Those Pricey Thakur Girls (28 page)

‘I’m not cut off, ’ she replies shortly. ‘Just give me the newspaper.’ ‘There are some interesting news articles in there nowadays,’ the Judge says to the teapot.

‘Don’t I know it?’ Debjani addresses the fruit bowl. ‘Old Mr Gambhir shakes them under my nose every time I go there to buy even a Rin ki tikia. He clearly thinks Dylan Shekhawat is some kind of hero. He’d award him with an honorary Sikh turban if he could.’

‘Really?’ her father grunts, still talking to the teapot. ‘And what do
you
think?’

‘I think it’s disgusting that even the kirana shop owner knows what goes on inside our drawing room!’ she flares up. ‘Gossiping is rampant up and down this road. It’s ridiculous!’

Mrs Mamta hurriedly hands her the newspaper and starts to sift through her mail. Debjani pursues the headlines. Presently, Mrs Mamta gives a low exclamation. Debjani and the Judge both look up.

‘I’m sure Old Mr Gambhir doesn’t know about
this
,’ Mrs Mamta says, producing an elegant cream and gold envelope and placing it on the dining table. ‘At least not yet.’

Debjani picks up the envelope, addressed in neat type to
Justice Laxmi Narayan Thakur, Mrs Mamta Thakur and Fly.
She opens it and slides out a pale gold card with cream lettering, upon which is painted a single white champa flower.

A Mangalorean lass and a Rajput knight

Eloped one day on an Enfield bike

There was no celebration

Which is an abomination

Thirty years later, please help us put that right!

‘It’s the invite,’ Debjani says unnecessarily, suddenly feeling like she’s about to burst into tears. ‘It’s on Friday the twenty-seventh. And it’s not just for you and BJ, Ma. The envelope says
and Fly
.’

‘Will you step into my parlour, said the spider to the fly,’ the Judge murmurs, only half whimsically. Then he nods at the teapot. ‘So, do you want to go?’

‘Call for you on line two, darling!’ The high-pitched voice of the thin Parsi receptionist pierces through glass and wood partitions alike, reverberating through the office. ‘Pick it up!’

Dylan immediately stops his frenetic typing and reaches for the phone. Varun Ohri looks up.

‘How do you know she was talking to you, bastard?’ he demands aggrievedly. ‘You’re the only darling in office or what?’

Dylan grins, motioning for him to be quiet. ‘Yes, hello… speaking.’ His expression changes, becomes intent. ‘Yes, ma’am, this is the real Dylan Singh Shekhawat. You’re calling from? Delhi! No no no, actually that happens to be perfect – I’m travelling to Delhi tomorrow.’

Varun, intrigued by the edge of excitement that has crept into Dylan’s voice, listens in shamelessly.

‘Day after tomorrow, one o’clock. At the United Coffee House in CP. Yes, I know it. I’ll be there.’

He puts down the phone and turns to Varun. His eyes are blazing.

‘This could be it! She’s twenty-two – which makes her eighteen during the time of the riots – an adult witness. And a genuine resident of Tirathpuri! She lived in Block 32 she says, Room Number 12. My god, I know that room! It’s on the first floor, right above the area where the rioting was thickest. She saw everything but her father wouldn’t let her testify before the SIC. But he just died – so she can come clean. She’ll speak only to me, she says. I have a good feeling about this, VO!’

‘Good for you,’ Varun responds. ‘Though she sounds a bit of a cold-blooded little cow calling you before her father’s ashes have even cooled. Did she talk about money?’

Dylan shakes his head. ‘No, but she’s the real deal, I can tell!’ ‘Whatever,’ Varun grunts. ‘Just be careful. Hira might have acted all chilled out when Motla paid us his flying visit, but there’s pressure from marketing to close down your little party. So keep the mess-making sanitary, okay?’

‘Okay, okay.’ Dylan nods vigorously. ‘I’ll be meeting her in the afternoon at a public place. She said she’s thin and fair, with long hair.’

‘Sounds promising.’ Varun’s voice is sour. ‘Have fun, darling.’

10

D
ylan has the strangest sense of déjà vu when he enters United Coffee House. There is an all pervading smell of sambar and masala dosai, but he’s suddenly back in Berco’s Chinese restaurant, face to face with the questionable Sardar. Think positive, he mutters to himself, and notices a thin girl in a floral salwar kameez eyeing him furtively. He walks up to her.

‘Hello, I’m Dylan. Are you Kamaljeet?’

‘Preet,’ she corrects him. ‘Kamalpreet. Yes, I am she.’

She has a clear, sweet voice. Dylan pulls up a chair, sits down next to her and quickly switches languages.

‘You’ve come alone, Kamalpreet?’ he asks her in Hindi.

She nods, looking at him out of huge, brandy-coloured eyes, rimmed with fine, pale lashes. She is thin, too thin. He wants to squeeze her hand, tell her everything will be all right and feed her a good nourishing meal.

‘My condolences for your father’s death. I trust everybody at home is coping well?’

Kamalpreet’s chin starts to wobble alarmingly. Her eyes well up and she lets out a convulsive little sob. People at the other tables stare at Dylan accusingly.

He flushes and reaches into his jacket and drops a clean handkerchief onto the table.

‘Here,’ he says awkwardly. ‘We can do this later, you know. There’s no hurry.’

‘Oh, yes there
is
,’ she says fiercely, her huge eyes burning in her tiny bit of face. ‘I’ve been wanting to say this out loud for years
.
Have you got a pen?’

‘I’ve got a cassette recorder,’ Dylan says. ‘But don’t you want to eat something first?’

Kamalpreet shakes her head. A lock of curly brown hair escapes her guth and falls on her forehead. ‘No!’ she says vehemently, twisting his handkerchief between her fair, bony fingers. Then, realizing she’s being rude, she adds in careful English, ‘Thank you, but I am not hungry.’

Dylan’s heart turns over. He says lightly, ‘Here, take my card. You should check that I am who I claim to be, you know. What if I’m not?’

She smiles at him. ‘Oh, I know ki you are Dhillon only,’ she says confidingly. ‘Aapki picture dekhi hai na, paper mein.’

He looks at her warmly. ‘You’re being very brave doing this. Does your mother know?’ He sounds absurdly like an Abba song, he thinks irrelevantly.

‘Mummy toh wahin khatam ho gayee thi ji,’ she replies matter-of-factly. ‘She died in the rioting only. Myself all alone.’

He frowns. ‘You might get a lot of attention after the story breaks. Unwanted attention. Where will you go? Have you got anything planned?’

She squares her thin shoulders. ‘You don’t worry about all that, Dhillonji,’ she tells him, almost comfortingly. ‘You just take your recording.’

He nods, privately resolving to keep an eye on her for a while in case the story starts to spiral out of control. ‘I’ll just order my coffee and then you can start talking. It’s okay to record you, right?

Kamalpreet nods. Her brandy-brown eyes grow huge as he loads a new cassette into the recorder. She sits up straight and pulls her chair in a little closer.

‘Should I pick it up?’ she asks, reaching eagerly for the gadget.

‘Just let it lie there between us,’ he says quickly. ‘And now it’s…
on.
’

‘You’ve got that smitten look again,’ Ethan tells his brother as they lean against the bar in the Jasmine Garden at the Gymkhana Club. ‘Who have you met
today
?’

‘Shut up, rat,’ Dylan says lazily. He is feeling quite at peace with the world. He has sent off the transcript of the Kamalpreet Kaur interview to Bombay and reached the club well in time for the party. ‘And straighten your tie. Have you been scraping your pimples again? You’ve got all these red scabs on your face.’

Ethan, looking rather dapper in his very first suit (Jason’s, altered by Amreek tailor to his height and skinniness), pulls a face. ‘Probably an allergic reaction to meeting all the Rics from Balmatta, Mangalore.’ He grimaces. ‘Can you believe they’ve
all
shown up?’

Dylan grins. ‘Cedric, Ulrich, Derek, Eric, Patrick, Scooter Rick and Auto Rick?’

Ethan nods. ‘The seven sons of Prick. Not to mention their lovely sisters Cecilia, Camellia and Cordelia, the daughters of Genitalia.’

‘Lord, it’s a circus, isn’t it?’ Dylan says, not without pride, as he looks around and sees how very full the Jasmine Garden is. Fairy lights twinkle in the neem trees, lending an intimate air to the gathering of over 300 people. The old wooden dance floor, highly polished and sprinkled lightly with talcum powder, glitters like a sugar-dusted chocolate brownie begging to be bitten into. The bearers, smart in their white, silver-buttoned uniforms, eye the frisky crowd, pick up their trays and throw back their shoulders, like soldiers readying for war. ‘I never thought
everybody
we invited would show up.’

But everybody has. The Mangaloreans, thrilled that the party is in October, when the weather in Delhi is actually pleasant, booked an entire bogey on the Konkan–Delhi express and have turned up in full strength, bearing kilos of frozen shrimp, shellfish, baangday, taarlay and koobays packed in ice-boxes as gifts. The prettiest Mangy daughters have arrived with their mammas, eager to interact with the handsome Shekhawat boys who, despite the Rajput taint, are still a prized matrimonial catch. The only problem, the mothers say darkly, is
catching
them. Still, it can’t be denied that they know how to make a girl feel both weightless and adored on the dance floor.

The Rajus are here in full strength too. Most of them have driven down in jeeps from Jodhpur, Jaipur and Mount Abu, and arrived with their handlebar moustaches windblown and flashing eyes red-rimmed, carelessly crumpling the numerous challans they’ve picked up along the way, shouting for garma-garam tea and double-fried eggs even before they have got out of their vehicles. Their wives, bright and bovine in their crushed, floor-sweeping georgette poshaaks, hurry to comply, all the while cracking lewd jokes at their husbands’ expense.

There has been a perfunctory puja in the morning and an emotionally charged church ceremony at five in the evening. And now, Brigadier Shekhawat’s old Commanding Officer, dug out from his soggy, rundown estate in Coorg, is about to raise a toast to Saahas and Juliet. After this the party (and the bar) will officially be declared open.

‘The Lobster looks lovely,’ Ethan says, rather pleased with himself for noticing this. ‘I rather like that butter chicken sari.’

The sari has been named thus as it is soft, butter-coloured mul mul, thick with cream chikan embroidery. Juliet Bai has teamed it with tiny white pearls around her still slim throat and wrists. A riot of champa flowers cascade down the bridal bouquet in her arms, teamed with feathery fern. Her cheeks are as flushed as a young bride’s.

‘Well, I hope she’s happy,’ Dylan says. ‘If I hear the words champa and champagne one more time, I might go stark, staring mad.’

Juliet Bai, deprived of a wedding, has turned the full force of her artistic genius into the planning of this party. ‘I was saving champa and champagne as a theme for
you
,’ she had told Dylan bitterly, ‘but as that won’t happen till our Prime Minister takes us into the twenty-first century, I might as well use it for Saahas and me.’

And so at the centre of each of the circular tables swathed in lace tablecloths is an empty champagne bottle holding a bunch of white champa flowers with a sprinkling of fern foliage. The labels of the bottles have been peeled off painstakingly and replaced with antique cream labels upon which Juliet Bai has handpainted, in beautiful golden calligraphy,
Saahas & Juliet 1958.
The Rajput contingent, used to bright pinks and vibrant oranges, doesn’t quite know what to make of this pale showing and hopes the champagne theme doesn’t mean the bar won’t be serving Black Label. As for the old Mangalorean ladies, they whisper that that Juliet was always crack, running away with a Rajput and painting her own living room walls, and remember how she turned up her nose at the decorations at Prince Charles’ and Lady Diana’s wedding? Naturally, roses and lilies and chrysanthemums must have seemed too boring to her – or
maybe
, they add snidely, they were too expensive. Must have got her trio of rowdy boys to swarm up trees and pluck the champas. And the bottles must be from the kabadiwallah only.

But Juliet Bai doesn’t care. The decorations have turned out exactly as she visualized them, and her artistic soul is quite satisfied. If only, she thinks, her lower lip trembling imperceptibly, the labels could have read
Dylan & Debjani
instead.

As everybody shuffles ahead to stand around the dance floor for the speeches, Dylan’s great-grandaunt Philomina Bai, who is seated in a place of honour next to the Brigadier’s mother, points at somebody with her quavering finger.

‘Who is that plump pigeon, ba?’

Dylan turns to see.

The taloned finger is pointed unerringly at Jason’s simpering girlfriend. She is hovering around the trolley bearing the beautifully iced thirtieth anniversary cake, proprietarily holding a matchbox.

‘Why?’ Dylan counters.

‘Don’t you backtalk me,’ the old lady snaps. ‘She’s trying to smarm up to us, that’s why. Rubbed off all my rouge with her kisses and then dived so hard for your Dadi-sa’s feet that we thought she’d dropped dead of a stroke.’

‘It’s nobody, Aunty Philo.’

The old lady snorts.

‘Nobody who is hoping to become somebody
,
obviously. And I think her blouse is padded. That body type is always flat-chested with a big, jiggling bum.’