‘Incident? Closure?’ Samar repeated. ‘You sound like someone who spends all day watching talk shows.’
Leo drew the car to a halt outside the cottage. ‘I’m going to let that remark pass because you’ve just spent four hours at the police station, Samar, and maybe that’s fucked up your mind.’
‘That’s not true,’ Samar said. ‘Do you want to know what’s fucked my mind?’
‘Not now. I would like to go inside.’
‘What’s fucked my mind is that I had her blood. On my hands. And it splashes.’
‘C’mon, Samar!’ Leo opened the front door and they walked in. ‘You’re being gross.’
Samar stopped by the telephone console in the hallway. ‘Gross? That’s exactly what death is. Gross. Gross weight. Grossly insurmountable.’
Saku-bai appeared briefly, but seeing the two men in a heated argument she quickly turned, went back into the kitchen and shut the door behind her. Standing motionless by the stove, she watched mutton boil for Mr Ward-Davies while the voices outside rose in pitch.
‘Look, don’t jump on a moral high horse because…’
‘Because Zaira got shot in the head?’
Leo looked on helplessly. What could he say?
Samar took a deep breath before saying, ‘I’d like her death to be private, Leo, because her life was not.’
‘It was only a suggestion. I’m not bent on doing it,’ Leo said irritably.
‘I know you will do the right thing.’
‘And what makes you think someone else is not going to write about the murder?’
‘Other people will write about it but you knew her because of me, and that alters the equation a bit.’
‘Wouldn’t you prefer a more sympathetic retelling of events?’
‘You mean,’ Samar said with a fake, theatrical gasp, ‘my very own in-house memoirist?’
‘That’s so tacky.’
‘Didn’t it cross your mind that this might not be an appropriate thing to ask at this time?’ He turned to light a candle in the living room. ‘I’m sorry I was rude earlier on…I didn’t mean any of it.’
Leo had started to march towards the kitchen.
‘Just give me open berth for a few days.’
‘Yeah, sure. Whatever.’
Samar followed Leo to the kitchen. Mr Ward-Davies, sweet and lonesome, met them with gentle, enthusiastic wags of his tail. Saku-bai cleared her throat and excused herself.
‘We’ll get through this, Samar,’ Leo said without any feeling.
‘I know we will. Thank you.’ Samar pulled out a bottle of cognac and two bowl glasses.
Leo was now sitting at the dinner table. ‘Thank you?’
Samar poured a shot of amber liquid into his glass. ‘For agreeing not to write about her death.’
‘Oh, right.’ Leo looked as if his wrist had been cut. ‘Anything for you, love.’
11
A month later Leo was reclining on the couch, browsing through the latest copy of the India Chronicle, when the phone rang.
It was Sally, his editor, from New York. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Nothing much…Just catching up on my reading.’ He sat up.
‘How are you holding up?’
‘All right…I guess.’
‘And Samar?’
‘He’s okay. He’s getting ready as we speak—a party we’re going to in a bit. It’s just down the road.’ Leo could hear Samar in the shower in the adjoining room.
‘Sounds like Samar is a lot more sociable since the time we last spoke.’
‘His first outing since the…It’s taken a lot for him to get here.’ He heard Sally click her lighter.
‘And it must have drained your reserves too?’
He didn’t know what to say. ‘How’s New York?’ he asked instead.
‘Cold. Relevant. Angry. Black. I’m also on my forty-second cigarette of the day.’
‘It could always be worse.’
‘I called to check on you.’
‘This country is not letting up on the murder, and we’re smack in the middle of it all.’
‘Is the press going crazy?’
‘The more public the trial becomes, the greater the number of photographers who park themselves outside our gate. I can barely pick up a magazine without seeing Zaira’s face splashed all over it. There’s mass hysteria over her death.’
‘Well, you can’t blame them for going after the story like sharks. I’m sorry if I sound cold, but it is a fabulous-fucking-story.’
‘I guess.’ He did not want to think of it as a fabulous-fucking-story, not after his row with Samar.
‘And I gather media interest has only been sympathetic.’
‘Well, Zaira was a superstar. Do you think the press would be filing stories of some toothless tribal raped and hacked apart in Rajasthan?’
‘There’s got to be more than just the bling quotient driving this.’
‘Sections of the so-called liberal press want to see Malik—he’s the fuckin’ murderer—punished. To chalk up a few social justice brownie points.’
She coughed. ‘Why do you think the guy shot her?’
‘Because she refused to serve him a drink.’
‘Sounds like a Man-Walks-into-a-Bar joke gone completely awry…’
‘It’s not as cut and dried as that either.’ Malik was part of India’s newly affluent, he explained to Sally, an echelon created by rapid, rampant urbanization. ‘Malik had the bucks to groove in all the right places. But once he was in, everyone treated him like a hick.’ Malik’s inherent gaucherie had been put to its greatest test at Maya Bar amid the lovely and the powerful; arrogance and insecurity would have been thrashing their wings inside his head. ‘He must have felt wildly insulted when Zaira refused him that drink; he flashed the gun and first shot at the ceiling to scare the shit out of her.’
‘But then he shot her in the head!’
‘I don’t know what drove him to do that. But he has a history of violence.’
‘With Zaira?’
‘Yes; he once rammed her trailer with his jeep.’
‘Why didn’t she report him to the cops for that?’
‘He’d been stalking her for two years now, Sally, and the cops simply looked the other way when she asked for a restraining order.’
‘Did they think it was just part of the Hot Chick Deal?’
‘Well, the police, like everyone else, worship Bollywood stars and by Indian standards Zaira was royalty. But then Malik was no small beer, either. His father is the Minister for Labour and Employment, and he knew whom to call when she went to court and asked for a restraining order against his son.’
‘Why didn’t she hire private security?’
‘Samar and I both tried to convince her but she thought hiring security would be an intrusion on her personal space. She hated entourages of any kind; I don’t think she had fully grasped the scale of her popularity either.’
‘But she was huge in India.’
‘There were temples built in her name.’
‘Wow. That’s freaky.’
‘Talking of freaky…on a TV show last night, one politician had a novel reason for her murder. He said Zaira had invited her murder by hanging out in a bar in a “sexy backless gown”.’
‘You’re kidding!’ Sally practically fell off her chair.
Leo sighed. Sally’s naivety not only raised his hackles but also whetted his appetite: this was precisely the sort of ignorance he had hoped to confront through his book. The politician, Leo told Sally, was with the right-wing Hindu People’s Party. ‘He’s probably been set up to save Minister Prasad’s ass. The implication that Zaira’s “sexy backless gown” caused her death fits in perfectly with the party’s morality management agenda.’
‘That’s the most regressive thing I’ve ever heard! Even our dyed-in-the-wool Republicans are better than that.’
‘This is India,’ Leo told her. ‘The politician doesn’t mean a word. He’s proba
bly running a porn empire on the sly but on the face of things there’s nothing quite like being morally outraged.’
Mr Ward-Davies padded into the room and nuzzled up against Leo’s legs. Hoisting the dog under his arm, Leo walked out to the porch. The warmth of the dog’s thin white coat against his body was such solace that it reminded him of his childhood, of sleeping with a teddy bear in his arms.
‘Don’t you think it’d help you to write about the murder then? I mean, just to get a detached point of view across,’ Sally urged.
‘I wish I was the man for the job, Sally.’
‘Your readers would love it. The magazine will give you a fabulous layout. And, as I’ve said before, the pieces could add up to quite an account of contemporary India. These are the stories of modern India we never hear.’
Leo put Mr Ward-Davies down. ‘You think I don’t know that?’
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘Years ago, Sally, when I published Old Gullies, I knew my big book would come out of India. Some landscapes draw writers to them and ask to be written about. Leonard Woolf served Sri Lanka. Isak Dinesen did Africa. Deep in my heart I knew I would write an account of India, not the exotic, colourful version but something that throbbed with its modernity.’
‘I agree; I don’t know anyone who could tell India’s story as well as you, Leo. So what’s stopping you?’
‘I…I promised Samar I wouldn’t.’ He could hear her take a deep drag of her cigarette, probably the last before she would stub it out.
‘Why would you do something so ridiculous, Leo?’
‘Well, he asked me not to write about it.’
In the silence that ensued, urgent and awful things that could not be said aloud pressed against Leo’s throat. Denied the right to tell a story that had gripped his mind, he had secretly grown resentful toward the man who had imposed the embargo. His immediate response had been to leave India but now the trial had forced him to stay on. His arguments with Samar were taking a toll on his writing; he had not produced a publishable page in weeks now.
‘Samar asked you,’ Sally repeated slowly.
‘He did. And I promised him I wouldn’t write a word about the murder or the trial.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I guess that’s really sweet of you.’
‘Sally.’
‘Yes?’
‘You’re not talking to some kid at a lemonade stall.’
‘We don’t do lemonade stalls in New York, Leo.’ A siren went off on the street outside Sally’s office, briefly drowning their conversation. When they resumed she said, ‘Well, ring me if you change your mind.’ Then she asked offhandedly, ‘What’s buzzing workwise?’
‘I can’t seem to write about India, that’s for sure.’ Leo restrained himself from saying that he could not get a fix on another subject; the inertia in his creative life had suffused him with gloom. As he bit on his knuckles, Mr Ward-Davies gave a nervous yip and his own ears pricked up. He turned sharply and saw photographers scrambling on to the boundary wall, trying to hoist a camera on the edge of the grille. He rushed indoors, keeping the panic out of his voice.
Sally said, ‘Then maybe you should consider writing about America.’
‘Why would I do that?’ He locked the front door, leaned against it, caught his breath.
‘Because you’ve long confronted the foreign,’ she said, ‘and now, perhaps, it’s time to take a look at the familiar. No one could do America as well as you, Leo. And I’ll publish whatever you write.’
‘Thanks, Sally.’
‘You sound like you’ve lost yourself, darling; it’s understandable during such a tragedy. Come back to yourself, come back to writing.’
‘I’ll try my best,’ he said feebly. ‘That’s all I have. The writing. Call you soon.’
Clicking off the phone Leo went into the bedroom.
Samar had just stepped out of the shower and said he needed a few more minutes to be ready for the party. Returning to the living room, Leo settled on the couch, wondering whether Samar, whose eyes he had noticed were red, had been crying. The lasting legacy of death, he felt, was the ambiguity of its mourning. How was one to set parameters for the time needed to recover from the loss of a loved one; how was one supposed to know when to stop? He tried to sympathize with Samar, but these days he was consumed with pure, unassailable exhaustion and, within it, Samar’s sorrow nudged and poked him, a heavy, toxic, contagious thing.
Of course, there were days when Leo was glad to be around Samar, particularly on the mornings he played the piano, nimble fingers uncoiling gilded rhymes from a few black and white keys. However, on other days, when Samar ranted endlessly about the trial, Leo found himself growing steadily impatient with his lover’s notions about big, anonymous ideas like truth and justice and politics; it seemed pointless to revisit them endlessly. Luckily, Karan was often around to step in and hear out Samar, inadvertently giving Leo a much needed reprieve from endless heated tirades. Leo tried to escape the cottage and its tense, claustrophobic atmosphere but the intense media scrutiny had restricted his movements. He felt like a captive, and a captive audience to Samar’s gathering wrath. The possibility of fleeing to San Francisco was only too tempting, but if he left he would be guilty of deserting a fort under attack and if he stayed he would probably not be able to write a sensible word. There was no way out of this. The only hour of calm was before dawn, when Samar went for his walk with Mr Ward-Davies, before busloads of shutterbugs arrived at their doorstep. It was a pure, restful hour, when Leo could be on his own but for the great sighing sea across the road.
Leo took a deep breath and picked up the magazine to resume his reading—yet another article on the murder, only this one featured what the guests at Maya Bar had told the cops.
I was at the bar, right beside Zaira. At around 1.00 a.m. a man wearing a white shirt and brown pants came up to the bar and asked for a drink. The bar had just been closed for the night, so Zaira said she could not give him a drink, that it was past the legal hour to serve alcohol. She was about to leave the premises. The man looked shocked and tried to persuade her, but she refused again and prepared to leave. A split second later, he pulled out a gun and shot at the ceiling. Then he pointed the gun at Zaira’s forehead and pulled the trigger point blank. She collapsed. She was in great pain and she repeatedly asked for someone called Samar. She was unconscious by the time the ambulance arrived.
The man who shot Zaira was Malik Prasad.
I recognized him because he had once asked me if I wanted to be part of an entertainment programme he was putting together in Toronto for his company, Tiranga Inc.
—BUNTY OBEROI
I was present at Maya Bar on the night Zaira was shot. I was out on the deck when I heard a commotion. I rushed indoors, where I saw a crowd at the bar. Zaira was on the floor. I kneeled by her and I saw a rupture on her left temple, where the bullet had entered. She was trying very hard to speak. Then I heard a voice from behind me. Nalini Chopra was shouting at a man wearing a white shirt and brown pants. I saw him slip a gun into his pocket as he ran out of the door. Nalini Chopra was yelling, ‘He’s the man who shot Zaira. Go after him! Get him!’
Zaira was in my lap at this point.
We took her to the hospital in an ambulance twenty minutes later.
—SAMAR ARORA
Although I was present at Maya Bar on that fateful night, I don’t believe I saw anyone with a gun; I certainly did not see the man who shot Zaira. I was at the venue to research my new novel and was chatting with a model when I heard a shot. Later I was told the Bollywood superstar Zaira had been killed. How would I know Malik Prasad? I am sequestered in a room, writing for eight hours a day—I have no connection with the world of glamour.
—VICKY LALWANI
I was with a friend—I believe the Princess of Jaipur—when my daughter Tara rushed up to me and said something awful had happened at the bar. Since we own Maya Bar, we were both extremely worried. My daughter saw Zaira first. Bloo
d was oozing out of her head and she was gasping for breath. My daughter, who is a sensitive person, passed out. Then I saw a man in a white shirt and brown pants put a gun in his pocket and race towards the door. Another man was with him. I ran after both men. At one point I caught a waiter and ordered him to help me chase the man who had shot Zaira. We made our way out through the chaos but they got into a car and drove away.
—NALINI CHOPRA
‘Ready?’ Samar asked as he emerged from the room.
‘I am,’ said Leo. ‘Are you?’ They were going for a party Diya Sen was hosting at her apartment in Colaba.
‘Yeah.’
Leo gave Samar a quick glance: he had lost most of the meat on his bones, and in his creased pants and baggy shirt now resembled a scarecrow. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to throw on a jacket? Maybe a nicer shirt?’
‘I’m sure.’ Samar took a deep breath. He was stepping out at Leo’s behest; he was not going to make a fashion show out of it.
Leo flung the magazine to the floor. ‘I’ll get the car keys.’
‘What were you reading?’
‘A report on the trial. The statements the guests made to the police. It’s not a pretty picture, Samar. A lot of people are backtracking.’
‘So goes the rumour.’ Samar tried not to look dismayed. ‘Anyway, let’s head out. I bet Diya is waiting for us.’
Leo was thrilled to be able to leave the house after a month-long self-imposed exile. But no sooner had they gone up to the gate than flashbulbs exploded in their faces, a riot of voices called out their names, shouted out questions. Recoiling in horror, they rushed indoors.
‘How are we going to make it past that lot?’ Samar exclaimed. Photographers had laid siege to their house; their sheer number was intimidating. ‘How will we ever step out?’
‘Will you quit asking me questions I can’t answer for you!’
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 14
