Those Pricey Thakur Girls (4 page)

Naturally his mother is worried. She has just quit her job at St Columba’s School, where she reigned for twenty years, loved and feared in equal measure by legions of sweaty, spotty and sporty boys (who dubbed her the Lobster and acquired, in spite of themselves, an appreciation for art in her painting and sculpture class). And now that she is finally free to design a tasteful wedding card, plan an artistic church wedding and welcome a beautiful, accomplished daughter-in-law into her all-boys home, her wretched malgado isn’t willing to oblige. She frets constantly, to her brushes and bartans, to Mamta Thakur, to fellow passengers on IPC buses.

‘When he was little he used to say, Mamma, I’ll find a nice girl quickly, okay? And then I’ll love her and love her and love her till we have fifteen children! But now, just see, ba, almost thirty years old and thenga to show for it! I tell you, I’ll be dead and buried in that Nicholson Cemetery before I see a grandchild!’

A new source of worry, far worse than his multiple girlfriends, is his recent obsession with the anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of the late Prime Minister by her Sikh bodyguards. He had been at the Delhi office of the
IP
when a freshly shorn and grievously wounded young Sikh lad stumbled in, babbling about revenge killings, burnings, rape and MP Hardik Motla. Dylan and a colleague from another paper drove down to the trans-Yamuna colony immediately. What he saw there is something he doesn’t talk to his mother about. But it has changed him somehow, she realizes. Won him some big journalism awards perhaps, but taken him away from his family like no girl could.

I wish he would just settle down, she thinks. If he were a married man with responsibilities, he wouldn’t go about muttering ‘
Truth. Balance. Courage.
’ and seeking justice for dead Sikh women and testifying before Special Investigation Commissions against the Delhi Police.

Still, at least he is coming home for a month. She worries about his health: he’s too thin and always forgets to put cream after his bath. Girls don’t like scaly boys. He doesn’t oil his hair either – suppose he goes bald? And he never cuts his toenails properly; they may get ingrown, and then how will he play soccer and frisbee and go running on the beach? Let alone walk down the aisle with a pretty, kind-hearted, fertile girl.

Juliet Lobo wanders around the house rearranging things, keeping up a little hum of worry. Suppose Jason has missed Dylan at the station? And why isn’t Ethan home yet? Doesn’t he want to meet his big brother? And Saahas? Where is he? She pops her head into their bedroom and finds the Brigadier polishing his shoes, his moustache imprisoned in a moustache-bund that ties around at the back of his head, pulling up his nostrils and making him look unusually fierce.

‘Where are you going, Bobby?’ she asks. ‘You know you can’t drive till your glasses get fixed.’

‘To Hailey Road, Bobby,’ he replies indistinctly. ‘Balkishen Bau is picking me up…’ His voice trails away guiltily. ‘For kot-piece.’

A reproachful silence follows.

The Brigadier looks as shamefaced as one can with a strip of cloth tied tightly around one’s upper lip.

‘They will never be home before seven,’ he offers finally. ‘That train is always late.’

Juliet Bai tosses her head.

‘Go, then,’ she sniffs. ‘And eat
there
only. More mutton chops for the boys that way. Will Balkishen Bau drop you back, or are you planning to stay the night at LN’s?’

The Brigadier, greatly relieved, ignores this piece of sarcasm and leans in to kiss her gratefully. ‘Don’t give those pups my mutton chops, Bobby. And tell Dylan to come pick me up. He should be home by then.’

The Brigadier has timed things nicely, because the boys arrive a full hour and a half after he leaves. They stagger in, flushed and excited, Dylan lugging his rucksack, Jason weighed down by a massive brown cardboard box, his face almost purple with the effort.

Ethan bounces up from the couch, electrified. ‘You didn’t! How
could
you? How much did it cost! Actually, don’t tell – the Lobster will flip.’

‘I won’t.’ Dylan grins. ‘But if I eat only breadcrumbs for the next three years I should be able to pay it off. Mamma! There you are!’

‘Hai, why should you eat only breadcrumbs, sonna?’ Juliet Bai demands, as her malgado scoops her up and swings her around the room like an ecstatic hero in a romantic movie. ‘Put me down, stupid boy, what have you bought?’

The two younger boys are almost knee-deep in cardboard and bubble wrap. They sit back finally, sighing, looking reverentially at a large, squat, rectangular, grey blob that looks (to Juliet Bai) like an ugly electric oven.

‘What is it?’ she asks her sons.

In awed tones, Ethan and Jason tell her. What it is. Why it’s so cool. And how it’s going to change the face of technology forever.

‘Apple makkhan toast?’ sniffs Juliet Bai finally, not particularly impressed. ‘What’s so great about apple makkhan toast? I’ve made
mutton chops
for dinner.’

Over at Hailey Road, the kot-piece game is in full swing. Until a short while ago, the fourth player in the kot-piece sessions was the Judge’s younger brother, A.N. Thakur. But the two have had a falling out, and now Debjani is the fourth – and usually the best – player at the table. This is probably because she is completely uninterested both in the conversation and in the snacks doing the rounds.

Eshwari, who makes herself scarce the moment the card table makes its appearance, wonders how she can stand it. ‘I mean, Balkishen Bau is just so weird, Dabbu. If I had to sit there and watch him spend half an hour stroking the warts on his nose with the card before he plays it, going
hmmm hmmm hmmm
all the while, I would flip. Doesn’t it freak you out?’

‘Well, yes,’ Debjani replies candidly. ‘But he can’t help the warts, you know. It’s something to do with his liver.’

‘And that cough.’ Eshwari isn’t done yet. ‘The way the balgam rattles about inside his chest, like a small animal in pain, it’s –’

‘He isn’t
well
, Eshu,’ Debjani says. ‘And Ma said that BJ is already so depressed about his fight with Ashok chacha, if his kot-piece quartet breaks up too, he might totally crack. Besides, I like kot-piece. And the Brig is sweet.’

‘Oh, I dig the Brig,’ Eshwari agrees. ‘But still. Poor you. Maybe BJ and the Ant will kiss and make up soon, huh?’

Debjani, privy to more information on the quarrel between the brothers than her younger sister, knows this is unlikely.

‘Don’t call Ashok chacha the Ant, Eshu,’ she says. ‘You know BJ doesn’t like it.’

‘But his initials are ANT,’ Eshu points out. ‘And he calls me ET, the Extra Terrestrial. So why can’t –’

‘Well, I don’t think they’ll be making up anytime soon,’ Debjani cuts her short. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll just have to learn to love the sessions.’

They aren’t
so
bad. The snacks are nice. Besides, her partner is usually Balkishen Bau, and she’s quite fond of him.

‘So how’s the celebrity?’ Balkishen Bau nods at her now over his fan of cards, like a bulbous, fantastic geisha, his watery little eyes twinkling. ‘My chest grew six sizes just watching you read yesterday, beta! Such good English! Bhai, mazaa aa gaya! The line of your chaahne-wallahs outside must have grown too, eh?’

This is a sly allusion to the toli of street dogs that lives outside the gate. 16 Hailey Road has always been imbued with a certain temple-like quality, devout pilgrims have thronged its gates ever since Anjini turned a luscious fifteen, but in Dabbu’s reign, this brigade has grown four-legged, panting, mangy-eared and disreputable. They sit outside the green gate and howl. Some of them have mange, and some of them, the Judge is sure, are rabid.

‘The GK of those wretched pie dogs will definitely go up now that their champion is reading the news,’ the Judge says wryly. ‘I don’t know why you encourage them, Dabbu.’

‘They’re excellent security,’ she replies diplomatically. It is an answer she has given many times before.

‘That’s true,’ the Judge concedes with a grunt. ‘Besides, they hate my tenants with passion. I like that. Keeps them from getting too comfortable up above.’

‘They haven’t been throwing down that many peanut shells lately,’ Balkishen Bau notes. ‘What happened?’

‘Winter got over, that’s all,’ the Judge says in disgust. ‘We’ll be pelted with lychee skins soon. I wish I could just get the chap to
git
.’

‘Won’t he git?’ the Brigadier asks sympathetically.

The Judge shakes his head. ‘No, he won’t. Which is why I keep hoping that one of these days, Dabbu’s Moti will take a chunk out of him. I’ve been fattening the brute up in that hope.’

Dabbu suspects it’s more than that. She thinks her father has a soft spot for Moti. She’s heard him humming Hemant Kumar songs to him out on the road a couple of times, and once she saw him chucking Moti under his chin and calling him ‘good boy’.

The Judge looks around. ‘What’s that infernal racket?’ he demands irritably. ‘Sounds like a pig being slaughtered.’

Debjani jumps to her feet. ‘It sounds like Moti. I’ll go see. He’s such a gentle dog. I hope no one is harassing him…’

Dylan has driven down to Hailey Road to pick up his father at a quarter to eight sharp. He has pulled up at the gate and given two sharp toots of the horn. He is hot and sweaty and itching to get back home and show the boys all the cool stuff the Apple Macintosh can do. He has no intention of venturing inside Number 16, recalling vaguely that this friend of Dadda’s has some fourteen daughters, most of whom are of marriageable age. Highly avoidable.

When there’s no response from the house, he gets out of the electric-blue Maruti 800 and strides up and down, trying to work up a breeze. ‘Come
on
, Dadda,’ he mutters. ‘Hurry up.’

He is just about to turn on his heel for the third time to go lean on the car horn again, when a low, wet growling sound makes his blood run cold. He turns warily.

A tiny, scruffy cat is crouching in front of his car. Ragged, orangy-black fur, torn ear, dirty rice-like teeth bared in a weedy, unconvincing hiss.

‘What the –’ Dylan starts to say. And then he stops abruptly. Because this unlovely creature is Hema Malini in a white apsara sari compared to what it is hissing at.

Standing in front of the green gate of Number 16 is a beast that defies all definition. As Dylan watches in horrid fascination, its jaws work, making that wet, muddy, gurgling sound again.

Is it a donkey? he wonders. Looks big enough to be one. But what about that massive snout, that weird lopsided gait, those glittering yellow eyes? And why does it look
naked
? It seems to have no fur at all, which somehow serves to emphasize its horribleness, not to mention the humongousness of its private parts. Dylan eyes these with healthy respect, backing away as the creature pulls back black, slavering lips and bares its fangs, reminding him of the ripe jackfruit he ate as a child in Mangalore – massive white seeds protruding from drippy, yellow, overripe pulp.

The cat backs away too, and comes up with a bump against the wheel of the 800. It gives a panicked yelp, then turns to make its wretched little stand, raising one scraggy, pathetic paw, now looking like Hema Malini trying to ward off a leering, slobbering rapist-murderer.

Baby, you’re toast, Dylan thinks. The hound from hell is gonna get you… unless there’s something I can do… but what?

He looks around for a stone to throw or a stick to shake but spots nothing. Abruptly, the donkey-dog kicks the action into higher gear by starting to bark. Deafening, bloodcurdling, bone-marrow chilling barks. Drool drips from its massive jackfruit seed teeth. It starts to make small forward and backward lunging moves, working up a nice little rhythm, until finally it hurls itself upon the cat, its black naked tail waving behind it like a flying snake.

Dylan bends smartly and scoops up the cat. The donkey-dog leaps at him, its yellow eyes rolling wildly. He aims a kick at its hairless chest, praying his sneakers will protect his toes, but then abruptly, a look of the most ludicrous surprise crosses the creature’s face. Dylan, who has grown up in an all-boys school, knows that look. It is the look of somebody whose balls have just been squeezed. Hard. As he watches, the donkey-dog, now thoroughly cowed, is yanked backward through the green gate, which is then shut smartly in its face. As it sets up an incensed howl, Dylan realizes a girl has taken its place.

‘Were you kicking Moti?’

‘That thing’s called Moti?’ he asks in disbelief. ‘As in
pearl
?’

‘Don’t change the subject,’ she snaps, tossing her wavy brown hair out of her eyes. ‘Were you kicking him?’

‘Well, yes,’ Dylan admits. ‘But only because…’ He holds out his arms to display the evidence that will extenuate him, and stops abruptly. The wretched cat has wriggled out of his grasp and decamped, ungratefully leaving his shirt wet.

‘Because?’

She says it challengingly, standing with legs planted wide apart and shoulders thrown back, obviously thinking he’s some kind of doggie-kicking sociopath. He starts to give an indignant reply, but just then the last rays of the setting sun hit her face and he discovers that her thickly lashed eyes are the exact colour and shape as Pears soap – a scent he associates with his beloved Grandma Lobo. His throat dries up.