Opening Night

by Diksha Basu

  Anyway, we were driving miles and miles through increasingly smaller villages and greener valleys until we reached the Hamptons of Bombay, Alibaug. We veered off the main road and began to make our way through a valley when Jay pointed across the dense foliage and said, ‘There. There it is. Nightingale.’

  I looked across the valley to where his finger was pointing and could see only what looked like a little township of cottages. ‘A nightingale? Where?’ I asked.

  ‘There,’ he insisted, ‘see that cluster of cottages? That’s Nightingale. Their place. I knew it wasn’t too far.’

  I realized then that Nightingale was the name of the estate we were visiting. Jay’s friends were one of those couples who had names for their houses. And there we were, pulling into a heavy wrought-iron gate with Nightingale carved tastefully into it.

  Nightingale was one of the getaways that belonged to Matthew and Priyanka (Anka, for short). Matthew, from Lisbon by way of Los Angeles, owned a chain of high-end lounges in Delhi, Bangalore and Bombay, and had been living in India for nearly fifteen years. Jay was one of his best friends from his early days in the country. He was also the man I was curtly introduced to at the book launch a few weeks back. Anka, his beautiful and significantly younger wife, was one of India’s top models in the 1990s and had since popped out three children and popped on quite a few pounds. I had a sneaky suspicion that Jay and Anka had engaged in a night or two of illicit excitement with each other. I had mentioned it once or twice, and Jay always laughed a bit too loudly about what a good friend she was and, moreover, what a good friend Matthew was. But he never really answered my question and that answered my question. You would think I would be jealous of all his past liaisons, but I found it quite exciting.

  I remembered looking at glossy pictures of Anka in magazines when I was nine and loving all the glamour and glitz that she represented. I used to love that world. I made every visiting relative or family friend bring me the latest issues of Stardust and Femina. It was a world I loved. A world I coveted. And here, a decade and a half later, I was actually pulling in through the gates of this once inaccessible world.

  I got out of the car feeling stale, tired and dishevelled as Nightingale’s uniformed staff members scrambled forward to relieve me of my bags and get me fresh coconut water. I was nervous. I pulled my hair into a ponytail, dabbed on some lip gloss and got ready to act like I belonged. Matthew, accompanied by two huge, perfectly groomed Dobermans, came bounding out towards the car and scooped me into a hug while the dogs lavished licks on my legs at which I had to giggle lovingly. Smelling sweetly of wine, Matthew said, ‘Let Gupta handle the car and shit. You come with me, beautiful. The sun is just setting and it’s a sight you can’t fucking miss.’ With that, I was thrown over his alpha-male shoulder and carried off towards the main door. I was trying to laugh coyly while yanking my dress down over my ass, and I was strangely excited and terrified about what lay ahead.

  From my upside-down view over Matthew’s shoulder, I could see us making our way towards a small door embedded in a massive stone wall. It looked intimidating and oddly alluring. I imagined that was exactly the effect some overpaid architect was hoping to create. But, ducking through the tiny door, I realized that the architect couldn’t have been paid enough. On the other side of the gigantic stone wall was a sight I had only seen in movies about big Hollywood producers in California. I seemed to have been transported into a villa in the south of France. Not that I knew what villas in the south of France really looked like, but I had read my share of Peter Mayle.

  There was a huge open-air kitchen which was warmly lit and looked oh-so welcoming. It was fully stocked with an island table in the middle, which was filled with half-empty bottles of imported non-Sula wines, meats and cheeses, and other exotic food. I think I even saw caviar. And a bowl full of diamonds. And around the table were the chicest-looking people imaginable. In front of the kitchen was a low seating area where lissome bodies lounged and smoked and laughed. The kitchen and the seating area were all done up in pure white upholstery that looked as though it got replaced every two days. Past the pristine white daybeds was the pool. A beautiful, deep blue infinity pool that dropped off the edge into a valley so green, it looked colour corrected. And across the valley, behind the hill, through turquoise clouds, a flaming orange sun was quivering its way down.

  Matthew put me down and, as I tried to pick my jaw off the ground, I noticed the beautiful people. I tried not to stare but it was them – the girls from the covers of the magazines of the 1990s. There, swaying to Café del Mar, with cigarettes hanging out of their pouty lips and wine glasses held daintily, were Anka, Mandy, Diana and Radhika (Rads, of course). The supermodels of yesteryear.

  And in the kitchen were the plus ones. Not quite as beautiful as the women, but charming in their own way. There was Zakir, who belonged to Mandy; Jason, who, along with his paunch, receding hairline and, I imagine, fat wallet, belonged to Diana; and Davo, belonging to Rads. There was a quick round of introductions. The men were all laid-back and seemed effortlessly fashionable in their linen white and pastel pants and chiselled, tanned bodies (except poor Jason). The women, in tiny bikinis, smiled their beautiful smiles but, I couldn’t help but notice, their teeth weren’t quite as white as the magazine covers had portrayed, their breasts were no longer as perky, their pierced belly buttons looked tacky and while they were still striking and magnificent, something about them made me feel a little sad. A little sad for them and a little happy for me. They weren’t as perfect as I had thought. I could be them. Easily. Well, them from ten years ago. Even better.

  They air-kissed me as if they had known me for years. I managed to fumble in return. They were only going for the one-cheek kiss but I went for the two and ended up brushing Mandy’s lips. She just laughed lightly while I hoped the ground would swallow me up whole before I tried to make out with someone else. (How are you supposed to know how many cheeks to do? I hear the three-cheeker is threatening to become the latest trend.) I went for the single cheek with the rest of them.

  For a brief instant, surrounded by these tall women, I felt myself rush back to the age of nine, sitting in the US, flipping through an old Indian magazine that some aunt had brought back from India in which Mandy had described her love for the new Fendi sunglasses that she had just picked up in Florence. She was shopping for Fendi while I was allowing my mother to pull my hair into pigtails before lunch. But I was quickly snapped out of my youthful confusion by Anka’s guttural smoker’s cough that suddenly converted her beauty into a sickening bit of yellowish phlegm. I winced and my self-confidence rose.

  By the time the sun completed its descent into the horizon, I was feeling a bit more comfortable in the company of these strange strangers. Actually, let me not romanticize the idea. Yes, the sun was setting and new friends were being made, but the unending glasses of wine were the real force behind these forgings of friendships.

  I was listening more than talking, but I liked being a part of this sorority of leggy beauties. Mandy giggled uncontrollably about not remembering a single time that she had been on a catwalk sober. Anka joined in proudly and spoke of the time she was so high she had wanted to waltz straight off the catwalk and into heaven. Diana and Rads shrieked with the memory of the time Diana had to hold Rads up through a photo shoot because the latter had consumed one shot too many. Mandy reminisced about Jay’s affairs with all the assistants backstage. Maybe I was feeling a bit paranoid that day but I swear I could hear a hint of sarcastic nastiness directed towards me when they talked about Jay. Why else would you dissect someone’s prolific (far more prolific than I had generously imagined) past love life in front of their current lover? But maybe in this world you did. Who were these people? I wondered what the families I saw in Dadar that day would think of this idle chatter about recreational drugs, one-night stands and fleeting affairs. Happening right in the same city as them with their synthetic saris and daily daal. And who were those people? Why did I fit in
nowhere? I imagined I’d be sadder if I did fit in in Dadar.

  The four made up in spirit all that they might have lacked in IQ and, despite my ongoing identity crisis, I found myself having fun. I was drunk and happy. Thanks to the booze, I felt like I was part of this group. I felt as though my legs had grown six inches while I’d been there and was convinced that I had once modelled for Versace. Talk about drunken delusion. I knew that when I woke up the next morning, that night would just be bits and pieces of memory wrapped in a pounding headache, but it was worth it.

  After hours of listening to them chat, exaggerating my glamorous experiences in NYC (Anna Wintour and I chatting for hours at my after-party), splashing about in the pool and still being ferociously drunk, I realized that Jay had been missing for a while. Giggling, wasted, and bathing suited, I decided to hunt around for him to have some fun with.

  Silly Nightingale had about a hundred little nooks and crannies and I was stumbling all over the place. It wasn’t just a normal huge house on acres and acres of land. No, that would be too easy. Instead, it was a sprinkling of cottages, all independently designed and scattered around the estate. Like a little boutique hotel. Except it was someone’s home. Sorry, summer home. And there were also random little outdoor jacuzzis and hot tubs and bathrooms and whatnot peppered across the property. I was just about drunk enough to give up on the hunt. A few more twists and turns and I wouldn’t have been able to find my way back to our room. Then, in the distance, through alcohol-blurred eyes, I thought I finally saw him. I saw someone. There seemed to be some movement a bit further away in an outdoor hot-tub-type thing. I clumsily stumbled over and, about twenty-five feet away, I stood frozen, dumbstruck. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be. But it was. Without a doubt. I found him. I found Jay. But he already seemed to be having fun. And instead of me, it involved … Matthew? I felt nauseous. I didn’t want to see them or them to see me. I wanted to run away but my feet refused to cooperate. There was an underwater light in the jacuzzi, so they were clearly visible to me standing in the distance in the darkness. I was suddenly sober. Sober but feeling absolutely sick. There was a bottle of whiskey between them. They were splashing and laughing and playing and merging. The water reflected smooth brown skin against porcelain white. Strong torso against strong torso. I couldn’t see it too clearly and I didn’t want to. I turned and I ran with some effort. I ran without looking back and straight to my room and fell into bed and covered my head with a pillow. The world couldn’t get to me there. I couldn’t have just seen what I saw. I couldn’t have … And then I fell asleep.

  I woke up, as expected, with a throbbing hangover, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced since freshman year at Princeton. My mouth felt like I had been sucking a giant cotton ball all night, my head was about to explode, my stomach might have beaten my head to the explosion, and my eyes felt as though all the moisture had been sucked straight out of them. I had no idea where I was when I woke up. I saw Jay next to me and felt relieved. At least that helped me orient myself a bit. And then I remembered where I was. In Alibaug. At Matthew’s house. Matthew, whom I saw in the jacuzzi with Jay. It couldn’t have been. Despite my body’s desperate wish to stay in bed, I couldn’t get myself to keep lying next to Jay. He was a stranger. I was three hours out of Bombay and felt completely alone. I wanted to run all the way back. I wanted Jess and Dino. At least their levels of weirdness I could handle. I wanted normalcy, didn’t want to get thrown into this insanity. I brushed my teeth and went and sat by the pool. Fortunately I was the only one awake so I had time to drink gallons of water and gather my thoughts.

  I had to be mistaken. That was the only logical explanation. It couldn’t be anything other than that. I was completely drunk and hardly remembered anything from the rest of the night, so why was I so certain about this? I recalled the scenario. I was too far to really even know if it was them. After all, it was a large property with a lot of staff. Who’s to say it wasn’t two of the staff members? Or Zakir and Jason, maybe? Wait, no, they were with us. Or maybe it was nobody. I was drunk. I had to believe this. For the sake of my own sanity, I had to believe this. Even if my instinct was screaming at me not to, I had to shut my instinct up and believe that it was probably not Jay. And so I did. I did everything in my power to convince myself that it wasn’t him. Heterosexual until proven otherwise.

  The rest of them gradually woke up and emerged. I couldn’t look Matthew in the eye. But it was a member of the staff … I still couldn’t look him in the eye. Everybody was laughing and joking about the previous night and I tried my best to join in. But I didn’t want to be there any more. Jay hadn’t even woken up yet. Mandy asked where he was and I was forced to lovingly go and wake him up. I entered our room and he looked so handsome and so peaceful fast asleep on the bed that I truly believed it wasn’t him. It couldn’t have been. I woke him up gently. His eyes opened and he smiled, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. I smiled too. How could it have been him? He nuzzled into my neck and fell asleep again.

  ‘Wake up, silly. Everyone’s waiting for you for breakfast,’ I whispered.

  ‘Mmmm. Let them wait. I have you here.’

  ‘Get up. There’s bacon!’

  But he was still sleeping, and I decided to let him sleep because as long as he was in there, asleep and adorable, I didn’t have to worry about watching him interact with Matthew and could continue believing that none of what I knew to have happened had really happened.

  I went back to the crowd and said that he was still sleeping and would not be joining us.

  Mandy asked, ‘He’s still sleeping? Lazy head. He went off to bed first last night, didn’t he? I don’t even remember seeing him after dinner.’

  I smiled vaguely and took an enormous heap of bacon. Nothing else would get me through the morning.

  Mandy said, ‘Take more of that, babe. It’s this tofu bacon I brought from London.’ I dumped the bacon back into the bowl, took a cup of coffee and sat down.

  With the hangover still raging and my thoughts all over the place, I smiled and nodded arbitrarily while the others chatted. Jay eventually surfaced and joined us at the table. Mandy shrieked, ‘About time, sleepy head! My god, you even went to sleep first.’ Couldn’t she shut her mouth? Jay didn’t say anything but smiled and tousled Mandy’s hair and because his smile was what it was, that was all he needed to do. He made his way over to me and kissed me on my forehead. He got a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and, on his way, gave Matthew’s shoulder a little squeeze too. My body tensed. The chatter at the table continued but I couldn’t focus. I breathed deeply and returned Jay’s smile. He looked happy and dazed and I felt miserable and sick.

  Jason and Diana announced their plans to get back to Bombay that afternoon. I jumped up. ‘Do you think I could hitch a ride back, actually? My roommate got food poisoning and I think she needs me to get back as soon as I can.’

  Jay looked up and asked, ‘Jess? Isn’t Dino there?’

  ‘No. No, no. Dino is in Milan, remember?’

  ‘It’s just food poisoning; she’ll be fine. Why are you rushing?’

  I hated having this conversation in front of everyone.

  ‘I know, but I spoke to her this morning and she sounds really miserable. I can’t let her be all by herself.’

  ‘Well, do you want me to come back too? We can both drive back.’

  ‘Oh god, don’t be silly. I would feel terrible if I made you do that. You need this break.’

  Fortunately, Diana piped in. ‘Jay. Chill. We’ll get her home safely.’

  While I was packing my things, Jay came into the room. ‘Are you okay? Why are you rushing off like this?’ he asked.

  ‘Me? No, I’m fine. Just Jess, you know. Poor thing. I would hate to be alone in her place.’

  ‘We can leave early tomorrow, though.’

  ‘No, no. Don’t be silly. It isn’t a big thing. You relax and enjoy yourself. Seriously.’

 
I gave him a quick kiss on his cheek and kept packing. Jay sat in silence, fiddling with his Blackberry. Suddenly, before my brain could stop my mouth, I said, ‘Hey, where’d you vanish last night? I was looking for you.’

  He looked up at me and then casually said, ‘You were? Oh sorry, baby. I was watching cricket.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Some more silence later, I blurted out, ‘Didn’t we meet Anka and Matt at that fashion launch thing?’

  ‘We did? Oh yeah, briefly. He goes by Matthew by the way.’

  ‘Oh sorry, Matthew. You introduced me to him very hurriedly last time. Why? What’s his scene? He seems nice,’ I said.

  ‘He is nice. And he has no scene. Shit.’

  ‘No, I know. He seems lovely. All of them do. Really. I really wish I didn’t have to leave.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  The silence resumed and this time I managed to keep my mouth shut. And again I felt like that nine-year-old with the pigtails for whom this world would never be reality.

  I was so glad about getting back to Bombay. Jess and Dino (who had got back from Milan the previous week) were surprised to see me back twenty-four hours earlier than expected. I told them the stories of the weekend and claimed that I left early because I got sick of all the bonding and catching up the rest of them were doing. I left out the bit about Jay and Matthew.

  Around eleven at night, the doorbell rang and Jess’s face lit up. ‘Naiya, that’s Vishal. I can’t wait for you to meet him.’ She jumped up to the door and I looked quizzically at Dino. ‘Who’s Vishal?’

  ‘A man. She met him yesterday night and she’s already saying it’s love. I do not understand you women.’

  Jess came back in, beaming. She had her arm looped through the elbow of a fairly handsome, tall man with bright brown eyes and a scruffy goatee. I felt a sudden stab of something akin to envy and gave myself a mental talking-to.