Yeah right, I thought, and blew my nose vigorously. Like that'll happen.
All I'd be doing, by allowing myself to get drawn into the international cricket circuit, would be setting myself up for the inevitable fall. Because one day, they'd lose after eating with me. And the later it happened, the worse it'd be.
All the Zoya fan club guys would swarm up ladders and put gobar on my hoardings.... The rejection would probably kill me.
That's why going to the Kotla breakfast was not an option.
I mean, I'd probably just end up watching my team of choice be ass-whipped by an angst-ridden, smarting-from-losing-to-Bermuda Nikhil Khoda, who was obviously out on a mission to crush me under his foot like he would an ant.
No way was I going to give him that satisfaction.
When I got home that evening my dad was all jumpy because Anita Chachi's nephew, Kattu, was visiting from Bikaner and had dropped in to our part of the house and formally asked Dad if he could take me out to dinner. Dad, instead of calling me and asking first, had happily told him, of course young man, by all means. Now, he told me, with a wink, to make a good meal of it.
I groaned to myself.
Dad has recently become a real bore on the subject of marriage. My two Chachis - Rinku and Anita - have been at him ever since my eighteenth birthday and now that my twenty-eighth was approaching, he'd finally begun to sit up and pay attention. After I broke up with my second boyfriend, the three of them even got together and put an ad in The Times of India.... Beautiful, fair, convented, Rajput, retired colonel's daughter, 5.4 feet, 27 years, seeks handsome kshatriya match, boy must be tall, highly qualified professional, 26-30 years....
It's all lies of course, I'm neither fair nor 5.4 (more like five three-and-a-quarter inch actually.)
Anyway thanks to that ad, I'd spent some hairy Saturday mornings at the DSOI (the army club), meeting fair, moustachioed, ghee-fed Rajput boys who all looked like they had surma in their eyes even though they didn't. Some of them were even nice, but just the thought that they were uncool enough to reply to a matrimonial ad put me off them completely. Which was totally hypocritical of me because, hello, I was the one who was uncool enough to take out a matrimonial ad.
Still, I didn't say haan to any of them. For that matter, some of them didn't say haan to me.
Actually, my dad is too sweet to tell me this, but the fact of the matter is that I don't exactly shine on the arranged marriage circuit. I have to tie up my hair, so I look all moon-faced. I have to wear salwar kameezes, which do nothing for my body type. And, of course, I have no accomplishments whatsoever. I don't play the piano/sitar, I don't know any classical Indian dances, I can't sing, I can't paint and I'm a lousy cook. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a professor. I do have an MBA but from a dodgy business school. And because I have this idiotic involuntary tendency to check out guys from what my Rinku Chachi euphemistically calls the 'marriage point of view' as I talk to them (basically I keep imagining them naked) my conversation is far from scintillating. I end up looking slightly nauseous and totally tongue-tied.
Anyway, the fact that Kattu had raised his ugly head meant that Dad was really scraping the bottom of the barrel. I remembered him as a snivelly little kid whom Zoravar and Montu were mean to when we were growing up.
Still, at least because our families knew each other I'd been spared the morning-tea-at-the-club routine. We could cut straight ahead to step two: the dinner-date-with-the-eleven-p.m.-deadline.
Kattu called me on my cell a short while later. 'Hi, Zoya,' he breathed heavily down the line. 'Remember me?'
I rolled my eyes. I hate people who call me up and say arch things like, Remember me. (It could've been worse, though. He could've said, Guess who?) 'Hi, Kattu,' I said, cautiously. 'I believe we have a date tomorrow night?'
'Ya! So tell me!' he said expansively, 'where would you like to go?'
I told him to pick me up from work the next day and hung up as fast as I could.
Still, in a way I almost welcomed the Kattu development. I told myself severely that my head was too full of romantic Bollywood nonsense. Real life wasn't all about Zing! shoots and Shah Rukh Khan's torso and sparring sessions with Indian skippers. Level-headed twenty-seven-year-old women didn't dwell on such facile non-encounters. They laughed them off and kept their feet on the ground.
So I made a special effort with my grooming the next day. I wore a 'good girl' salwar kameez, shampooed my hair and applied my make-up with care.
Kattu was lurking near the sidewalk in a fat yellow car when I came down from office in the evening. Totaram was giving him dirty looks. 'Hi, Kattu,' I said as I opened the door of the car and recoiled at the blast. He'd really overdone the aftershave. The mature twenty-seven-year-old woman in me wanted to turn tail and scurry for an auto.
'Hi, Zoya,' he goggled at my get-up, glasses gleaming.
I inhaled cautiously and internalized the fact that the years had been kind to Kattu. He looked okay, nice even, in the usual Rajput butterball-with-a-moustache Raj Kiran-ish kind of way. Then he put on music, which was good because we didn't have to talk, and I directed him to the Carmic Cat, a nice cosy pub nearby. They serve drinks and dinner and it's pretty brightly lit, so I could examine Kattu minutely for flaws and he could do the same to me. I ordered a Zing!, took a sip and immediately an unbidden image of Kattu's face, contorted with passion right above mine in a dimly lit room, rose before my eyes.
'D'you have stomach ache, Zoya?' Kattu asked, concerned.
'No!' I said, smiling brightly, wondering if his cheeks would droop in that position. His lower lip definitely would. And I couldn't shake the creepy feeling that he would drool. 'I'm fine, what's up?'
'Nothing,' he said, making this expansive gesture with his hands. Mon says a man's hands are a good guide to his.... uh... equipment. Kattu's were very thick, fair, hairy and bejewelled. I almost gagged.
'Are you sure you're all right?'
'I'm fine,' I managed to say.
He looked unconvinced but continued, 'I'm here for a sales conference, though Ma and Babuji want me to meet some girls, too, and then it's just work, work, work.'
'How nice,' I said. 'How many girls have you met?'
He shrugged, 'I've lost count actually. Some of them were very nice, but you know, I'm looking for something magical.... You know, a connection?'
I nodded, warming to him a little. 'I know exactly what you mean,' I said, and meant it too. Really. I liked the fact that he was romantic, that he was looking for true love. I tilted my head to one side and tried to imagine how his face would look below mine, say if I was on top. Bad mistake.
'Why are you squinting?' he asked.
'I'm not,' I said brightly, thinking sinkingly that the inside of his mouth was pink, and that his tongue looked like it would wag. 'Could I get another drink?'
He nodded and snapped his fingers at the waiter in an authoritative (some might say obnoxious) way.
'You've grown up a lot since we last met,' he said rakishly. 'I like it!' Then he started elaborating on his romantic theme. 'I dream of meeting an unspoiled girl, Zoya!' he said, his eyes locking into mine. 'A shy, unopened bud, a kali you know, whom I will then, slowly, slowly,' - he exhaled deeply and opened his hairy hand out daintily in a classical Indian dance mudra - 'turn into a flower.'
I choked on my drink.
He beamed at me and said, 'Please excuse me, I have to relieve myself.'
I nodded, hiding my face in my napkin and he sped away to the loo, his shoes squeaking a little. I sipped my drink gloomily as the chwing chwong chwing chwong of Kattu's shoes faded away. Had I gone through two heartbreaks to end up with this? This was the hero of the movie of my life?
Because, hello, I've grown up thinking I'm starring in DDLJ. Or Titanic. Or at least Bride and Prejudice. And all the time it's actually been Dunston Checks In.
I had a sudden vision of Kattu and me at a honeymoon hotel in Goa, him all cocky and expansive in swimming trunks, with a towel
hanging around his neck, snapping his fingers at the waiter. And me, with sindoor in my hair, a mangalsutra dangling demurely between my recently-pawed-by-Kattu breasts, modestly encased in a prim salwar kameez of course, smiling bravely in spite of suffering a raging case of honeymooners' syndrome a.k.a urinary tract infection. Later, we would live in an apartment with stiff cream curtains that you pull open with a cord, in a gated community in Gurgaon, and make a couple of Kattu-like kids. I would feed them every single meal by hand, like a good mother should. Naturally, I would have to give up my job, start wearing long kurtis to hide my flabby, scarred-by-a-million-stretch-marks tummy, learn to do a million clever things with leftovers and bread crumbs, and have to ask Kattu for money to buy sanitary napkins every month. In the holidays we would go on long car trips where the kids would drink Mango Frooti and throw up in my lap. We would spend every weekend with our in-laws, including horrible Anita Chachi. The kids would leave home and then bald, pot-bellied Kattu would get diabetes, without losing his appetite for sex. I would have to take his urine samples in warm little jam jars to the doctors' every day.
Then I would die.
By the time Kattu came back from the loo and sat down again, the mature twenty-seven year old woman in me had been completely vanquished.
I wanted excitement.
I wanted adventure.
I wanted out.
Come Friday, I was going to the Kotla.
***
8
I decided to be as lucky as I knew how. So the next morning, I went to the Punjab Emporium opposite Hanuman Mandir and picked up this hardcore salwar kameez, a little phulkari jacket, juttis and a pink parandi. I wore the whole ensemble and drove to the Kotla stadium in the car Zahid had sent for me, Daler Mehndi blaring from the speakers.
The team was already at the table when I reached. I knew Zahid, of course. Hairy was the captain of the Kings XI side, apparently, so I met him, and Shivee and a couple of hulky, vaguely familiar looking goras.
'They are Australia's best bowlers,' Zahid whispered when I dug him in the ribs questioningly. 'You should know that much, Zoyaji!'
I muttered something about them looking so different in the Punjab uniform and he nodded, mollified, and introduced me around. Then Nivi Singh rushed in, falling all over himself to say hi to me. But that was just because he'd thought I was Preity Zinta, come to wish him in person.
'She really wanted to be here,' Hairy told me wistfully, once Nivi had slunk away disappointed. 'But she is shooting some big film in Prague and cannot make it.' He then showed me this long bloodthirsty sms from Preity, telling him to go out and basically kill the Mumbai team.
I admired it dutifully, suddenly feeling very small-time. After that the boys pretty much left me alone. They got into this strategic-sounding conversation. Not that there's much strategy involved in a Twenty20 match. Seems to me you just go in there and hit the hell out of the ball. Still, Hairy seemed to have some kind of a plan. Which is good because everybody was kind of expecting this match to be a replay of last year's IPL Final in which Nikhil's side had trounced Hairy's soundly.
After a rather quick breakfast, I got up and went out on to the terraced balcony adjoining the dining hall. It had a great view of the maidan below, where the groundsmen were scurrying around doing stuff. I thought I recognized one of the umpires from Dhaka and was leaning out to get a better look when I heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Nikhil Khoda, lean and keen in the spiffy Mumbai Indians uniform, looking right down at me.
'Hi,' I said, stupidly.
Loathing 80%. Lust 20%.
'Hi, yourself,' he smiled back. 'You look sweet. Thanks for coming.' Was this guy for real? He'd got me off my favourite brand, was out to disprove my lucky status, and he was now being nice? The outrage must've showed on my face because he said quickly, 'Look, none of this is personal, you know. It's just that we're all keen to settle this luck thing before we get into the run-up for the big one next year.'
'How civilized. So you've decided to test my luckiness out in simulated test conditions,' I said sweetly.
His teeth flashed in a very white grin. 'Yeah.'
I leaned back a little and opened my eyes wide. 'You think I'm going to be a flop today, don't you?'
He grinned again. 'Pretty much,' he drawled.
'And your side's going to win?'
He lifted the collar of his striped shirt and eyeballed me with his Boost-browns, 'Yeah.'
'Great,' I cooed. 'That should make a nice change for you.'
His eyes glittered but all he said, pretty neutrally, was, 'Are you so nice to everybody or is it just me?'
'Just you, actually,' I said, 'because you've been so nice and gone out of your way to have me practically sacked.'
He had been looking over my shoulder at the pitch, hardly listening to what I was saying but at this his eyes snapped back to me. 'Matlab?' he asked
'Matlab, thanks to you, they took me off Zing!. I'm working on Maximilk now.'
'Thanks to me?' he repeated, puzzled. 'What'd I do?' Then his brow cleared. 'But it's the same company right? What's the problem?'
I gave a tight little laugh. 'Oh, just that I hate the job,' I said.
Khoda shrugged and went back to looking out at the field again. 'Oops,' he said indifferently. Then he added, 'Much as I'm enjoying this conversation, I really have to get on to that field now.' And with a curt nod he clambered on to the balcony railing, leapt lithely onto the grass, and got into a chat with some guy in a Fly Kingfisher coat below.
I glowered at him for a while, then shrugged andwent downstairs in search of Zahid and the other boys.
The stadium was decently full, but it lacked the hysteria of a proper India match. Speakers were blaring the Kings XI Punjab anthem and there was a sprinkle of vaguely famous looking people with their sunglasses on, but there was no one I actually recognized.
I looked down and saw Zahid chatting cosily with Khoda, like they weren't set to disembowel each other later at all. Guys are so weird....
I walked upto them. 'Best of luck, Zahid,' I said and he turned around, unruly copper curls falling into his eyes, a little surprised at the intensity in my voice.
'Thanks, Zoyaji,' he said formally, going pink as always.
As I smiled up into his serious brown eyes, something about the bored smirky grin on Khoda's face behind him got to me.
And that's when I did a rather silly, filmi kind of thing.
I reached out for Zahid's hand as he turned to walk away, yanked him back, and kissed him full on the mouth.
He was surprised. I could tell from the way his eyes widened just before our lips made contact. Obviously his 133 female fan club members had not pulled this stunt on him - yet. Still, he stopped being surprised pretty quick and it ended up being a nice kiss, toe-curlingly tingly and smelling of CK One and some minty brand of chewing gum. But the nicest part was that Nikhil Khoda wasn't smirking any more. He wasn't there any more actually. He'd walked away, to be exact.
And then Zahid pulled back and looked at me, a little confused, a little unfocused. Then he smiled. 'Mein abhi aataa hoon, haan?' he said quite gently and walked off to join Khoda who was waiting for him with the umpire on the pitch, hands deep in his pockets.
'Arrey wah, Joyaji, you have made him forget his English even!' I heard a voice booming behind me and turned around to see Lokendar Chugh, chomping pistas as usual and looking rather hideous in a Kings XI tee shirt.
'I didn't know you support Punjab, Lokey,' I said.
'Lai, I am Punjabi only!' he said. 'And you are looking so soni kudi! Come in and watch the match with me.'
'No way,' I said, shaking my head, my idiotic parandi swinging from side to side. 'I have to go to work now.'
Well, I left on a high all right. But as I rattled towards office in an auto, it suddenly occurred to me that a picture of me smooching Zahid might make it to the papers. Which made me feel totally nauseous - because, hello, my dad would totally freak.
<
br /> And what would Zahid think?
He'd think I was some total despo, fully nuts about him.
God, how humiliating.
Of course, all I'd been seeing was Khoda's smirky face so confident of victory.
I'd wanted to lash out at him in any way possible.
The Zoya Factor Page 11
