by Sheila Kumar
For Medha, Malli, Ritu, Khomi, Clara, Sue King,
Madhu … my M&B gang!
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Copyright
ONE
IT WAS INFATUATION, PURE and simple. Or, on second thoughts, neither pure nor all that simple, Nina reflected wryly. She had seen the man just a few times, they hadn’t exchanged more than five sentences, yet all it took was one intent look from those smouldering eyes for her to go up in flames. Me and quite a large contingent of fans in the India! office, she told herself with an inward smile.
What was Samar Pratap Singh doing down here in the dungeons, as the paper’s sales, marketing and accounts section was labelled?
‘Nina!’ Her boss Rohan cut into her reverie, ‘Are you listening?’
She gave him a rueful smile and brought her attention back to the spreadsheet on the table. She’d been with the India! newspaper for over a year now and liked the job a whole lot. What’s more, she liked India, especially this southern bit of India, Bangalore, a whole lot, too. During an earlier brief stint at the Mumbai office of the paper, she’d made two business trips to Bangalore. Sure enough, the city had cast its spell and she had asked the paper’s executive editor if she could work for a while in the branch office at Bangalore. And here she was.
Balmy days and cool pleasant evenings almost all the year round, pubs which served a mean chicken tikka along with draught beer down almost every road and a people whose laid-back attitude totally belied the industry that had propelled the city to the status of India’s Silicon Valley; Bangalore was just Nina Sabharwal’s kind of city. And she wasn’t about to blot her copybook because of a man with chocolate-brown eyes.
However, Rohan was nothing if not sharp and he had followed the direction of her errant gaze. ‘Aha, HB has honoured us with his presence, has he?’ he remarked before raising his voice to call, ‘Samar! Over here when you’re done, I’ve something that will fog up your camera lens.’
Rohan Varma was an incurable gossip, and the salacious snippet he was itching to tell Samar now took precedence over pulling Nina’s leg about her unguarded reaction to Samar. Thank god for small mercies. ‘HB’ was Rohan’s supposedly clever version of ‘Heartbreaker’ and as far as Nina could make out, Samar remained unmoved by the moniker.
From across the room, Samar Pratap Singh raised one mobile eyebrow good-humouredly at the man who hailed him, nodded and turned back to the accountant. Back in the cabin, Nina muttered to herself, ‘This will be Encounter Number Five, let’s see how well you handle it,’ even as she leaned forward and asked Rohan about the numbers in the last quarter, neatly inked in the document on the table. Having carved an unassailable niche up north, India! had decided it was time to take over the south. For a relatively new kid on the news block, the paper was doing a good job in Bangalore, circulation had more than doubled in just a couple of years. They had overtaken the stolid local daily which hitherto had been the number one newspaper in the Garden City but the sales and marketing team knew there wasn’t room for complacency; not for a minute, not in the keenly competitive world of print media.
What the public didn’t know was that within the three-storeyed building that housed India!, marketing and editorial were locked in fierce battle, with the former pulling out all stops to ensure sales and the journalists seething at what they termed, with some amount of truth Nina thought, the tabloidization of what had been a feisty newspaper firmly committed to exposing the weak flanks of the government. Now, even if Nina did wince once in a while on seeing three-column pictures of nubile and vacuous models on Page One pushing more serious news to second and third spots, no way was she going to tell the edit people that. All over the world, newspapers were increasing the pages in their entertainment sections to increase sales. It really was a case of shaping up or shipping out.
Numerous surveys and graphs revealed that, dumbing down or not, this was what the reading public wanted in the age of breaking news television, and if one of India’s top dailies wanted to go the same way, well, she was on hand to help India! achieve just that.
She knew the exact moment when Samar Singh entered Rohan’s cabin because the fine hairs on her nape actually rose. This is a sexual reaction, nothing more, nothing less, she acknowledged, willing herself into some semblance of her usual self-composure. Slowly, she lifted her eyes to drink him in. Samar Pratap Singh was India!’s star photojournalist-at-large, and fast becoming one of the country’s most perceptive lensmen. The eye of his camera seemed to look beyond the obvious, and the results were both startling and deeply moving. Today, he was clad in yet another variation of his regular well-worn jeans topped by a rust-coloured shirt in soft cotton, sleeves rolled back to reveal sinewy forearms.
‘You know Nina Sabharwal, our S & M director, don’t you?’ asked Rohan slyly, waiting for her to flare up at the twist to ‘sales and marketing’ that he used once in a while just to get a rise out of her. Nina gave him a token glance but kept quiet while he chortled, then she smiled at Samar in what she hoped was a casual friendly manner. ‘Hello, Samar,’ she murmured trying very hard not to fix her eyes on those sculpted lips which had now quirked in amusement. This mouth had captured her imagination from the first time she had set eyes on it. She wondered idly whether it would stiffen with surprise if she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to it. And then she wondered just why that thought had slipped into her mind!
‘Hello, Nina,’ he replied easily. He had a voice that sounded like molasses poured over granite, and she knew he knew just what effect that voice had on most people. She had seen girls all over the India! office suffer immediate meltdowns when he spoke to them. Samar went on to ask her about the Girl Child project the marketing team had put together. Nina hurriedly collected her wayward thoughts and told him that the project was making dolefully slow progress.
Rohan Varma shifted impatiently. ‘Guess what I heard about The Man Who Must Not Be Named?’ he asked Samar and immediately launched into an outrageous and probably totally untrue story about the big white chief, the owner of the newspaper. He had related the spicy bit of gossip to Nina first thing in the morning, and she had refused to believe it. Samar sat back and grinned while he listened.
Why is this man immune to me? Nina thought with a dash of frustration. She knew she was something of a sensation in the office and it had as much to do with her being the only firang on staff as it did with the way she looked. Nina was a good-looking girl, her rather dramatic looks beautifully balanced by an air of calm serenity. She’d been hit upon, chatted up many times here and in Mumbai, and had learned to fend off advances gracefully, sometimes inventing a special someone back in London so she could let the interested man down gently. Once in a while, she’d gone out for a movie or dinner with a particularly persistent admirer, but no sparks flew for Nina and she turned down further invitations in a friendly but inoffensive manner. And then she had laid eyes on Samar Pratap Singh.
She did not think she had an outsized ego but all the same, it piqued her that Samar was the only man who didn’t react to her in any way whatsoever. Maybe he’s not into half-blood girls, she thought, involuntarily channeling a good old Harry Potter term, somewhat to her own amusement. Nina’s mother, Ann, was a Cotswold girl from Armscote while her father Prem was Indian, Punjabi through and through. This was a fact
every male in the many-storeyed office of the newspaper had made it his business to discover. What just a handful of people knew, however, was that though Nina favoured her mother in her appearance, she was her father’s daughter, and being in India was so good, it felt like being at home.
Samar watched that delectable mouth purse itself and idly wondered how it would taste under his. Nina Sabharwal was a knock-out: tall, with a figure that faithfully emulated an hourglass. Add to that masses of hair the colour of autumn leaves, usually caught up at her nape, blue eyes fringed with impossibly long lashes (they have got to be false, he thought cynically), and the end result was nothing short of stunning. That was his evaluation as a photographer and as a man. Very much as a man.
Oh, she was sexy as hell, he acknowledged, understanding just why the men in the office found reasons to pop up in the marketing section at least once a day. Poor suckers, he thought dryly. They didn’t know what he knew. That Nina Sabharwal, not to put too fine a point upon it, was the property of the resident editor in Bangalore and had asked to work in this branch of India! just so she could be with Alan Pereira. Her lover. Her married lover, thought Samar with a sharp note of distaste.
Nina watched Samar push back his chair abruptly and get up to go, puzzled about the sudden tension she felt emanating from him. He was speaking to Rohan, and she let her eyes roam over the rangy figure with skin the colour of honey, a narrow waist that only served to emphasize the breadth of his shoulders and the length of his legs. He exuded power, virility, an earthy charisma, and he wore it all lightly but no one could miss it.
What would it be like, thought Nina suddenly feeling breathless, to be this man’s woman, to have those mesmerizing eyes glaze over with passion for her, to be clasped tight to that incredibly sexy body? To have that mouth come down upon hers, drawing her very soul out? Instinctively, she knew Samar would be a seasoned lover, one who would fulfil every woman’s wishes. Every woman but me, she thought, fighting down a feeling of despondency. I somehow can’t even manage to hold a casual conversation with the man.
Later that night, in the small and cozy apartment not too far from the office which Alan Pereira had so kindly helped her choose, Nina sat at the dining table and gave herself a talking-to. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, lose her head over some colleague, and especially one she did not see all that often. He wasn’t even conventionally handsome, come to think of it. He stood just under six feet, his whipcord slim frame was nut-brown, his nose looked like it had been broken sometime in a definitely misspent youth, and as for his hair, it was eternally rumpled. But there was that deep dimple, and that was a definite talking point among his fans! But, protested some part of Nina’s brain again, what Samar Singh had was sex appeal, tonnes of it. He just had to walk into a room for all eyes to be immediately drawn to him. His brows winged their way to his temple in satanic fashion and below them was a pair of expressive eyes the colour of sunlight upon burnished gold. Those eyes were his most arresting feature. That, and his mobile, sensuous mouth which had a permanent half-smile playing on very sexy lips.
More to the point, however, Nina was here in India on a two-year contract and one year was already up. After her stint with India! was over, she planned to return to London, to start work on a long-planned book. London was where she belonged, in the Chelsea apartment she shared with her sister Sue. She had it all planned out, her future: she’d work for one of London’s dailies while she wrote her book, visit her mother at her farmhouse in the Cotswold countryside every weekend, and in due time, she’d meet that special man who was also somewhere out there. All in good time, and Nina Sabharwal was in no hurry.
Actually, for all that she loved being here, India had not called out to Nina. This stint was pure happenstance, at least in the beginning. Prem Sabharwal had been a second-generation British of Indian origin and though the Sabharwal family were inordinately proud of their Punjabi roots, he had shown no interest in visiting India, in taking his family ‘back home.’ It was an interesting dichotomy. Though Nina and her sister Susan had grown up with the most superficial of India connections – mainly involving food, dress and festival rituals – they had always been aware and even proud of their Indian heritage. The two girls did not look too Indian since both of them heavily favoured their mother, who was a classic peaches-and-cream English beauty. However, as time passed, both Sue and she had become very interested, very involved in the country their father’s roots lay in. And given that she was now here, it was as if providence had played a part.
Anyway, India would soon be just a page out of time for Nina, a collation of cherished memories, a learning experience in how a newspaper in another country functioned. This was only a borrowed if enchanting environment for her; at times she felt like she belonged, at other times she felt totally the outsider.
‘Reality check over, girl,’ Nina muttered to herself as she went to bed. And then she fell into a restless sleep, dreaming about a shadowy figure who chased her endlessly through casuarina groves by the seaside but when he finally caught her, looked intently into her upturned face and then abruptly let her go. As he walked away, the setting sun caught the sharp slant of his brow and cheekbone and highlighted it. Nina moaned in her sleep.
She woke up to a sultry morning with no recollection of the dream, the wind whooshing in the flame-of-the-forest tree outside, scattering her small balcony with vibrant red blossoms. Spring had come upon Bangalore and the city’s avenues were fringed by swathes of canary yellow laburnum, the soft lavender of the jacaranda and the bright orange flowers of the gulmohur tree. She also woke on a thought: just why is Samar Singh called Mr Heartbreaker?
She got her answer later that afternoon. Sitting in the plush office café with Mini and Leena, dipping into a plate of steamed idlis served with the spicy coconut sauce she had become virtually addicted to, the conversation veered around almost inevitably to Samar Pratap Singh and stopped there. Well, Nina hadn’t set the ball rolling, Mini, a Page Three reporter, had. Samar Singh was regularly, if irritatingly, featured in the Page Three gossip columns, which was, funnily enough, rather irregular given that he was some kind of a staffer at the paper. He ignored it, lesser minions grumbled and Mini’s boss, a large-built woman who very obviously carried a torch for Samar, said his lifestyle was so flamboyantly removed from that of the run-of-the-mill journalist, it aroused curiosity and interest in readers. Some of this was undeniably true; journos were a grounded lot, carrying their lack of glamour like a pennant. However, to have it pointed out in such a deprecatory fashion had irked them not a little. Which made for yet another inter-office running skirmish.
‘Just why is he called Heartbreaker Singh, Mini?’ Nina asked.
Mini rolled her eyes expressively. ‘You need to be told, woman? Why, women just take one look at him and keel over, whether he looks back at them or not. And most times he does not, our Mr Heartbreaker. Because…’
‘Because?’ Nina asked before she could help herself, then realized Mini’s eyes were fixed on someone or something beyond Nina’s left shoulder. Resisting the temptation to turn around, she asked softly, ‘What is it?’
‘It is the reason why Samar doesn’t respond to all our none-too-subtle invitations, dearie,’ supplied Leena. ‘And it is called Karishma Jhala. Old money, old lineage and old family friend, or at least her parents are; from what we hear, she has been hand-picked by Samar’s mama for the man.’ Catching the look in Nina’s eyes, Leena said, ‘Samar is, to use the antiquated terminology favoured by our dear paper, the scion of an old aristocratic family from Rajasthan. So, of course, nothing less than a Rajput princess will do for him.’
Leena threw Nina a wink. ‘So just why is he working for India!, you ask.’
Nina grinned equably and murmured, ‘Well, I didn’t ask but since you brought up the topic…’
Leena made a moue and said, ‘Six words. Best photo lab in the country.’
Nina was eaten up with curiosity but decided she wouldn’t turn around
. In the event, she didn’t have to because Karishma passed by, wafting some elusive perfume, and chose to sit facing Nina at the next table. Karishma Jhala was a vision all right, of that there could be no doubt. Petite, with a thick curtain of raven black hair falling to her waist, she had the smoothest complexion Nina had ever seen and almond-shaped dark eyes set in a perfect oval of a face. She wore a long silk tunic over cigarette pants and a whole lot of gold bracelets on both her arms. Personally, Nina thought Karishma was rather overdressed for the morning but maybe that was her thing, who knew?
Mini picked up the thread of conversation again. ‘She is Samar’s constant companion du jour.’ At Nina’s enquiring look, Mini said, ‘Karishma is a neurologist working in the prestigious National Institute of Mental Health. Though that is an arguable fact, given the time she spends in our offices! Rumour has it that she’s just waiting for things to be finalized on the marriage front before she asks for a transfer to New Delhi. Or wherever her swain will go eventually.’
She caught the other girls’ eye and all three burst out laughing. ‘Swain?’ choked Leena. ‘I love that word.’
Somewhat sulkily, Mini said, ‘Well, my boss loves it, too. We use it almost like an article on Page Three.’ And they fell about laughing again, catching the appreciative eye of not a few people in the café. Laughter in the open space offices of India! was usually of a derisive, cynical nature; pure unbridled amusement naturally attracted curious attention.
Then Leena said, ‘Actually, Heartbreaker Singh is the cheesiest nickname ever, isn’t it? It’s so cheesy, one uses it just to see if it gets any reaction from the man.’ She put down her coffee cup and added, ‘No reaction whatsoever. So people keep trying!’
So that was that, Nina told herself and contrarily enough, felt a slight lifting of her spirits. She’d been dreaming about another woman’s man and now that she knew he belonged elsewhere, life could go on. On the heels of this thought came Samar Singh, striding into the café from the door facing Nina and to her utter consternation, she felt her heart give its customary somersault. She’d definitely have to work on that resolution, of letting life go on. Today, he had on a Madras check shirt that moulded itself lovingly to his lean body, the errant lock of raven hair falling as usual onto his brow.
