She walks into the green room, her hands clammy but her head held high, and suddenly finds herself navel deep in children dressed in red-and-black striped towels, with knitting needles sticking out of their hair. All of them, regardless of gender, have three little dots painted upon their chins like a ‘therefore’ sign.
‘Er, hello.’ Debjani peers through the sea of red and black. ‘I’m here for my make-up.’
The sea parts to reveal a bald man with a belligerent air and a hearing aid, sweating profusely in spite of the air-conditioning. He jerks his head at her questioningly. ‘Adivasi dance?’
‘Um, no,’ Debjani says. ‘Newsreader. For the English news.’ His expression turns to one of disbelief. ‘So early? Nine o’clock news?’
‘They told me to be here three hours early.’
The make-up man smirks, not unkindly. ‘Come back after one hour.’ And he goes back to painting large red circles on the cheeks of the children milling around his knees.
Dabbu, her own cheeks red, goes out and stands in the corridor. I must look like such an over-enthu idiot, she thinks, showing up so early, all trussed up in a sari. Of course the professionals drift in late. And they probably don’t even wear a sari – they just drape the pallu over their jeans or whatever. Why didn’t I think of that?
People walk past without giving her a second glance – a short, bearded man with a clipboard, some scruffy technicians, an important looking bearer loaded down with a tray full of steaming teacups that Debjani doesn’t dare help herself to, even though she’s dying for a cup of tea.
I’ll never fit in, she tells herself miserably. What was I thinking? That I could waltz in here and read the primetime news live on DD? I’m going to be a disaster. Just like I was in HTA. My voice is drying up. Maybe I should sneak off and do some voice modulation exercises in the loo? But where is it?
She turns around – and is hit by a strong scent of imported aftershave. A face she knows as well as her own is bobbing before her eyes. Smoothly handsome, ruddily fair and ending in a neatly clipped beard. A voice like growling honey trickles into her ears. Growling honey with exquisite diction.
‘Well, hello there. Are you the newbie?’
Debjani nods, overwhelmed. It’s Amitabh Bose, she thinks, stunned. The Amitabh Bose. The It is with great sorrow that I tell you that our Prime Minister has been assassinated Amitabh Bose. The Today Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian in space Amitabh Bose. And sure, BJ claims he wears a beard to hide a weak chin and Eshu says she can’t shake off the feeling that he farts, sneakily and soundlessly, even as he reads so fluently and flawlessly – but still, he is famous. And he is talking to her.
‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘I’m Debjani.’
‘Babejani.’ He smiles. ‘How nice. We’ll be reading together tonight. They told me to look out for you. Do you want me to show you the ropes?’
She stares up at him, still a little stunned. The ‘Babejani’ comment is strictly cheesy but this is Amitabh Bose – dare she take offence?
He assumes she is taking him up on his generous offer, turns around and starts walking, and just like that, the spell is broken. He has a large wobbly bottom, the kind (according to Eshwari, the butt aficionado among the sisters) that jiggles about and actually talks to people, so that even when the bum-owner’s got his back to you, you don’t feel socially neglected.
‘Are you familiar with the set-up here?’ he asks.
Debjani shakes her head. ‘I just got the telegram,’ she explains breathlessly. ‘Saying I was selected.’
‘Ah.’ Amitabh Bose winks conspiratorially. ‘The famous DD telegram! Have you seen the newsroom at least?’
Debjani nods. Frankly, the newsroom had disappointed her. It was a dusty, dingy space, smelling of stale beedi, housed in some squalid barracks behind Akashvani Bhavan. There were towers of dusty cassettes piled all higgledy-piggledy on the floor, and she had found it hard to believe that the news India heard every night, read out with such grace and elan, was put together there.
‘This is Studio Number 2 to your right,’ Amitabh Bose is saying, ‘where all the big shoots happen. There’s an Assamese dance going on there today. And that’s Number 3, from where we do the news broadcasts. Take a look.’
Debjani peers into Studio Number 3. It’s not very big, the set is blue, with a rotating globe, a gleaming tabletop and two high chairs. One of those is for me, she thinks, oscillating madly between panic and pride.
‘And that’s the autocue,’ Amitabh points. ‘You’ve had some practice?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m not very good with it, though.’
He laughs. ‘You’ll be fine. Ah, here’s young-Uday with our scripts. Go through them, check for grammatical errors, there are usually plenty.’ He mock-frowns at young-Uday, who looks dutifully sheepish. ‘And see if you have any questions.’
She takes her sheets from pimply young-Uday, who look even more nervous than her, and scans them quickly. Her lines are marked ‘Newsreader 2’. I’m Newsreader 2, she thinks happily. This is easy, actually, lemme see, President’s visit to an engineering college in Tirunamalli… Foreign Minister’s speech at the SAARC summit… Okay, all good… nothing here I can’t pronounce.
Back in the green room, the make-up men attack her hair and face, powdering, dusting, spraying. Their hands smell of Charmis cold cream and onion. She demurs a little at how thick they are laying it on, but they assure her that she’ll need it under the strong studio lights. There is an awkward moment when one of them picks gently at her mole. ‘It’s real,’ she says apologetically and he smiles in a friendly way. And then young-Uday – who appears to be the floor manager – leads them back to Studio Number 3 and they sit, and he tells her where to look, and the DD News theme music starts to play and Amitabh flashes her an encouraging smile and young-Uday counts down to one and the cameras whir to life and Amitabh says easily in his famous baritone: ‘Good evening and welcome to the Friday Night News at Nine. I’m Amitabh Bose…’
Dabbu takes a deep breath, smiles and says, not at all like someone whose heart has clawed its way up to her esophagus and is about to leap out of her mouth, ‘And I’m Debjani Thakur.’
‘Dabbbuuu! I’m so proud of you!’
The Thakurs are at Bengali Market, eating chaat. Well, they’re holding it and talking excitedly around it but not much is going into anybody’s mouth. The chaat-wallah, a thin bronze personage with a grey handlebar moustache, looks at them indulgently and doles out the golguppas extra slowly.
‘How was I?’ Debjani asks for the fourteenth time since they picked her up.
‘I told youuuuuuuuu! Perrrrrfect!’
‘I had tears in my eyes,’ Mrs Mamta Thakur confesses. ‘You were every bit as good as that Bose, and he’s been reading for twenty years!’
‘Shhush, Ma, somebody’ll hear you.’
‘The princesses are eating very slowly,’ the Judge says to the golguppa man. ‘I apologize on their behalf.’
But that mustachioed worthy shakes his head. ‘No problem,’ he says, nodding towards Debjani with an avuncular smile. ‘I saw baby on TV. Read very well. Eat slowly slowly. Golguppe free hain.’
The girls squeal in excitement. The rest of Bengali Market turns and stares.
‘Thank you ji.’ Mrs Mamta smiles at him graciously. Then, in a lower voice, ‘Keep it down, girls. Always be ladylike. All this shrieking isn’t good for Debjani’s image.’
‘I have an image.’ Dabbu gulps, her eyes widening, and promptly chokes on a golguppa.
‘Ey, bring one Campa!’ the golguppa man shouts.
Eshwari immediately starts coughing too.
‘Bring two Campas.’
‘Do you think,’ breathes Debjani after a tingly swig, ‘that the Prime Minister saw my broadcast?’
‘Hmm?’ The Judge looks up from his aloo tikki. ‘Of course, of course. What else is there to see on TV?’
‘Behave, LN,’ Mrs Mamta starts to say but right then a group of boys
emerges noisily from Nathu Sweets. A general air of repletion and loosened naada strings hangs about them, they are picking at their gums with toothpicks and eyeing the kulfi stand in anticipation. Then they spot Debjani sipping her Campa Cola and do a double take. Furious whispering ensues.
‘Same sari.’
‘Mole on chin.’
‘You aks.’
‘No, you aks!’
Finally a large hairy one approaches the Thakurs bashfully. Dabbu pretends to look unconcerned (because what if he just wants to ask the time or something?).
‘Excuse me, you are…?’
Dabbu fiddles with her bottle of Campa Cola.
‘Yes,’ says the Judge a little testily. ‘She is.’
A huge grin spreads across the boy’s hairy face.
‘Arrey wah! You are my first famous person! That I have met personally, I mean. Matlab ki, I saw a two-foot bona with three legs in a mela once, but that’s not really the same thing, is it?’
‘No,’ Debjani agrees, ‘it isn’t. Ma, can we go home now?’
They load up in the Ambassador which, perhaps aware that there is now a celebrity on board, starts up with minimum fuss.
‘I’m so happy,’ Mrs Mamta Thakur says complacently, biting into her kulfi. ‘See the rishtas that will pour in for you now! All the best boys from the best communities – Rajputs, Khatris, Brahmins!’
‘Rishtas would have poured in anyway,’ says the Judge grandly. He has none of the proper subservience that befits a man with three daughters married and two more to go. At every rishta negotiation, his attitude has always been one of condescension – like he is doing the boys’ side a huge favour by bestowing upon them the undeserved jewel that is a Thakur daughter.
Mrs Mamta sniffs. ‘LN, we can’t act like that whole kaand with Chandu didn’t happen,’ she murmurs. ‘That would be foolish.’
The Judge doesn’t reply. The fact that Chandralekha, their third born, threw aside the nice Rajput second lieutenant with the sword-of-honour-from NDA her parents had found for her, and eloped with a shady American-Estonian a night before her wedding, still rankles.
Hacked my nose off in front of the whole biradari, he broods. That too without the anaesthesia that saving on the expenses would have provided! The tent-wallah refused to return the advance, so did that thug of a caterer even though he didn’t have to fry even one paneer pakoda.
‘If she had mentioned only once that she wanted to marry that lalloo Lippik, I would have relented,’ he sighs. ‘But she never let on, never even hinted. Am I so scary?’
Everybody ignores this plaintive query.
‘How do rishtas matter anyway?’ Eshwari asks. ‘We all know Dabbu is going to marry Moti-the-mongrel and they’re going to live happily ever after!’
‘That’s not funny, Eshu.’ Mrs Mamta Thakur frowns. ‘She’s twenty-three – we have to start looking.’
‘Ma, my world’s just opening up and you want to shut it down again!’ Dabbu looks upset.
‘Arrey aise kaise?’ her mother says soothingly. ‘We’ll find you someone nice, beta, like we did for your sisters.’
Debjani and Eshwari greet this statement with a strangled silence.
‘Unless,’ Mrs Mamta gives Debjani a sly look, ‘you have somebody in mind already?’
‘I don’t,’ Debjani groans.
‘Dabbu turns down everybody,’ Eshwari complains. ‘For the weirdest reasons – she doesn’t like boys who have too much money or boys who have too much muscle. She doesn’t like boys who want you to laugh at their jokes. She doesn’t like boys who flick their hair back, like this.’ She tosses her head. ‘She doesn’t like boys who wear acid-washed jeans, or boys who breakdance. She doesn’t like NRIs – too obnoxious; or IFS officers – too pompous. She doesn’t like boys who say twunty instead of twenty. She doesn’t like any boys at all.’
‘Clearly, Moti’s our man,’ the Judge says, not entirely unhappily. Dabbu is his favourite and he is in no hurry to see her wed.
‘Shut up, Eshu, I can speak for myself!’ Debjani says crossly. ‘Ma, I don’t like oversmart, flirty guys who think they’re god’s gift to women. And I don’t like freaks. Is that too fussy of me?’
‘Have you ever had a crush?’ Eshwari demands.
‘Have you ever not had a crush?’ Dabbu shoots right back. ‘Right now you’re crushing on the guy who doles out the tokens at our Mother Dairy, aren’t you?’
‘Hai, not that pahadi!’ Mrs Mamta exclaims, horrified.
‘Chinkies are cute, Ma,’ Eshwari says dreamily. ‘All the cutest basketball players are Manipuri, you know.’
‘Why couldn’t I have had five fine sons?’ the Judge wonders randomly in the front seat. ‘Instead of five demented daughters?’
‘Ma!’ Eshu appeals. ‘See what BJ’s saying!’
‘My girls aren’t mad,’ Mrs Mamta bristles. ‘You don’t kn –’
‘They’re making us fight,’ the Judge warns her. ‘Watch out, Mamtaji!’
‘I hate show-offs and flirts,’ Dabbu says, rather intensely.
‘Duly noted.’ The Judge nods at her in the rearview mirror.
‘I think it’s better to have lots of crushes than none at all,’ Eshwari asserts. ‘It shows that you don’t take yourself too seriously.’
‘But I don’t!’ Dabbu insists.
‘Well, I think it’s a self-esteem problem,’ Eshwari declares. ‘You think people may not like you, so you quickly say they aren’t good enough first. That way you’re safe.’
‘And you think, just because you’ve taken psychology in class eleven, you know everything,’ Debjani flashes, her cheeks very red as she realizes that her parents’ silence probably means they agree with her sister. ‘If I had low self-esteem, how could I have done what I did tonight?’
‘That’s… different,’ Eshwari says slowly. ‘I don’t know how, but it is.’
‘Well, at least meet some boys now, Dabbu,’ her mother coaxes. ‘You don’t have to marry them.’
‘She’ll never allow herself to like anyone,’ Eshwari predicts. ‘She’ll wait too long and finally end up with nothing, like people at weddings who don’t join the buffet queue till really late to show how non-desperate they are, and then get only raw onion rings and rice to eat.’
‘Well, I’d rather be like them than like the bhukkads who elbow everybody else out and stuff their faces,’ Dabbu retorts, ‘and then get the loosies.’
Eshwari, who has a delicate stomach, gasps at this crack.
Debjani grins.
‘I think you should start looking for a job,’ the Judge intervenes. ‘People will recognize you instantly – it will help you no end in interviews.’
Dabbu blinks. ‘This is a job. They pay 500 rupees a bulletin. If I settle into a weekly spot, I’ll be picking up 2,000 rupees a month. HTA was only 1400.’
‘But advertising was a career,’ the Judge replies. ‘This is a job. Not even a job, a hobby. You need to do more with your life than just sit in front of a camera and read, Dabbu. You have an MA in English, after all.’
‘Bauji, please…’
‘What about law?’ he persists. ‘Why can’t you do law?’
Yeah, right, Dabbu thinks disgustedly. So I can spend my whole life being compared to you and falling short. Which reminds her…
‘Ma, did Anji didi call?’ Dabbu asks.
Mrs Mamta gives a guilty start. Anjini had called. And said that Dabbu had read well but looked like a first-time schoolteacher – scared and stiff. I thought her supta vastha would end spectacularly tonight, Anji had fretted, but she still looked sort of half asleep. I wanted to reach into the TV and open her hair. Stupid girl. Anyway, I know how to fix this – I’ll come over and dress her for the next broadcast myself.
Being a mother of five girls involves a certain amount of mendacity.
‘Of course she phoned!’ Mrs Mamta says brightly. ‘She said you were too good. And to say congratulations and a big hug from Antu bhaiyya and her.’
/>
‘And Binni didi?’
‘She couldn’t get through, I suppose,’ Mrs Mamta replies casually. ‘The line was busy all evening. I’m sure she’ll call tomorrow.’
The truth of the matter is that the Judge and Binni aren’t on talking terms. Binni is sulking at him. And the Judge, it must be admitted, is sulking right back. They haven’t spoken in three months.
As BJ has banned everybody in the house from talking to or about Chandralekha, Debjani knows better than to ask if her third sister called after the broadcast. Instead, she sits back, satisfied.
At home, after Eshwari and she have carried their mattresses to the terrace, laid them out and sprinkled them thoroughly with fridge-cooled water, Debjani lies back on the chilled sheet and stares at the amaltas canopy above her, replaying her big day in her mind, still hardly able to take it all in.
There are four trees in the garden whose branches nod to the terrace: a jacaranda, an amaltas, a harshringar and a champa. The girls sleep under whichever tree happens to be in flower. It is a recent ritual, started last year after the Big Three left and Debjani (finally) got to call the shots at home. She loves the seclusion and the stars on the terrace. These April mornings she often awakens to find tiny, cup-shaped, sunshine-yellow flowers curled up inside her bedclothes or upon her pillow. Sometimes she will go halfway through the day with amaltas petals caught in her long wavy hair.
Thank god it went off so well, she thinks now, cuddling her pillow. I read smoothly, I didn’t panic. I didn’t screw up. Hopefully they’ll give me a regular slot soon. Maybe – her heartbeat quickens as she has a sudden, glad premonition of good things to come – maybe success, fame and perhaps even romance are just around the corner. Maybe Ma’s right. Maybe my ‘tunn’ in the sun has finally come!
2
DD’s dumb doll doesn’t please at all
Roving Eye
Over the past few months, there has been a lot of buzz around DeshDarpan’s so-called ‘Operation Credibility’. We have been informed that, under the rule of our shiny new ‘Mr Clean’ Prime Minister, DD will become more empowered, more autonomous and a lot less incompetent. A brand-new Director General has even been imported from North Bengal and installed at Mandi House. He has been given the mandate to produce entertaining, informational content and (no sniggering please!) genuinely balanced news reportage, of the kind produced by respected public broadcasters the world over.
THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS Page 2
