THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘What is it?’ she asks her sons.

  In awed tones, Ethan and Jason tell her. What it is. Why it’s so cool. And how it’s going to change the face of technology forever.

  ‘Apple makkhan toast?’ sniffs Juliet Bai finally, not particularly impressed. ‘What’s so great about apple makkhan toast? I’ve made mutton chops for dinner.’

  Over at Hailey Road, the kot-piece game is in full swing. Until a short while ago, the fourth player in the kot-piece sessions was the Judge’s younger brother, A.N. Thakur. But the two have had a falling out, and now Debjani is the fourth – and usually the best – player at the table. This is probably because she is completely uninterested both in the conversation and in the snacks doing the rounds.

  Eshwari, who makes herself scarce the moment the card table makes its appearance, wonders how she can stand it. ‘I mean, Balkishen Bau is just so weird, Dabbu. If I had to sit there and watch him spend half an hour stroking the warts on his nose with the card before he plays it, going hmmm hmmm hmmm all the while, I would flip. Doesn’t it freak you out?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Debjani replies candidly. ‘But he can’t help the warts, you know. It’s something to do with his liver.’

  ‘And that cough.’ Eshwari isn’t done yet. ‘The way the balgam rattles about inside his chest, like a small animal in pain, it’s –’

  ‘He isn’t well, Eshu,’ Debjani says. ‘And Ma said that BJ is already so depressed about his fight with Ashok chacha, if his kot-piece quartet breaks up too, he might totally crack. Besides, I like kot-piece. And the Brig is sweet.’

  ‘Oh, I dig the Brig,’ Eshwari agrees. ‘But still. Poor you. Maybe BJ and the Ant will kiss and make up soon, huh?’

  Debjani, privy to more information on the quarrel between the brothers than her younger sister, knows this is unlikely.

  ‘Don’t call Ashok chacha the Ant, Eshu,’ she says. ‘You know BJ doesn’t like it.’

  ‘But his initials are ANT,’ Eshu points out. ‘And he calls me ET, the Extra Terrestrial. So why can’t –’

  ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll be making up anytime soon,’ Debjani cuts her short. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll just have to learn to love the sessions.’

  They aren’t so bad. The snacks are nice. Besides, her partner is usually Balkishen Bau, and she’s quite fond of him.

  ‘So how’s the celebrity?’ Balkishen Bau nods at her now over his fan of cards, like a bulbous, fantastic geisha, his watery little eyes twinkling. ‘My chest grew six sizes just watching you read yesterday, beta! Such good English! Bhai, mazaa aa gaya! The line of your chaahne-wallahs outside must have grown too, eh?’

  This is a sly allusion to the toli of street dogs that lives outside the gate. 16 Hailey Road has always been imbued with a certain temple-like quality, devout pilgrims have thronged its gates ever since Anjini turned a luscious fifteen, but in Dabbu’s reign, this brigade has grown four-legged, panting, mangy-eared and disreputable. They sit outside the green gate and howl. Some of them have mange, and some of them, the Judge is sure, are rabid.

  ‘The GK of those wretched pie dogs will definitely go up now that their champion is reading the news,’ the Judge says wryly. ‘I don’t know why you encourage them, Dabbu.’

  ‘They’re excellent security,’ she replies diplomatically. It is an answer she has given many times before.

  ‘That’s true,’ the Judge concedes with a grunt. ‘Besides, they hate my tenants with passion. I like that. Keeps them from getting too comfortable up above.’

  ‘They haven’t been throwing down that many peanut shells lately,’ Balkishen Bau notes. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Winter got over, that’s all,’ the Judge says in disgust. ‘We’ll be pelted with lychee skins soon. I wish I could just get the chap to git.’

  ‘Won’t he git?’ the Brigadier asks sympathetically.

  The Judge shakes his head. ‘No, he won’t. Which is why I keep hoping that one of these days, Dabbu’s Moti will take a chunk out of him. I’ve been fattening the brute up in that hope.’

  Dabbu suspects it’s more than that. She thinks her father has a soft spot for Moti. She’s heard him humming Hemant Kumar songs to him out on the road a couple of times, and once she saw him chucking Moti under his chin and calling him ‘good boy’.

  The Judge looks around. ‘What’s that infernal racket?’ he demands irritably. ‘Sounds like a pig being slaughtered.’

  Debjani jumps to her feet. ‘It sounds like Moti. I’ll go see. He’s such a gentle dog. I hope no one is harassing him…’

  Dylan has driven down to Hailey Road to pick up his father at a quarter to eight sharp. He has pulled up at the gate and given two sharp toots of the horn. He is hot and sweaty and itching to get back home and show the boys all the cool stuff the Apple Macintosh can do. He has no intention of venturing inside Number 16, recalling vaguely that this friend of Dadda’s has some fourteen daughters, most of whom are of marriageable age. Highly avoidable.

  When there’s no response from the house, he gets out of the electric-blue Maruti 800 and strides up and down, trying to work up a breeze. ‘Come on, Dadda,’ he mutters. ‘Hurry up.’

  He is just about to turn on his heel for the third time to go lean on the car horn again, when a low, wet growling sound makes his blood run cold. He turns warily.

  A tiny, scruffy cat is crouching in front of his car. Ragged, orangy-black fur, torn ear, dirty rice-like teeth bared in a weedy, unconvincing hiss.

  ‘What the –’ Dylan starts to say. And then he stops abruptly. Because this unlovely creature is Hema Malini in a white apsara sari compared to what it is hissing at.

  Standing in front of the green gate of Number 16 is a beast that defies all definition. As Dylan watches in horrid fascination, its jaws work, making that wet, muddy, gurgling sound again.

  Is it a donkey? he wonders. Looks big enough to be one. But what about that massive snout, that weird lopsided gait, those glittering yellow eyes? And why does it look naked? It seems to have no fur at all, which somehow serves to emphasize its horribleness, not to mention the humongousness of its private parts. Dylan eyes these with healthy respect, backing away as the creature pulls back black, slavering lips and bares its fangs, reminding him of the ripe jackfruit he ate as a child in Mangalore – massive white seeds protruding from drippy, yellow, overripe pulp.

  The cat backs away too, and comes up with a bump against the wheel of the 800. It gives a panicked yelp, then turns to make its wretched little stand, raising one scraggy, pathetic paw, now looking like Hema Malini trying to ward off a leering, slobbering rapist-murderer.

  Baby, you’re toast, Dylan thinks. The hound from hell is gonna get you… unless there’s something I can do… but what?

  He looks around for a stone to throw or a stick to shake but spots nothing. Abruptly, the donkey-dog kicks the action into higher gear by starting to bark. Deafening, bloodcurdling, bone-marrow chilling barks. Drool drips from its massive jackfruit seed teeth. It starts to make small forward and backward lunging moves, working up a nice little rhythm, until finally it hurls itself upon the cat, its black naked tail waving behind it like a flying snake.

  Dylan bends smartly and scoops up the cat. The donkey-dog leaps at him, its yellow eyes rolling wildly. He aims a kick at its hairless chest, praying his sneakers will protect his toes, but then abruptly, a look of the most ludicrous surprise crosses the creature’s face. Dylan, who has grown up in an all-boys school, knows that look. It is the look of somebody whose balls have just been squeezed. Hard. As he watches, the donkey-dog, now thoroughly cowed, is yanked backward through the green gate, which is then shut smartly in its face. As it sets up an incensed howl, Dylan realizes a girl has taken its place.

  ‘Were you kicking Moti?’

  ‘That thing’s called Moti?’ he asks in disbelief. ‘As in pearl?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ she snaps, tossing her wavy brown hair out of her eyes. ‘Were you kicking him?’

  �
��Well, yes,’ Dylan admits. ‘But only because…’ He holds out his arms to display the evidence that will extenuate him, and stops abruptly. The wretched cat has wriggled out of his grasp and decamped, ungratefully leaving his shirt wet.

  ‘Because?’

  She says it challengingly, standing with legs planted wide apart and shoulders thrown back, obviously thinking he’s some kind of doggie-kicking sociopath. He starts to give an indignant reply, but just then the last rays of the setting sun hit her face and he discovers that her thickly lashed eyes are the exact colour and shape as Pears soap – a scent he associates with his beloved Grandma Lobo. His throat dries up.

  ‘Because?’

  But Dylan is just staring. Dabbu, leaning against the gate, breathing a little fast because of her dash across the lawn, stares back. Behind them the sun slips into the feathery embrace of the amaltas trees lining Hailey Road.

  ‘I’m Dylan,’ he manages to say. ‘I’m here to pick up my father. Brigadier Shekhawat?’

  For a moment she looks at him like she’s going to accuse him of lying. Then she nods.

  ‘Wait here,’ she tells him grudgingly. Then she turns on her heel and reopens the gate. ‘Unbelievable! What a sociopath.’

  ‘I heard that –’ Dylan takes a step forward but she has already shut the gate in his face. He puts a hand to the latch, wanting her to know he isn’t really a rabid dog-kicker, but the sound of teeth gnashing from within stays his hand. Neither dog nor dog-protectress, he reflects wryly, will warm to him when he is so thoroughly doused in cat pee.

  On Sunday morning, Mrs Mamta Thakur switches on the television at seven-thirty sharp. She sits before it, her hands busily shelling peas over a brass thaali on the table before her. A digital time clock fills the television screen for ten whole minutes and is then replaced by the revolving DeshDarpan logo which undulates on the screen for an agonizing five minutes to some incredibly depressing, keening theme music. It is very sad music. Children in houses across the country have been known to burst into tears on hearing the DD theme music play.

  ‘It’s horrible,’ Eshwari shudders as she ties her thick shiny hair into a high ponytail. ‘Like the ghost of a dead baby wailing for its phantom momma. And that logo – it’s like a massive unwinking eye – I think it’s a conspiracy to mass-hypnotize the whole country into mindless submission.’

  Mrs Mamta looks up at her. ‘Going jogging, beta?’

  ‘She’s wearing a tracksuit,’ the Judge says crankily, ‘so she can’t exactly be going swimming.’

  ‘Stop it, BJ,’ Eshwari replies. ‘Bye, Ma.’

  But the Judge has just remembered something. ‘Why,’ he asks her, ‘did everybody at that match call you Bihari?’

  He has recently been to see Eshwari play at a Delhi State Basketball Zonal, and was taken aback by how aggressively she played. The other girls shied away from her, looking rather frightened. Her skin glowed, her eyes were blazing, her shiny black ponytail seemed to float on the wind like a victory pennant. And every time she scored a three-pointer from the centre of the court, raised both arms triumphantly and flashed a sweaty, exultant grin, a crowd of smitten boys cheered raucously from the sidelines: ‘Bihari-Bihari-Bihari, hai hai hai!’

  ‘Oh, that’s just them being silly, BJ,’ she replies. ‘You know I wear all those bright batik T-shirts? The ones I get from Janpath? I wore one with the Buddha on it for practice and they started calling me Bihari, because Buddha was a Bihari, get it?’

  ‘He was Nepali, actually,’ the Judge replies, still not ‘getting’ why his fifth daughter has a nickname that seems more suited to a Bombay underworld underling than a gently reared young lady.

  ‘Stop at Gambhir Stores and get me six eggs,’ is all Mrs Mamta says. ‘Here’s three rupees.’

  ‘Oh god, I hate jogging carrying stuff in my hands!’ Eshu groans. Seeing her mother’s expression, she sighs. ‘Okay, fine, Ma.’

  She strides out of the house, skips over the sleeping laindis in the sand pile and starts her jog. It is a cool morning. Hailey Road lies damp and empty. Amaltas buds crunch below her sneakered feet, and above her the trees paint the scene a sunny yellow. At Gambhir Stores, old Mr Gambhir greets her with a wrinkly, conspiratorial smile.

  ‘So!’ he crows as Eshwari halts, not in the least out of breath. ‘Your sister read so well on TV! She was too good.’

  Young Mr Gambhir, his anxious looking forty-year-old son, cuts in with an uneasy smile, ‘Er, what are you wanting?’

  ‘Six eggs, please,’ Eshwari says. ‘Ma said fresh.’ Then she smiles down at the stooped old man. ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  Old Mr Gambhir beams. Always immaculately dressed in spotless white kurta pyjama, he has presided behind the cash counter at Gambhir Stores for as long as Eshwari can remember. He sits right below the picture of the First Guru, the tip of his white turban almost touching its frame of twinkling, multi-coloured series lights, inhaling huge amounts of agarbatti smoke and working up quite a high.

  ‘Poached egg for breakfast, hain?’ he asks jovially. ‘Judge saab’s favourite!’

  ‘Er, yes,’ Eshwari replies, rolling her eyes at her friend Satish Sridhar, who happens to be at the store too, rootling hopefully in the shelf of English movie video cassettes grandiosely titled ‘BEST-OF-HOLLYWOOD LENDING LIBRARY’.

  Young Mr Gambhir comes back with an egg tray and places it on the counter. His father waves him away.

  ‘How nice to know that after your didi has read the news to the whole of the country, she will go home and eat…’ his hand hovers over the egg tray for a moment, then descends on the largest specimen and picks it up with a flourish, ‘this! This Gambhir Stores egg! How proud that makes me feel!’

  Satish gives a little snort of laughter which he hastily turns into a cough. Old Mr Gambhir eyes him with stern, beady benevolence.

  ‘Got a cuff, beta Steesh? Here, let me give you two Vicks ki golis instead of one-rupee change.’

  Eshwari gives Satish a quelling look and smiles at the old man. ‘Namaste.’

  She continues her jog along her usual circuit, past the ruins of the Agrasen ki Baoli, all the way down to the T-point where Hailey Road hits the low red buildings and green grounds of Modern School, Barakhamba Road. She has to weave her way around several sand mounds heaped outside construction sites. The sand glitters silver in the sunshine. Eshwari can see tiny pink and brown conch shells in it. When she was younger, Debjani and she would pick out these shells and make necklaces with them. There have always been mounds of sand and stacks of bricks along Hailey Road, because so many of the old-style bungalows are in the process of being broken down and converted into apartments blocks under the family group housing scheme.

  ‘So Dubs’s got a real fan club going now, huh?’ Satish calls out from behind her, and suddenly there he is, grinning down at Eshwari.

  ‘Yes,’ she replies shortly.

  ‘So now you sisters will become even more snooty,’ he says as he starts to walk beside her. ‘That’s all we need.’

  ‘We’re not snooty!’

  ‘No?’ He grins. ‘All of you pricey Thakur sisters look down upon us dicey mohalla guys. Admit it!’

  ‘You’re mad,’ she says evasively.

  Satish and Eshwari have been walking down to Modern School together all their lives. He has always had a certain good-humoured puppy-like quality, but in the last couple of years he’s shot up and become all deep and stubbly, so now, Eshwari thinks, looking at him from below her lashes, it’s a German Shepherd puppy-like quality. His grins have grown vaguely wolfish, there is a warm glint in his eye, and last year, he asked her to go out with him. ‘Be my chick’ were his exact words. She had shuddered and turned him down as nicely as she could, explaining that, after the whole fiasco with her sister Chandu, she wasn’t allowed to have a boyfriend until she turned twenty-one.

  He took it badly at first, but now, more than a year on, their relationship is back on its old ‘just-friends’ footing. For which Mrs Mamta
Thakur, for one, is extremely thankful. She thinks the Sridhar boy is on drugs. He wears black T-shirts with snakes and roses on them, bangs on a drum set and gets his hair cut once a year. He is supposed to be highly intelligent and is studying to be an engineer, but to her he seems distinctly half-witted. Besides, the Sridhars are appallingly clannish. None but a pure Tamil-Brahmin girl will ever be good enough for their darling son. A romance between Satish and Eshwari can only end badly.

  ‘So how’re you gonna top Dabbu’s act, huh, Bihari? With basketball? India doesn’t even have a proper basketball team. You’ll have to run away to Bombay and join the movies.’

  ‘Excuse me, that’s a really sexist thing to say!’ Eshwari exclaims, pulling a face. ‘It implies that my options are purely bimboesque.’

  ‘Not true,’ he parries promptly. ‘You could become a director. A cinematographer. A producer. Don’t put your narrow little thoughts into my big broad mind.’

  ‘Jog in front of me and I’ll put my narrow little foot into your big broad behind,’ Eshwari invites him sweetly. ‘Stupid.’

  Satish chuckles and ducks nimbly out of the way of her swinging foot.

  ‘You just wanna lech at my butt,’ he says coyly. ‘Not that I get that. I mean, why this obsession with guys’ backsides? Shouldn’t you be interested in their, um, frontsides?’

  Eshwari turns on him. ‘I’m holding eggs,’ she tells him, starting to open the brown paper packet threateningly.

  The ghost of Holis past makes Satish backtrack hastily.

  ‘Or you could top the school,’ he says. ‘To be better than Dabbu, I mean. Now that’s doable.’

  Eshwari, whose studies aren’t her strong point, glares at him. ‘I am not competing with my sister,’ she says coldly. ‘Hence, I do not need to consider any of these stupid options. Directing movies, topping school, etc etc.’

  ‘Stupid people always say hence and etcetera etcetera when they wanna come across smart,’ says the incorrigible Satish and vanishes into the driveway of Number 8 before Eshwari can think of anything to say. She glares, shrugs and picks up her pace – he was slowing her down anyway.