'I thought this place was closed on Monday!' Khoda said, pulling his hood lower in a bemused sort of way as we emerged from under the trees and into the thick of the action.
'It is,' I told him. 'This is the famous all-night Monday cart-market. Pedestrians only. These guys come from all over Delhi to sell their stuff here.'
Khoda shook his head at a bunch of grinning kids indicating that no, he didn't want to buy a toy cellphone, red heart-shaped balloons, a plastic badminton racket or a pair of pink sunglasses. 'Yes-madam-bellies?' called out a rakish looking dude in a Titanic tee shirt, Kate Winslet and Leo di Caprio locked in a passionate embrace across his skinny brown chest. 'Yes-madam-tee shirts? Yes-madam-baggies?'
I shook my head at him, and he focused his attention on Khoda instead.
'You sure you don't want a bellies?' Khoda asked me grinning. 'Or a baggies?What is a "baggies" anyway?'
'No, I don't want either,' I told him. 'A "bellies" is a flat shoe that will make me look short and a "baggies" is a very outdated trouser. Come on, aren't we doing this for exercise?'
He followed reluctantly, trailing behind me a little, looking at all the crazy stuff on sale on the road, wooden spoon sets, suitcases of every size and colour, piles of spongy, squeaky children's shoes and frilly nylon frocks that looked like iced wedding cakes.
We passed carts piled high with rosy red apples, knobby grey-green water-chestnuts and bright yellow nimbus. We passed carts selling fake Dresden China shepherdesses and porcelain doggies, mosquito nets, fake flowers and digital watches. Then, at a cart piled high with plastic knick-knacks, Nikhil pounced on a red plastic fly-swatter-cum-back-scratcher. 'This is great!' he said enthusiastically, 'It's a two-in-one. I can kill flies and scratch my back as well.'
'That's kind of the idea,' I said, grinning as he waved the idiotic thing around, his eyes all shiny under his stupid sweatshirt hood and tried to swat me with it. I ducked and said hastily, my self-preservation instincts coming into play, 'You know what? I think I want one too!'
He fished out his wallet and bought two fly-swatter-cum-back-scratchers for the princely sum of ten rupees.
'There's so much energy in this place,' he said, leaping ahead and walking backwards in front of me. 'It's unbelievable!'
He couldn't have said anything to make me like him more. The KB Monday night market is my most favourite thing on the planet. I beamed up at him happily in the light of the bright naked bulbs strung above us, 'Isn't it?' I said, then added, 'Uh...watch out, bull ahead!'
We stepped around the placidly majestic bull and his steaming aromatic droppings and I led him towards a street corner where an old sardarji presided over a massive flat copper skillet, frying mashed potato cutlets to a rich golden brown, sending huge quantities of steaming potato vapours up into the air. The steam, coupled with the magical tunnnggg! tunnnggg! of his metal skewer hitting the skillet was attracting people to him in droves. We queued up for our turn, inhaling appreciatively, tucking our hands into our pockets. It was getting a little chilly.
'It's going to take a while, I think,' Khoda said.
The guy in front of us turned around and nodded, grinning. 'Ten minutes at least...Sardarji's very famous.'
Just then a runny-nosed little surdling came and handed us two cups of tea. 'Complimentary hai ji,' he said smilingly, exposing a gap in his front teeth. 'Waiting de vaaste.'
We thanked him and sipped our tea in silence.
Then Khoda said abruptly, 'Look, I'm sorry about that whole episode with the lawyers. Please tell your father that we'll fix it up any way you want, no conditions, no obligations. The important thing is for you to come to the World Cup with us.'
I didn't say anything, just cradled my glass of hot chai and blew on the icky brown-orange skin floating on the top. A million thoughts went through my head, number one being Anita Chachi's cheap Draupadi crack.
'Why?' I asked him straight up.
He looked surprised. 'You know why.'
I laughed, not very happily. 'Because I'm lucky. You don't really believe that, do you?'
'No,' he said doggedly, 'but my boys do. Even the ones who didn't come with us to Dhaka. They've seen that Australia match footage a million times and are convinced you're a miracle, a Goddess.'
'And you, Nikhil-sir?' I asked. 'What do you think?'
He said, with mild irritation, 'Will you please not call me Nikhil-sir? If you were born in June '83 you can't be more than two years younger than me. And it makes me feel really old. Like those dudes in the serials whom all the pretty girls are always calling Mr Bajaj or Mr Walia.'
'You watch those serials?' I asked, momentarily diverted.
He shrugged. 'Sure. They're pretty hilarious.'
'They're supposed to be tragic,' I told him. 'But look... uh...Nikhil, did you read that piece of paper they wanted me to sign?'
'I did today,' he nodded. 'Then I tore it up and threw it away. Forget about it. Just come as a guest, an honoured guest.'
I shook my head, swinging my fly-swatter-cum-back-scratcher around uneasily. 'I felt so cheap. You have no idea. There was this hairy troll in orange robes who went on about my "propitiousness" being directly proportional to my "purity".'
'Sounds like Jogpal Lohia's Lingnath Baba,' Khoda said dismissively. 'He's a joke.'
'Well, the joke was on me,' I said, rolling my eyes. 'And my dad...he was very quiet about it, but I think he was upset at the tone of the whole contract. He was already hassled because the family's been making snide remarks about Zahid and me.'
Nikhil placed his hand on the small of my back and nudged me closer to the sardarji's sizzling tikkis. 'I figured it was something like that,' he said. 'Do you think it'll help if I speak to him?'
I nodded, feeling that this could not actually be happening. 'Yeah, I guess. It should help.'
We'd reached the front of the line then and the old sardarji, a vision in spotless white, glowed at us benevolently from behind his skillet. He dished out four spluttering golden-brown tikkis into two leaf plates, sprinkled them with juicy, freshly grated carrots and sweet white radish, ladled on two kinds of chutneys - a sticky-sweet tamarind one and a lethal green chilli one - and sent us on our way.
Nikhil looked at his tikki gingerly, cocking one eyebrow. 'Isn't this seriously unhealthy?'
I grinned up at him. 'Worried you'll put on weight or worried that you'll get the runs?'
He laughed. 'Both actually.'
'Sports quota variety,' I said disparagingly.
'Karol Bagh type,' he smiled.
We walked home through the park, chatting easily, Khoda swinging the fly-swatter-cum-back-scratchers with one hand as we passed below the huge neem trees. A big gust of wind sent the neem leaves and tiny, star-shaped bittersweet neem flowers fluttering down upon us like confetti. He bought a paper bag of unshelled peanuts from an old lady and we ate them sitting on the swings in the deserted kiddie park.
He did this really nice non-starry thing with the peanuts. He kept shelling them and handing them to me to eat. I didn't have to shell a single one myself. Well, Lokey did the same thing, and with pistas, which are way more expensive than peanuts, but somehow I'd never gone weak at the knees thinking about how considerate he was.
'You know...' he suddenly said.
'What?' I asked, holding out my hand for more peanuts.
He dropped a shelled handful into my palm. 'We could've gone out somewhere fancy for dinner. Some place expensive. Gotten our picture in the papers...'
I looked up at him, puzzled. His tone was odd. I couldn't figure it out. 'But I'd eaten already,' I pointed out. 'And you said you wanted to walk. Sorry...did you want to go somewhere fancy?'
He shook his head. 'No, baba,' he said, looking at me, eyes alight with amusement. 'I didn't. But you're really a cheap date, Zoya.'
'It's all part of my simple unspoilt charm,' I assured him, shovelling peanuts into my face.
'Yeah, right,' he said laughing.
Then he leapt
up and started running nimbly back down the lane to my house, while I trailed him slowly, surreptitiously fluffing up my hair and sneaking peeks at his butt. I wondered what Nikhil Khoda was doing here anyway, at a little past midnight, in my brother's grubby sweatshirt, the strings hanging idiotically around his chin, asking me questions about my life? Why wasn't he with the other rich beautiful people doing rich beautiful things? Or with his underwear-model girlfriend? What did he want with me?
Well, he wanted me to come to Australia with the team, that much was clear. But that was just a fifteen-minute conversation. And it was over. So why was he lingering? Was this usual? Did he do this with every mid-level advertising executive he met?
Of course, I didn't ask him any of these questions. I just chattered away as he ran circles around me, ignoring his complaints that I was walking too slowly, and acted like there was nothing extraordinary going on here at all.
And so, by the time we walked up to my gate, I realized I'd told him all there was to know about Tera Numbar and AWB, the twin pillars on which my life was built. He, on the other hand, hadn't talked that much, just nodded and listened, his eyes gleaming appreciatively every now and then.
A slight drizzle had started to fall, so we sheltered under the overhang of the madhumalati and he made me business card my dad's number to him, and then said formally, not at all out of breath, 'Thank you for a lovely evening.'
'Thank you too,' I answered politely. 'Goodnight.'
An awkward silence followed.
I reached out to take my stupid fly-swatter-cum-back-scratcher from him and in the process both of them fell on to the pavement. Khoda bent down to help me pick them from among the thickly strewn madhumalati blossoms and we knocked our heads together hard.
I saw stars and from the dazed look on his face, so did he.
He pulled back and looked at me, rubbing his forehead. 'What is wrong with you?' he asked exasperatedly.
'Sorry,' I winced and giggled at the same time.
'No, I'm sorry,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'My head hurts.'
'We should bang our heads together again,' I suggested. 'Nahi toh a black dog will bite you.'
He raised his eyebrows at that. 'And who's being superstitious now?' he asked.
He had a point there. I shrugged. 'Me, I guess. It's just something Eppa says.'
'Maybe she just likes to bang Zoravar and your heads together,' he said, still rubbing his own ruefully. 'Maybe that's how she gets her kicks. Ever thought of that?'
'No, actually,' I laughed, warming up to him for talking about my family like he knew them.
'Anyway, who am I to argue about superstition?' he asked resignedly and came closer to me. 'So, where's your head again?'
I closed my eyes, still giggling, and braced myself for the collision. But nothing happened. There was just the feel of his lean, strong fingers cradling the back of my neck. Suddenly I was almost scared to open my eyes. But after a while, I did. I blinked and looked up. He was looking down at me. His face was very still, his eyes unreadable.
'Your hair's so soft,' he said.
I didn't know what to say. I mean, 'thank you' would've sounded idiotic in the circumstances. So I just looked up at him, though it wasn't easy. His Boost-brown eyes were mesmerizing. Then his gaze slid and I relaxed a little, only to realize that he was now looking at my mouth.
'I really want to kiss you, you know,' he said softly. 'I've been wanting to, all evening.' He touched the centre of my lower lip gently with one calloused thumb. 'Right here.' But then he said, even though his thumb lingered, 'But I'm not going to, okay?'
'Okay,' I whispered back idiotically, really for the lack of anything to say.
He shook his head and laughed, sounding half amused, half amazed. 'Aren't you going to ask me why, Zoya?'
'Not if you don't want to tell me,' I said, striving for a mature tone even though my heart was slamming against my ribs. 'And listen, if you're not going to kiss me, do you think you could get into your car and reverse it out of here, quickly? This is my Gajju Chacha's parking slot and he gets really antsy if anybody else uses it...'
'Well, of course. We can't go upsetting Gajju Chacha...' Khoda said, sounding faintly irritated and pulling away from me entirely. 'So why don't you run into the house now, isn't that your mongrel stirring again?'
Sure enough, Meeku's quick little feet had pattered to the gate and now he had his paws up against it and was beginning to bark up a storm. I picked him up in an effort to silence him and he started licking my face thoroughly.
Khoda watched wryly for a bit, then handed me my flyswatter-cum-back-scratcher. 'So, goodnight then,' he said. 'And make sure your dad picks up my call, okay?'
'Okay.'
He waited for me to get to the gate, open it and latch it behind me. Then he got into the car and drove off.
***
11
Dad drove up to the gate a few days later, the car loaded with goodies from the farm. Warm, tangy buttermilk, round pats of fresh, white butter, bearing the imprint of my Dadi's palms, coarsely ground bajra flour and best of all, a massive lump of sweet, sticky, browny-orange gud.
Eppa had just finished watering the lawn, so it was cool and fragrant outside. I carried our evening tea out onto the veranda and we sat down to a cup of gud-sweetened tea with Meeku sniffing about hopefully at our feet. I sipped my tea, and listened to my dad as he gave me all Dadaji's news and wondered how best to broach the whole should-I-go-to-Australia subject.
Apparently, my grandfather had managed to set up an Internet connection in the village and was addicted to a Friends Reunited website. He'd propped an ancient photograph of his passing-out parade from the NDA next to the comp and was contacting all his old pals on it, one by one. I thought that was rather sweet till Dad snorted and said that Dadaji had got into the rather ghoulish habit of inking a marigold garland around the necks of all his batch-mates who had died, and crowing about the fact that he was still going strong. 'There are just seven ungarlanded faces left on that photograph, of a class strength of fifty-three.'
My dad shook his head. 'Pitaji says three out of those seven have some kind of cancer so they don't really count. He's convinced he's going to outlive the bunch of them. He keeps telling Amma she got a really good bargain. He also seems to be deriving a special pleasure from the fact that all the Generals from his batch have kicked the bucket...'
My grandfather retired from the army as a lieutenant colonel, the same rank my dad held when he took premature retirement a few years ago. According to Yogu Chacha that is as high as the people in my family rise in the forces, because, 'They just aren't socially savvy enough to rise any higher, kiddo.' Deciding to attempt some savviness myself, I put my cup down, and in a carefully casual voice asked, 'Dad, did Nikhil Khoda call you by any chance?'
'Yes, actually, he did.'
'Oh?' I said, a little taken aback. 'And what did he say?'
My dad grunted, 'Wahi, ki Zoya ko Australia bhejo. We will pay for everything and take good care of her.'
'What did you say to him?' I asked, feeling seriously weirded out. Things like this just didn't happen. An Indian skipper, no matter how many matches he'd lost, didn't just call up your dad and have long chats with him. I mean, he lived in a different world. The fact that Nikhil Khoda and my dad had a talk over the phone seemed way more bizarre to me, somehow, than the fact that Nikhil Khoda had said he wanted to kiss me.
'I told him ki listen, young man, Zoya will not sign any contract. It will have to be a no-conditions arrangement. And I also told him,' he went on, breathing a little heavily, 'that I was surprised, or rather amazed, yes amazed, that a new-generation fellow like him should believe in all this luck-shuck.'
I winced. Poor Nikhil. That must've hurt. 'What did he say to that?'
'He said he was really calling on behalf of the IBCC chief Jogpal Lohia. That taking you along was Lohia's idea and that he was just a go-between because you and he are' - Dad paused and looked up at me
through beetling brows - 'friends.'
I went pink. Couldn't help it. 'Yes, that's true, actually,' I said, trying to appear cool. 'Not that we're friends,' I added hastily. 'That's an overstatement. He was just being polite. But it's true that Nikhil is not at all superstitious. It's Zahid and the younger boys really.'
Dad snorted. 'One trip to Dhaka and it's Nikhil and Zahid. And you want me to let you go to Australia?'
'I don't really need your permission to go,' I pointed out to him, flaring up instantly. 'I just...'
'Oh, I know, I know,' Dad said. 'You're twenty-seven years old, you'll do exactly what you please. But don't get too carried away. One match lost and these fellows will drop you faster than they drop catches.'
The Zoya Factor Page 16
