Club You to Death
Page 1
For Jaideep Singh,
Strong, steady, twinkly-eyed,
We’re still dealing with the loss.
Who always told the Ajays he met—
‘You are a Jai, but I,’
(pause, deep chuckle)
‘I am THE Jai, boss.’
Contents
1. Tambola Sunday
2. Rasputin
3. Jai Bhavani
4. Pinko Hathni
5. Very, Very Over-Smart
6. Cheeky Peaches
7. A Snake in the Garden
8. Selective Hearing
9. An Eye in the Wall
10. The Hottie-Culture Committee
11. A Gun in the Mud
12. The Ghia-Lauki Gang
13. The Khuranas Receive Visitors
14. Flames & Flowers
15. Killer on a Hat-Trick
16. The A to my B
17. Icky Slime
Acknowledgements
About the Book
About the Author
Praise for Club You to Death
Copyright
1
Tambola Sunday
‘I feel like a hooker, I say!’
Brig. Balbir Dogra is slumped low in the passenger seat of his old Maruti Swift, staring down at his phone in complete exasperation.
His daughter Natasha lifts her hand off the gear stick to pat his knee placatingly. ‘That sounds so wrong, Daddy. But I think you mean you feel like you’re available? Up for grabs? For sale to the highest bidder?’
‘Exactly!’ Brig. Dogra’s chin juts forward, his face purpling with rage. ‘My family’s been members of the DTC for decades, and I’ve never seen such vulgar canvassing for votes during any presidential election! It’s all so bloody crass!’
Natasha swings the old car onto Shantipath. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning in February, and all the roundabouts are ablaze with flowers in Lutyens’ Delhi.
‘Did you get another WhatsApp message?’ she asks.
The brigadier waggles his phone about agitatedly. ‘Yes! Mehra keeps on messaging me! Even though it’s clearly against the club by-laws! Inviting me to bawdy cocktail parties and whatnot! Practically offering bribes and kickbacks!’
The election for the post of president of the Delhi Turf Club, the capital’s oldest and finest, is slated to happen the next evening between Lt General Mehra (retd) PVSM AVSM Yudh Sewa Medal and Mrs Urvashi Khurana, Padma Shri, homemaker and founder, lifestyle brand ‘Chrysanthemum’. About two thousand permanent members residing in Delhi will be casting their vote, including Brig. Dogra.
‘Why don’t you just enjoy all the wining and dining and then vote for whoever you want?’ His wife, Mrs Mala Dogra, suggests practically from the back seat.
The brigadier’s eyes bug out. ‘I’m not going a mile near these parties, I say! That poor sucker Suri went, and Behra Mehra cunningly recorded a video of him idiotically babbling “Jiggy Jiggy” as he jiggled a half-naked Russian belly dancer in his lap, and now he’s blackmailing Suri into voting for him!’
‘Your grandson’s in the car,’ Mrs Mala Dogra murmurs.
The brigadier’s voice drops to a peeved mutter. ‘And that wretched woman is no better! Bombarding us with gift hampers! Full of stinking cheese and candlesticks!’
‘Ooh, I love Urvashi auntie’s cheeses!’ Natasha says at once. ‘So much better than tacky Russian belly-dancers! She has my vote for sure!’
‘You don’t have a vote, madam!’ her father says dampeningly. ‘Not till you become a permanent member, at any rate! And neither does your brother!’
Cuddled against his grandmother’s bosom, five-year-old Dhan takes his fingers out of his mouth long enough to volunteer, ‘Kashi mama don’t wants DTC memmershi. He says it’s full of sobs.’
‘Snobs,’ his mother corrects him automatically, then wishes she hadn’t. The brigadier rises again with a roar.
‘My son is a duffer, I say! My father got me green card-holder status at the DTC when I came of age, and I did the same for you and Akash! Now the fool’s twenty-five – and eligible to apply for full membership – and he wants to let it lapse! He’s just cutting off his nose to spite his face!’
‘Good,’ Natasha replies soothingly. ‘Kashi’s nose is way too big anyway.’
This doesn’t have the desired effect. ‘Don’t joke, Nattu!’ her father growls. ‘We’re talking about the Delhi Turf Club! The most exclusive club in the country! Regular people have to wait thirty-seven years and pay a seven-and-a-half-lakh waiting fee to get what I’ve got you and your younger brother for just one lakh!’
She glances at him affectionately. ‘I know, Daddy, and I’m properly grateful for it. I took the full membership at twenty-five, didn’t I?’
‘But Kashi won’t!’ The brigadier sketches agitated quote marks in the air. ‘“The DTC is a symbol of privilege”, if you please! “Of elitism and ossified class stratification!”’ He drops back, disheartened. ‘He wants to give up the membership.’
‘He’s kidding, Daddy, don’t take him seriously.’
‘He thinks he’s the Prince of England,’ Mrs Mala Dogra chimes in from the backseat. ‘Abdicating his birthright. And that JNU ki Bangalan is his Meghan Markle.’
‘Which makes you the queen of England, Mummy. Isn’t that nice?’
Her mother looks appalled at this display of ignorance. ‘It makes me a divorced, dead princess, Nattu. Don’t you know any history?’
‘Some would argue that the lives of the British royalty are more tabloid tattle than genuine history,’ the brigadier puts his oar in.
His wife ignores this irrelevant remark. ‘The point is that she’s the one egging him on to do all this.’
Natasha wags an admonitory finger at her mother.
‘Not nice, Ma! To imply that your phool-sa-boy can do no wrong, and it must all be the fault of the girl he’s with! You should be happy Kuhu isn’t status-conscious or money-minded.’
‘Kuhu.’ Mrs Mala Dogra rolls her eyes. ‘Ridiculous name!’
‘Money, status, where?’ the brigadier broods. ‘Arrey, the Turf is not a symbol of elitism! Look at us – four generations and a wheelchair stuffed into a rattling, eight-year-old Maruti Swift – how are we elite?! Elite people go to five-stars and seven-stars and whatnot! All the DTC membership gives you is cheap facilities and recognition that you – and your family – are old, established Dilliwallas! It helps in networking, and closing deals, and getting your children settled. Why, your rishtaa came through the club only!’
‘Yes, Dad,’ Natasha says patiently. ‘But that is what privilege and ossification is all about.’
‘He’ll regret it,’ Mrs Mala Dogra declares. ‘He’s only twenty-five now – so he thinks he’s being very heroic and anti-establishment and socialist by doing all this, but when he’s a middle-aged man and his children ask him why Natasha bua’s kids have DTC membership and they don’t – what will he tell them?’
‘Kashi mama says he’s going to be poor forever,’ Dhan informs the car seriously. ‘And if his chinnin want the good life, they’ll just have to suck up to their boozy boujee bua.’
‘Perfect!’ Natasha claps her hands delightedly. ‘I’d love to be boozy, boujee bua! We’ll make all the little Kashi-lings really grovel before we sign them in for cheap daaru and dancing on Thursday nights, won’t we, Dhanno?’
‘Hands on the wheel, Nattu!’ The brigadier frowns.
‘For heaven’s sake, Daddy, I’m thirty years old!’
‘We should never h
ave sent him to boarding school.’ Mrs Mala Dogra’s voice trembles slightly. ‘He feels closer to his wretched friends than to us – that’s why he’s moved out to live with them in that dismal barsati in Nizamuddin.’
‘But that’s healthy!’ The brigadier thumps the dashboard. ‘That’s normal! Besides, he can’t commute from Noida daily! Do you want to smother the boy, Mala-D?’
‘Don’t call me Mala-D!’ Mrs Mala Dogra hugs her grandson harder and sits back, disgusted.
Her mother-in-law, a fluffy, bird-like lady, dressed in a creamy chiffon sari and pearls, looks at her uncertainly, a question in her rheumy old eyes.
‘Nothing happened, Mummy.’ Mrs Mala Dogra pats the old lady’s arm reassuringly. ‘So exciting, no? We’re going to the Club to play Bumper Tambola!’
As the old lady nods and breaks into a sweet smile, the Maruti Swift swings onto Aurangzeb Road and joins the long line of cars inching towards a set of imposing black wrought-iron gates monogrammed with the horse and jockey insignia of the Delhi Turf Club. A moustachioed guard, standing next to a gleaming metal sign that reads ENTRY FOR MEMBERS ONLY, notes the DTC sticker on the windshield of the dilapidated Swift, snaps to attention and waves them in.
The DTC’s website declares it to be a world in itself – ‘a haven of graciousness and elegance, merging the historical past with the modern present’ – and on this particular winter morning, with the sun out, and the white colonial main bungalow gleaming in the middle of the sprawling thirty-two-acre lawns like a Fabergé egg in a bed of emerald-green velvet, the claim does seem to ring true. Pillared, bougainvillea-festooned verandas fan out from the main bungalow like fine filigree work; there is the glint of swimming pool turquoise, tennis court ochre, and skating rink peat in the distance, and a giant arch of multicoloured helium balloons sways airily across the East Lawn. A gay banner flutters below it.
‘COME ONE COME ALL! ANNUAL CHARITY BUMPER TAMBOLA!’
‘What’s with the balloons?’ Mrs Mala Dogra grimaces. ‘Looks like a birthday party.’
‘Some bloody lala trying for an out-of-turn membership, I say,’ Brigadier Dogra replies. ‘He sponsored free balloons to suck up to us. These baniyas are all the same.’
‘Daddy!’ Natasha throws him a reproving look.
‘I like the balloons,’ Dhan declares decidedly.
‘So do I,’ replies his mother firmly, as she swings into the senior citizen parking spot, right next to the main porch. ‘Woohoo, Dadi, are you feeling lucky? We could go home millionaires!’
Brigadier Dogra’s mother prods his back with her membership card. When he turns around, she holds up ten fingers, her eyes anxious and fever-bright.
‘Ten,’ she says. ‘Ten.’
‘Yes, I’ll get ten tambola tickets, Mummy,’ he replies gently. ‘Five for you – and one-one for the rest of us. And Fanta-beer shandy and shaami kebabs for everybody!’
The old lady thrusts her membership card at him urgently, and he takes it with a slightly overdone cry of delight. ‘Wow! Dadi’s treat, everyone!’
‘Thank you, Dadi!!!’ all of them chant in a well-practised chorus. The old lady smiles proudly. The tension in her face eases and she sits back, satisfied. Paying for the eats is the sweetest part of visiting the DTC for her, and the family does not let on that they actually never swipe her card.
The brigadier produces a hat and pulls it low over his head.
‘Behra Mehra and Urvashi Khurana are bound to be haunting the place, soliciting votes,’ he mutters darkly as he exits the car. ‘I’m going in incognito!’
‘Mummy, they call the numbers so quickly – how will you tick five tickets at once?’ Mala Dogra asks her mother-in-law, sounding worried. ‘The stress will be too much for your heart.’
‘Kashi and I will help Dadi,’ Natasha says, turning around to wink at the old lady. ‘And we’ll all split the spoils.’
Mrs Mala Dogra rolls her eyes and sighs.
‘That’s if he shows up.’
In the dappled shade of an ancient peepal tree growing miraculously right out of the pavement at the edge of a scraggly park in Nizamuddin, a callow adolescent in a bright orange shirt holds a long, sharp blade to the throat of a young man about ten years his senior. They are watched by a circle of rummy-playing taxi drivers, a one-eyed shakkarkandi-chaat seller, several urchins and a skinny cow.
‘Please don’t kill me, Firdaus.’
This entreaty, uttered in a deep, smiling voice, causes the trainee-barber to pull his blade away, his expression reproachful.
‘Why you’re joke, Kashi sir? Would I kill my best client?’
‘Your only client, you mean,’ sniggers the chaat-seller as the puny Firdaus tips his victim’s chair backwards to rest against the peepal’s ancient trunk, stippled with the jointed names of lovers now long sundered. ‘Akash sa’ab, better you than us!’
In reply to this sally, Akash Dogra, lathered to the cheekbones and tilted back till all he can see is the peepal’s canopy (festooned with grimy string and a torn pink kite) lifts both hands in a fatalistic gesture to the Heavens. Seen from this angle, he is revealed to have thick, dark hair, a broad forehead, a large nose and comically panicked dark-brown eyes. As the blade scrapes away at his face, a firm but full-lipped mouth comes into view, and, gradually, a square, well-defined jaw and a column of muscular neck.
The ‘barber’ straightens the chair, twitches the striped towel away with a flourish and Kashi springs to his feet to a round of applause. He is a lean, muscular, young man, dressed in a cobalt-blue cable-knit sweater and khaki chinos, both of which have clearly weathered several winters.
Surveying his visage in the mirror the barber is now holding up, he says briskly. ‘Excellent job, Firdaus meri jaan. Just two nicks and a minor bloodletting!’
Firdaus grins a shy, shifty grin. ‘Dekha?’ he crows triumphantly to the onlookers. ‘Kashi bhaiya fights such big-big cases, comes on TV and all, and gets his hajamat done right here! From me! When will you suckers latch on?’
The circle of drivers doesn’t look very impressed.
‘That is because Kashi sir is brave enough to risk a throat-slitting – and we are not!’ one of them quips snarkily.
‘You’re drunk half the time, you’ll kill us!’
‘God knows if you even sterilize that thing!’
‘C’mon guys, if you don’t let him practice on you, how will he ever get better?’ Kashi says as he hands Firdaus a folded note. ‘Give him a chance to make you look handsome!’
‘You were looking really handsome on TV, sir!’ volunteers one of the drivers. ‘On every single news channel last night!’
There is a general chorus of agreement.
‘Nothing like that, boss.’ Kashi, always awkward when praised, goes a little pink around the ear tips and gestures to the chaat-wallah for a plate of shakkarkandi chaat. ‘Masala tez,’ he says, as he drops down to sit on the low boundary wall. ‘Nimbu zyaada.’
‘Should we deal you in, sir?’ asks another driver. ‘Fancy a game?’
‘Just one,’ Kashi agrees, smiling. ‘My Uber will be here soon. How much is the buy-in?’
He raises his eyebrows at the steepness of the stakes, but hands a note of the correct denomination to the ‘banker’, and pops a chunk of chaat into his mouth.
It is the first slow day he’s had in months.
His client, Geeta Nagar Jhuggi Colony Dwellers, has finally been allotted a massive amount in compensation from the Supreme Court for the unauthorized demolition of their shanties thirty-six months ago. The Municipal Corporation has grudgingly coughed up the money. The judgement is a landmark one, and will set a precedent for several such cases all over the country.
Kashi fans out his cards (he’s been dealt a pure sequence and two jokers) and gives a contented sigh. How pleasant it is to sit in the winter sun with no set agenda, with this sweet bunch of guys for company, relishing
the nimbu-laced taste of smoky-sweet shakkarkandi, and thinking about how tomorrow he and Kuhu will be in Goa, finally taking a much delayed two-week holiday! Life couldn’t possibly get better.
And then it does. His phone rings.
Kashi grabs it.
‘Hey …’ His voice is a deep caress. ‘All set? Packing for Goa?’
The musical voice at the end is unusually sombre.
‘Kash, there’s a problem.’
Twenty minutes later, it is a rather tight-lipped and taut-jawed Kashi who steps into his Uber and sets off for the Delhi Turf Club.
When the grounds of the DTC roll smoothly up outside his left window, his face grows a little less stormy.
His eyes fill with a sort of resentful wistfulness – how much he had loved this place as a child! The tennis courts, the library, the pool, and later, as he grew older, the gym and the Thursday night bar scene. If somebody had told him then that there would come a time when he would go without dropping in at the Club for three whole years, that too while living four kilometres away from it, he would have just laughed in disbelief.
‘Kashi baba! After so many days!’ says the security guard after Kashi pays off the Uber and strolls in through the main gate. ‘No more long tennis?’
They have a little chat about the state of the nation, then Kashi takes the shortcut through the Lady Darlington Swimming Bath, aka the swimming pool, passing a sign that declares: NO SERVANTS, AYAHS OR GUNMEN BEYOND THIS POINT. The place is practically still practicing apartheid, he thinks, as he crosses the stuffed leopards snarling inside glass cages in the main lobby. Founded in 1844 by bored British housewives, and stormed during the mutiny of 1857, it is still living with its head completely up its own arse – more a symbolic seat of power than the Red Fort would ever be, a citadel of rulers totally disconnected from the rest of the country, who, thanks to Kaya Skin Clinic and Blonde Highlights from L’Oréal Paris, have managed to become almost indistinguishable from the British who built the place. Like the pigs walking upright at the end of Animal Farm, Kashi had told his sister fancifully when she’d called to set up this meeting.