THOSE PRICEY THAKUR GIRLS

by Anuja Chauhan

  They go on to talk at length about the protest march – ruing the poor turnout, bemoaning the apathetic public which had not responded to the call of the Grand Old Men of Indian Publishing, and hinting, basically, that the government was not going to be particularly impressed.

  ‘I think the bill will be passed,’ Hira says in conclusion. ‘Now all we can do, as conscientious newsmen, is to ensure that it is as toothless as possible.’

  ‘Haha,’ the interviewer twinkles coyly. ‘It is bitter medicine perhaps, but the patient is in need of it. And on that healthy note, goodnight.’

  The lights go off. Hiranandani and the interviewer walk out of the studio and back to the green rooms. When Hiranandani emerges a little later, he is alone and Debjani is waiting for him.

  ‘Hello, sir.’ She smiles. ‘Such a pleasure to meet you.’

  Hira nods, all suave, avuncular charm. ‘Ah, hello, you’re young Debjani Thakur, aren’t you. Quite the celebrity. Didn’t you go to College?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ she replies, slightly confused. ‘You have to be a graduate to read the news.’

  ‘But not to the College, clearly,’ he continues smilingly. ‘Well, you could’ve fooled me, you read so well. Very smoothly, with none of those dreadful rounded vowels favoured by the lesser DU colleges. Well done.’

  What an ass, thinks Dabbu.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she says. ‘Actually, I came to the studio today specially to ask you something.’

  ‘Make it quick, young lady,’ Hira says, glancing at his watch. ‘I have a flight to catch.’

  ‘Just if you had any news of Dylan Singh Shekhawat,’ Debjani says, her cheeks very red. ‘He’s a – a family friend and I thought perhaps you might have some news of him?’

  Hira’s face softens. ‘You poor child,’ he says gently. ‘I wouldn’t say this on camera but I can tell you privately: Shekhawat turned out to be a sad disappointment. Able chap, but morally unsound. He’s a disgrace to the profession, frankly, and deserves every bit of what’s coming to him.’

  Debjani stares at him, her brain spinning. ‘But I thought Viewstrack and your paper had done a story…?’

  ‘That was a fake story,’ Hira says firmly. ‘Made up by a silly girl who was in love with him. You aren’t a silly girl too, are you?’

  Debjani throws back her shoulders. ‘Oh, no,’ she says, her eyes flashing. ‘I’m not silly.’

  ‘Good.’ Hira pats her shoulder. ‘Forget him. He’s going to be in Tihar for a long time. Move on. That’s my advice.’

  Even his boss says he’s lying, Debjani thinks dispiritedly as she ties on her sari for her newscast that night. And his father told BJ that he offers no guarantee for his son. His own mother told me the story about the fake wedding invitation cards he got printed. He made up a fictitious cat to explain away the fact that he was cruelly kicking Moti the first time we met. He is a liar. And what kind of pathetic loser am I for refusing to let this go?

  Valiantly, she tries to wrap her mind around the depressing fact of Dylan’s essential dishonesty (D for dishonest) but her mind is reluctant to oblige. But Dabbu, who has managed to wrap her fingers even around Moti’s loathsome balls by telling herself that you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, is having none of that.

  ‘He is a liar,’ she tells herself firmly. ‘Get this into your thick head, Debjani Thakur, he is a liar, and that poor Mitali deserves your pity, not your envy – so banish all filmi notions of visiting him in prison wearing that pretty net dupatta you embroidered all over with dainty little rosebuds…’

  And that’s when a horrible caterwauling sound floats to her ears, followed by hysterical barking and screams and squeals ripped from the throats of the three children lying in their makeshift beds in the drawing room. This is followed by her father calling out testily for someone to please go and see what that bloody racket is. Dabbu drops her sari pleats and walks out of her room.

  ‘It’s the ghost of the Pushkarni,’ Monu quavers from below the bedcovers as another bloodcurdling yowl sounds from the gate. ‘She’s come to suck out my soul, like marrow from a bone.’

  ‘Uff, what crap!’ Debjani says and hurries out, hot on the heels of the intrepid Samar and closely pursued by the barefoot Bonu, down the drive and out through the gate. Moti and his family are on the ghostly silver sand pile, barking up a storm. She shushes them and such is her tone that they cower immediately, sidling backward into the sand. Debjani turns towards the house, her mind already back on her problems.

  But Samar’s hand tugs the end of her sari.

  ‘Is that a baby leopard?’

  Dabbu looks.

  A tiny, mangy cat is crouching against the gate. Ragged, orangy-black fur, a horridly torn right ear, dirty rice-like teeth bared in a weedy, unconvincing hiss.

  Debjani stares down at it like she’s never seen a cat before.

  ‘No, summervine,’ she says, her voice shaking, a little tremulous, a little crazy. ‘It’s a cat. A tortoiseshell. Isn’t it pretty?’

  The TV at the Connaught Place police chowki sits atop a weirdly hissing refrigerator, draped with an orange and white towel, like some fantastic electronic bride coyly doing ghunghat on the beach. At seven o’clock every evening, somebody lifts the towel, twiddles its twin brown knobs briskly and gets it going. Dylan can just about see it from the edge of his cell. He is careful not to let on, though, because then the policemen will push it out of his line of vision. It helps pass the time, especially late at night, when they watch raunchy movies featuring lovely large ladies whose rolling assets Dylan cannot help but appreciate.

  When the TV crackles on this particular evening, his fourth in the lock-up, he realizes abruptly that it is Friday. With a pang of longing so sharp that the pain is almost physical, he recalls the scent of freshly cut grass in Justice Laxmi Thakur’s lawn. The mouth-watering smell of fried onions atop the bowls of Maggi noodles, the pretty embroidered cheese-cloth napkins, the thrumm of the circulating fan as it turns its steely head to lift the little flyaway curls at the base of Debjani’s neck and send in Dylan’s direction the faint scent of Ponds Dreamflower talc.

  He throws an arm over his eyes, rolls over on the cement bench, and mutters, his back to the TV, ‘It really is high time this country privatized television.’

  He dozes uneasily as the fat little TV beams out the Hindi news to the nose-picking policemen, following it up with the wildly popular filmi sitaron ka rangarang karikram, Chitrahaar, and an episode of the newly launched comedy show Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, which has all the cops guffawing madly. But at nine o’clock, when the new theme music of the English news bulletin sounds, he sits up straight and stares through the bars at the little television with resentful slit eyes.

  ‘Hello, and welcome to the News at Nine! I’m Amitabh Bose!’ booms a familiar plummy voice and Dylan swears under his breath. Still, he can’t help waiting, his heart in his mouth, for the camera to cut – which it does, right on cue – to Debjani, rose-bedecked and unusually pale as she twinkles gravely and adds, ‘And I’m Debjani Thakur.’

  Amitabh has the lion’s share of the news tonight. He drones on about the Prime Minister’s visit to the North East, which cuts to visuals of the Prime Minister wandering about in jeans and T-shirt in some vaguely mountainous background, chucking babies under their chin, shaking a leg with some young ladies clad in black, red and silver, and gravely examining ears of grain in green terraced fields. Debjani comes in to talk about the celebration of some festival in the state of Gujarat, and then Amitabh talks about Mikhail Gorbachev’s imminent visit and India’s ties with the USSR for three whole minutes. And then it is Debjani’s turn again. Dylan waits for her to fill everybody in on the happenings at the American Open, where Martina Navratilova and Boris Becker have had rather an eventful day. Instead, Debjani looks straight into the TV screen, draws a deep breath and goes abruptly, completely quiet.

  It is just a moment’s pause – probably a glitch with the autocue – but it feels somehow mo
mentous. Maybe it’s because the expression on her face is so strange. Oddly resolute and a little scared, but also like she might start giggling at any moment. Dylan gets the unnerving feeling that she can actually see him, that she is watching him watching her with unwilling eyes – unshaven, bloody and bedraggled – through the bars of the lock-up in the Minto Bridge police chowki, nine kilometres away from the headquarters of DeshDarpan.

  Don’t be a fool, he tells himself savagely even as his belly plummets into a graceful swallow dive before rising again like the talented ballet star it is and pirouetting madly on its toes. Her eyes are just looking at the damn autocue, not searing into your stupid soul.

  And as he continues, grudgingly, to drink in the sight of her, this new, seemingly omnispective Debjani squares her shoulders and looks straight into the camera, her eyes glowing with some inner resolution. So might a suicide bomber look before he presses the detonation button, Dylan thinks, then wonders if he’s losing the plot entirely. She says, her voice as calm, as well-modulated and as matter-of-fact as always:

  ‘Meanwhile, in a startling development, video news magazine Viewstrack and the India Post conducted a joint investigation and discovered that the bribery and testimony tampering charges against journalist Dylan Singh Shekhawat are entirely false and were fabricated by MP Hardik Motla in a scurrilous bid to discredit the highly regarded journalist.

  ‘Kamalpreet Kaur, the so-called eyewitness whom Shekhawat stands accused of bribing, turned out to be the niece of Motla’s long-time employee and ex-driver.

  ‘Our sources believe that the false case against Shekhawat is part of a larger conspiracy to make the press appear both immoral and incompetent in order to ease the passing of an anti-defamation bill through Parliament, which will give the government far-reaching powers to penalize any journalist that dares raise his voice against it.

  ‘Journalists of all publications gathered today at the capital’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in a show of strength to urge the government to withdraw the bill. AIR and DeshDarpan too support them in this worthy endeavour.’

  She comes to a breathless halt and smiles the lopsided street-urchin smile that India loves.

  ‘That’s all from our news desk for now. Goodnight.’

  14

  The world didn’t crash in on Debjani after she finished that evening’s broadcast. Amitabh Bose, so quick to notice any minor mistakes in pronunciation, didn’t even realize that his fellow newsreader had just read an entire paragraph of news that didn’t feature on the autocue rolling before them, news that had been made up on the spot, that hadn’t been carefully whetted by the I&B ministry. She was able to unclip her mic, walk calmly down the corridor and take the usual chartered cab home before the phones started ringing madly inside the DD offices.

  Anjini didi and Antu bhaiyya have taken everybody out for jalebis at Bengali Market, Binni’s Oriya maid tells her when she gets home. Does Dabbu didi want anything?

  Debjani doesn’t want anything – least of all to engage with the unfamiliar, panicked voice that hisses into her ear when she answers the telephone a little later, informing her that her services are no longer required at DeshDarpan. ‘Don’t expect a cheque from us for tonight’s broadcast, either!’ the voice wails hysterically. ‘Instead, expect to be fined, expect to be arrested, expect to face a criminal prosecution!’

  Whatever, she shrugs as she hangs up. She finds she isn’t too concerned about her newsreader job right now, even though it’s something she has worked so hard and so long to get. Instead, her palms are sweaty, her stomach is churning and her mind is totally occupied with how vulnerable she has made herself vis-à-vis Dylan.

  He’ll know I love him now, she thinks, mortified. How awful! What was I thinking? Suppose they let him out of jail on the basis of the evidence Mitali dug up and he shows up here with Mitali in tow to thank me, knowing all the time that I’m obsessed with him? Oh god, how do I cover up?

  While she is agonizing over this, tossing and turning in bed, sunlight filters into the bedroom and the phone begins to ring. Mrs Mamta takes the calls, going from bemusement to straight out panic in about three interactions.

  Is this Debjani Thakur? Oh, her mother? Vul, Mrs Mamta, how long did it take your daughter to infiltrate DeshDarpan? Is she part of any organization or is she working for the opposition? Are she and Shekhawat in a romantic relationship?

  After a few hurried denials, Mrs Mamta puts the phone off the hook. Then she hustles Dabbu into the drawing room, summons the Judge, and demands to be told what’s happening.

  Dabbu, sulky at first, finally admits rather airily that she has become disgusted with the way the government keeps poking its nose into all of DD’s doings. The anti-defamation bill was the last straw for her, and so, she had decided on the spot, all miked up and with the camera rolling, to do something about it.

  ‘Anyway, what I said wasn’t too bad,’ she tells her parents. ‘You guys must’ve heard me! It was the bit I read out right at the end.’

  Her parents exchange guilty looks. To be very honest, watching Debjani reading the news has lost its novelty. Neither of them listened very carefully to the broadcast last night. They’d switched on the TV, watched the beginning, satisfied themselves that Dabbu was looking pretty, and then more or less let their minds wander. Mrs Mamta had knitted a sweater for Samar and brooded over Anjini’s non-pregnancy and how grave and grey Anant looked all the time. The Judge had fretted over Chachiji’s woes and his shameless younger brother’s canoodling with the Hot Dulari. And then of course, they had all gone out for jalebis. And while they had been so criminally negligent, the Judge thinks bitterly, their fourth-born was busy scoring her most spectacular own goal yet. She had gone and messed about with an I&B ministry-approved script and destroyed a hansta-khelta career in less than three minutes.

  ‘Hey bhagwan.’ Mrs Mamta wrings her hands, looking uncharacteristically rattled. ‘She read out something that wasn’t approved, LN! To the entire country! At prime time! What does this mean? Will she have to go to jail?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the Judge says unconvincingly. ‘At least, I don’t think so. Calm down, Mamtaji!’

  Mrs Mamta sinks into a chair and begins to fan herself.

  ‘We should never have gone out to eat jalebis. But I was just so relieved to see that Anjini and Anant are getting along at last! I wanted to encourage them.’

  The Judge privately thinks that far from ‘getting along’, Anjini and Anant have been softening up the family in order to break some big bad news to them, but this isn’t the time to bring that up.

  ‘Hai, isse better was that she stayed in supta vastha only! And does this mean she’s still obsessed with that wretched boy?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ The Judge mops his brow.

  ‘Ma, BJ, I’m in the room,’ Debjani says, getting more panicked as she sees how panicked they are getting. ‘Stop talking about me like I’m not here. And it’s not that awful. Of course I won’t get sent to prison. What an idea!’

  ‘Why’s Dabbu going to prison?’ Eshwari, who has wandered into the room and is busy pulling on her sneakers, asks interestedly. ‘To visit Dylan? That’s kind of romantic. Like how Ba went to visit Mohan Das in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.’

  ‘Be quiet!’ Mrs Mamta hisses so vehemently that Eshwari actually shuts up mid-word, her mouth open. ‘Don’t you dare go out or talk to anybody, either of you! Khabardaar! Sit inside the house and keep your lips buttoned or I’ll break both your legs!’

  Eshwari looks mildly astonished at this. Mrs Mamta doesn’t usually subscribe to the Khabardaar school of mothering. Things must be serious.

  ‘It’s all your fault,’ Mrs Mamta tells her husband. ‘Going on about the Vunderful Vladimir. You’ve turned her head.’

  ‘There’s no point in being so dramatic,’ the Judge says quietly. ‘This is a serious issue. More serious than Debjani realized, obviously. Who knows what the repercussions could be.’

  ‘They called from
DD,’ Debjani falters. ‘Late last night. I didn’t tell you guys. They said I was sacked and that I would be fined and that there would be a criminal prosecution.’

  ‘Bas,’ Mrs Mamta says fatalistically. ‘The whole family will be clapped in irons.’

  ‘Stop it, Mamtaji.’ The Judge’s voice is sharp. ‘Debjani, if you can remember clearly, word by word, what exactly it was you said, I can prepare a statement for you to make.’

  Debjani nods, her stomach churning. She had thought the worst was Dylan finding out she still had feelings for him. Going to prison hadn’t even entered her mind. I could end up in a cell with Phoolan Devi, she thinks, breaking out in a cold sweat. And have to wear a bandanna and bell-bottoms and have my uterus removed. The loos will be filthy. And there will be mosquitoes and no electricity and AIDS lurking everywhere. Is that what Dylan is going through right now? Then I’m glad I did it. But oh god, I think I’m going to be sick.

  ‘I can remember it all, I think,’ she tells her father. ‘I’ll write it down and give it to you.’

  ‘Good.’ The Judge smiles at her encouragingly, the first time, she realizes, tears springing to her eyes, in almost three months. ‘Now, everybody, please relax. If we could weather living with Chachiji for three whole months, we can surely weather this.’

  And uttering these bracing words, he retires to his study alone, to face the fact that his favourite daughter is in very deep, very grave trouble.

  Late the next night, Varun Ohri is fast asleep when a sibilant whisper sounds in his ear.

  ‘Sunn, Varun! Varun ke bacche! Arrey, sunn meri gal, lordu!’

  Varun stirs, groans and sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes. A chunky silhouette, as wide as it is tall, hovers over him, breathing heavily. There is a strong scent of chamelis and chicken tikka.

  ‘Bade-papaji? It’s two in the morning!’

  Purshottam Ohri bangs the floor with his metal-tipped walking stick. ‘Read this!’