Pretty Vile Girl

by Rickie Khosla

  Within just a couple of weeks of hiring Jazmeen, Leena Aunty had started to revel at her far-sightedness of taking in such an unknown, untested Punjabi kudi. And that too, purely on a hunch! She was delighted by the new girl’s charms. She liked that Jazmeen was impish but deferential, and hardworking but not servile. They had similar tastes in films, fashion and food. It was almost uncanny how much their preferences matched!

  Jazmeen already had a natural flair for makeup, hair and skin. Those matters had been of great interest to her even during her teens when she didn’t have a penny to indulge in them. But even then, old issues of Femina and Cosmopolitan were easy to come by, and those beauty Bibles had informally trained her on aesthetics related to personal grooming, clothes and accessories. Later on, just months before she had left Faridabad for good, formal training had come by way of a short stint at a local parlour where she had worked as an apprentice without pay. It had made Leena Aunty’s job of showing her the ropes considerably easier.

  Seeing an impeccably attired and coiffured Jazmeen around every day, with an easygoing friendliness in her demeanour and an assured deftness in her work, Leena Aunty, too, started to take more interest in her parlour. The presence of two highly presentable, eminently deft and charmingly chatty women manning the salon started to have an impact. Soon, those women in the locality, loaded with time to kill and money to burn, that Leena Aunty had always desired to see in her parlour, started to walk in. They told their friends, and business began to boom, and that made Leena Aunty very excited She had never imagined that her small business had so much potential! She wanted more.

  Thankfully, her assistant had ambitious plans for the parlour too.

  ‘There must be some way for us to increase business in a big way, don’t you think, Aunty?’ Jazmeen said one night as the two women sat at the counter counting notes.

  ‘How?’

  ‘The ladies are already quite happy with us...’ Jazmeen continued.

  ‘Yes, you are right. After all, everyone likes to look good these days.’

  ‘Yes, Aunty. Everyone likes to look good these days, not just the ladies…’

  Leena Aunty continued to count a stack of fifties but, suddenly, the pace of swiping notes from one hand to the other slowed, and then stopped entirely. She looked at Jazmeen with the gleam of a brand new idea.

  ‘I know what we should do!’ she said excitedly to her assistant.

  Within months, the large hoarding above the glass door outside was pulled down to make way for a new, shiny one that said Hair and There Unisex Salon. The parlour was now open to male clientele, as vain about hair and skin as their female counterparts. All that Leena Aunty and Jazmeen had needed to do was to cordon off some space at the back of the salon and split the place into two gender exclusive sections. They’d bought some new chairs and equipment and made the men’s section look as slick as possible, and hired a pappu named Sareen to man it. The tall and lanky boy was trained to service the new male customers when it came to their haircut, shaving and maalish needs.

  Jazmeen was available to service their eyes.

  Shailesh Bhimrao Gokhale had always been quick to grab an opportunity when he saw one. The moment he saw Jazmeen he’d wanted to grab her. He’d restrained himself so far because he already had a girlfriend—and she had a vicious temper.

  Gokhale was the first male customer at Hair and There. He looked tentative as he walked into the salon, but grew more comfortable once a more thorough visual examination of the place and its inhabitants had been made. He sat on the brand new barber’s chair and got a shave from Sareen. Gokhale then got a head massage from Jazmeen. He kept his eyes open throughout the whole thirty minutes. It wasn’t because he was insufficiently relaxed to close them, just that this way he could watch the young woman in the mirror as her breasts swayed gently with the motion of her arms.

  Gokhale and Jazmeen didn’t speak much that first day. Nor when he came back the next day, and the day after. By the fourth visit, he had become a ‘regular’ customer. He would arrive around 4 PM when the salon was virtually empty, and stay for an hour. He would get a shave from Sareen, followed by a massage from Jazmeen—different parts of the body on different days of the week. The head was attended to on the first day, followed by the neck and shoulders, then the back, finally the feet—and repeat. The timing of his daily visits was so consistent that it was only natural that he was soon invited by Leena Aunty to join them for some tea and samosas.

  ‘Would you like to have some garmaagaram tea?’ Leena Aunty asked her visitor as he was getting his toes kneaded by Jazmeen.

  ‘Yes, sure, Aunty…’ he said hesitantly. Jazmeen smiled, not taking her eyes off the calloused feet.

  ‘I was thinking for the past couple of days that since you come every day around this time, I should ask you to have some evening snacks with us,’ Leena Aunty explained, as if the invitation had been the subject of some great deliberation at the salon. ‘Our Chintu should be coming with tea and samosay shortly,’ she added.

  Chintu, a tall errand boy in dirty half-pants, timed his delivery just as the foot massage was completed.

  ‘Do you work around here?’ Leena Aunty asked politely as she, her two staff, and their most loyal male customer were sipping the sweet, brown concoction.

  ‘I have my office-cum-home at Charat Naka,’ Gokhale explained.

  ‘Business?’

  ‘Yes, trading. Also branching into real estate now.’

  That seemed to explain the 4 PM shave to Leena Aunty. Only a businessman in property dealing could want to get a shave at that stupid hour, she thought. All property dealers were crooks as far as she was concerned.

  ‘Real estate prices are already touching the sky with the new Monorail at Lal Bagh coming up soon. Dhanda is going quite well.’

  Everyone nodded. Even Sareen. Then there was silence, except for the slurping sounds that Sareen made each time his tea cup touched his lips, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone.

  ‘Have you been doing this haircutting business for long, Auntyji?’ the visitor asked.

  ‘Yes, since 1998. My father-in-law had this shop space which was lying vacant. When he passed away, I thought I should start something. I was trained by stylists from Elizabeth Arden and The Red Door, you know.’

  ‘Who Elizabeth? Like, the Queen of England who took our Kohinoor?’

  ‘No,’ she said, somewhat curtly. ‘Bloody property dealer! Uneducated buffoon!’ the woman recoiled in her head at the man’s abhorrent ignorance. Jazmeen sensed her boss’ rising anger when she saw that she had refrained from offering a second samosa to Gokhale who was holding an empty plate. She quickly stepped in to explain what Leena Aunty meant.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said the man who probably still saw nothing. ‘Pardon my ignorance, Auntyji. I am sure you can tell by just looking at my face that I have no knowledge about these things!’

  ‘Obviously!’ Leena Aunty thought. The man’s face reminded her of a depressed-looking Amol Palekar from the movie Gharonda. Suddenly she felt pity for him. Moreover, she knew better than to be outrightly rude to such a good customer.

  ‘So, what else do you do, bete? What about your wife?’

  ‘Oh no, Auntyji, no wife yet. I live by myself,’ Gokhale said. ‘Usually, work takes all my time. When I have some spare moments, I do some cooking and gardening.’

  ‘Gardening!’ Leena Aunty’s eyes lit up like a Punjabi wedding. ‘I love gardening too!’

  ‘I limit myself to bonsai and cactus. After all, where is the space to do anything more elaborate in these tiny flats of Mumbai?’ the man said sheepishly.

  ‘I have over forty different bonsai in my home garden!’

  The two mini-tree huggers looked at each other with instant and rampant adoration.

  ‘Here, beta, have some more samosay,’ she said, suddenly, piling his plate. ‘Take chutney also!’

  ‘Seems like a nice fellow,’ Leena Aunty said at the day’s closing, as they took sto
ck of their earnings.

  ‘You think so?’ Jazmeen asked. ‘He seems chaalu to me.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘He is a property dealer, Aunty. They are all chaalu.’

  ‘Arre, no, re… this one seems ok.’

  Jazmeen knew it was only their mutual adoration of gobar ka khad that had made her beautician mentor warm up to Gokhale.

  Since the salon was flourishing like never before, and Gokhale was a trader willing to dabble in all types of business opportunities, Leena Aunty and Jazmeen soon started to rely on him for stock purchases of beauty and hair supplies. The prices that the man offered were not always competitive, but Leena Aunty had taken a liking to the man who shared her passions. Gokhale became a teatime regular.

  ‘Do you still not like him?’ Leena Aunty would ask Jazmeen occasionally.

  ‘He is OK,’ Jazmeen would say.

  ‘He is young and single, too, you know?’

  ‘Haye Rabba!’

  ‘No, I am serious. Think about it!’ Leena Aunty would say excitedly. ‘Men like him go far in life.’

  ‘You are crazy, Leena Aunty!’

  The two women would laugh.

  One fine afternoon, the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation councillor representing their area was knifed. The man didn’t die, he wasn’t even seriously hurt, but the political storm that followed was ferocious and terrifying. The ruling political party the councillor belonged to waged a frenzied verbal attack on the opposition, calling them murderers and worse. The opposition party was not going to take things lying down, and they launched a full scale attack on not only the ruling party’s goons, but also the entire neighbourhood. Rampaging mobs were out on the streets. Shop owners were forced to down shutters to demonstrate their ‘solidarity’. People living in the locality were left with no option but to huddle inside their homes. Four days of ruckus was finally brought under control when scores of paid hooligans from both sides of the political divide were arrested by the police.

  Many businesses around the area had to face the wrath of the wanton mobs. There were crazy rumours about the number of people killed. The TV news shows couldn’t agree on exact counts, but the buzz on the streets was that it ran into dozens. The main and side roads of Chinchpokli were littered with the carcasses of burnt out black-and-yellow taxis. The place looked like a war zone.

  A stone thrown by an unknown assailant had managed to go through the pigeonholes in the iron shutter and crack the thick glass front of Hair and There. It hadn’t shattered the glass completely—strong duct tape might have held it together. But it looked hideous, especially at an establishment that was run for the image-conscious.

  ‘These bastards have no morals!’ Leena Aunty complained bitterly. It was the first day they’d felt confident enough to reopen their doors to customers. Business was slow. No one was in the mood to get a haircut or a massage so soon after millions of rupees had gone up in smoke all around them. Leena Aunty and Jazmeen felt that it might even be weeks before the rotund ladies of the locality felt bold enough to stop waxing their moustaches on their own.

  Gokhale at least was back the moment they were open for business again.

  ‘I wish I could just leave this awful locality,’ Leena Aunty said after taking her first bite of samosa.

  ‘This will soon pass,’ Jazmeen said in an effort to calm her.

  ‘No, but I do agree with Auntyji. This locality is not the same as it used to be,’ Gokhale said.

  ‘Hain na? Don’t such things always happen around this area only?’ Leena Aunty complained.

  ‘Why don’t we ever hear of such goondagardi in other parts of the city, in say, Navi Mumbai?’ Jazmeen asked.

  ‘That is because all the sane people have left this part of town and moved there!’ Leena Aunty said.

  ‘The future of Mumbai is in the new parts of the city that are coming up. Slowly, everyone will just move there,’ Gokhale said.

  Sareen nodded in agreement. He slurped some tea.

  After a few moments of quiet, Gokhale turned towards Leena Aunty and asked, ‘You have always wanted to expand your business. Why don’t you shift there, too?’

  ‘Shift? But what will I do with this space?’

  ‘Sell it! What else?’

  ‘Oh no, no!’ Leena Aunty said shaking her head, quite horrified. ‘This place has belonged to my late husband’s family for more than fifty years. I can’t sell it!’

  ‘Then just rent it out and buy another one in a newer part of the city.’

  ‘And which bank should I go and rob to get the money to do all that?’ she laughed. ‘At least earlier I could have just asked my daughter for money. Now even that option is gone.’ She sighed and continued after the pause, ‘Arre beta, I am only saying all this because I am angry. Anyway, I am too old to get into this whole buying and selling of property headache!’

  ‘Those are only excuses, Auntyji. Everyone is buying and selling property these days,’ Gokhale said. ‘A person as kind and talented as you deserves a great salon in a great location,’ he added.

  Everyone nodded—including Sareen.

  The samosas were devoured at an unusually leisurely pace that evening. Maybe it was because business was slow. Maybe it was because everyone was lost in thought.

  Or, maybe it was because at least one of them had started to dream of owning a spanking new salon in one of the swish new malls up north.

  On their traditional Tuesday off, Leena Aunty invited Jazmeen over for lunch at her house. She rented a pretty two-room flat with a giant balcony in a quiet little building in Sion. Jazmeen had visited a few times earlier too.

  The flat was well sized by Mumbai standards. It bore a cosy look with lots of plants, and trinkets and memorabilia of Leena Aunty and her family’s former glory days. Her late husband had been a factory manager of a motor parts company in Thane, who had met with a fatal accident on the factory floor some twenty years ago. That explained the decent pension that his widow had been receiving ever since. There had also been a daughter, but she had passed away tragically about two years ago, leaving Leena Aunty all alone in this world.

  Dozens of photos occupied all the wall space and every table top. Most featured Leena Aunty’s husband; a handsome man, bespectacled, thin, slightly stern. ‘I wonder how things might have been different had he been alive today?’ His wife had multiple styles of the exact same look in all of them—like a hundred poses of the Laughing Buddha. Together, the couple made the perfect figure ‘10’—one tall and lean, the other short and round. There weren’t many photos of the dead daughter. ‘The memory is too fresh,’ Jazmeen concluded.

  Leena Aunty hadn’t slept well for the past four nights. She had been constantly wondering about Gokhale’s idea of shifting her business to a better location. Ever since that thought had sprouted in her head, her mind and heart had been waging a battle against each other. Shifting out of Chinchpokli made perfect business sense; doing so by selling the space that the family had owned for decades was like severing a deep-seated emotional bond. Plus, a move to such a distant locality would also mean swapping her Sion flat for something closer to the new location. That meant more expenses. The turmoil of indecision was too much to bear for Leena Aunty and her poor heart—and despite trying valiantly to dismiss the entire idea, she had failed to do so.

  She needed someone else, someone rational, to help her resolve her predicament. Someone to talk to. Who better than Jazmeen, she thought. ‘I will ask her to come over to have her favourite rajma chawal and then ask her what she thinks about it.’

  Until the time Leena Aunty had asked her big question, the two women had been discussing silly matters such as how fun Farhan Akhtar’s new film was, and how strange Himesh Reshamiya had looked in a recent reality show on TV. Jazmeen knew Leena Aunty had something on her mind but was dithering over whether to let it out. In the end, unable to contain her own curiosity, she had bluntly asked Leena Aunty herself.

  ‘Now tell me what it is that you
really wanted to talk to me about today,’ she had asked point blank, not allowing the older woman to jump into yet another inane subject—possibly Akshay Kumar’s umpteenth comedy.

  ‘Oh, Jazmeen, I have not been able to sleep for days!’ Leena Aunty gabbled, relieved.

  In fact, so excited was she that not once did she stop even to draw her breath. Once she’d got it all off her chest, she told Jazmeen that she’d not wanted to discuss it at the parlour with Sareen around.

  ‘Aunty, I have been thinking about this ever since Gokhale mentioned it.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It does make sense to move to a new and more happening locality. We will have better clientele, that’s for sure.’

  The older woman looked mighty relieved. This reassurance meant that she wasn’t totally out of her mind for thinking such brazen thoughts.

  ‘Is it possible to sell the Chinchpokli place to some developer—and then lease it back from them? That way, we will have the money to buy a new place in Navi Mumbai, and still keep Hair and There going at this location too. That will give us two salons. You know, like a main outlet and a branch outlet!’

  Leena Aunty went wide-eyed at the suggestion. Jazmeen’s idea was even better than Gokhale’s. Two locations!

  ‘Is it… is it possible?’ she asked, almost breathlessly.

  ‘I don’t know. We will have to ask Gokhale.’

  ‘Yes, of course! Should I call him on his mobile now? Maybe he can join us for lunch too!’

  Gokhale joined them later in the evening. He heard the two-salon idea, eyebrows raised, surprised that it had come from the parlour ladies with no seeming exposure to property matters. ‘It’s possible,’ he said, ‘definitely possible!’ Commercial real estate prices in their area were sky high and there was no reason why they could not get a profitable deal that allowed them to develop the current location, as well as expand to a new one.

  The news was like music to Leena Aunty’s ears. The three decided to go to Chowpatty to celebrate over paanipuri and ragda patties.

  It took a few months but Gokhale eventually managed to find two NRI contacts—one was looking for a commercial shop space in South Mumbai for investment purposes and another was selling his vacant space in a new mall in Vashi. Since both the clients were based outside India, they had authorised Gokhale to conduct the deals on their behalf via a Power of Attorney.