THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  ‘There you are!’ she beams. ‘Good morning! I thought we’d begin with a nice manicure-pedicure. Dip your fingers in this basin.’

  And so it starts.

  ‘Your nails may not show on TV, but you’ll know they’re pretty and that will give you confidence,’ Anji says. ‘Just look at this dead skin – gross! Now show me your underwear… Uff, I know you don’t plan to flash it but it has to be sassy!’

  The family gets no eggs for breakfast that day, and no banana shake either, as Anji sticks the entire ration of both these items into making a ‘bouncy banana eggnog’ for Dabbu’s head. She also throws henna powder, tea leaves and coffee beans rather haphazardly into the mix, which gives Dabbu the uneasy feeling that she is being guinea-pigged with. Her head has to be covered in a plastic Gambhir Stores packet before she can wander about the house, as the Judge and his grandson protest that they are in danger of asphyxiating from the odour emanating from her hair.

  ‘Sissies,’ Anji scoffs as she herds Dabbu into the bathroom and soaps her head vigorously with reetha suds. ‘Men have no concept. Arrey, let them get their threading done just once and then we’ll see! You don’t worry, Dabbu, it’ll all wash off – and anyway, people can’t smell you through the TV, can they?’

  Eshwari, perched on the edge of the clothes-laden bed, is watching the action with keen interest. ‘Abroad, there is apparently a company called Wella that makes hair colour,’ she pipes up after a while. ‘You can get any shade you want, I saw the ad in Woman and Home magazine.’

  Anjini emerges from the cupboard, where she has been burrowing terrier-like for over half an hour, her pretty hair all dishevelled. ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do you, Chubs, your hair is so black it will take no colour. And don’t you ever get your threading done? Your eyebrows look like caterpillars smooching. Now, Dabbu, this petticoat, it’s satin, it’ll make you feel like a queen. And this nice, light sari, wear it and show – not now, stupid, you’ll wet it!’

  As the afternoon draws to a close, the smells are vanquished, the sari tried on and the effect declared airy and bright. Debjani, who knows there is no stopping her eldest sister when she is on a mission, submits quietly, voicing objection only when Anjini produces her trusty hairdrier and a set of twenty-four pink sponge-rollers.

  ‘I don’t want sausage curls,’ Debjani wards her off firmly. ‘You might enjoy going around looking like you’re wearing a judge’s wig, Anji didi, but I don’t. I have to tie my hair up to read, it helps me concentrate.’

  ‘Fine, whatever.’ Anji, intent on ‘goodness’, heroically ignores the red rag that is the judge’s wig crack. ‘But at least plait it loosely, like so.’ Her quick fingers braid Dabbu’s hair and bring it over to lie along one shoulder. She tousles the crown, letting some curls escape and fall loosely around Dabbu’s face, and purses her lips. ‘You need something more. Dangly earrings?’

  ‘No!’ Dabbu wails. ‘I could be reading about train crashes. Or plagues. Or earthquakes. How can I do that wearing dangly earrings?’

  But Anjini, humming ‘Georgy Girl’ under her breath again, isn’t listening.

  ‘There’s got to be something… something unique… Oh, I know! Hah! Thank me for changing your life forever, Debjani Thakur!’ And Anji, extracting a single white rose from the vase Mrs Mamta has placed on the dressing table, bites off most of the stalk with her teeth and sticks it ceremoniously into Dabbu’s plait, settling it in the nape of her neck. ‘A rose for a rose. You’re perfect now, baby! And Anji didi made you so!’

  She marches Debjani through the aangan and into the drawing room. ‘Ma, Bauji, how does she look?’

  ‘D for dazzling,’ the Judge says with an encouraging smile. Could he be more fake? Dabbu thinks, exasperated. He doesn’t even have his glasses on.

  ‘But it’s not about how you look,’ the Judge continues, much to Anjini’s disgust. ‘It’s about self-belief. Remember how you took on the Vunderful Vladimir, while all the others cowered!’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Anji scoffs. ‘We didn’t cower. We were just smart enough to know that Vladimir wasn’t actually going to skewer you to death inside that box, Bauji!’

  ‘I love the rose!’ Mrs Mamta Thakur puts in hurriedly. ‘Well done, Anji! And Dabbu, smile a little more when you read. You have such a lovely smile, baba!’

  ‘Don’t let the laindi dogs jump on you!’ Anji agonizes as Debjani heads for the door. ‘They’ll spoil your clothes… Uff, who’s phoning now?’

  Debjani, who is right next to the phone in the passageway, grabs it and holds it to the non-rose-festooned side of her neck. ‘Hello?’

  ‘All the best.’

  His voice sounds toe-curlingly hot on the phone. Still, this is a little too high-handed for Debjani.

  ‘How are you so sure it’s me?’ ‘How are you so sure it’s me?’ he replies and she can hear laughter in his voice.

  Debbie flushes. Flirt. Harami. Kiss grabber. Also, autocue coacher, she remembers guiltily. But the autocue coaching was probably just preparatory to the subsequent kiss grabbing. Cunning kiss grabber.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says with bad grace.

  ‘I’ll be watching,’ he says, his voice a caress. ‘Blow them away.’

  And that evening, Debjani does ‘blow them away’. She greets the camera without any self-consciousness, reads naturally and doesn’t falter once. Dylan, watching in his living room with his mother and brothers, finds it hard to take his eyes off her.

  ‘She’s pretty,’ Ethan declares. ‘Prettier than the rose in her hair.’ His eyes slide slyly towards his big brother. ‘No, Dyl? See, Mamma, how hard he’s hugging the cushion while watching her!’

  Dylan chucks the cushion at him and enquires mildly if he wants a kick in the goolies.

  ‘The question is not what I want,’ says the incorrigible Ethan, ‘but what you want.’

  ‘I want to listen to the news,’ Dylan answers pleasantly. ‘So keep your trap shut or I’ll shut it for you.’

  Debjani talks in dulcet tones about the President’s visit to a medical college in Maharashtra. She speaks of the inauguration of an art exhibition in Pragati Maidan by the Minister for Culture. And at the fag end of the main news, she mentions that ‘the Special Investigation Commission appointed to investigate the incidents following the assassination of the late Prime Minister in New Delhi submitted its findings today. It recommended no criminal prosecution of any individual and cleared Member of Parliament Shri Hardik Motla of directing the riots’.

  Then she smiles her pretty, lopsided smile. ‘And now for the sports news. England continued to dominate on the fourth day of play against India in Calcutta…’

  Dylan stares at the television screen in bewilderment. No criminal prosecution of any individual? What about fucking Hardik Motla and his gang of goons? What about all the eyewitness accounts? What about my eyewitness account, for heaven’s sake? He gets to his feet and as his mother watches uneasily, walks up to the TV and switches it off. Debjani, now wrapping up the news bulletin, her skin more dewy than the rose in her hair, vanishes with a little blipp. Dylan stalks out of the room, picks up the phone and dials the India Post office, very white around the mouth.

  ‘Yeah, it’s me. I want to speak to VO. He’s in Delhi? Oh, board meetings. What? Really? Okay, I’ll give him a call then.’

  A tall, thin, fair man with a dyed goatee and a beatific Hindu-god smile is listening to somebody speak, his eyes half closed, his body language elaborately attentive. His arms are crossed, his fingertips, tapping gently against his arms, are slim and pale and twitchy. Somehow they manage to give the impression that they spend a lot of time up his thin nostrils, like worms seeking out their hidey-holes.

  ‘Mr Motla, would you like to share your reaction to the findings of the Special Investigation Commission with the viewers of Viewstrack?’

  The voice is Mitali Dutta’s. The camera cuts to her briefly as she speaks. She is looking rather warrior-like in a peacock blue kurta and bright red lipstick.


  Hardik Motla opens hooded, watery eyes. ‘I feel vindicated.’ He has a trick of tilting his eyes upwards as he speaks, until only the whites show, like a prophet seeing visions. ‘Vindicated. A lot of things have been alleged about me, and I am very happy to get this clean chit from such an apex body. Yes. Also,’ he clears his throat, his smile staying miraculously intact, ‘my heart goes out to the families of all those who died in that dark time. I pray for the souls of…’

  ‘How the fuck does he manage to smile and speak at the same time?’ Varun Ohri asks, fascinated. ‘His cheeks must be as steely as Jane Fonda’s thighs.’

  But Dylan is too disgusted to theorize on thighs.

  ‘I can’t believe they gave him a clean chit.’ He shakes his head. ‘This SIC is like some sick joke.’

  ‘He’s obviously got friends in high places,’ murmurs editor-in-chief Hiranandani suavely, his silver hair gleaming above his thin, sad-clown face in the afternoon sunlight that is filtering in through the windows of the India Post’s Delhi office. ‘Or he’s got dirt on people in high places.’

  On the TV, Mitali narrows her eyes and pushes the mic closer to Motla’s face.

  ‘Sir, what about the statement of one of the officers who was in the briefing room with you on the night of 30 October, that you said – and I quote – “Get people to vent their anger. It’s much better that way. Keeping anger, rage, violence pent up inside is unhealthy. It can give you cancers.”’

  Motla leans forward.

  ‘Who was this officer? What is his name?’

  Mitali looks discomforted.

  ‘We both know, Mr Motla, that the statement was made anonymously. The officer said he feared for his life.’

  Motla sits back in his chair, spreads out his pale palms and rolls his eyeballs upward. ‘Only cowards are anonymous.’

  ‘But he said you said – and again I quote – “Ask any good psychiatrist, keeping anger inside is bad. It can give you ulcers, giltees, cysts and cancers. So if you don’t get the poison out in small-small controlled bloodlettings, it will build up and build up and one day it will explode.”’

  ‘Nice story.’ Motla smirks. ‘Only, it’s not true.’

  ‘You went on to give examples from history. You said,’ she bends down to consult her notes, ‘“The anger of the German people was not allowed to be vented after the First World War. They had to keep it all inside so their resentment just kept building and building and building, and then what happened? Hitler happened! Second World War happened! This is history – let us prevent it from being repeated.”’

  Hardik Motla wraps his arms around himself and massages his upper arms rhythmically.

  ‘Look, Mitaji, I have been very patient. I have sat here and listened to all your questions. Because you are from a video news magazine and everybody wants to encourage these new, so-modern video news magazines filled with pretty young journalists. But ten officers have testified that this so-called cancers speech of mine never happened. It is made up! Untrue! Rubbish!’

  ‘So you deny it entirely?’

  ‘Yes! These Sikhs, they only have themselves to blame. Arrey, if you distribute sweets and laddoos and sing and dance to celebrate the assassination of a beloved Prime Minister, you are asking for trouble, na! Every action has an equal and opposite reaction! That is physics.’ He smiles at her, trying for charming and achieving distinctly creepy.

  Varun Ohri snorts. ‘Fucker used to be a high school teacher or what? First history, then physics.’

  Mitali doesn’t smile back. ‘What about the reports that you supplied party workers with voting lists so they could zoom into Sikh households and torch them with kerosene you provided?’

  ‘Find me one party worker who says I did this! The SIC hasn’t been able to. Maybe you, being a modern video news magazine, can do it!’

  She ignores the sarcasm and ploughs ahead. ‘Sikh people have testified that they heard you incite the Hindu crowd from the back of a truck in Tirathpuri. They say you were the one who started the chanting of the slogans Blood for Blood! and A Life for a Life! which spread like wildfire to the rest of the country.’

  ‘That is all rubbish,’ Motla snaps testily, his smile wearing and tearing. ‘These are faceless and baseless accusations made up by that half mad reporter Shekhwati.’

  ‘You mean, Shekhawat?’ Mitali corrects him, looking taken aback. ‘From the India Post?’

  ‘Yes!’ Motla nods. ‘See, this Shekhwati and other people are just doing name-calling, but when I ask them to supply proof, they slink away like shadows!’ His eyelids stop flickering suddenly, and his eyes lock into camera. His smile grows steadier, wider, more assured. ‘I tell you what, I tell you what!’

  ‘What?’ Mitali prompts, moving a little closer.

  ‘Let me issue a challenge to the Indian media today, on your programme! You people give big talks about my briefings to ten-ten civil service officers, to an army of party workers, to a colony full of common people! Yes ki no?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  ‘So if you can find even one civil service officer, one party worker and one common people to testify against me, I will myself walk to the closest police station and surrender humbly. Bas!’

  Mitali looks startled but makes a quick recovery. She says, with the satisfied air of somebody who’s got their scoop, ‘Well, that’s fair enough. A defiant challenge being issued here on Viewstrack today by MP Hardik Mot –’

  Varun waddles forward and punches the pause button on the VCR. Dylan pushes his hair off his forehead and shakes his head.

  ‘Well, Shekhwati, what do you make of that?’ Hira raises an eyebrow. ‘We’ve just had a direct challenge made to us.’

  ‘I know,’ says Dylan, still reeling.

  Hira steeples his fingers. ‘So have you dug up anything new here in Delhi that we could use for this? Or has DeshDarpan become your new whipping boy?’

  Dylan acknowledges this thrust with a faint grin. ‘You should’ve written that piece yourself, Hira.’

  ‘Oh, I agree.’ Hira nods. ‘As it stands, you’ve made me look a right monkey.’

  ‘What I said was justified,’ Dylan maintains.

  ‘Mostly,’ Hira concedes. ‘I’m not sure why you took off on that sweet newsreader though. I wouldn’t have done that – that was just mean. Poor Ms Mathur.’

  ‘Thakur,’ Dylan corrects him, flushing.

  ‘Thakur.’ Hira’s keen eyes gleam with sudden, speculative interest. Dylan gets the feeling he wants to pursue the topic but all Hira says is, ‘So, what about Motla? And the non-findings of the SIC? Should we make a hoo-ha about it? Or will the Prime Minister’s Office have a coronary?’

  ‘You have the answer to that,’ VO says heavily. ‘You’re the Fop, not us.’

  ‘What a revolting word.’ Hira grimaces. ‘I’m assuming it means Friend of PM?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Varun nods stolidly. ‘So you tell us.’

  ‘Let’s go for it!’ The words burst out of Dylan before Hiranandani can speak. ‘It was all so clear from what he said – all we need are three unshakable, unbreakable witnesses. People who won’t back down, who will be willing to reveal their identities.’

  ‘But people are too scared to talk, Dylan,’ Hira says. ‘That’s why the SIC failed. Motla knows that, that’s why he issued such an arrogant challenge!’

  Dylan shakes his head. ‘That’s all eyewash. The SIC failed because somebody high up muzzled it. People want to talk. How about we just print our interviews directly in the paper?’

  ‘We’ll ruffle too many feathers…’ begins Varun, looking uncomfortable.

  ‘Ah, but what are ruffled feathers,’ Hira murmurs, ‘before people who have lost their lives, that too in such a sickeningly barbaric fashion? And he’s named us personally! If we don’t take up this fight, our motto Truth. Balance. Courage. will become a complete joke.’

  The trouble with bloody Hiranandani, Varun thinks in disgust, is that I never know when he’s serious a
nd when he’s just being facetious. Sarci fucker.

  ‘Let the Sikh associations fight it,’ he suggests warily. ‘It’s their war, not ours. God knows they’re rich enough.’

  ‘It is our war,’ Dylan says, his eyes blazing. ‘Don’t back out at this point, VO!’

  There he goes again, Varun thinks resentfully, channelling Bade-papaji. It’s like he’s the official grandson, not me.

  ‘Taking him on will push up our circulation figures too,’ Hiranandani says thoughtfully.

  ‘See?’ Dylan grins. ‘Circulation! It’s a good idea, VO!’

  Silence. Except for Varun Ohri doing a gulping fish imitation. Bloody Stephenians, he thinks, feeling harassed. It’s like the mafia around here.

  ‘One IAS officer, one party worker, one common man,’ Dylan says, leaping lithely to his feet and counting off on his fingers. ‘With testimonies that no legalese can shake. And who won’t go hostile on us. That’s enough to nail him. And after this character certificate Motla’s just handed me, people in Tirathpuri will be falling over themselves to tell me stuff!’

  ‘I approve it.’ Hiranandani nods with sudden decisiveness. ‘Go get ’em, tiger.’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Varun says lightly. ‘My granddad just owns the paper. Now can we watch that interview again? Fast-forward that ugly bugger Motla’s bits and linger on Dutta. She’s hot. That nose ring sends shock vibrations straight down to my jaded loins. Weren’t you two an item not so long ago, huh, Dhillon meri jaan?’

  ‘We were in college together,’ Dylan says matter-of-factly. ‘And we sort of keep in touch.’

  ‘Ah,’ Varun murmurs. ‘College and all.’

  ‘The family business does a gross disservice to your vast talents, VO,’ Hiranandani says resignedly. ‘You should run a gossip magazine. That’s your true calling.’

  6

  ‘So what do you make of that Shekhawat boy?’ Mrs Mamta asks the Judge in the privacy of their bedroom.