Jay nodded. 'That last ball, Nikhil, what was going through your mind at that time?'
Nikhil thought a little, then shrugged again and said, 'Well, it wasn't much of an ask, really. One run off one ball. I've done it hundreds of times before. I just' - he made a graphic gesture with his hand - 'removed the hype from the situation in my head and then it was easy.' He grabbed Vikram, who was lurching past them and said, 'Why don't you ask him something? He's the guy who hit the big one!'
Jay pounced on Vikram then. 'Vikram! That was a magnificent six!'
Vikram looked down, all modest, and said, 'Thank you, sir.'
'You'd had a major setback in the semi, do you feel vindicated?'
Vikram said, looking a little haunted, 'I am glad I managed not to let my country and captain down, that's all.'
'So you've beaten the hex that was put on you, huh?'
Vikram looked uncomfortable and didn't say anything, so Jay turned the mike on Khoda again. 'Nikhil, you have to tell us, what do you say about the Zoya Factor now?'
There was a little silence, all the boys piped down for a bit and looked uneasy. But Nikhil said dryly, 'That's a question you should put to the Australian skipper, Jason.'
Jay said, 'Oh, I most definitely will. But we all want to know what you have to say.'
Nikhil said steadily, 'What I've always said. That maybe it exists. Maybe it doesn't. But Team India doesn't need her. We can win on our own strengths, if we play with dedication and with belief in ourselves, any time we want.'
I grabbed the remote from Zoravar's hand and zapped off the TV.
An unnatural little silence followed.
Okay, this was it, time to face the family. I didn't know whether my dad and Zoravar had guessed about my feelings for Nikhil, but I did know that Rinku Chachi had the biggest mouth in Karol Bagh. This was so not going to be the best moment of my life. I squared my shoulders and smiled brightly around the room.
But nobody looked at me. The Chachas were busy breaking open some alcohol, Dad was fiddling with some glasses, Rinku and Anita Chachi had vanished, and Zoravar and Eppa were rummaging through a huge cardboard box.
Wow, my large and loud family was being sensitive and all.
I said, in a slightly shaky voice, pushing my hair off my face, 'Eppa, what are you doing with that box?'
She looked up, her snappy little eyes bright with tender concern and said, with a break in her usually strident voice, 'Crackers, Zoya Moya! Zoravar and I got for you to light, so you could be a happy.'
I turned to look at my horrible brother, at a total loss for words. He grinned and said, 'Let's light up a blast, Gaalu.'
Zoravar had really gone the whole hog. There were Cock Brand Big Bang Bumper Flowerpots, Chinese Fire Dragons, 8000 Ladi Bombs of Chinatown Celebrations and a whole box of Pyromania She-Demons.
We staggered out into the garden with the big box between us and Zoravar sat down on the boundary wall, his plastered leg dangling before him and watched as I set up a long line of Big Bang Bumper Flowerpots.
'You gonna light them all together?' he asked, a little uneasily.
'Why not?' I answered with reckless gaiety as I struck a match and lit a candle, wincing a little at the brightness of the flare. A throbbing headache had taken possession of me.
As I held a phuljhadi over the flame, all I could hear in an unrelenting, constant loop were the words: Team India doesn't need her. All I could see before my eyes was a cold, shuttered face, surrounded by a triumphant band of boys who didn't like me any more. All I could feel was a sick hollowness at the thought that somewhere tonight, the Men in Blue were whooping and cheering and cracking lame jokes, getting mindlessly drunk and dancing very badly - without me.
You know what your problem is? You've turned into a male attention junkie. Unless a knot of world-famous cricketers is flocking around you, you feel you don't exist.
But I want to be with him - with all of them! Hey, maybe I could call him, maybe I could give a press interview explaining it wasn't about the money, explaining why I wouldn't go back?
Yeah, but to whom? Look over the boundary wall, baby. The journos, the cameras and the mad mobs...they're all gone! You're yesterday's news. Didn't you hear the man? Team India doesn't need the Zoya Factor to win!
The phuljhadi lit up and white hot sparks flew out in every direction, spluttering wildly. I tossed my hair back and ran with it to the line of bumper flowerpots, bent low, and one by one, torched the lot. Magnificent fountains of flames bloomed around me and a fiery rain fell lightly on my skin as I whooped and capered around, but somehow, the pyrotechnics and the smell of barood did nothing for me this once. I felt as cold and as dead as I would've if I'd stayed downstairs and shut myself into the refrigerator.
You had me the moment I smelled the gun smoke in your hair....
Determined to feel something, I ran back to Zoravar and picked up a two litre Zing! bottle and shoved a couple of the Chinese Fire Dragons into it. I placed the bottle on the floor and lit another phuljhadi.
Zoravar shouted over the spluttering of sparks as I lit up the Fire Dragons, 'Gaalu, you idiot, be careful!'
'Don't worry,' I shouted as I stepped back nimbly and watched the Fire Dragons zoom up into the sky and explode into a million sparkly bits of ruby red and then go out with a chimmer.
Rather like the spectacular way in which my heart has broken, I told myself melodramatically: Bhadhaam! Kaboom! Dhichkiyaaown! Nikhil was probably claiming his so-colled fiance like a prize. She was probably simpering, Nikhil, you played an awesome innings, you brute of a man, you....
Jogpal's probably buying them dinner.
Cho chweet.
Puke puke puke.
'Who the hell cares?' I shouted aloud.
I blinked back my tears, lined up the AK 8000s and lit their long fuses, feeling completely numb. I stood there, the fancy fuse-lighter dangling from one hand, wondering in a detached sort of way why the AK 8000 seemed so big today. I didn't remember the ones in Dhaka being so big, or smelling so strong. Tongues of flame flared and rushed up towards the mouths of the dragons on the canisters, hissing softly. And then, suddenly, as I vaguely registered Zoravar leaping up from the boundary wall and rushing towards me, it hit me. The AK 8000s were looking so big because, like an idiotic lovelorn lid I'd forgotten to move back after lighting them.
And now, as time stood still and everything moved in dramatic slow motion, I took a step backwards, my hands held up protectively before my eyes. But I'd left it too late. With an incredibly sexy whoooofft sound, the AK 8000s exploded. There was a chimmering sound and a horrible smell of burning hair.
Oblivion.
***
22
'You look like shit.'
I sighed, 'Thanks, Sanks,' and thought, You don't exactly look like a branch of blooming bougainvillea yourself. But he did have a point. I won't go into lengthy descriptions, it would be too depressing. Suffice to say that as I'd got out of the auto outside office this morning, the driver had told me: 'Pachaas rupay hue, Bhaisaab.'
It was a fortnight since the night of the World Cup final. Zoravar's plaster was off and he was due to go back to his unit in Poonch tomorrow, which was good because Dad was really mad at him for letting me run amok on the terrace. 'Her face could've been burnt!' he'd raved and when Zoravar had flippantly said that at least then I would have a legit reason to go in for plastic surgery, he'd almost hit him.
Sanks, who had got back six days ago, had phoned me and, on being told what I'd done to myself, had said irascibly that a drastic haircut was no reason for anybody to pull so much paid leave.
'It's a lesson to you to care more about the little kids in Sivakasi, not to mention the pollution levels in this city,' he'd told me reproachfully. He also told me to quit languishing, to get my sorry ass to office, and to start peddling cola, double quick.
I had dazedly obeyed to find that the world had returned to normal, in the sense that I was back to being a total nobody a
gain. In a way, the loss of my 'mane', as I now thought of it fondly, had been good. At least I wasn't constantly being accosted by sneering citizens going: 'You're Zoya Devi, the greedy Goddess, na?' Because, like it or not, that was how I was known. I'd gone down in history as somebody who had priced herself too high and overplayed her hand. In fact, only yesterday I'd overheard people in an office meeting talking about how much to price a premium Kit Kat bar to the client. 'Be careful, don't price it too high and do a Zoya.' They'd been saying it totally without rancour, but it had hurt.
What hurt even more was that all the players - including my three former acolytes - had totally bought Jogpal's version of the events. None of them had so much as called or messaged me even though they had been received with glorious fanfare three days ago on their return. The president, an ardent cricket fan herself, had broken all official protocol and gone to receive the team at the airport. Their faces were in every newspaper, at every roadside. Even Vishaal's Nike ad, the anti-luck one, was on air now; it must have sold a million pairs of shoes, people loved it, they couldn't get enough of it.
And what hurt the most was that the players were attributing their victory to talent/grit/mental attitude/hard work but definitely not to crummy old luck. They were the ones who deserved all the credit. I, if they bothered to talk about me at all, was just a Jogpal protege, who'd been more or less forced down their throats. They couldn't stop talking about themselves. It seemed like in the course of a single match they'd lost all the innocence and the humility, which had been their most endearing trait, and set them apart from the overhyped old Indian team that had disgraced itself during the previous World Cup.
I couldn't even bury myself in work. Because guess who was slated to star in the next bunch of Zing! commercials? The entire team, that's who. I'd managed to squirm out of the film shoot somehow but the images of the boys, the very same stills Neelo and I had shot in Dhaka, were staring me in the face every day. The Goddess had been replaced by eleven sweaty God-lings. Such is life.
I kept wanting to stand up and shout: It's just a game. Just a stupid, overrated game. It's not a cure for cancer. Get over it!
I mean, why couldn't these people just make a nice wholesome Shah Rukh Khan-chases-a-Zing!-and-gets-outwitted-by-a-kid/dog/old man, ordinary consumer commercial for a change, anyway? But, of course, I couldn't say anything because people would think I was bitter and grudging and screwed up on top of being greedy. So I just had to grin and bear it.
At least Nikhil wasn't gloating as much as the others. But that wasn't much comfort because all he was doing was appearing in the colour supplements with various babes on his arm. The sight of their simpering face in all the national dailies set my teeth on edge and made me want to puke.
And, of course, there was the baby.
The only consolation I had was that Jogpal was looking more like a cornered rat every day. True to what he'd said in his e-mail, Weston Hardin was insisting on investigating Robin Rawal and the others concerning the Auckland match. And suddenly, now that he'd spearheaded India to a World Cup win, Wes had a lot more people paying attention to what he was saying. Some dodgy-looking characters had been flown in from Sharjah and Dubai to 'assist the CBI in their inquiries'. Their pictures were in the papers, talking shadily into cellphones.
I was sitting in my cubicle and reading one such report when Mon sauntered up and chucked something on my table - a dainty gold bracelet, with fat little sheep hanging off it. It lay there glistening on top of one the artworks I was supposed to be checking. The words 'Buy a Zing! 600ml and Get a Kurkure Red Chilli Chatka Free' peered through the bracelet.
'Where'd you get that?' I said faintly, my heart starting to slam against my ribs so painfully I thought it would bruise.
She smiled, and blew a perfect smoke ring right into my face. 'He gave it to me to give to you,' she said in a smug sing-song way. 'At the shoot.'
'He asked about me?'
She shook her head, frowning a little. 'No, not really,' she admitted. 'I think he was kind of expecting you to be there, you know?'
'Did he say anything?' I said, trying to sound casual and failing miserably.
Mon pursed her lips. 'No,' she said. 'He asked about Armaan, about how the Beyblading was going. That's all.'
I picked up the charm bracelet slowly and turned it over. There it was, entwined forever on the plumpest sheep's curly little bum: 'NZ'.
I sighed and slipped it into the pocket of my baggy grey shirt.
There was no way I could wear it.
It so didn't go with my Tihar Jail haircut.
***
About half an hour after I got home, I was hit with this massive urge to phone Nikhil. It was the bracelet, of course, which was to blame. A heavy little mass curled up in the shirt pocket right over my heart, acting like the Ring of Sauron, controlling my thoughts and telling me what to do. Just call and say hi.... Here's the phone, look, now just scroll down to N, and punch the little black button, go on, just do it.... I chucked both, the bracelet and my phone, on top of a steel Godrej cupboard, changed into grubby home clothes, and went out into the garden, my hands shaking with resolve.
My dignity was just about all I'd salvaged from my misadventure in Australia. I was so not about to abandon it so late in the game.
In the garden, I found a rusty khurpee right where Dad had left it the night before and crouched down resolutely. Inhaling the scent of rich, upturned earth and gouging out large amounts of bhattua roots from the dahlia beds made me feel a little better. When I found Meeku scratching himself among the verbena blossoms, I felt energetic enough to chuck aside my khurpee, pull him onto my lap and de-tick him thoroughly. As Eppa won't wear the glasses the ophthalmologist advised her and as she watches any number of soaps and gory movies at night, her vision is not exactly twenty-twenty. There were entire colonies of little ticks lurking in his shaggy undercoat that she'd missed completely.
I was working my way down around his collar area and doing a really good job by imagining that every squirming plump tick I was pulling out and squashing to death viciously with a flat stone was really Jogpal Lohia, when a deep hesitant voice above me said, 'Excuse me...Zoravar?'
And I looked up with a feeling of total inevitability and met Nikhil Khoda's Boost-brown eyes.
He gave a startled exclamation and backed off, even as I reared up into a standing position from my squatting stance in the flower bed. In fact, I missed banging the top of my shorn head into his chin by a few millimetres. A couple of tick carcasses did fly up though, and hit him in the eye. Of course Meeku leapt up and started barking madly.
Rubbing his eye vigorously with one hand and fending Meeku off with the other, Nikhil said, 'Whatever happened to your hair?'
'Never mind my hair,' I blustered, totally appalled by the surge of worshipful groupie-ish emotion that had taken possession of me at the sight of him standing tall among the dahlias. 'Whatever do you mean by sneaking up on me like that?'
'Sorry,' he said, and added somewhat confusedly, 'I thought you were your brother.'
'Well, I'm not,' I said crossly. 'That is my brother.' Zoravar, having heard the mad barking, had come on to the pillared veranda and was gawping at Khoda with the air of a soldier who was wondering if he should sneak back to his tent and bring out his regulation army rifle.
'Hello,' said Nikhil warily.
'Hello,' replied Zoravar, walking up slowly.
They circled each other like a couple of suspicious street dogs and then, as I said their names, reached out and shook hands gingerly.
'Congratulations,' Zoravar said grudgingly.
'Oh ya....' I chimed in reluctantly. 'You won the World Cup after all.'
Nikhil grinned, folded his arms across his chest and rocked back on his heels cockily. 'Yeah, I did,' he drawled with great satisfaction.
He looked so super-hot saying that! So much so that I had no idea how I managed not to throw myself at his superheroic, world-beating chest at that very mo
ment.
Then he turned to me and repeated, 'So what happened to your hair?'
Zoravar volunteered information unnecessarily. 'She celebrated your victory a little too enthusiastically.'
Nikhil frowned. 'Meaning?'
So Zoravar told him how my hair had caught fire. He exaggerated the whole episode, of course, running around the lawn dementedly in a witless imitation of me, beating his hands against his head like Nana Patekar. He was so over-the-top. Really. I wanted to tell him that Truly Spiritually Evolved people behave exactly the same in front of kings as they do in front of beggars.
The Zoya Factor Page 41
