The Benefit Season (20 page)

‘
What does a cricketer
know about cricket?’ Modi replies, and giggles himself
silly.

‘
True. Who would have
thought the guys at BCCI would have the bollocks to suspend the
RCA. But you socked them in the nose sir- springing back after the
court battle.’

‘
I invented the IPL. I am
IPL. You can’t keep me out of it. Cricket is not a game, it’s a
spectacle, and it’s opium for the masses. And I am a drug peddler’!
Modi digs an elbow in Vishal’s side, and again giggles like a silly
kitty, covering his mouth with a delicate hand.

‘
You sold the IPL telecast
rights for a fortune there! We salute you sir!’ Vishal raises him a
crisp toast.

‘
Yeah, and got a cool 80
crores as “facilitation fee”- for selling it to myself!
’

‘
That’s what we do
too…facilitate, but no one pays us like that. We have a lot to
learn from you, show us the way sir’.

‘
You’ll get there some day
kid, as long as
you show me the way
to the lines! I’m crashing!’

‘
Sure sir, follow me’,
Vishal leads him away by lightly touching his elbow. ‘Are you guys
coming?’ he pauses and asks us.

‘
Not my thang, you know
that’, Monal tells him, ‘enjoy yourself honey’.

He shrugs and they go down to the lower
decks.

‘
What’s lines,’ I ask her
when we are left alone.

She takes the straw from her drink and
brings it near her nostril and snorts.

‘
Oh!’

‘
Ah’.

‘
Hmm’.

‘
You look a little
lonely’, she says. ‘The Lebanese isn’t going to miss you it
seems’.

‘
Nor your husband you’. It
is a cheeky thing to say. Monal, who doesn’t waste time, replies
with a sharp backhand across my cheeky face that nearly brings a
tear to the eye. She looks at me for a long time and then hugs me.
She puts her cheek against mine, which is hot and red from the
crack. Then she draws back and kisses me softly, and leads me by
the hand to the dance floor and there, with reckless abandon,
begins to make love to me.

She holds me close, her right hip touching
mine, and her leg between mine. She twines her arm around my neck,
and puts my hands on her hip. Then she thrusts against me, rotating
our hips in sync, in fluid sensual moves. We take small leaning
steps to the right, dragging our left feet also to the right, and
away again. The melodious music and the warm touch of her body get
me in a thrall. Cupping her hip I turn her towards me; spinning
her. We do a right-left sway in time with the music. We stop, she
twines a leg around my waist, and I support her back, grabbing her
free leg as she arches back, bends her supporting leg and drops her
head back. When she turns and we face the same direction, she
abruptly bends over at the hips, and keeping her legs straight;
with her backside thrust towards me slowly rises back to standing
position, all the while grinding and rotating her hips into mine.
She makes a fine dancer, and the crowd parts to clear the way for
us. They cheer when the music stops. Monal turns back towards me,
hot and sweaty, grabs my collar, and leads me away.

She sits us in the lounge and says nothing.
The breeze is cool but sticky and my lips feel salty when I run my
tongue over them. Suddenly she laughs, ‘you know, actually you were
right about my husband. He doesn’t miss me… it must feel good to be
missed by someone’.

‘
We can’t direct the wind,
but we can adjust the sails’. Again, a useless comment that doesn’t
help anybody, but Monal’s hand doesn’t stray this time. We are
sailing into the wind and the dark on a vast and endless ocean and
that makes my mind free and my tongue loose.

I wonder if Aarti is missing me right now. I
wonder if one day our marriage too will sail its course and wash up
like broken-down timber on shore. I’ll have to keep her in good
paint and powder and her sails full if I don’t want that. I have a
sudden urge to call Aarti but I let it pass.

‘
Come let’s adjust the
sails’, she laughs freely, and grabbing my hand, runs me down the
stairs into the suites below.

She turns a crystal knob on the satinwood
door decorated with bronze heads and ormolu veneer which opens into
a dimly lit palatial suite with crushed-onyx tiles and superb
vantona-damask curtains. We halt at the doorway trying to adjust to
the darkness and smoke inside. A number of people are in the room,
some lying on the king-size bed in a maze of arms and legs, and
others lounging around on armchairs and sofas, mostly drinking and
smoking from a variety of pipes and chillums. The air is heady with
pot and I’m feeling high already. Vishal is seated in one corner;
his shirt buttons open, doing cocaine lines with the Moroccan girl
who is squatted beside him, her hand caressing his thigh. Vishal
relaxes back in the sofa as Monal stomps towards him. He wraps an
arm around the girl’s shoulders, cupping her breast, and leers up
at Monal. Monal glares down at the Moroccan who grins at her and
begins to stroke Vishal, rolling her tongue around her fat lips.
Both seem pretty pleased with themselves right now.

‘
Did you miss me?’ Monal
says.

‘
What?’ the man looks at
the Moroccan and laughs. She giggles, beside herself with euphoria,
and tosses her thick mane back.

‘
Obviously not’, Monal
says, casting a lethal look at the girl.

The girl grins back and grabs Vishal’s
crotch, as if daring her.

‘
I thought it wasn’t…your
thang!’ Vishal says.

‘
I think we should leave
here now’.

‘
Why? Otherwise you’ll get
that mean guy to move me?’

‘
Nothing like
that’.

‘
Yeah? Some balls;
grinding your butt up his dick like that in front of the whole
world- my world- my office, and asking me if I miss ya?’

Monal looks stumped that her husband should
find out so soon about that harmless little cha-cha that we had
upstairs.

‘
It was just ten seconds
of dance.’

‘
So what’s your problem,
eh? We’re having a dance too!’ he wiggles and thrusts his crotch up
at the Moroccan’s roving hand. ‘Did he give you a good
time?’

‘
Nothing of the
kind’.

‘
What kind then, eh? Tell
me he got your juices flowing’.

Monal crosses her arms across her chest,
tosses her head to the side, and just stands there, taking it
quietly, looking regal and hurt.

‘
Aren’t you going to do
something… let the earth part and swallow you? Or should we give
you a chance first- a chance to prove your innocence?’

‘
How do you
mean?’

Vishal leans over and whispers to his
companion who raises her brows questioningly. Then she gets up and
walks drunkenly towards Monal. She looks again at Vishal who
gestures her to go ahead. The Moroccan girl leans down, pulls
Monal’s panty down and shoves a finger up her vagina. Then she
pulls it out and smells it. Then she licks it greedily. She shakes
her head and tells Vishal, ‘she’s clean. And she’s tasty’.

He laughs. ‘She likes it in the ass too.
Check her out baby’.

I feel revolted when the Moroccan chuckles
and shoves a finger behind Monal, who just stands there bearing it
without a murmur, as if she’s in the habit of being in bondage. The
girl pulls her finger out with a jerk, making Monal wince, and
smells her finger again.

She shakes her head, ‘clean again’.

Vishal smiles.’ And the taste?’

Now it’s the girl’s turn to gape at Vishal.
‘I mean it’, he says menacingly and pulls out a gun and tosses it
on the table, upsetting the neat rows of cocaine.

The girl shrugs and simply puts the finger
in her mouth again, lingering in its feel. ‘Not bad’, she says
finally. Vishal seems pleased; he spreads his arms and beckons to
Monal who, after slipping out of her thong and tossing it in the
Moroccans face goes and straddles him on the sofa.

I can’t wait to see any more. I turn on my
heels and walk out, promising myself never to have nothing anything
to do with these sick people again.

Or at least that’s what I think.

ϖ

Diu, our last port of call, with the sweet
scent and false promise of heavy rain, is a minor fair-weather port
off the coast of Saurashtra in the Arabian Sea. We dock off the
southern part of this small island topped with fluffy clouds, and
small tenders tow us in to the shore that is lined by limestone
cliffs, rocky coves and surf-kissed sandy beaches. The grey
ramparts of the Diu fort, etched throughout the coastline glower
above us, while large canons protrude menacingly from its
bastions.

Just a mile off the shore
is a dark, foreboding structure in stone rising from the heaving
seas. It is the Fortim-do-mar, or the
Panikotha-
the bleak prison on the
sea, once meant for nasty pirates and robbers. The prison is at the
mouth of the tidal creek that separates the island of Diu from the
mainland of Saurashtra in the North. A small bridge at Ghoghla, on
the highway from Una connects the mainland with the island. Towards
the north of the island there are flies buzzing in the tidal
marshes, and rare Wild Asses gamboling on expansive saltpans that
stretch out as far as the eye can see.

The ship-shaped structure
of the prison fort also houses a small chapel for our Lady of The
Sea. They say there is a secret under-sea tunnel connecting the
prison to the mainland. Later one of my cab drivers, a Koli Patel,
proudly told me a great many of his great-grand relatives had
perished behind the prison’s sinister walls and rusty bars.
‘Koli’
is a name derived
from the English ‘
Coolie
’ or the Gujarati ‘
Kori
’ (robbers). Kolis doubled as
porters on the docks and as stout seamen and pirates on the seas,
before the Portuguese finally managed to subdue their buccaneer
ways. For the trivia aficionados, the prison also served as a
setting for the movie
Quyamat,
though personally I have not seen it, or for that
matter a good many other movies either, that were not set in this
prison.

We set foot on land at Agoa Beach on the
eastern flank of the island and are quickly driven to the Radhika
Beach Resort by swarthy looking tribesmen who would have felt
happier holding bows and arrows in their hands than pieces of
passengers’ Luis Vuitton baggage. The streets of Diu are a delight:
neat, quiet, clear of maddening traffic, lined with well-manicured
hedges that spill into vast open rolling hills carpeted with
velvety green fur. The winding road runs parallel to the crescent
coast and you get marvelous views of the beach, the raging waves,
and the looming cliffs in the distance. The snow-white churches,
the pastel-colored houses, the shops; all are infused with
unmistakable Portuguese history and culture. Beautiful Hoka trees
dot the charming landscape. Hokas are branching palms that the
Africa-sick Portuguese brought from Africa and planted here. In
India it’s only here that one can find Hoka trees.

Do nothing in Diu but gambol and loll on the
beaches and if you are a woman, and of fair color, try, and avoid
pissed up Gujarati men who sneak in on long weekends from a dry and
virtuous state to soak in the sights and the booze.

ϖ

And if you were I, you would flick the
laptop open and book the first flight out to Mumbai. Alas, nothing
flies out of Diu on the weekend except white Pelicans that dive
from high above with their wings folded and their large beaks open
to pick up fish churned up by the choppy waters. Fine then, I’ll
fly out by Monday. I draft and redraft a mail to Tom showing him my
reasons for quitting, adding a wish to work with him again. I still
can’t get it to sound exactly the way I would want, but I send it
anyway.

I decide to go for a swim in the sea. The
waves are tall and the waters choppy, but I am a strong swimmer. An
hour later I barely manage to make it back to shore- the tide is in
and the current so fast. Tired, I lie back on the sand and before I
know, doze off. When I awaken some hours later with the hot sun
scorching my face, I feel much refreshed, and have forgotten about
the boat journey already- the exercise has done me good. I dust off
the sand and decide to head for a chilled drink at the bar.

The swarthy barman is probably another Koli;
the look of swashbuckling ancestry is all o'er him. He is a little
surprised at my wish for a non-alcoholic beverage, but serves up
nevertheless something oversweet in blue with a tiny umbrella; a
sliced lemon and an exotic name coined, I have a feeling, by him
only. I would have preferred unsweetened milk, but on my last
outing it had invited unfair criticism. Next time, remind me to can
the mammarian juices and bung them in with the shaving kit and the
reading material when setting out on a jamboree. The bar is noisy
because of a gag of Gujaratis who have been drinking beer since
breakfast. I had wanted to swim in the hotel pool but didn’t
because of them. They are a very loud and irritating bunch, out to
make a statement that they are having a good time. I wonder if it’s
worthwhile wrecking the beautiful knickknacks in this quaint place
by picking a fight with them and breaking an arm or two. I mean,
who wades around in a public pool in capris and socks? Worse, they
are openly ogling at an elegantly turned out woman sitting in a
dark corner of the cavernous bar.