Nalini Chopra sniffed, not quite sure what being cute had to do with any of this.
‘You remember, Mummy,’ her daughter was saying, ‘how I passed out as soon as I saw Zaira lying dead on the floor?’
‘You were in shock, beta. It was only natural; you’ve always been a sensitive girl.’
‘And to think that now we’re being treated like petty criminals! Like, HELLO!’ she said, pointing her index finger in the air. ‘There’s no justice in this world.’ Her voice was wobbly with emotion, like a hippo on stilettos. Then, suddenly, she lowered her voice. ‘Mummy, I need to tell you something totally important.’
Nalini Chopra leaned forward. ‘Yes?’
‘Mummy…’
‘Yes, Tara?’
‘Burn that fuckin’ dress.’
Nalini Chopra looked as if she’d suffered a stroke. ‘Surely, my outfit isn’t all that last season already? ’
‘And there’s enough kohl under your eyes for an entire republic of racoons!’
‘Tara!’
‘I mean it.’
‘I’m your mother, for God’s sake.’ She downed her drink. ‘And you cannot speak to me like that under any circumstance.’
‘Well, it’s for your own good. Have you seen your pictures in the papers lately?’ Tara decided to lay out her case. ‘I’m a fashion designer, Mummy. And a fairly famous one, if I might say so myself. Now, if my own mother looks like some sort of thrift-store Thumbelina, d’you know how it’ll screw up my image?’
‘It’s very hurtful that you think of me like that.’
‘Why does everything have to be about you?’ Tara proceeded to give her mother a fashion tip—why did she not wear a sheer tulle scarf around her head for a touch of the suffragette? She direly needed sympathy points from the press.
‘Never mind your silly fashion tips, Tara!’ Nalini scolded. ‘I’m here to talk about something far more critical.’
‘Oh, whatever!’
‘I’m completely out of it,’ she pleaded. ‘Can you please go easy on me?’
‘All right, all right. Talk to me about Minister Prasad.’ She kicked off her mules and tapped her cigarette against the edge of the table; the ash fell on the carpet. ‘Isn’t he responsible for Bunty’s change of heart on the witness stand?’
‘I heard that Bunty’s selling price was four crore.’
‘Cool. A million dollars will buy him enough charlie to float for a few years.’ She rapped her knuckles on the table. ‘So, what have you decided to say in court?’
She said that Minister Prasad had reminded her that she and her daughter were single women, and in a city like Bombay, well, anything could happen to them. Someone, for instance, might throw acid on their faces one morning; someone could even climb into their bedrooms at night and rape them. This was a big, fat lie, but Nalini Chopra felt the need to punish her daughter for the vicious comments she had been subjected to.
‘Did he actually say those things?’ Tara Chopra felt her knees turn to jelly.
Nalini Chopra nodded like a woodpecker working on its nest.
‘Will you tell the court you saw Malik at Maya Bar that night?’
‘Should I?’
‘I mean,’ she said haltingly, ‘that’s the truth, isn’t it?’
Nalini Chopra rolled her eyes. ‘Truth is such a subjective matter. The truth, according to you, is that I’m a fashion disaster. But someone else might think of me as a fashion icon.’
Tara touched her mother’s hand. ‘I’m sorry. Was I being a bitch? I’ve had the mother of all Mondays doing business with a beastly bunch of billionaires from Bahrain.’
‘That’s okay, beta.’ She smiled heroically. ‘I’ve been through so much already—what makes you think I cannot bear this?’
‘Well, Mummy, I’ve also had an equally tough life and then today this fat—and I’m talkin’ baby hippo here—woman walks into my store and says that she can’t fit into any of my clothes, and I just wanted to slap her. Instead, I told myself to calm down. I told myself: she’s not fat; she’s two people. I guess what I’m trying to say is that there’s more than one way of looking at any situation, and if I can find my inner peace that way then why can’t you do the same with this stupid trial?’
‘Well, the chubby boy I saw that night looked somewhat like Malik Prasad.’
‘But then you had on that really rad pair of Gucci shades.’ Tara had finally found one redeeming quality about her mother’s ghastly get-up. ‘At least you had one thing going for you.’
Nalini Chopra asserted they were, indeed, her favourite pair of sunglasses. ‘The gorgeous Mr Gucci gave them to me in Milan.’
‘Then it’s possible you might’ve mistaken Malik for someone else—thanks to Gucci.’
‘Don’t you think that poor boy deserves the benefit of the doubt?’
‘I guess people are turning Malik into some kind of a punching bag, aren’t they? What if your evidence clinched the wrong guy?’
‘Exactly! It would be so cruel if Malik went to jail for a crime he didn’t commit.’
‘That would be the height of injustice. We’re all mortal, Mummy, and we all make mistakes.’ Tara gestured to the waiter for a repeat of drinks before reassigning her eyes on her mother. ‘You could have screwed up in the identification parade. Besides, all boys, after you’ve had a few, look the same.’ She gave a naughty grin.
‘Yes, I guess there is a grain of truth in that.’
‘Well, you might also like to know what Guru-ji says…’
In recent times Tara had come to rely on the counsel of a spiritual leader who wore long, flowing red robes, maintained a wiry, sagacious white beard and had become renowned for helping politicians win elections by giving them secret mantras to chant at dawn in their birthday suits.
‘Go on, beta, enlighten me.’
‘Guru-ji says that everything is destined, it’s all written in the lines of one’s hands. Maybe Zaira was fated to drop her mortal coil…It was her karmic path, really.’
‘But why look at death as a limiting condition?’ Nalini Chopra argued on the grounds of her newly discovered passion for theology. ‘I mean, isn’t she bound to be reborn?’
‘No way!’ Tara thumped her hand on the table. ‘I had a long one-on-one session with Guru-ji and he assured me Zaira was an Advanced Soul. Her brutal murder was only a means for her to work out a big backlog of karma. But because of the shootout she’s now eternally free.’
‘Are you saying…’ The socialite’s mouth fell open.
‘You got it!’ Tara declared. ‘The N-word, mother. Zaira nailed it way sooner than any of us. Who’d have thunk, huh?’
‘But that’s fantastic news, Tara!’ Nalini Chopra looked thunderstruck. Nirvana, she repeated to herself with a tinge of envy and awe, Zaira has attained nirvana.
Tara Chopra shrugged, opened her snake-skin clutch, fished out her Chanel compact and touched up a spot under her right eye. ‘She went ahead of all of us, our beautiful little Zaira.’
‘And death is such a small price to pay for salvation.’
‘Not simply salvation, Mummy; I’m talkin’ eternal release, moksha, freedom from the tortuous cycle of birth and death.’
‘I must meet Guru-ji and thank him.’
Tara looked around impatiently. She was supposed to be at a party in an hour; the mother–daughter bonding fest had gone on way too long.
‘You know what we should do after this is finito? We should go on a spiritual retreat of some sort,’ said Nalini Chopra.
‘Mummy!’ A feverish glow came into Tara’s eyes. ‘You stole the words right outta my mouth!’
‘Let’s go to Haridwar and Rishikesh.’ She could picture herself descending the holy steps of Har ki Pauri and meeting the great, churning waters of the Ganga.
‘Totally, Mummy!’
‘I’ve heard there’s this fab little Italian ristorante in Rishikesh.’
‘Yes, we should definitely go there!’ Tara Chopra said a
s she stood up to leave. ‘I hear Madonna hangs out there when she’s tired of being a Kabbalah slut.’
17
In his long innings as a politician, Minister Prasad had dealt with the law on so many occasions that he was, by now, seasoned in the knowledge of the workings of the Indian legal machinery. He had breezed through charges of extortion, poll scams, vandalism, murder, embezzlement, arson. Each case had been a learning experience, teaching him how to slide through loopholes, dodge bullets, jump the highest bars. His renown for evading the law had spread beyond political circles. In fact, when the young Turk of Bollywood, Rocky Khan, had a bit of a run-in with the police, he had reached out to the minister for help. Minister Prasad was extremely proud of having saved the hunk from a slammer sentence and often recollected the day when Rocky had rung him in a panic.
Rocky Khan, a Bollywood beefcake dubbed ‘Rip-Off Khan’—as he was frequently possessed by an impulse to tear off his kit and gyrate like a pole dancer before crowds of dumbstruck admirers—had a major drinking problem. One night, Rocky got seriously smashed at a bar in Juhu and was speeding home recklessly when his jeep ran over three workers sleeping on the pavement. One worker, severed in half, performed a morbid drama: his lower section, from his toe up to the torso, rose up and raced forward before collapsing in a writhing heap. Getting out of his car, Rocky had drunkenly surveyed the damage and proceeded to offer the two surviving workers a few thousand rupees for the unfortunate turn of events. Outraged, the injured workers dragged themselves to the local police station, and on the strength of their evidence a case was registered against the errant superstar. Gripped with terror, Rocky had called Malik and requested him to bring his father on board to fix what was certain to flare up into one very ugly public affair.
To Malik this seemed a wonderful opportunity: if he could bail out Rocky now then the popular star would be obliged to perform in Tiranga Inc. shows on demand. Malik did not waste a second in ringing his father, who, having nursed acting ambitions in his college days, was thrilled to come to the actor’s rescue. His first piece of advice to the Bollywood badmaash was to bribe the key witnesses; this would defuse the prosecution’s case from the word go. The witnesses haggled with horrific alacrity, eager to milk the film star of all he was worth. Rocky was a charitable man; he acceded to their every request. One witness, a traffic policeman who turned down the monetary offer, sadly, never reported for duty again. Then Minister Prasad put Rocky in touch with Vijay Singh, his lawyer. Vijay Singh was notorious for his aggressive line of questioning and a Rottweiler manner that made witnesses bungle up their testimony. The lawyer advised Rocky to take the butchered man’s kin into confidence and pay them off; the last thing he wanted in the courthouse was an ugly cluster of maudlin relatives. The case went on for five years. Most hearings were adjourned. The final witness, Mrs Patel, a housewife who had seen Rocky race into the night after the accident, washed her hands off the case not because she had been paid or bullied but because the case had gone on so long that she just could not find the time to attend every hearing.
Once acquitted, Rocky flew to Delhi to personally thank the minister, whom he now considered his guru. By midnight the two men, the oddest of accomplices, had polished off a bottle of Black Label and wolfed down many platefuls of oily onion pakoras. The star expressed an almost reverential interest in how the minister had gathered such extraordinary insight into the law that he could torque it around like a piece of wire. Euphoric with the celebrity interest in his seedy life, Minister Prasad made a scholarly face as he unravelled his ‘philosophy of Indian law’.
According to him, such blatant manipulation was possible only because corruption in India was endemic: it was not the pollutant in the air, it was the air. Years of witnessing and directing wholesale con jobs had convinced Minister Prasad that although all countries under the sun wrangled with corruption in their system, India had gone one step further and accepted that there was actually a system in its corruption. Once fraud had got hard-wired into the national consciousness, the political machinery did not work to rectify the flaw but to embrace its ideals. Over the years Minister Prasad had perfected this art form. He knew how to rally round judges who were desperate to move from a low-level trial court to the high court. He knew how to intimidate witnesses. He knew how to bribe the investigating officers. Cruel as it was, such machinations were charged with a lustrous cosmic logic all their own: for after the dead were gone, life went on, as it was meant to.
Now, as the minister recalled the night Rocky Khan had dropped by at his house, the inherent unfairness of life reaffirmed itself: having orchestrated a complete stranger’s acquittal on a murder charge, it would be ironic indeed if he failed at the same task when his own son’s life and future were on the line. His thoughts turned to the afternoon Malik had been born, the doctor’s ecstatic expression as she announced triumphantly the birth of a son, the heir apparent. The nurse had handed the infant to the minister. His arms had gone weak from holding the baby. He was so worried he might drop the baby that he refused to hold the child again. He remembered also that Malik didn’t start speaking until the age of four; he suspected the boy was a bit of a retard but this doubt was quashed as soon as Malik uttered complete sentences a few days before his fifth birthday. He noticed an obsessive streak in his son: Malik collected dinky cars and, at one point, had owned a collection of seven hundred and twenty-seven cars. In the tenth standard he started collecting stamps and in a matter of months had eleven thousand stamps glued carefully on sheets of parchment paper. At college, Malik had been a renowned failure; he quit a few days before his finals. It had come as no surprise to Minister Prasad that Malik had chosen to drop out.
Over the years, the minister had watched his son weed his way out of a litany of impressive failings: being expelled from several schools; acquiring the social skills of a born-again savage; thrashing a professor who dared to fail him; chasing after anything in a skirt. Under the rickety awnings of his adulthood, Malik had chosen the strobe lights and sewers of Bombay over the dignified avenues of Delhi. Initially, Minister Chander Prasad had worried about his son hacking it in a big city, and when Malik’s event management company had met with some degree of success he had been extremely surprised. Later, he found out that Malik had always got his way because he had dropped the family name on every occasion.
More recently, their reconnection under the auspices of the murder trial had brought the boy under closer scrutiny. The minister was surprised they had so much in common: the same shape of the eyes, a lousy stomach, skin allergies. In Malik, the minister saw his own flawed mortality, its capacity for love charcoaled with lunacy and tenderness. He was slowly growing obsessed with saving Malik from a prison sentence not only because his own political future depended on emerging unscathed from the scandal, but also because he suspected that if Malik went to prison then something in his own being would curl up and die forever. The image of his son in prison made his eyes well up, and had the phone not rung, he would have shut the door of his study and burst into tears.
‘Good evening, Minister-saab. Am I calling you at a bad time?’
‘Vijay Singh! You’ve called precisely at the right moment; I wanted to go over the case with you.’ He picked up a pen from the desk he was seated at, and reached for his notepad.
They conferred for ten minutes before concluding that in spite of the case moving in the right direction Samar Arora was raining shit on them.
‘Now what to do?’ he moaned. ‘That madarchod is not about to give up.’
‘But Minister-saab, why are you worrying so much? Haven’t we worked on umpteen cases together?’ Vijay Singh, standing in his balcony, was looking out at the street below his house, at the endless stream of devotees walking barefoot towards the Siddhivinayak temple.
‘That might be so…’
‘Did I not get you an acquittal in every one of them?’
‘I helped you, Vijay.’
‘Of course you did! I don
’t want to take away from your contribution at all. You’ve given me a fantastic headstart in this case too.’ Vijay Singh knew that left to his own devices he could not have turned Nalini Chopra and Bunty Oberoi into hostile witnesses.
‘Honestly, tell me,’ the minister asked, ‘what is the chance of that lauda Samar Arora bungling this case?’
‘He didn’t see the key accused shoot the victim,’ the lawyer assured. ‘He’s a secondary witness, Minister Prasad. He is entirely incidental to the legal proceedings. In fact, he is entirely incidental—full stop!’
‘You know what bothers me the most? That bastard’s nerve. He has a…a hero complex.’ The minister wasn’t sure if there was any such psychological disorder but it sounded about right to him. ‘He talks to the press so freely. Do you know the ripple-down effect bad press has on me?’
‘That man should keep his trap shut.’ Vijay Singh took a deep drag of his pipe, wondering why so many people frequented the Siddhivinayak temple.
‘The head of the HPP called me to say the papers are going at it like piranhas. He said it was “all getting out of hand”.’
‘Yes, the coverage does seem to be in overdrive.’
‘And what is this rubbish “Justice for Zaira” business? People die. Is death so difficult a concept to fathom in a country that breeds like roaches in a sewer?’
‘Now, now, please don’t take tension over Samar, Minister-saab. You’ve handled two of the witnesses like a pro. This chap is bound to fall in line.’
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Don’t be nervous.’
‘Samar Arora is always on my mind.’
‘You must forget him.’ Vijay Singh paused. What were those noises? Was the minister crying?
‘Minister-Saab…’ he ventured after a few moments, ‘are you all right?’
‘I’m sorry. I have…a slight cold.’
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 19
