‘We’ve met before, you know,’ she said, lighting her cigarette, and looking at me with this almost hopeful expression.
‘Have we?’
‘Yes, once, you were waiting for a rickshaw, and I gave you a ride? Just off Linking Road?’
I did vaguely remember, I had been in a Yusuf fugue, and I had just been standing there, despairingly, when this girl had offered me a ride home. I hadn’t given it a thought since, and I certainly wouldn’t have expected it to be anyone I would meet again. I was surprised that she even remembered.
‘That was you?’
She nodded, and looked hopeful again. Was she expecting me to thank her again or something? I already had, on the day of, and I don’t believe in piling up gratitude out of proportion. One rickshaw ride, one thank you. I smiled at her and said, ‘That was nice of you.’ She continued looking expectantly. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. Maybe I could give her my next free glass of champagne.
And then, out of my pose, and with this strange confused expression on my face, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and it was Yusuf. And that’s really when it all began.
12
The Antibiotic Pink Bungalow
My hotel is pretty shit, well, at least the sheets are clean, but it’s super basic. Not even hot water, not even your own bathroom. You ask the kitchen for a bucket and then you go to this cement stall-like thing, and pour mugs of it over yourself. I guess I’m cleaner in Goa though, because I’ve been in the sea a lot, and anyway, at under Rs 100 a night, what could I expect? At least I got one of the rooms to myself. I’m advised by the forty-something English dude, who is always outside, always in the process of rolling a joint, to buy my own lock. Not that I have any valuables anyway, but he said, ‘For safety’ and did the Indian head waggle he had no doubt picked up somewhere and now thinks is a cool local custom. This makes me think how I don’t notice the head waggle on my Indian friends, only on this guy it’s so glaringly obvious that it’s something he throws in for effect, I mean, he’s not even waggling it properly, it’s sort of jerky. But he seems like a sweet enough dude, and he’s been staying at this place for the last two months, so I take his advice and get a small lock. Also a torch and a mosquito repellent. I feel like a proper traveller.
I go to the Loons’ party a little after seven. It’s not hard to travel around Goa if you know how to get around. There is a bunch of young men on motorcycles who will ferry you around for a fee. I love motorcycles far more than any other kind of transport, so I strike up a deal with one of them, a guy called Joshua, who agrees to be my personal driver whenever I need him. He’s waiting for me outside the Villa Castellina, which is the (very promising-something-it’s-not) name of my hotel. But maybe I’m being too hard on it. This might be because the last time I was in Goa, I stayed in a luxe hotel, one of those old Portuguese villas turned into a boutique hotel, and our suite (because we had a suite) had a private courtyard with a sunken tub in the middle, which you could climb into and lie back and watch the stars. That was also with the ex—this last ex—so I tell myself that it’s better to be by myself and at the Villa Castellina, than on the 400-thread-count sheets of that fancy hotel with him. Oh, those sheets! Oh, that bed! One night and the lumpy mattress of the Villa Castellina has already given me a kink in my back. Maybe I’m just too old for lumpy mattresses and budget hotels now, but if Dreadlocked Old English Dude can do it, so can I.
Joshua revs up and we are off, my hair is flying behind me in what I fondly imagine is a Rapunzel-like fashion, all long and flowy, the princess on the back of the steed but, which, in reality, is probably standing up all around my head now. I have taken a small notebook with me. I have loads of these little handmade notebooks which are completely useless to write in, you realize after one or two tries, but make for good presents. At the last minute, leaving Bombay, I’d stuffed an entire packet full of them into my suitcase, for presents. Michael Loon looked like the kind of man who would appreciate a good handmade notebook.
‘This is the house,’ Joshua pulls over, jerking his head at a closed gate and waits for me to hop off.
‘Thanks,’ I say, dismounting. He waits for a second and I think to ask if he wants to join us.
‘No men,’ he says, scoffing. I like that he says ‘men’ instead of ‘man’, like the Bandra Catholics I know. He’s originally from Bombay, that is, his family lived there till Joshua was about five and then decided to move closer to the extended family in Goa. But some habits still stick. ‘Not my scene,’ he says, ‘I’ll be at the bar down the road. It’s called Blue. Call when you want to go home.’
‘Okay!’ I say. ‘Don’t drink too much!’ I guess I should be more nervous that my designated driver is planning to spend the evening in a bar, but hey, this is Goa. No matter if loads of people die in accidents every year. I have implicit faith in Joshua, even though he’s about six years younger than me, he’s got honest eyes. This is something that would make my flatmate Akshara choke on her iced coffee, she’s constantly telling me not to have too much trust in people, to be more street-smart, but I’ve trusted people all my life and it hasn’t done me any harm. Well, except for the ex, but I don’t feel like thinking about him yet.
I push open the gate as Joshua sputters off. It was high and imposing, with bamboo slats placed across the iron frame, making it impossible to look inside. This makes me feel slightly intimidated, I mean, seriously, what am I doing, just coming to a random beach shack person’s party? Is this how low I have sunk? Although, this is also quite exciting—all the possibilities that lie ahead this evening. I am young! I am cosmopolitan! I’m the kind of girl who gets invited to random parties in a random beach town! I imagine myself at a Bandra cocktail party, with a drink and drawling to someone, ‘Oh, yes, at this private beach party I was in Goa, something … something …’ Okay, so this may not be a private beach party, like the Villa Castellina isn’t an actual villa, but I like to fly my hopes high.
I notice, in the middle of all this fantasizing, that I have been walking through a compound for some time, and I still see no sign of other people. The house itself looms large and silent in the twilight in front of me. It’s quite ugly, in this antibiotic pink colour with yellow highlights. I’ve always thought the most depressing thing is white light in a room painted this shade of pink. Or that nasty pista green. In fact, even thinking the words ‘pista green’ makes me feel sad and nauseated. I’m getting a little worried. Maybe it’s a trap. I’m being sold into prostitution. I’ll never see my dog again. I even think of the newspaper story that will run: ‘When last seen, Ladli Gupta was going to a party,’ says motorcycle taxi driver Joshua, who ferried her there. ‘I tried to tell her not to go, but she wouldn’t listen. I blame myself. I should’ve gone in with her.’ I also try to pick what photo they’ll use with the article, probably something ‘full of life’, like one of me laughing uproariously, and looking like I enjoy my life. Unfortunately, I don’t have a single picture like that. Mine are all sad and full of angst. My favourite, the one that’s my Facebook profile picture, has me in silhouette, against the window, peering out. It just needed to rain outside and that would’ve been the perfect photograph. I must get more pictures where I look happy. No one will be sad if a sad-looking girl vanishes forever. It’s more poignant when she’s happy and laughing and you click your tongue and shake your head and feel all bittersweet at what a horrible world we live in and how glad you are, personally, to be alive and secure.
Too late to turn back now, I think, and push open the door. It swings open quite easily, and I walk through the house, which is also ominously quiet, but then I see a pair of tiny pink Crocs, and I remember with relief that the Loons have children. No one with children would kidnap someone and sell them into prostitution. Parents are generally nicer people than non-parents.
I smell chlorine and hear voices at the same time. Before I can open the screen door which obviously leads to the pool area, I am beaten to it by Girl
Loon, who pushes open the door from the other side and regards me gravely. ‘Are you here for my daddy’s birthday?’ she asks.
I smile big, which is the only way I can smile at children, I’ve tried to be restrained and dignified, like the kind of adult I used to admire when I was that size, but all that comes out of me are clownish gestures, an over-the-top high-pitched voice and a stupid loopy grin. And the kids never fall for any of those. They always avoid me after we’ve had a couple of minutes of conversation.
‘There’s someone here for the parteee!’ she yells over her shoulder, and I hear Mrs Loon going, ‘Bring them in then, darling!’
‘Follow me,’ says Girl Loon, keeping her grave voice on. I can’t help feeling like I’ve been out adult-ed by this small creature. I am now facing the pool, and she points, ‘My daddy’s over there, Nina’s on the deck chair. She’s not my mummy.’
‘Okay,’ I say, not knowing how to respond to that.
She sticks out her hand, ‘My name is Alicia. Nina calls me “darling”. I don’t like it.’ I am still gazing at her with my mouth open, and she makes a ‘tsk’ of impatience, and takes my hand and shakes it. Her hand is small and soft and sticky. I didn’t know three-year-olds could ‘tsk’.
I remember my manners and say, ‘Nice to meet you, Alicia. My name is Ladli.’ Then she seems to forget about me and runs off, to jump in the shallow kiddy pool, where her brother already is.
‘Hello!’ calls Mrs Loon, waving from her deck chair. She looks very beach holiday and glamorous, in a low-cut kurti in sea green and sunglasses perched on her head. I feel grubby and motorcycle-haired. There are a couple of other people, all gathered around Mr Loon, who is passing out some barbecue stuff.
‘Hi,’ I say, tentatively, ‘I’m Ladli. Um … we met at the beach shack? Kinda?’
‘Oh, I don’t keep track of how Michael meets his guests.’ Mrs Loon is smiling brightly at me. ‘I’m Nina, you’ve met Michael, the kids are somewhere around.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘I just met Alicia.’
‘Precocious little poppet, isn’t she?’ asks Nina, without a trace of a smile on her face. ‘Jeffery is far more charming. He’s almost ten, so that maybe accounts for it. Alicia’s only five.’
Ah, five. I’ve never been good at figuring out people’s ages just by looking at them, and kids are the worst. Mrs Loon is walking towards the white plastic table that is the bar, and begins pouring out a glass of white wine.
‘I don’t drink white,’ I say, apologetically, and she starts and I realize the glass wasn’t for me after all, and begin to wildly overcompensate, rummaging around the bottles till I find a half-empty vodka, pouring in some juice and pretending like I had never said anything at all.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she says, sounding slightly bored, and wanders back to her deck chair. Oh. Okay. I guess she isn’t going to be my friend, although I’m now completely curious about how she wound up being a step-parent and where she’s from. The more I look at it, the more the rest of the family—mister and the babies—seem quite foreign. A little brown, but not Indian brown. Mister is rather pink actually, under his tan, and the two children are golden, and when they run about, so are the tips of their hair, especially when Alicia stands against the sun, then it’s like a halo around her face. She’s quite cute, I think, indulgently, sitting down one deckchair removed from the glamorous but unfriendly Nina, and watching the sun preparing to plunge into the sea.
Mr Loon spots me and waves. ‘Hello!’
‘Hello!’ I say, adding an exclamation mark and a wave of my own. Must be catching! I remember the present I’ve carried for him, and put down my drink, spilling a little on my hand while I search through my bag. He comes over, offering me a paper plate of charred meat bits that smell good despite the fact that they’re black and crispy round the ends. Still, I shake my head and he shrugs and puts it down anyway.
‘Don’t tell me, you’re the girl from the … shack?’
As I had met him only that afternoon, it couldn’t have been that hard to remember my face, but I smile and nod anyway. I never used to smile this much in Bombay. I told you, angst. It’s what I do best. But the Loons are smilers. (Well, clearly, apart from Wicked Stepmother Loon over there, but she’s not blood related to any of them.)
‘Tell me your name again?’ asks Michael. He’s quite nice-looking, in a quiet sort of way, with glasses and an unremarkable haircut, and a faded blue T-shirt with khaki shorts. I start imagining how he first asked Nina out, how she must have considered him for a second, maybe tilting her head to get a better angle and then slowly nodded yes. Then, oh God, I’m thinking about the first time they did it, and why is this image there, and Michael’s rather hairy chest and oh God oh God oh God!
‘Are you okay?’ Michael is looking at me, concerned, and I start and say, ‘Sorry! Sorry. My name is Ladli.’
‘And you’re Indian? Sorry, is that a stupid question? My wife is Indian, so I’m just fascinated.’ Hah. I knew it. Didn’t I say? I feel quite smug.
‘No,’ I say. ‘Not a stupid question, Goa is so global, so international,’ I’m waving my arms around gesturing like an idiot, but his eyes are wide and he’s nodding in complete agreement. ‘And so yeah, I’m Indian. Yeah.’ After all that gesturing my voice trails off a little bit, I can’t help feeling slightly anticlimactic. Michael is looking down at me like I’m some sort of genius though, and I can’t help basking in that a little. See, people don’t normally think I’m smart. They think I’m kind of flaky to tell the truth. Sort of spacey. In my own head a lot.
My friend Meera once described me by moving her arms up and down in waves and saying, ‘You’re like this, like this … dippy la la!’ I must’ve looked hurt or confused or both, because then she dropped her arms and stuck her chin out and said in a fierce voice, ‘That’s a good thing.’ I almost believed her. She has a good, convincing, fierce voice. But, but, no one really wants to be dippy la la, do they? I mean, it sounds like I’m some pink-and-blue Teletubby with a heart drawn on my stomach, or wait, was that Care Bears? Either way, one of the things I took away from my break-up (which I still don’t want to talk about) was that I wanted to be the kind of person whom no one could describe with a dance movement. Or an androgynous cartoon animal creature. ‘Take that!’ I want to tell my friends who picked his side during the break-up (even though they told me there are no sides, but once you say that, you’ve already picked one, haven’t you?). ‘Someone thinks I’m smart! Someone is looking at me with admiration!’ God, it’s been so long since someone looked at me with admiration. I’m getting almost weepy, but maybe that’s just the vodka.
‘Nina’s family is originally from around here,’ Michael says. ‘Well, this part of India anyway. The Konkan coast, I think it’s called. But they’ve been in America for so long, I think she’s more American than I am! My family’s Greek. They only emigrated when I was about four.’
‘Greek! How wonderful, I’ve always wanted to go to Greece,’ I say, inanely, but it seems nothing I can say will put this man off. He continues to look at me like I am a shining jewel of intellectuality. No wonder he’s married. Maybe even twice. He knows how to treat women.
‘I got you a present,’ I say, handing it over.
‘Aren’t you sweet?’ He opens it and flips through it and looks at me with so much gratitude in his eyes, I feel embarrassed. It’s only a stupid little notebook. And I’ve only just met him. He’s telling me how much he loves notebooks, how they represent a journey not yet taken, how each page has so much possibility and I find myself nodding and saying, ‘Me too!’ a lot.
‘Darling.’ Dun … dun … dun … dun. It’s the Wicked Stepmother, come up from behind us. ‘I think the food’s running low.’
‘No, it’s not, there’s plenty over here.’ He passes her a plate which she looks at and wrinkles her nose.
‘Well,’ she says, ‘the liquor then.’
‘There’s more beer in the fridge.’ He doesn’t look up at
her, still playing with the notebook. I’m feeling hideously uncomfortable. What’s going on here?
Mrs Loon does a big sigh and rolls her eyes and then looks around. Then she turns back, her eyes gleaming. ‘Darling, it’s time the kids got out of the pool. They’ll catch a chill.’
‘Oh God, you’re such a mom.’ He says this affectionately though, and gets up. ‘But, you’re always right, and I’ll go get them out.’
‘Thank you, my love.’ They kiss, but the air between them is brittle and sharp.
He’s left his notebook behind, and Mrs Loon spots it, and picks it up, turning it between her hands like he just did. Have these people never seen a notebook before? ‘I gave him that,’ I say, before she can say anything insulting, ‘Um, as a birthday present. You know. I carried a bunch from Bombay.’
‘Aren’t you sweet.’ The same words he used, but without a question mark and said in a flatter tone, like she thinks I’m anything but. ‘I’m sure he loved it.’
‘He did, actually,’ I say, crossing my arms. Why am I being so defensive? Why is she attacking me? What’s going on? I long for Joshua to come sputtering up on his motorcycle to whisk me away somewhere, and we’ll walk on the beach and drink coconut water and I never have to see these strange people again. On the other hand, I really want to know what’s going to happen next, like I’m reading a book and they’re the characters, and I’m the omnipresent narrator, not judging, just observing.
She shoots me a strange look, and I decide to be the oil on troubled waters and all that and say, ‘So, Michael tells me your family is from around here?’
‘Ages ago. But my grandparents migrated in the late 1940s. I guess I’m, what? Third generation?’
‘Oh wow,’ is all I can think of saying. Mr Loon would have given me a look of appreciation. She gives me a look of contempt. It’s like she’s on to my Teletubby ways. I can’t help but admire her more than her husband as a result. Isn’t it weird how we sort of, at the back of our heads, always grudgingly admire people who are condescending to us?
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