‘You fed him with a dropper?’
Samar stood up now. ‘The vet said he might resist his food, so I had to keep at it. Besides, Mr Ward-Davies was a gift from my friend, Zaira; I wasn’t about to let her down either.’
Karan tried not to let the astonishment he felt swim to his face. Having written off Samar Arora as a bit of a poser, it was now difficult, and annoying, to imagine him sitting up nights nursing a convalescent puppy. Besides, he thought edgily, there’s only so much time for small talk; the light before gloaming was abundant, revealing, perfect for portraiture. It was time to get on with the shoot. ‘Do you need to get ready?’
Samar grinned. ‘I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘No make-up?’ Karan could not bear to remind Samar he was bare-chested, clad only in a white towel, his wet hair plastered over his head. What sort of a photograph would that make?
‘I don’t use make-up. Why hide the scars I’ve paid for with time?’ Samar said. ‘My only regret is that you’re photographing me when I’m old and ugly; you should have seen me when I was young and ugly.’
‘You are young! You’re all of twenty-eight; you have only three years on me.’ Karan undid the lens cap. ‘You’re just being falsely modest.’
‘Never,’ Samar said, his hand placed solemnly on his chest, ‘I’m merely modestly false, but you shouldn’t take it personally.’
Over the next twenty minutes the only audible sound was Karan’s shutter release giving off staccato clicks. Looking through his viewfinder, Karan found it difficult not to admire Samar—his muscular, supple arms, the narrow, boyish waist, the melancholy neck with its classical arch. But the man’s real beauty hides in unobvious places, he thought: the ear lobes, the deep, wry indent on his chin, the listening eyes. A certain quiet sense of ineffable loss danced around Samar’s good looks; it gave him an unexpected, haunting dignity, an air of remorse, depth as well as peculiarity. Karan hoped to capture this elusive mood in his photographs.
In a while, Karan paused to change a filter. Samar sat by the pool with Mr Ward-Davies on his lap, his legs lazily weaving the undulating ripples of blue; he looked thoroughly bored, but he was being a mighty sport about the shoot. Karan stole an occasional glance at his curious subject and thought of the two stories Natasha had told him about Samar, unsubstantiated and embellished, that seemed to bolster the glittering haze of scandal and enigma around the pianist.
At the age of eighteen, Samar had famously ‘divorced’ his mother. Mrs Arora, an ambitious, embittered widow who had pawned her jewels to put Samar through Juilliard, had been devastated by her son’s rejection and in her resentment had tainted his name in the press to the point that it isolated him from the rest of his family. Initially restrained in his response, Samar had later clarified to the press that his mother had objected vehemently to the arc of his sexual longings; she had gone so far as to suggest that he undergo conversion therapy. He had disowned his mother, he revealed, not because she had suggested that he put himself through electric shocks and hormonal medication but because she had seen him as a sexual being more than as a human being, and as her son. For anyone, particularly his mother, to define him by what he did in bed was so repugnant to him that he had chosen to give her notice.
The other nugget of gossip concerning Samar was his inexplicable departure from the world of music. At a concert in Boston he had got up mid-recital and walked off the stage, leaving his audience bewildered. He later claimed to have stepped out for a bit of fresh air when ‘the music had run out’. Critics, denied the right to write off Samar, never treated his retreat seriously, assuming he would make a comeback. But Samar gave up the lease on his shotgun apartment in Brooklyn, packed his bags and left for his home city, where he bought the last cottage on Worli Seaface and lived off the royalties his records aggregated each year.
Just when Karan was about to ask Samar if he was ready to recommence the shoot, he heard the French doors of the living room being thrown open and saw a woman running toward Samar, her red gypsy skirt flaring about her, green glass bangles jostling the length of her arms.
Samar jumped to his feet and walked forward briskly to receive her. She embraced him with such force that he almost lost his balance. He wrapped his arms around her and ran his hands gently down the length of her back. Then he led her away from the pool to the shade of a towering, leafy almond tree in the far corner of the lawn, where they stood as one in a tight embrace, lost even to themselves.
Taking a closer look, Karan was astonished to see that the woman in Samar’s arms was his best friend, Zaira. He was tempted to click them right away, in that ineluctable moment of fragile affinity, but he knew that certain kinds of photographs were best not taken; they were a violation not of subject but of sentiment.
‘Don’t worry…everything will be fine.’
Zaira, breathing in gasps through her mouth, gripped Samar tightly. ‘You can’t even begin to imagine what I’ve been through.’
‘Well, tell me then.’
‘It was awful…’ A sob caught in her throat.
‘You’ll be fine. You’re here now. I’m with you, Zaira.’ He felt her heart pulsating against his chest.
‘He tried to kill me today!’
‘What!’
‘He went for me, Samar…he really did…’
‘Are you talking about Malik?’
Zaira’s wracking sobs came in the way of her reply, and Samar just held her in his arms. He found it difficult to believe that Zaira’s stalker could have gone to such gruesome lengths. In the past when they had discussed Malik’s mad love for her they had done so in jest; he had been for them the crazed cliché hanging on to the train of her gown. After all, what actress in Bollywood did not endure the undesirable privilege of being the object of a stalker’s tainted attention?
‘I never thought he could get down and dirty, Zaira.’
‘Hasn’t he flashed all the signs before?’
‘I suppose you’re right, but I think he’s got a lot crazier after his father’s landslide victory.’
Malik Prasad, the man in question, was the son of Shri Chander Prasad, Hon’ble Minister of State for Labour and Employment, a top-ticket politician with the Hindu People’s Party. Malik ran an event management company, Tiranga Inc., which specialized in taking Bollywood stars for dance performances to Canada. Many moons ago, when approached by Malik, Zaira had rejected his offer to participate in a show in Toronto and had believed, naively enough, that her demurral would end their communication. But this was not to be. Malik started calling her at odd hours of the night; she found him present at every restaurant she went to eat at; every now and again she received love poems by Ghalib, scribbled in his illegible, hick writing, tucked into the folds of her fan mail. Polite pleas, blatant disregard, rude rebuffs—nothing seemed to drive the message home.
But when Zaira found blood stains on the door of her Juhu apartment one morning, after Malik had spent the entire night rapping incessantly on the door, she knew the situation was hurtling out of hand. Sure enough, the following week, Malik got plastered and called her early one morning, spitting abuses and threatening to thrash her to an inch of her life. She appealed to the court for a restraining order. However, Malik’s father was too well connected to break into sweat over a measly police complaint. The case went to trial, but Zaira lost.
The judge’s dismissal of her case—on grounds of insufficient evidence—emboldened Malik. Certain that his father would cover his ass no matter what he did, Malik now went after Zaira with every card in the whacko book.
On the day Karan was at Samar’s cottage for the photo shoot, Malik had scaled new heights of lunacy. For much of the day, Zaira had been filming with the sumptuous leading man of the day, Shah Rukh. The director was wrapping up the last scene for the day: Shah Rukh and Zaira were to roll around in a bed, making out to a raunchy A.R. Rahman number. Just as the two of them had got into position on the bed, and the director was issuing his final instructions, Malik had sto
rmed on to the set. He looked like a bull on the rampage, his eyes watery and red, his hands lunging out at whoever was in his way. He was calling out for Zaira and shouting invectives—saala, ma ki lauda—at Shah Rukh. Before long, he was caught by three security guards and deposited outside the film set. But Malik was not to be outdone. He got into his jeep and stepped on the pedal. He wanted to total the sets from which he had been so insultingly banished. Within an hour, a full report of Malik’s sinister spree emerged: The gaffer who had tried to stop Malik had broken his wrist in the effort. The director’s chair had been flattened like filo pastry. The dummy doors had been split in half. A gramophone, having fallen off the ledge of the coffee table on which it had been placed, lay on the ground like a plucked honeysuckle. A make-up artist had stumbled over the rubble and tangles of wires and hit her head against a broken beam.
Fortunately, Shah Rukh had lost no time in dragging his leading lady into his trailer, refusing to let her be alone while Malik was on the loose. The stars were undoubtedly in Zaira’s favour, as it was later discovered that Malik had rammed her trailer so many times with the rear end of his jeep that it was left worthy only of scrap. When the director surveyed the wrecked trailer and remarked rather coarsely that ‘Zaira could have become sandwich stuffing’, she had fled the set and headed straight for Samar’s house.
Now, in Samar’s presence and in familiar surroundings, Zaira’s composure was restored, and the two of them walked toward the pool hand in hand.
But Zaira stopped in her tracks when she spotted Karan. ‘Who’s he?’ she whispered agitatedly.
‘A sweet kid who works for the India Chronicle,’ Samar explained, turning to her.
‘The same one who took those snaps of you tap dancing?’
Samar nodded in affirmation. ‘Relax. Don’t go off and have kittens, doll.’
‘He’s got his camera, Samar! And I’ve just had a crying jag…’ She swiped her cheeks with her palms to clean the dirty mascara stains.
‘He’s not going to tell on you.’
‘He’ll read about Malik and me tomorrow morning. D’you think he took a picture of us? Will he babble to the magazine? I’d hate for anyone to know that I came here and cried and…’ A jangled light shone from her eyes.
Samar stood, arms akimbo. ‘Just look at him, Zaira. Does he look like he gives a shit?’
She glanced over Samar’s shoulder: Karan was busy goofing around with Mr Ward-Davies. ‘Maybe not,’ she had to admit. ‘But you never know when someone will squeal on you.’
‘You’re being paranoid because too many journalists have given you the short end of the stick; believe me, this boy is not one of them.’
‘You talk like you’ve known him for years.’ She frowned.
‘Trust my instinct, and be quiet now because we’re close enough for him to hear us.’
Karan looked up to find Zaira standing next to him, her hand extended. ‘Hi, I’m Zaira.’
Karan continued to kneel beside the dog even as he introduced himself; he was sure if he stood up to shake hands with her he would betray how starstruck he was.
‘I’m so sorry…I botched up your shoot, didn’t I?’
Karan nodded, now forced to get to his feet. Deserted by language, he was smiling foolishly at her. In her flare-hem gypsy skirt and appliqué camisole, she looked like a runaway princess. ‘Something awful happened earlier on and I…’
‘But it’s all under control now,’ Samar cut in.
‘I’m glad for that.’ Karan lifted his camera, as if to remind Samar that he was here on an assignment.
Samar gave Karan a brief, discounted account of Malik’s latest act of insanity.
‘I’m sorry you had to go through that.’ Karan turned to give her a sympathetic look.
Zaira examined his face, tidy and focussed. A touch of asceticism ran through his solid good looks like a vein in marble. Her heart, in his presence, felt like a dark, beautiful box whose mysterious, troubling contents she wanted to upend at his feet.
‘I suppose you would like to get on with the shoot?’ Samar said.
‘Only if you want.’
‘If we don’t shoot now you won’t make your deadline.’
Karan nodded. He looked at the sky; dusk giving in to night would soon leave them with little light. ‘Yes.’
‘Then we should get on with the job,’ Samar said.
‘Sooner rather than later. The light’s perfect and won’t be around too long.’ He panicked suddenly, remembering Samar’s pictures from Gatsby, rendered useless because of the lack of proper light; for these photos to suffer the same fate would be criminal.
‘Yes,’ Zaira said. ‘I have been guilty of interrupting already. Why don’t I go in and wait for you until…’ She turned toward the cottage but Samar caught her elbow.
‘How about the two of us?’ he asked Karan. ‘Would it work?’
‘Are you mad!’ Zaira cried. ‘Why would Mr Seth want to photograph me with you?’
‘You’re playing hard to get because your goop’s a goner. Stop being a diva!’
Zaira could not help blushing. ‘If I’m a diva, what does that make you?’
‘Oh, go on, Zaira!’ Samar cajoled. ‘Say yes. If you do, I’ll get us some fizzy water and make it all better.’ He kissed her shoulder. ‘Mr Seth won’t mind at all…’
Karan grinned as he loaded more film into his camera. ‘I really don’t mind at all.’
3
‘I should get going now,’ Karan said, putting his camera back in its case. Evening was giving way to night. Mosquitoes danced over the privet flanking the path leading back to the cottage. ‘Thanks for your time; it was a wonderful shoot. I’ll make copies of the pictures and send them to you.’
‘Won’t you come inside for a Bellini?’ Samar gestured toward his cottage.
‘Yes,’ Zaira said. ‘Please do.’
Karan glanced curiously at the house. Perhaps Samar’s house, in keeping with his persona, would be baroque, teeming with antiques and satin upholstery, decadent and lavish and extravagant. Then he looked at Zaira, and her presence made Samar’s offer all the more inviting.
‘I don’t want to intrude—’ Karan swung his camera case on to his shoulder.
‘There’s no need to be so formal,’ Samar said sternly. ‘And certainly not now, after you’ve seen me in my swimming trunks.’
Karan laughed. ‘Well, then, I’d love to have a drink.’
Entering through the French doors, Karan stepped on to a cool cement floor of brick-red geru. Tropical palms in cane barrels shaded a large wicker chair. On one side of the rectangular room was a white couch with a marvellously battered air. Glass votives with tea lights on tables and in niches in the wall illuminated the room with a cognac hue and cast scurrying shadows on the ceiling. There was a neat, elegant pile of books on art and music on the coffee table and a clutter of silver glasses on an antique tray.
Zaira swung open the door to the kitchen.
An uneven black kadapa counter ran the length of the kitchen. A circular table of Burma teak, with a deep polish and shaky legs, stood in the centre; here, Karan positioned himself on a sturdy chair with a high bamboo back and watched his hosts go about their tasks. He was grateful for the monastic calm of the cottage, its profound simplicity; he had not expected Samar to live in such understated quarters.
‘Shouldn’t you report Malik?’ Samar asked Zaira as he served olives and crackers on a long taupe ceramic platter.
Zaira, who was uncorking a bottle of Prosecco, glared at Samar. ‘I’m not sure, after last time…’ she said
‘Aw, c’mon Zaira!’ He poured Cipriani peach base into three champagne flutes.
Zaira slumped into the chair next to Karan’s. When Samar put the drink down before her she took a few sips and sat back, folding her hands across her chest. ‘You know what they’ve done in the past,’ she reminded him. ‘Had me doing the rounds of the trial court, and then the bloody judge axed my case!’
Zaira was uneasy discussing Malik in front of Karan. What if he were to repeat the conversation verbatim to a gossip columnist at the India Chronicle? Or worse, inflate its inane particulars for Mid-Day? Hoping Samar would drop the matter, she said vaguely, ‘Past experience is an indicator of future result.’
‘Don’t be such a quitter,’ Samar scolded. He turned to Karan and noticed him lick his lower lip after tasting the drink; probably his first Bellini, he thought.
‘We’re talking about Minister Prasad’s son here, in case you’ve forgotten,’ Zaira said. Why did Samar ignore the fact that Malik, using his father’s influence, had breezed his way out of numerous court cases already?
Presently, the door opened. A lean man with blue eyes and a tonsured skull peeked in gingerly.
Karan recognized Leo from the night at Gatsby, when he had offered his hand to Samar after the impromptu tap dancing session had come to an unceremonious end.
Leo looked uncertain about interrupting them but Samar extended his arms and murmured an affectionate welcome.
‘Just caught a news flash on the idiot box,’ Leo said, his eyes on Zaira. ‘Is it true about Malik and you?’
‘Oh, I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘A bit of a run-in with “my beau”.’
‘I hear it’s more than a bit.’ Leo bent and kissed Samar on the cheek, before settling down on the arm of Samar’s chair, his hand on his lover’s shoulder.
Zaira noticed Karan ducking his head and suspected that Leo’s show of affection had made Karan squirm.
‘Meet the genius who photographed me making an idiot of myself at Gatsby,’ Samar said to Leo, his chin edged up in Karan’s direction.
Leo nodded. ‘So you’re the wunderkind with the magic fingers.’
A cold feeling ran down the length of Karan’s neck; Leo’s praise, well meaning but cursory, was in stark contrast to Samar’s genuine zest. It reminded him of a socialite kissing the air.
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 3
