Socialite Evenings

by Shobhaa De

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  EPILOGUE

  A CONVERSATION WITH SHOBHAA DÉ

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  SHOBHAA DÉ

  “Shocks India, and much of its literary set like no other writer today.”—The New York Times

  “The astute descriptions from her deadly pen decide who’s in and who’s out.”—Sunday Times of India

  “Her in-your-face wit and immaculately turned-out looks still captivate. . . . Like wine, she’s only getting better.”—Savvy Mumbai

  Praise for

  Bollywood Nights

  “This steamy saga also includes a bright bindi flash of spirituality that is uniquely Dé.”—PublishersWeekly

  “A very entertaining, emotional, and moving story that gives a well-rounded picture of the trappings of fame, the fragility of egos, and the effects of a less-than-perfect upbringing.”—Romantic Times

  ALSO BY SHOBHAA DÉ

  Bollywood Nights

  New American Library

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  Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Previously published in a Penguin Books India edition.

  First New American Library Printing, September 2009

  Copyright © Shobhaa Dés, 1989

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Books (USA), Inc., 2009

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-13366-8

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  FOR MY FAMILY

  CHAPTER 1

  I WAS BORN IN A DUSTY CLINIC IN SATARA, A REMOTE VILLAGE IN Maharashtra . . . Even as I type these opening words I find them unexciting. But where else do I start? It is difficult this, trying to tell the story of a life even if it’s my own. But do I really want to write about my early childhood, all my memories of which are indistinguishable from the clichéd village and small-town reminiscences one always reads about? No, I don’t think I want to do that. Bombay—it is Bombay which has shaped me into what I am now and it’s the story of Bombay I want to tell. And when I think about Bombay the person who comes to mind is Anjali and so I shall begin my narrative with her.

  My initial memory of Anjali is not unlike those first impressions celebrities are constantly dredging up on request: it is so clear in my head that it unnerves me. I can see the clothes she wore that day, the way she spoke, the way she carried herself—but the thing that transfixed my attention were her nails.

  “My precious talons,” as she would describe them every now and again. They were truly beautiful. They were, in fact, a little too perfect, or maybe I was just a little bit jealous. I would stare wide eyed at those elegantly shaped and buffed points as she waved her small-wristed arms around to illustrate some point or the other when words failed her. She did this quite often for she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. But then, I realize now, she wasn’t much of anything. Perhaps that was her problem but it’s difficult to be sure. Anjali didn’t have to be anything or anyone. She just had to be. Or so I thought then, all my disillusionment coming later. Anyway, the first time I met her she seemed invulnerable. She was still stunning to look at in her midforties. Not classically beautiful, not flashy like a movie star but straight of back and firm of shoulder. Although her nose was too prominent and the eyes far from special she carried herself well and the nails added to the memsaaby image. I should be forgiven for returning to her nails time and again for they were truly spectacular. I never saw them with the polish chipped (until she married her second husband much later and she filed her nails straight across) and I know of at least one of her lovers who was attracted to and could never get over her nails.

  She was a prominent socialite and the wife of a wealthy playboy. Like most women in her circle, she had started dabbling in fashion designing and advertising. I had just finished school and started my first term in college. And unlike many of my rich and sophisticated classmates at the time I was terribly self-conscious and awkward and resented with all my being my middle-class origins and the shabbiness of my life as the daughter of a middle-rung government official. No matter that my parents cared for me and my sisters, but subconsciously, and in the previous few years consciously, I yearned to be part of the smart and beautiful set that so many of the girls in school belonged to so effortlessly. Anjali was the portal to that world which is why I remember her so well. I’d been told that she was looking for models for a fashion show, and with what I suppose was an act of tremendous daring for the girl I was then (for though I was a “rebel” I was far from sophisticated), I decided to try out for one of the places.The meeting took place in Anjali’s tiny office near Metro cinema.

  As she put me through my paces (yes, I did feel like a nervous racehorse trying out for the big race) I remembered that she’d modeled herself—the ads for Tata Textiles and Khatau Voiles rose before my eyes as in a cold voice she asked me to walk. My nervousness threatened to overwhelm me. I even remember what I
was wearing that day—awful bell-bottom pants in white, with a funny printed shirt over them. My heels were worn out and scruffy, and my hair teased into a messy bouffant hairdo. She watched me silently as I stumbled about. I was feeling stupider by the minute. This was not at all like the small modeling jobs I’d done earlier for a lark and that Father had got so angry about. She said something to the small intense man beside her in Gujarati and he shook his head. She turned to me and asked, “Are you free to do this show? We start rehearsals next week.” Suddenly she didn’t appear very fierce. She actually smiled as she gave me her address and telephone number.

  It was closing time by the time the interview was over. We left the small office together and walked down the crowded street in search of her chauffeur. “Can I drop you somewhere?” she asked in a preoccupied sort of way. I was dying to say “Yes, back to my college, which is right down the street” but I didn’t dare. I just gaped at her satiny nails. Her fragrance washed over me, and it was then that I realized that the rich even smelt different! Her perfume was at once flowery, light and mysterious (L’Air Du Temps I discovered later). I told her I’d wait with her till her car arrived. Then suddenly there it was, an enormous, finned Impala in silver gray. It glided up like a gigantic swan negotiating its way past handcart-pullers, pedestrians, taxis and local busses. It was the perfect vehicle for her. In those days, the only other people in our already flashy city who ran around in these monsters were the movie stars. There was little contradiction in this for, in her own way, Anjali was a star.

  I watched her glide into the Impala with the mean-faced man, who I discovered later was her brother Arjun. He worked for her husband in some vague capacity. City gossip had it that this meant he was basically Abe’s boozing partner and pimp, the one who drained the Chivas, switched on the stereo and rounded up the pretty Hindu virgins whom Abe was partial to whenever he threw one of his wild parties. Anjali rolled down the window, looked at me and said sweetly, “OK, see you soon.” I felt terrific walking to college. Anjali was someone out of all those silly novellas we’d read in school come alive. I wanted to be her. But I was also afraid for she seemed to represent everything I had been brought up to believe was wrong and evil. Perhaps that was what made her so irresistible.

  When I got home that evening, I told my two older sisters about Anjali. “I met a real big memsaab today, she’s really quite a thing,” I said.

  I told my sisters everything. Ours was that kind of family. When they asked me to describe Anjali, in my slightly infatuated state I exaggerated everything. “She’s very tall and statuesque,” I said. (She wasn’t.) “She’s very sophisticated,” I added. (Again, now when I think of it, Anjali could hardly have been described as sophisticated.) “She dresses beautifully,” I went on. (She didn’t really.) “And she speaks divinely,” I gushed. (Well, her voice was sort of throaty and sexy, but she gobbled up all her words, and those that emerged were not exactly dazzling.) Details, details. My sisters had begun to look bored but I prattled on. Anjali had married Abbas “Abe” Tyabjee when she was just nineteen. It had been a little before my time, but I’d heard vaguely about the furor it had caused within her community, the conservative Jains. Anjali and Abe had met on a flight. She’d joined Air India as an air hostess like other attractive girls of her generation. She later explained, “Basically, I wanted to get out of the closed, boring, middle-class environment of my family. I wasn’t interested in studies. I wanted to be on my own, independent.To see the world, meet people, buy lovely clothes and perfumes.What else does a pretty girl at that age want anyway?”

  Abe had been years older. An experienced rake with a wild reputation. Something about Anjali’s almost frigid demeanor had attracted him. Initially, he had imagined she would be just another quick pickup. But, by the time they landed in London, Anjali had managed to hook Abe. Or he her. She told me that part of her life after we became friends many months later.

  I remember telling Mother about her one day.We were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea. Mother was preoccupied with what to cook for Father’s dinner. It never mattered what the children’s preferences were. It was always him.We were left out of their little world. If not left out entirely, then certainly kept carefully on the fringes. Mother gave Father priority, whether it was at mealtimes or anytime else. Whatever little time was left over from looking after his needs was then almost absentmindedly distributed among the three of us. Father rarely spoke directly to us. Anything that he wanted to be said was always routed through Mother except when our transgressions required chastizing. Then punishment was swift and direct. In retrospect, I would say he wasn’t an unkind or cruel man.Whatever he did to us was done in the belief that he was bringing us up right. Interestingly, we didn’t even resent this. It was just the way things were. And even though the anger and hostility surfaced in time, thinking of it I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier if I had lived the way Mother did. She didn’t like it at all when I told her about Anjali. She frowned and said, “Who’s this woman? She seems much too old for you.” A strange remark that, considering we weren’t discussing a future husband. But a revealing one. I’ve always held that Mother is psychic without realizing it. I tried to describe Anjali to her, carefully avoiding all those areas I knew would alarm her. She wasn’t convinced. “Father will be very upset if he hears about this woman. Have you taken his permission before agreeing to model for her? And what is this fashion show business? Girls from decent families do not cheapen themselves by going in for such things. Hasn’t your father already got angry with you for those ads you appeared in? I will not take any responsibility for this.You tell him. Don’t involve me. Later he will blame me if anything happens.”

  As it turned out, he did blame her for whatever happened. But that wasn’t new. He always blamed her for the children’s mistakes.

  I began by saying I was born in the country. That I was, but I grew up in a succession of small towns or mofussils as Father called them. This didn’t affect me as much as it did my sisters. Perhaps I was too young to notice.To me it didn’t matter whether the orderlies (called “oddlies”) spoke Telugu or Bhojpuri. Whether there was a chaprassi on a cycle to take us children to school or a tonga. All that mattered was the long, hot afternoons of guileless play with companions of my age—mainly the children of servants. What joy there was in the exploring of the groves outside the compound or clambering up neem trees! Happiness was in finding a bulbul’s untidy nest in a low bush and raiding it for speckled eggs. Or playing “soldier soldier” with a young Nepali boy in our unruly garden, or tormenting Billy, the neighbor’s pet cat.

  The move to the big city came at just the right time—for me but not for the rest of the family. Looking back, I imagine Father was steeped in his midlife crisis, Mother was premenopausal and my older sisters were plain scared. Not surprising really, for we were country bumpkins transplanted for the first time into the imperson alities of big city life. We had never stepped into an elevator before, nor seen a double-decker bus. Bombay was mind-boggling and I loved it.Which seems strange now considering we arrived when the city is supposed to be at its most unattractive: midmonsoon. But the moment we stepped out of the filthy train and on to the slushy platform at Bombay Central, I knew I’d finally found “my” city. Dirty, overcrowded, impersonal and entirely wonderful! Everything fascinated me, including the rowdy railway porters in fire-engine-red uniforms.We got jostled and pushed around as Father went in search of our luggage in the brake van.There was a junior officer waiting to receive us. Mother had on her irritated face (she loathed change—any change, and still does) while my sisters stood around looking terror-stricken, clutching their quaint, rustic frocks to themselves. I couldn’t wait to get out of the station and hit town, though I wonder what my expression for my urge would have been then.

  We were to stay in a crummy “transit flat” in Ghatkopar while the allotted one was being readied for us. In those days Ghatkopar was a wilderness. Arid hills in the distance, smoky factories
belching chemicals, mosquito-ridden swamps and kutcha roads. Not much of anything. But it was Bombay!That was enough for me. Everybody else hated the place. Mother grumbled constantly about everything—no servants, no water, no furniture, electricity cuts, dirty kitchen, unfamiliar language, and worst of all, unfriendly neighbors. Father was too busy trying to organize school admissions for all of us and finding his feet in his new job. My sisters cried a lot and demanded to go back to their old school and friends. I can see why now, though I resented it then, their admission tests to the city’s “convent schools” must have been terribly traumatic although they went through them bravely without knowing a word of English. I don’t know whether the “government quota” did it but all of us managed to find places in good schools. Within a year, I could eavesdrop on my sisters conversing fluently in a language which had been alien to them not so long ago. My own “progress” from childish rhymes in my mother tongue to “baa baa black sheep” was equally swift. Because I was so young and had been pushed straight into the world of English medium schools, I escaped the “vernac” tag and strange English accent that plagued my sisters forever. My extreme youth also checked my dying over things like shabby clothes and re-heeled shoes.

  I took to my new school and thankfully my new school took to me.While my sisters preferred to concentrate on their percentages, I preferred to discover Bombay and Bombayites. While my sisters earned, every now and again, grunts of approval from Father for their high marks, I never did make the grade.

  I was the only child with a discipline problem both at home and at school. In the house it manifested itself in small things—not jumping at the sound of Father’s voice booming out some command. Not putting my stuff away after school. Leaving a dirty thali on the dining table, whistling in the bathroom, backcombing and teasing my hair, refusing to fetch trays of tea for boring visitors, being cheeky with relatives and, mainly, not cowering in the presence of “elders” as the morose battalion of uncles was called.