She had never worked with Samir Rathod, the director, before. Until now they’d always done completely different kinds of films. But he had been the media’s darling for years, with a special talent for staying in the papers for all the wrong reasons.
“He’s not the same Samir Rathod you’re used to seeing in the papers,” DJ kept telling her. “Trust me, you’re going to love working with him.”
But Samir was far too full of enthusiasm, far too intense. Far too tall, broad-shouldered, and buff. He made Ria’s skin crawl with discomfort. He peppered every line that came out of his mouth with her name as if they were old friends. “The script is pure gold, Ria.” “I’m sure you can’t wait to get started, Ria.”
Each time he said her name it sickened and violated her. All she wanted to do was get away from him.
“Sweetheart, are you okay?” he asked, placing his large gentle hand on her shoulder, and Ria jumped and backed out of the room, rushing out of the building, leaving DJ mumbling apologies in her wake.
“He was just trying to be nice, Ria. Just give him a chance,” DJ told her in the car, carefully ignoring her bizarre exit.
But Ria was certain she never wanted to see the man again, never wanted to see the inside of a studio. She didn’t know how to tell DJ that she wouldn’t be there when shooting started to give him a chance. She just didn’t have the strength to stand in front of a camera. She was fresh out of it. Whatever it was you needed to keep going.
The only time Ria felt remotely alive was when she talked to Uma. With Uma she was able to get the words out. Not too many, but just the few she needed to keep Uma from getting on a plane. She needed to hear Uma’s voice. Even if she talked about the most inane of things. Even if everything Uma said was only to keep from saying the words she really wanted to say. Questions teetered and danced on Uma’s tongue, but she held them in. Ria couldn’t fathom how Uma understood exactly what she needed, but it gave her the strength she needed to go on.
Uma told Ria that the reception had gone well. Jen and Nikhil had both looked great. She never said anything about how upset the two of them must have been that Ria had left without saying good-bye. She never said anything about whether or not Vikram had stayed for the reception. She told her only about the food and the gifts and what each one of the aunties had worn.
Nikhil and Jen were all packed and ready to fly out to Malawi next week. They planned to stop in Scotland for a quick honeymoon before they started work. Uma did ask Ria again to call Nikhil. He had called Ria every day, but she hadn’t been able to answer. She hated to put him through this, but the idea of speaking with Nikhil or Jen right now was unfathomable. Again, Uma seemed to know exactly how much Ria could take. She didn’t push her.
When the story about Ria’s mobbing and hospitalization broke, Uma had packed her bags, ready to fly to Mumbai. It hadn’t been easy to convince her that the media had made up the thing about the hospital. Thankfully, DJ was able to convince her that Ria was not in the hospital and they had gone back to their calls once every few days. There was no way Ria could handle meeting Uma right now—and yet there was nothing she wanted more.
It was only two more days before the fitness boot camp for StarGangster started. But Ria still hadn’t told DJ that she wasn’t doing the film. He had scheduled a one-on-one for her with her trainer, and Ria sat in her living room listening to Mina chatter excitedly about the film. She was going to be one of the lead trainers on the film, a huge step for her career. At the meeting, the director had repeated over and over again how physical fitness was a crucial component of the story. “Think of fitness as one of the characters in the film, Ria,” he had said, and his sharply outlined biceps had made Ria hate the very sight of him. Mina, on the other hand, seemed to be nursing a giant crush.
“Such a visionary,” she said in a voice throaty from too much shouting and goading and steroids. “And totally hot too, no?” She winked at Ria. “He really understands the human body. It’s rare to see this kind of knowledge in filmmakers.”
Even though Ria couldn’t begin to understand her fervor, she was glad for the opportunity this film would give her after all these years of working so hard. Mina measured and pinched Ria’s body with tapes and calipers and furiously typed every detail into her laptop.
“Wow!” she said in the hyper-energetic way that always reminded Ria of a spinning top. “Looks like you’ve been following your routine diligently.”
A million crushing memories rushed into Ria’s mind. Ever since she had left Chicago it had been impossible for her to get any food down her throat, and her bones had started to stick out at sharp angles, making her trainer giddy with happiness.
“I wish all my clients were this disciplined.” Vivid images of Uma wringing Mina’s muscled neck flashed in Ria’s head.
Ria hadn’t said a single word thus far, but the conversation hadn’t ceased even for a second. Mina pulled a measuring tape across Ria’s breasts. “Oh no, your bust size has reduced. That’s not going to make the producers happy.” She sucked on her lower lip as if a minor tragedy had befallen them and stared at Ria’s breasts like a doctor studies an X-ray. “You had such beautiful breasts.”
The floor swam beneath Ria’s feet. Vikram’s basement room closed around her. His voice rumbled in his chest. I’m so impressed, by the beauty of your breasts. His smile soaked his voice. Love and laughter danced in the blue-gray depths of his eye
s. He stretched across his bed, propped up on his elbows. All his beautiful surfaces glistened. She backed away from the trainer and tried to clear the images from her head. But the memories came at her so fast she lost her balance and fell back onto the sofa.
“Ria, babes, are you okay?” the trainer asked, unable to mask her panic.
Stop asking me that. Oh God, will everyone just stop asking me that?
Ria wanted the trainer out, wanted her gone. But she couldn’t find the words to ask her to leave, to tell her that she was wasting her time.
“Do you want to sit down? Can I get you some water?”
Ria forced herself to relax, tried to smile. But she had lost her ability to manufacture smiles.
Just as Mina gave up all pretense of being in control of the situation, the doorbell rang. She ran to the door and didn’t even try to hide her relief at seeing DJ. The two of them exchanged a secret glance that wasn’t secret at all. Ria tried to work up some outrage at being treated like she wasn’t right there, but nothing budged inside her. Nothing.
When DJ turned to Ria his face was thunderous. He looked enraged enough for both of them. He helped the trainer pack up her equipment and walked her out of the apartment. He was really great at that, at getting rid of people without letting them know he was doing it. When she left, DJ turned to Ria. “Good thing you’re sitting down,” he said without preamble. No “Hi,” no “Are you okay?”
Relieved, she was so relieved. She sank deeper into the sofa.
He paced around for a few minutes without saying anything, his fingers tightly wrapped around a rolled-up newspaper. Tension rose from the newspaper and traveled up his arm, tying his muscles in knots.
What now?
Ria extended her arm, silently asking him to hand the newspaper over. He hesitated, moving the paper from hand to hand.
“This is bad,” he said. “This is worse than anything you expected.”
Wasn’t everything?
28
Ria sat slumped on her sofa, her hand extended, while DJ paced the room, and waited for him to hand the newspaper over. For all his quick temper, she had never seen him this upset over anything. Right now, he didn’t seem so much angry as defeated. He looked like a man in a crisis with no means to handle it. And that was someone Ria had never seen Big DJ be before.
He paced restlessly up and down the room one more time and came back to stand in front of her, looking at her with that same pitying look he had taken to throwing at her at regular intervals. She lost her patience and snatched the paper out of his hands.
She didn’t even have to turn to the Celebrity pages—right there on the front page was a picture of her. Not the picture of her surrounded by the hungry mob that had been splattered across papers for the past week. But a picture of her with a crazy gleam in her eye, balanced on the ledge of her balcony with her toes clutching the concrete edge, ready to jump. A picture from another lifetime.
MENTALLY UNSTABLE STAR FLIRTS WITH DEATH
The headline screamed across the page, and Ria’s sluggish heart kicked itself alive with an excruciating jolt. She sat up. Her eyes flew over the article wrapped around the picture in snaking narrow columns.
In overdramatic, pseudoscientific prose it explained the relationship between suicidal tendencies and fame. Apparently, she was ailing from an exhibitionist syndrome that ailed the pathologically narcissistic. She had shown all the signs over the past decade, but a very forgiving public had ignored it all and bought her Ice Princess cover. The truth was she was sick and the power trip of taking the public for a ride had probably worn off. A public suicide would be the ultimate swan song for someone who fancied themselves the ultimate artist. Or at least an attempted public suicide. Most pathological attention-seekers only went so far, never really intending to kill themselves.
Ria skimmed the bizarre, badly written piece with a mix of irritation and distaste. It was so full of holes it was a wonder the nation’s leading newspaper had printed it, as a front page story, no less. She couldn’t even get herself to read the words. Her eyes swept over them until out of nowhere the words mental asylum in Bristol jumped out at her and the room quite literally imploded into a vacuum.
She gasped, struggling for air to force down her constricting windpipe. The paper blurred in front of her. She focused on the page and fought to make sense of the words as they came back into view. This time every tiny etched letter jumped up and grabbed her attention, she absorbed every black newsprint word as it burrowed into her head and twisted inside her brain.
Ria Parkar has spent ten years denying the existence of her schizophrenic mother. She has kept her locked away in a mental asylum in Bristol, England, under a false name and claimed to be an orphan. Unnamed sources have stated that Ms. Parkar has never visited her mother in all the time that she has been at the facility, a period estimated to be close to twenty years. Even as far back as school, Ms. Parkar never admitted to having a mentally ill mother.
One classmate, who spoke under condition of anonymity, said that Ria Parkar (who changed her name from Ria Pendse when she joined films) was always self-absorbed and never interested in making friends. She went to great lengths to keep herself away from the other students and never shared anything about her family life with anyone. Even the teachers awarded her preferential treatment and Ms. Parkar took full advantage of this fact. The classmate believes that Ms. Parkar showed obvious signs of mental illness even back in school. She is impressed by how well Ms. Parkar has managed to hide her problem from the public.
Ms. Parkar’s costar in her next film, Mr. Shabaz Khan, is quoted as admitting that Ms. Parkar’s mental instability might have led to difficulties during filming. However he urges the public to be kind in their judgment and remember that a mental illness is still an illness.
It is hard to judge someone who has struggled with mental illness herself, but does that justify forsaking one’s parent? Do these public suicidal tendencies mean that her condition has deteriorated? Is this a cry for help? Will her own mental illness be her ironic comeuppance for mistreating an ill parent in this shameful fashion?
That was it? One question mark and it was done? She wanted to go on reading until it made sense. But there was nothing more.
The numbing fog that had enveloped Ria in Chicago and followed her to Mumbai dissolved and crumbled to the floor around her. Everything inside her came alive in stark, sharp bursts. Dead feelings reared back up, buried memories roared to life. Her convent school with its carved steeples and rafters, Mother Superior’s pitying eyes. All the faces of her past, schoolgirls whispering behind their hands, Ved’s lust fuelled by his ability to hurt her, her father’s hollow eyes, the creature’s tears running down porcelain cheeks. Chitra’s finger wagging in her face.
Mental illness is not something we can allow into our family. Into the pure untainted bloodline we can trace all the way back to the Peshwa rulers. Ten generations of health, breeding, intellect. I will not stand by while my only son—the scion of our dynasty—lets you destroy his life. You will have to find someone else to watch you go crazy. Someone else to have sick children with. It will not be my Vikram.
It will not be my Vikram.
“Ria?”
She looked up at the sound of DJ’s voice. She had forgotten that he was in the room. Questions shot from his dark eyes like torpedoes.
A storm raged in the deepest part of Ria’s chest and shuddered across her body. She wanted to shake DJ. How had he let the blackmailer pull this off? How? DJ reached out and tried to touch her. She sprang off the couch and ran to the front door. She wanted him out. She held the door open. “Please leave.” It was amazing how quiet her voice sounded.
Inside she was screaming.
Gut-wrenching screams. They filled her ears, her lungs. Even in their silence they tore through her with such violence they gouged out her throat, stretched her vocal cords to breaking point. But she couldn’t stop. They went on and on, and drowned everything else out.
When finally the screaming stopped, Ria found herself sitting on the floor with her back against the front door, her arms wrapped around her knees, her fingers digging into her calves, curled up like a fetus. Only there was no mother to shelter her with her body. Just her and her soul-deep aloneness.
And it made her sick with anger, filled her with so much rage she didn’t know what to do with it. A lifetime of work, gone in an instant. A lifetime of running, and it had taken her nowhere. She was back to being The Girl Who Came From Insanity. You. Come. From. Insanity. Even worse, she was the insane girl who came from insanity. What could be funnier?
All the faces in her head burst into laughter. All that pity for the pathetic girl from insanity exploded into a cloud of hysterical laughter.
Her phone rang. It had been ringing for a while, but the screaming and the laughter had drowned out everything. Now the ringing finally cut through it all. Everyone fell silent. All the faces in her head quieted and waited to see what she would do. One of those faces had stolen her secret and sold it. Kicked her because she’d been rolled up in a ball.
She straightened herself out and pulled herself to her full height, unrolling from around a secret that was no longer there to hold, breaking through pain so old, it was like breaking bones and reforming them. But it was time.
The newspaper lay on the floor. She picked it up and carried it to the kitchen. Then she turned on the stove and set it on fire.
29
Everywhere Ria looked she saw her own face—the TV, newspapers, magazines. So much for a decade of reclusiveness. The police questioned her about the “suicide attempt” and closed the case with nothing more than a knowing chuckle about stars and their publicity stunts. No reporter bothered to report this vital piece of information. No one cared that she had been investigated and that she had come out clean.