Opening Night

by Diksha Basu

  Ritesh told me to send my pictures to all the big production houses. Having come equipped with my headshots and an inflated résumé, I went around to all the production houses and dropped them off. That resulted in more nothingness, and by the time I met Jay, my spirit was becoming increasingly weak and could be strengthened only with the help of multiple vodkas on the rocks every night.

  To: NalSharma84@gmail.com

  From: NaiyaKnows@gmail.com

  Nal,

  I live with a half-Indian, part-time lesbian and a complete Italian Adonis who will sleep with anything that walks. These are my roommates. Talk about diversity. In India!

  Truth be told, I was more than a little freaked out when I landed. Nothing seemed different at first. There were men at the airport offering me hotels, and the heat and the humidity and the crowds made my eyes tear up. I was tempted to turn around and get on the next flight back to the States. Driving out of the airport, it seemed like I had just returned to the usual India. You know, the India we hated when we used to come to visit? And I just could not, for the life of me, figure out why I had decided to do this. I could see lane-less driving, crowded streets, nose-pickers, stray dogs, and children doing circus acts for money on street corners. The car pulled up in front of a building that looked like it would collapse in the next storm, and I continued to feel completely disheartened.

  But then I rang the doorbell for what is now my apartment in Bandra. It was approaching noon by the time I arrived at the flat (I call it a flat now. Apartment is oh-so-American). Can you imagine my surprise when a handsome, dishevelled Italian with piercing blue eyes, a beer in his hand and a cigarette dangling from his lips opened the door? I thought I had the wrong apartment. In fact, I thought I had the wrong country. But he, in his delicious Godfather accent, said, ‘Eh, Naiya, si?’ and ran out to grab my suitcases. He rushed me into the flat and introduced himself as Dino, from Milano. He seems to do everything in a hurry but doesn’t really seem to do much. Anyway, as he was helping me move my luggage in, a gorgeous Indian girl with thick, long, straight black hair emerged from one of the bedrooms. She was wearing tiny grey shorts with a baggy black T-shirt, and smoking a cigarette. She smiled at me, picked up her trendy, oversized red bag from near the door, slipped into her chappals and walked out the door. Walked out! A girl in shorts, with a cigarette! Dino shrugged and said, ‘Eh, I forget her name. I met her last night. Very nice.’ I believe I was just witness to the end of a one-night stand.

  Then, equally languorously, another Indian woman emerged. This one wasn’t as pretty as the previous one and looked slightly older, but she was still breathtaking. She had heavily kohl-lined eyes and her hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She was wearing pink-striped pyjamas and a purple tank top. I was standing transfixed, thinking I’d just walked into some kind of brothel or orgy, but this girl smiled at me and said, ‘Naiya, right? We’ve met on email. I’m Jess. I’m so glad you’re here! Do you want coffee?’ I guessed she had emerged from the other bedroom. ‘Dino, do you want coffee? From what I could hear, you didn’t sleep all night.’ Dino laughed and said, ‘From what I can hear, you sleep too much every night. You need more sex.’

  I sat with them and had coffee and tried not to choke on the cigarette smoke that was filling up the room. The anti-smoking campaigns have worked too well in NY. Nobody ever tells you just how cool it looks to be a smoker.

  So, the point is … I guess I’m not rushing back to the airport after all. I get the feeling that insanity is on the horizon. I just hope I survive.

  Love and miss you already,

  Naiya

  To: NaiyaKnows@gmail.com

  From: NalSharma84@gmail.com

  Naiya,

  I haven’t been back in India since I was ten but I can’t imagine it actually being like this. I have to come and visit you soon. My idea of the place is still the stifling heat, the lizards on the walls, and fat aunties who’ll feed you until you burst. I used to hate going, but feel really tempted now. What are you doing with your days? Does it feel weird living there? I mean, you’re American but you’re not. It’s all those crazy identity issues we swore we didn’t have.

  One of the reasons I’m asking is because I took James home last weekend for the first time and I’m not so sure I can handle the cultural differences. I always thought of myself as American, but last weekend was really awkward. For starters, the minute we walked into my house, the smell of stale curry hanging on the heavy curtains made me want to die of embarrassment, Naiya. And then I got really upset with myself for being embarrassed. This was my home, after all. My parents, while not American, had never been anything but wonderful, and here I was, feeling self-conscious in front of my white boyfriend. Of course it went the opposite way when I found James in the kitchen trying to be friendly with my mother and telling her all about how much he loved me and how I made him laugh. It was awful. My parents aren’t even slightly romantic and there he was going on and on about what all ‘we’ do: ‘Oh, we love going for walks on the Brooklyn Bridge’, ‘Oh, we saw the best movie – The Namesake’, ‘We love rice pudding’. If he had said ‘we’ one more time, ‘we’ would have broken up by now.

  God, I wish you were still here. Last weekend was just one long, awkward disaster and now I’m feeling all confused. Listen to me complaining while you’ve just moved to India. I’ll keep shut. You send me pictures and more details.

  Love,

  Nal

  To: NalSharma84@gmail.com

  From: NaiyaKnows@gmail.com

  Nal,

  I can imagine your mum cringing while listening to James talk about your love for rice pudding. Awful! You need to train him better.

  Oh, and about your identity stuff – can I admit something terrible? When I first got here, I thought I’d be the ‘cool kid’ from abroad; but it doesn’t seem to work that way any more. For starters, everyone seems to have come from abroad and most people don’t care if you have. It’s no longer like visiting your cousins and bringing them Backstreet Boys T-shirts and having them follow you around asking questions. I remember when I came here one summer when I was eight and told all my cousins so proudly about how my school was just like the one in The Wonder Years, that I carried notebooks to class and had a locker. That was all I needed to be cool then. Now, I’m neither here nor there. It’s funny – all my life, living in America, I’ve never really questioned my identity but here, suddenly, I am. I like it, though. I like living in a country in which I look like everyone else. It’s comforting.

  I’ve already had the most miserable casting experiences. I just don’t know where to begin here. It’s not normal for people to return work-related calls at 2 a.m., asking you what you’re up to, is it? I feel cheapened so far. I don’t know how to navigate this industry. I know there’s never a defined route to success, but I wouldn’t mind at least some street signs. You helped me out so much in New York and now I feel that I might have made a big mistake leaving right when I was starting to get the hang of things there.

  Love,

  Naiya

  Naiya Kapur is watching metaphorical sex on stage. on Friday x

  I wasn’t looking for love when I came to Bombay. I’d already done my one major love thing at Princeton and I got scalded so badly that I had no desire to return to it in the near future. I still dreamt of a ‘Happily Ever After’, but didn’t feel anywhere near ready for an ‘Ever After’ of any sort. The details of my dream changed frequently, but the basics remained the same – houses that turned into homes and the handsome husband and pretty kids who stayed five years old and cute forever. I always imagined the husband to be Indian but well travelled, preferably fluent in French or Italian. The home, in my dreams, was actually two homes – one in NYC and one in Lisbon or Florence. But these dreams … well … they were just dreams and in them, nobody ever cried … or died. I knew that reality was more like the screaming, shouting fights that had destroyed my first love, or the illness and cancer that had destroyed
my parents’ only love. I was much keener to be on my own and to be married to my career and my life as an independent woman. I never needed sex – emotionally or physically – the way a lot of my friends did and, other than a handful of one-night stands, was perfectly happy in my own little world. But, despite all my modern woman claims, resisting the offer of that ‘Happily Ever After’ was not something I could do. Certainly not when that offer was from someone who looked like Jay.

  Jay and I first locked eyes at a book launch that Ritesh had dragged me to. Ritesh came over to our place one evening, sighed dramatically and settled onto the ground with a cigarette and a beer.

  ‘My boss has suddenly decided to make me cover the literature beat. Look at my face. No wrinkles. Well, a few around my eyes but those are nice, no? I’m handsome. I’m too handsome to be covering the literature beat. I know I’m intelligent. I’m brilliant even. But who wants to sleep with writers when you can sleep with models? The injustice is just so hurtful.’

  ‘Ritesh, you keep complaining about how vapid the Bollywood scene is. Why are you complaining now?’ This was Jess.

  ‘Yah yah, so it might be vapid, but you can’t deny that it’s good looking,’ Ritesh retorted grumpily.

  ‘Why can’t you refuse?’ I asked.

  ‘Darling, I need the money. I can’t afford to get fired. Not all of us have bank accounts filled with dollars.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure it won’t be that bad. I like a lot of the new Indian writing,’ I said.

  ‘Do you?’ Ritesh’s eyes sparkled. ‘Oh of course you do, my little Princeton baby. Okay, good, then you’ll be my date for the ghastly book launch on Friday night, yes?’

  I was reluctant. Friday nights were meant for drinks at Zaza’s, not dreary book launches. But who knew? Maybe this book would get turned into a movie, and the director, having spotted me at the launch, would insist on casting me?

  ‘Yeah, I’ll come. I have nothing else to do. Will there be booze?’ I said.

  ‘Of course! And if not, I’ll buy you a drink. Old Monk only, though, okay?’

  So that Friday rolled around and I threw on a white-and-gold chiffon Anarkali and lots of kohl to look my artsy best. I was hoping the book would be India’s answer to The Devil Wears Prada and so assumed that everyone attending would be trendily done up. I was wrong. Very wrong. Instead of the Taj, Ritesh and I pulled up to the big Bookends outlet in Kemps Corner. I turned to him nervously and said, ‘Why are we here? This is where the launch is?’

  ‘Of course this is where the launch is. What were you expecting? The Taj?’

  Bookends had cleared out a little corner for the launch and there were about thirty-odd people in the audience. Not trendy, well-dressed people. Oh no. Most of them, both men and women, were wearing shabby kurtas over ill-fitting jeans, and not a dot of make-up. Feet all around us were in desperate need of pedicures, and hair in equally desperate need of straightening irons. It looked like an NGO rally. I looked and looked and couldn’t spot even a simple glass of wine anywhere.

  Disheartened, I looked towards the stage and my jaw fell. Sitting on stage, looking handsomer than any photograph suggested, was Jay Gupta. Jay was a successful male model who was touted to be the next big thing in the modelling industry in the 1990s. However, things never went as predicted and he fell off the radar quite inexplicably. During my teenage years, I always tore out his pictures from magazines that visiting aunts from India brought me. Even the sad pictures that chronicled his downfall. In all my teenage Happily Ever After dreams, this was the man who would come home in the evening and sweep me into his arms and kiss me with passion. I could not believe that I was sitting just a few feet away from Jay, the man from all my adolescent fantasies. Before I had the chance to turn and gush to Ritesh, a dour-faced woman in a frumpy, overly starched yet somehow crushed pale pink sari huffed up to the podium. She put on the awful rimless reading glasses that were hanging around her hefty bosom, looked around the audience sternly, cleared her throat, and said, ‘Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the launch of Yellow Bananas in the Afternoon Sun by Seema Chattapadhyay. I am Rupali Das, the editor-in-chief of Miso Publications, and we are very excited to be bringing this book to you. Thank you all for the wonderful turnout.’

  Wonderful turnout? There were about thirty-five people in the audience, and most of them seemed to be staring at Jay as much as I was.

  Rupali continued, ‘I won’t take up more of your time with my chatter. Let’s get to the main attraction tonight. With us today, ladies and gentlemen, we have Seema Chattapadhyay and Jay Gupta. Seema, congratulations on the book. We, at Miso, are very proud of you. It is a very, very special book. And Jay, thank you so much for being with us here today. I will now hand the microphone over to Jay, who will speak to Seema about her new book and will then take questions from the audience. Thank you.’

  With that, Rupali took her glasses off and oozed sex at Jay. She fixed her starchy pallu and took a seat beside Jay and Seema, and I felt a ripple of something akin to jealousy flow through my veins.

  Jay looked at the audience and smiled. I straightened up in my seat and, out of the corner of my eye, noticed Ritesh do the same. I looked straight at Jay and he met my eye, held it, and said, ‘Hi, good evening. Wow, it’s really terrific to see everyone here.’ And then he smiled at me. Directly at me. I felt heat rise through my body while I tried my best to not wink at him. I could tell he was talking, but all I could see, in slow motion, was his mouth moving, his perfectly dishevelled hair falling across his forehead, and his broad chest straining his black button-down shirt. Gazing at him, the rest of Bookends dropped away from my consciousness and I felt it was just Jay and me talking to each other. My mental movie camera whirred and whirred, with perfect lighting bringing us closer together. But then it was abruptly forced to refocus on Seema Chattapadhyay and all the awful fluorescent lighting at the bookstore seemed to suddenly turn back on with a thud.

  Seema had a British Bengali accent and a deep throaty voice that sounded painfully cool. She had a tendency to let all her words run into each other so that she sounded just bored enough. Seema, younger and prettier than Rupali, was wearing a beautiful dark green silk sari and red heels. She looked nice, but I was sure I looked better. Seema turned to Jay and said, ‘First of all, Jay darling, I can’t thank you enough for being here tonight.’ She then turned to the audience and continued, ‘I’ve known Jay for years and it makes me very happy to have him here with me tonight. He’s been like a brother to me.’ She then looked back at Jay, laughed gently, and said, ‘Well, maybe not quite a brother.’

  I couldn’t take my eyes off their interaction. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to be Seema. Ritesh, however, wasn’t having it. He whispered angrily, ‘I can’t handle this fuck-fest. I’m going out for a ciggie.’ I would have followed but was too enthralled by Jay to even move.

  Seema continued, ‘This book was a lot of hard work and it is an absolute pleasure to be here tonight. Before we begin the discussion, I’d like to read a few pages to you.’

  I had mastered the art of tuning out professors at Princeton, and I used that talent while Seema read from her book. I caught bits of it – something about alienation and poverty and doom and gloom or some such – but was too busy staring at Jay to register a single sentence. Jay didn’t look like he was listening much himself. He was looking my way more often than necessary. I took a page straight out of Tyra Banks’s book and smized at him like there was no tomorrow.

  Seema finally finished reading and Jay began moderating. Seema was suggestively eyeing Jay, scanning him from top to toe every time she began answering a question. Both the women on the podium seemed to be doing an unnecessary amount of pallu adjusting around Jay. He asked Seema what the inspiration behind the book was, and Seema started off on a rant about Bangladesh and pain.

  Ritesh came back and whispered in my ear, ‘Did I miss anything other than the metaphorical sex on stage?’
<
br />   ‘No,’ I mumbled while keeping my eyes focused intently on Jay. ‘I used to have the biggest crush on Jay when I was in high school. I had pictures of him on my wall.’

  ‘Everybody did, sweety,’ Ritesh said crabbily. ‘And he took advantage of that and did everybody.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I asked.

  ‘Uff, nothing. I just hate covering this stupid literature beat.’

  ‘But Jay’s here. Jay Gupta. That’s like beauty meets books. It’s the best you can ask for.’

  ‘Jay’s hardly that exciting. His days are over,’ Ritesh said, still sounding like the cranky gay guy he claimed not to be.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re in such a pissy mood, but you made me come with you tonight; so now you sit here quietly while I stare at him. Can you introduce me when they’re finished?’

  ‘No. I haven’t spoken to him in ages.’

  I turned back to the stage and made eye contact with Jay again. He was saying, ‘… since my childhood, well, teenage years were not the easiest. I am just so proud of this book, Seema. You’ve really struck a chord. We’re going a bit over our time now, so let’s just open this up to the audience and take a few questions. Rupali, how are we on time?’

  ‘Take maybe two questions,’ Rupali said, ‘and then Seema can sign the books.’

  A doddering old woman was the first to raise her hand to ask a question. Jay said, ‘Yes, lovely lady in the pink kurta over on the left.’

  The little old lady looked at Seema lovingly and said, ‘Beti, I am very proud of you. You have written about a time period before 1947 during which …’

  I switched off again. Jay was looking at the lady and smiling. She rambled on for a few more moments and then ended with a ‘… so, so proud of you, beti’. She ended right where she had begun, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed that there was no question embedded in her words. Jay turned to Seema and said, ‘Well, there you have it. Not too sure what the question was. Actually not even sure there was a question, but we are proud indeed, Seema. Thank you, ma’am.’