Socialite Evenings

by Shobhaa De

  “No—I don’t know anything about this party,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter. What happened there? What were you wearing? Tell us everything—and make it fast. I have to buy shaving cream.”

  “Is that fucking shaving cream more important to you than my future?” Anjali asked.

  I spoke soothingly and she seemed mollified enough. Besides, it was obvious, she was dying to tell the story. She’d gone to the party reluctantly, since she had a migraine. But the Mehra wife phoned and insisted. Anjali wore her sequined black chiffon (“The one Abe used to adore me in”), slapped on lots of glitter dust (“even between the titties”), wore her favorite diamonds (“my first Cartier set—remember it?”), and went migraine and all. She’d expected it to be a smallish affair, but as it turned out, there were over a hundred people. As she had been chatting with some impoverished princeling, a man nearby who had obviously been overhearing their conversation (“Such silly stuff, you know, who’s sleeping with whom, and all that”) said, “A refill?” Without looking up, she had held out her glass and said, “Yes please, but forget about the olive.”

  “Any other instructions?” the voice had asked politely.

  “Yes—no ice either.”

  “You’ve got it,” the voice had replied and moved off. It was only when she saw him walking back toward her with the drink that she had really noticed him. (“Nothing special. Average height. Slightly paunchy. Nice hands. Firm mouth—you know what an average Punjabi businessman looks like.”)

  “My name’s Bhandari. Kumar Bhandari. I already know yours. Pleased to meet you, Anjali. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”

  Anjali had felt slightly confused. “Do I know you? Have we met. No, of course not, you just said so.”

  “May I?” he had asked, before sitting down beside her. The princeling taking the hint had picked up his wine and walked away.

  “Lovely sari,” he’d said.

  “Nice cuff-links,” she’d answered.

  “Are we going to spend the rest of the evening complimenting each other like school children? Come on, why don’t we go get ourselves a decent drink somewhere.”

  “What shall I do with my car?”

  “Sell it. I have a feeling we aren’t going to need it in future.”

  “Is that a proposal?”

  “Thought you’d never guess.Yes—it is. Do you accept?”

  “You must be insane. But I accept your offer to go and get ourselves a drink.”

  They had landed up at the Café Royale. Kumar had said, “I love fondue. Do you?”

  “Cheese, yes. Meat, no,” Anjali had replied.

  “Then cheese it shall be.With a crisp wine.” It had extended into a long evening. He’d told her about himself. He’d been married twice. The first wife with their two daughters lived in Madras. The second one with their son lived with him at Juhu. “So, you aren’t divorced. Do you go proposing to every single woman you run into?”

  “No, not every single—just the odd one now and again.”

  “What if I’d taken you up on it and said yes instantly?”

  “I’d have been delighted and worked toward a quick divorce.”

  “Are you rich?”

  “Sufficiently.”

  “What do you mean by that? Can you afford me? I have very expensive tastes.”

  “Yes, I noticed. And I think I can.”

  “Your Mercedes isn’t the latest model. It’s at least five years old.”

  “This one is for slumming.The other two are reserved for driving the likes of you around.”

  “What about your wife—the current one?”

  “What about her? She’s a sweet person, but I’m bored. I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life with her.” And so it had gone with Anjali questioning him closely. (“The only thing I didn’t ask him was the number of his Swiss bank account. And that too, only because I forgot.”) He had remained candid and amused throughout. “I’d love to see you again,” he had told her. “And the next time I’ll bring the 280 S.”

  “Make it a Bentley—and you’re on,” she’d said—or claimed to. Anyway, they had embarked on a dizzy courtship, which included a quick trip to Mauritius. He was generous and attentive, plus “hon orable” in his intentions—he had stuck steadfastly to his marriage proposal, even though Anjali had been quite prepared to settle for an affair.

  “What kind of a woman are you?” he had asked her, when on their first evening out, after the fondue dinner and two bottles of St. Emilion 1978, she had saucily asked him—“Your place or mine?”

  Indignantly she’d replied, “Just an honest one.Why? What’s your problem?”

  And then Kumar had sprung his first big surprise at her. “I don’t want to go to bed with you. No, please listen. This isn’t a rebuff. It’s just that I value you too much. I’d rather wait till we’re married. Now, be a good girl, wipe that fondue off your face and I’ll take you for a great big orange juice at the 1900s . . . come on.”

  Both Ritu and I snorted when she told us this. Then I asked her, “Are you still pure and untouched? Has he broken his vow of chastity or not?”

  “If you’re asking whether we’ve been to bed yet, the answer is, we haven’t.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been out with the guy night after night. You’ve been on a vacation with him—and you haven’t screwed?? This is too much! It sounds fishy. Are you sure he’s OK? I mean—can he get it up?”

  “How crass you’ve become. Of course he’s OK. He’s just sentimental and old-fashioned.”

  “What do you do then—hold hands—or isn’t that allowed?”

  “Yes—we hold hands and kiss—soul kiss—and all that . . . but nothing more.”

  “This is the silliest story I’ve heard in years. At your age and his. It’s almost obscene. And unnatural.”

  “Look who’s talking. My! My! What has happened to Little Red Riding Hood suddenly? Seeing too many wolves lately? Besides he isn’t ninety-five or something. He’s fiftyish.”

  “Dentures? Or haven’t you found even that out?”

  “You disgust me.” Anjali stuck to this version, while Ritu and I listened in disbelief. Kumar had taken her to the 1900s where he did order this great big Orange Julienne with lots of crushed ice. He had asked her to dance, held her close and whispered, “I like your body. We fit well into each other, I knew we would.”

  Great, we told her. Just terrific. But what about the wife? Mimi? Abe? Anjali’s parents?

  “My parents . . . you mean, ba? She’s happy enough. Her first reaction was, ‘Thank God, he’s not another mussulman.’ That’s all she was interested in. Mimi was more practical. When I told her the whole story, she said, ‘Look, Mama, it is your life. I can’t tell you what to do with it. But if he could dump two wives just like that—he could as well dump you in the future. But if this decision makes you happy, it’s fine by me.’ Abe—oh, I don’t know about him. I went over to break the news. He was pretty plastered. That cow was around. He looked blearily at me and said, ‘God bless you! Inshallah, everything will turn out OK.’Then, out of habit, he asked, ‘Do you need any money?’”

  “When did he give you the ring?” Ritu asked her. Anjali caressed it lovingly and said, “Oh, that was really romantic. One day, he arrived early to collect me. I forget where we were going. In my rush, I’d forgotten to wear my own ring. He looked at my hands in the car and said, ‘What’s this? Naked fingers? Let’s go get you something glittering.’”

  I was instantly suspicious. “Anjali, confess. Are you sure you didn’t plan this?”

  “I swear I didn’t. Don’t believe me? I swear on Mimi—I’m not so calculating.”

  Well, for a “spontaneous” buy, it was quite a whopper. A three-carat, flawless marquise. Even after listening to the whole story, I remained skeptical.

  “This not-going-to-bed business—I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.Why don’t you tell him it will lead to hormonal imbalance or something?”
r />   “Do you think I don’t want to? I’m dying to make love. But he is determined to do it his way.”

  “Next you’ll tell us he has planned a special deflowering ceremony on the wedding night, complete with a flower-decorated bed and shehnais. What happened in Mauritius? Did you have separate rooms and were you wearing a chastity belt?”

  “It was understood that we’d abstain, so I didn’t have to do anything.”

  “You mean you slept on this springy king-size bed in a seductive negligee after dousing yourself with Passion and nothing happened? This is getting filthy. Are you sure the guy isn’t a eunuch?”

  “Don’t be idiotic. Why would I want to marry a eunuch?”

  “Well, a eunuch with three Mercedeses and a bungalow in Juhu, is better than a down-and-out stud, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That’s a cheap comment, but I’ll ignore it. OK. Listen to this—I know he’s not a eunuch because I have felt him.”

  “Oh sweet lover of God!You’ve FELT him? What’s going on? Are you guys playing ‘back-to-school’ or what? Where did you feel him, for Christ’s sake? Don’t tell me you go parking à la Sandra Dee?”

  “I don’t have to do that—I can feel him against me when he holds me in his arms. Or when we’re in bed together. I’m telling you—it’s OK. He’s all right, the only thing that worried me was when he once let slip, ‘In five years time I’m going to need a snake-charmer to get it up.’ ”

  Ritu interjected, “I’d make very sure, if I were you. How do you know that what you are feeling is really him? I mean, he could have stuck a rubber hose into his briefs like Mick Jagger does.”

  “You know what I think?” Anjali finally exploded. “I think you women are sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. And I’m sick of this conversation. Let’s get out of here. Rubber hose! Honestly! How disgusting can you get! Anyway, remember you said all this about my future husband.”

  “But do you love him?” I asked as a parting shot. Anjali was honest for once. “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  She got married six months or so later. I hardly saw her during this period. She was in such a flurry, getting her trousseau together. She preferred to take Nisha with her on these shopping expeditions. Or even Mimi, who was looking even more emaciated and anorexic than ever.

  We received the card inviting us to the wedding and a champagne reception at Kumar’s Juhu residence. I was pretty excited, but my husband wasn’t.

  “Do you really want to go?” he asked grumpily.

  “What do you mean? Of course, I want to go! Anjali is a good friend of mine.”

  “Friend?” he snorted derisively. “Friend? That’s a laugh. Anyway, if you want to go that desperately, I suppose we’ll go, but don’t expect me to hang around for hours and hours.”

  I rang up Anjali to ask her about details—what she was going to wear and so on. She sounded very happy and surprisingly relaxed. “My first Hindu marriage,” she said, “at last I’ll feel really, really married. You know how weird the whole thing was with Abe. I was too young, my family wasn’t with me, and I felt so out of it—you know, the nikaah and all that. Plus, I was dying of guilt marrying a Muslim. It didn’t really feel like a wedding at all.This time, I’m going to have the works, including a Vedic ceremony, our traditional Gujarati sari, mehendi, haldi, everything.”

  I felt very glad for her and touched by her enthusiasm. I still hadn’t met her Kumar. Perhaps after the disastrous Nanking lunch, she’d decided to keep him away and maybe she was right. I still felt prejudiced, but there was no hostility. I was genuinely glad for Anjali and wished her well. She told me about his divorce. “It was easy. His wife was told—cooperate and you’ll be well looked after. Act tough, and you’ll be on the streets.” Sounded ominous and awful, but I didn’t say a thing. I quizzed her about the rest of his family. “The old girl is quite something. Do you know she guessed everything much before he told her? She saw me at a party in their home soon after I met him at the Mehras and apparently told her son, ‘That woman in white—you’re in love with her aren’t you? I knew it the moment I saw her walk into the room.Your face changed immediately.’”

  “Does that mean she approves?”

  “Oh yes—she’s quite sweet, actually. I don’t think she was crazy about my predecessors. She loves the children, though, and will miss little Bobby—but c’est la vie.” Anjali’s little “frenchisms” were still there. I liked that.

  Anjali’s wedding made it to the pages of a city glossy as the “Event of the Fortnight.” It was quite spectacular. Mr. Mercedes-Benz had obviously gone to town on the production. The entire street leading up to his palatial marble palace on the beach was strung with tiny lights.The marble chips in the driveway had been shampooed for the occasion and were gleaming white. There were “instant palm trees” in the garden—hauled in a couple of days earlier by his company’s heavy-duty cranes and a special police bandobast had been organized with extra traffic police on duty for almost a mile down the road. The enormous swimming-pool had been emptied out and resembled a brightly lit womb. This was supposed to be the discotheque for the night. All in all, pretty weird. While Cyndi Lauper wailed in the blue-tiled pool disco, live shehnai players greeted guests at the entrance with wails of a different sort.Traditional marigold garlands were strung up over all the doors, while enormous western-style flower arrangements wilted in strategic places under strong spotlights. Anjolie Ela Menon hung cheek-by-jowl with vague European painters on the wall, and an obscene-sized Husain dominated the living room where a huge bar had been rigged up. A Vithal bull stood in a neglected corner of the garden.

  I watched women on tall, thin heels wobbling their way through the marble chips. Each time they took a step, they sank four inches into the ground. Champagne and feni. Dahiwadas and caviar. Like I said—weird.

  I went in search of Anjali and found her in one of the rooms on the second level. She was looking dazzling.

  “Wow!” I said, giving her a hug. “The radiant bride herself! So what’s this big bridal routine at your age!”

  “Sweetheart, I’m not eighty yet you know.” She gave me a beseeching look. “Spare me your sarcasms, at least on this day.You can go back to bitching tomorrow.”

  Even then, I couldn’t resist asking, “Did you do it last night? Or have you reserved it for tonight?”

  “Ssh—everyone can hear you,” she hissed.

  “Quick—tell me.”

  “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  “Which means you haven’t. Are you sure he’s up to it?”

  “Go away!”

  “But I’ve just arrived.” Just then someone came up to hug her. I stood at a distance to take in the details. Anjali—I had to hand it to her—had chutzpah. There she was decked out in an elaborate Rajasthani ghagra in gold tissue. It was intricately embroidered all over and must have weighed a ton. She had the odhni demurely over her head, and her face was made up like a Bengali bride’s. I felt yucky looking at her. And I felt even yuckier when I saw Mimi standing miserably in the shadows with a pinched smile on her face. I went and put my arms around her.

  “Isn’t Mom looking fabulous?” she asked me.

  “Sure she is. So are you Mimi,” I said to her.

  “You don’t have to be kind,” she said quickly. “I know I’m looking awful. My mascara’s smudged and the lip gloss is all over my teeth.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “Here, take my hankie. Or let me fix it for you.”

  She was in what was the hot outfit that season—a bhopali. It didn’t suit her at all. For one, she had bleached and permed her hair on her last visit to LA. She looked like a Mexican waitress at a Tex Mex drive-in. Poor Mimi. At that moment, I felt intensely protective. She held my hand and said, “Did she ask you before she agreed to marry Kumar uncle?”

  “Well, she told me, Mimi. But she didn’t ask me. Why should she? I’m not her mother or someone.”

  “No, I just wondered whether she’d asked. I’d told her to.�
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  “Really. Why?”

  “You’re the only sensible friend she has. And I was sure you’d tell her not to go ahead with it.”

  “No, Mimi. I didn’t tell her anything of the kind. In any case, she’d already made up her mind when I found out.”

  “Do you think she’ll be happy?”

  “Let’s hope so, Mimi. For her sake.”

  I left Mimi standing near a French window, clutching the drapes and still gazing at her mother.

  Even as the pool filled with gyrating bodies, people kept arriving in mobs. Michael Jackson screamed “Beat It,” in his inimitable falsetto. That’s what I felt like doing. I went looking for the husband . . . and caught sight of the bridegroom instead. He was wearing a well-cut sherwani with wonderful minakari buttons. I suppose this was in keeping with her Rajasthani gear, for he sported a leheriya saafa on his head. I must say I was quite surprised to see that he was almost presentable. Tallish, not as paunchy as Anjali had made him out to be, and altogether dishy. He was wearing far too much jewelry even for a bridegroom, but I pardoned the excess, thinking the poor man must’ve got carried away and if not on his wedding day, then when? He was standing amidst a cluster of men knocking back their drinks with exaggerated gusto. Punjabi high spirits, I figured. Out of this bunch, my attention was drawn to a dark-complexioned young man standing beside Kumar with a scowl on his face. What seemed odd was the manner in which he hung on to Kumar’s right hand, refusing to release it even when the other wanted to light a cigarette. Perhaps he’s a young brother or nephew, I thought.

  I strolled into the dining room where a stupendous spread awaited the guests.The sight of all that food made me ill. Kumar had gone overboard with the ordering—mixed cuisine in great big heaps sat all over the long tables. Chinese, Mughal, Gujarati, Polynesian, Continental. Everything seemed far too opulent, almost vulgar. I recognized several faces—movie stars, the Juhu Pack, businessmen, socialites, the usual bunch that drifts from one party to the next, often climbing into Airbusses to make it to Delhi and back, if the host was important enough. In fact, there were quite a lot of out-of towners present that evening, including a clutch of Pakistani cricketers. Someone was talking about a laser show Kumar had organized the previous night. I overheard snatches of conversation referring to the stag party the week before.