Priya

by Namita Gokhale

  A crowd had gathered. There were no houses for miles around, only silence and darkness and low hills, and I couldn’t imagine where they might have materialized from. They seemed, all of them, to have beards of the stubbly unshaven sort. They were carrying staves and rods and sticks. Then I saw some sheep, grey blobs in the dusk, escorting the men, looking up enquiringly at their angry faces.

  ‘I saw blood on the tyres!’ the PSO exclaimed. ‘Let me contact the control room!’

  Wireless static hit against the soft strains of Begum Akhtar’s voice. ‘Hullo Patrol room?!! Hullo Patrol Room!?’ The PSO was squeaking, his habitual bravado gone.

  ‘Turn the damn music off!’ Suresh shouted, a note of panic in his voice. ‘Don’t you have any sense?!’ It wasn’t clear whom this was addressed to.

  The bearded men had now surrounded the car. They seemed to be very upset. ‘Have we killed someone?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll fix them,’ the security officer declared, his hand on his holster. Opening the door a crack, he stepped out like a bad thief, exiting sideways. The driver leaned over to lock the door after him.

  ‘Can’t the fools see that this is a VIP car?’ Suresh asked. ‘Can’t they see the flashing lights?’

  No one had an answer to this.

  The security man rushed back in and locked the door again.

  ‘A goat has died, or a dog, perhaps,’ he reported, ‘crushed under the front left tyre. But they insist that a child has been run over.’

  ‘Drive on,’ Suresh said imperiously, but with a quaver in his voice.

  I opened the door. ‘Let’s find out!’ I said, suddenly unwilling to be part of this scene from a bad film or novel. I was surprised to hear myself say: ‘If a child has been run over we must take it to the nearest hospital.’ The evening was settling into night as I stepped out, dark clouds lowering in the monsoon sky. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed a movement. A child emerged from under the car, at the speed of light, and rushed towards the circle of angry men. In an instant, their faces changed, were washed with tenderness. I dashed back inside the car. ‘Hurry up,’ I told the driver. ‘Quickly. Let’s get going!’

  We sped off. Just as we were leaving, a police patrol car pulled up. We didn’t stop. The PSO told them of what had happened in confused bursts; the static in the walkie-talkie was acting up.

  I pressed the glass down and turned back to look. The child was nestling against the protective cordon of the crowd. The policemen were taking notes, the men were shouting and waving their staves. There was a textured look to it, like a moment frozen in a grainy black-and-white photograph.

  The driver picked up speed again. The music had returned too, and Begum Akhtar’s voice filled up the white-towelled interior of the car: ‘Jaane Kya Baat Hai, Kis Baat Pe Rona Ayaa . . .’ As we neared the next town, we found a gaily lit halting point that had been set up for the Kanwaria pilgrims, on their Shrawan pilgrimages. It’s the same story every monsoon—young boys from villages off to see the city lights, with religion providing the occasion. Disco devotionals blared into the night, silencing Begum Akhtar’s sweet melancholy. Hundreds of single-minded young men, dressed in an east-west mix of t-shirts and sneakers and faded orange lungis and dhotis and kachhas, carrying containers of sacred water from the Ganga to their villages. Was this tourism? Was this religion? And what if we ran over any of them? We’d be lynched, I was sure of that.

  A young man in a Che Guevara t-shirt and dusty dhoti slapped the car appreciatively. He peered in from the window and whistled at me. He was brandishing a cell phone; perhaps he was taking a photograph. The security officer reached for his holster, but the young pilgrim had disappeared back into the crowd.

  ‘Drive very slowly please!’ Suresh said to the driver, entreating rather than scolding. ‘Dilli ki dadagiri yahin rah jayegi. Your flashing lights and sirens will get you nowhere if that lot decides to take you on.’

  The driver looked chastised. He switched the music off and we drove sombrely through the highway, pondering the real India and our close shave with it.

  ‘Can you imagine Paro’s son getting married and all that?’ I said chattily. I had to break the solemn silence that seemed to have descended upon us. ‘If only she were alive to see this day!’

  ‘Those whom the Gods love die young,’ Suresh responded, nodding his head sagely with the carefully cultivated solemnity which has covered him like a new skin.

  ‘The Gods did not love Paro!’ I replied impetuously. ‘She was a difficult, selfish woman. The Devil would enjoy her company.’ I said this partly to irritate my husband, to unsettle him. Increasingly, he has that effect on me.

  He didn’t like that, Suresh didn’t. ‘You were always jealous of her, Priya,’ he said. ‘She was so beautiful, and she was a great lady. You sound so vindictive sometimes.’

  His remark hurt me, it was too close to the bone. ‘She may have been a great lady,’ I retorted, controlling the agitation this conversation had unleashed. ‘But she was not a good person. She was foolish and inconsiderate and managed to hurt all those who loved her.’

  Suresh looked at me, a little surprised by the outburst.

  Would she never let me go?

  The fort was outlined in flickering fairy lights against the dark monsoon sky. Tall, turbaned men holding earthen lamps stood stationed beside a row of sneering camels. Eleven PYTs in white and blue saris were posted at the entrance—I counted. Suresh shook hands with each of them in turn. But it was clear the Pretty Young Things were on the lookout for the ‘chief’ chief guests; they did not recognize mere Ministers of State—or need to.

  Bucky Bhandpur, in a white linen suit, received us at the main gate. His slightly protruding teeth somehow only added to his taut elegance. He was, after all, a Rajput, from a minor thikana, and blue blood shows through in these things. Once a royal always a royal. Even Indira Gandhi couldn’t end that when she cancelled their privy purses in 1971! Bucky squeezed my hand affectionately and gave Suresh an enthusiastic yaari-type hug. The father of the bride, Manoviraj Sethia, was next in line to greet the guests. He seemed distracted, and his eyes were fixed on the front gate. Who was due?

  Celebrity faces glow with the self-possession that comes from being observed and stared at. They are constantly on parade. I ogled them unabashedly, with the shaky confidence of being almost, if not quite, one of them. It was a heady mix of khadi-clad politicians, suited businessmen and arms dealers, carelessly shabby journalists, diplomats, expats, and glamorous women with boob- jobs. The film stars and cricket stars were like fixed islands in their midst, models and society ladies waving and undulating around them. The royals, or ex-royals, as Suresh correctly refers to them, stood out with their khandaani airs.

  Suddenly, both Bucky Bhandpur and Manoviraj Sethia rushed to the reception area. The ‘chief’ chief guest had arrived! Craning my neck, I glimpsed a tall, lean man in a buttoned-up bundgala suit, wearing a monocle over his right eye. He had a limp, or perhaps a club foot, for he dragged his right leg as he walked. Maybe he wore the monocle to deflect attention from his leg, I thought.

  Behind him, walking slowly to stay in step, was the handsomest cricketer in India, Gaurav Negi. Bucky and his sambandhi Manoviraj Sethia were both deferentially keeping pace as well. The penny dropped—this had to be Dhruv Desai, President of the Indian Cricket Board.

  The sight of Gaurav Negi provoked an electric thrill among the celebrity guests—a moment of hushed silence and then an extra buzz of animated chatter. A stylish woman in a purple backless choli lunged through the crowd of socialites and flung herself at Negi. She let out an elegant whoop and landed him a kiss full on the lips. Dhruv Desai looked annoyed at the interruption, while Bhandpur and Sethia stood very straight and observed the scene with polite detachment, as though this was normal behaviour for women guests at Indian weddings. Negi tried to step back, and collided into a waiter carrying a tray. A glass of wine leapt into the air and emptied itself over Desai, Negi, and the woman in the back
less choli. It was a classic slapstick moment, and I would have laughed out loud, had I not looked by accident into Dhruv Desai’s eyes.

  Desai’s eyes were blank with rage. He lashed out with his cane, striking the waiter on his shoulders with swift, savage strokes. Other waiters had materialized with napkins and jars of water. ‘It’s good luck!’ Bucky said with forced gaiety. Sethia was scrubbing the backless choli with enthusiasm. The moment passed, and I slid away, somehow unnerved.

  Members of the Sethia clan led us up successive levels of the fort. The bride and groom weren’t in sight, so I handed over the unwieldy gift to an officious looking relative. When I turned back, I had lost Suresh. Rita Ray, the power minister, spent a few minutes making condescending ‘what a pretty sari’ conversation. I was staring at her hair to see if it was really a wig, as Bano the beauty lady had claimed, when I saw her eyes set into a fixed glaze. Rita was staring over my shoulder at somebody. It was Queenie Kwatra, the reigning Mumbai QB, epitome of glamour. They air kissed and murmured affectionate salutations. ‘And what do you do?’ Queen Bee asked me, with a convincing show of interest, before her eyes switched off too, and they both moved on to greet a yet more important guest in the food chain. Such is life.

  As a mere homemaker, I am accustomed to the peculiar disdain with which my species is treated. ‘And what do you do?’ successful and powerful women ask me, if they manage to finish the sentence, the condescension sprinkled like black peppercorns in their voices.

  ‘Oh nothing really. I worked in a bookshop, once . . .’ I reply, playing along. A strained mask falls over their faces. Powerful women don’t ascend the stratosphere for nothing. The fact that I’m a housewife—a non-person outside the pale of the human rights ordinances—shines through the bookshop façade.

  Sometimes, it’s easier. ‘Oh, so you are Suresh Kaushal’s wife, are you?’ they probe, these MDs of banks and CEOs of technology firms.

  ‘Yes,’ I reply truthfully. Then they decide to be nice to me, to the poor housewife, for I have my foot in the pecking order after all and, maybe, the ear of my husband. They talk of Delhi and Bangalore traffic and of children and of pollution and try hard to demonstrate their goodwill. As you can tell, I don’t enjoy these encounters. That’s why I prefer to keep to myself.

  An arms dealer’s wife was attempting polite conversation. Wife or mistress? Her plump, smooth arms were encircled with diamond encrusted tagdis. A midnight-blue chiffon sari, studded with Swarovski crystals, was draped snugly around her swelling breasts. Her sari blouse was just a strategic cluster of Swarovski glitter, more illusion than garment. Shocking! Or was that envy?

  ‘Howveryoo?’ she chirped, in authentic Delhi dialect. ‘Can I get you a glass of champagne? Myself Pooonam!’ She pointed to herself as she spoke. ‘With three Os, not two. And you are Mrs Suresh Kaushal?’

  I wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question. Pooonam shook her head this way and that as she spoke. Her blonde- streaked chignon, covered with crystal danglers, swayed like a chandelier in a breeze. She had, I guessed, been sent to stalk me, to charm and ‘cultivate’ me, in case my up-and-coming politician husband ever moved to a more useful portfolio. She looked delectable, though a little stale, like a soufflé that’s begun to settle.

  ‘Yes, I’m Priya Kaushal,’ I replied, and then we stared at each other, both at a loss for words. She was struggling to step ahead with the conversation, I could see that.

  ‘Your sari is so simple,’ she ventured at last. ‘It is so . . . Swadeshi. A plain cotton with a simple zari border . . . Is it because your husband is a politician?’ There was a note of genuine wonderment in her voice.

  I looked at her plump pretty face and her silly hairdo and her extravagant sari and didn’t know quite how to respond. There was something vulnerable about her, a sort of girlish high-school charm, under the glamour. ‘It’s an Upada silk, actually,’ I ventured. ‘It only looks like cotton because the count is so fine . . .’

  Here I was, apologizing and explaining to strangers. Why? ‘Don’t be so pathetic, Priya Kaushal,’ I told myself firmly, and moved into the conversational fray.

  ‘Are you Mrs Khosla?’ I asked. She was somehow associated with one of the arms dealers, I was sure of that.

  ‘Oh, I’m Pooonam UmaChand,’ she replied in a proud defensive tone. ‘I’m a Director in Manoviraj Sethia’s company. In Universal Hand Tools and Weapons Ltd. And what do you do?’

  So she was his mistress. I ignored the question. ‘And those stunning arm-clasps—do you wear them because you are an arms dealer?’

  I thought she might be offended by the silly joke; it had been my defence against her cotton sari remark. But Pooonam UmaChand burst into peals of genuine laughter. ‘Hov funnnneeee!’ she gasped. ‘What a great sense of humour you have. Oh dear!’ and another bout of giggles. ‘I must tell that one to Manoviraj. I think we will be friends for life, Priyaaa!’

  Her giggles disarmed me. People don’t laugh much in Delhi, not in the circles I seem to move in, anyway. We chatted companionably for a while. ‘I’m sooo tired,’ my new friend sighed. ‘We are all partied out. Especially us girlz! Four days of continuous mazaaa. We slept after breakfast today. Even Ani and Suzi!’

  ‘Where are they?’ I asked eagerly. Junior and his bride were nowhere in sight.

  Pooonam giggled again. ‘Ouff, they’ll turn up. The newlyweds will crawl out from their bedsheets when they are through . . .’ she whispered suggestively, as though she had, too. She was playing with the loose strands of her streaked hair as she spoke; her chignon was beginning to come undone. Had she dressed in too much of a hurry?

  A sudden movement in the crowd and there they were, the bride and groom. They looked like young gods or immortals. I was so proud to have known this young man as a little boy. A line of guests had assembled to greet them and I waited for my turn.

  ‘Your mother Paro was my friend, beta,’ I told Junior, after I had nudged my way through the press of people. ‘You wouldn’t remember. I’m Priya . . . Priya Kaushal.’

  A look of boyish delight flooded his grey-green eyes. Paro’s eyes. ‘Priya Aunty!’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course I remember. You were the bestest kindest aunty ever.’ The dazzling Suzi gave me a dazed nod. She was, as Pooonam had suggested, clearly partied out. Then I was jostled away by an impatient power couple. But Junior’s words stayed with me. I was content, for that moment, to be a kindest aunty and not a glamorous celebrity.

  Suresh had disappeared, as had my new friend Pooonam UmaChand. I made my way to the ladies room to repair my lipstick. Two feminine voices were engaged in an intense conversation from across the carved-wood toilet cubicles.

  ‘That Pooonam UmaChand is a real cheez, yaar,’ a voice trilled from the corner loo. ‘Manoviraj’s ex-wife just can’t stand her. Sunita Sethia kicked up a huge fuss about her being invited here. But then Pooonam has Manoviraj and his Hand Tool company by the you-know-what! Did you see her trying to play hostess right under Sunita’s nose?’

  ‘My husband calls her the Exocet—a top-range guided missile. Aim and shoot! Pooonam’s trying to suck up to Sethia’s daughters now,’ the other voice replied.

  I grimaced mechanically at my reflection, to check if my lipstick was applied evenly. I had been warned.

  When I returned to the suddenly-less-crowded party, I found the PSO searching for Suresh. ‘Sahib is missing . . . got lost,’ he said. ‘This is a big security problem. I must find him.’

  ‘Look in the gents’ toilet,’ I said. A passing waiter thrust yet another glass of champagne on me.

  Where could he be?

  I downed the champagne in a quick nervous gulp. My head was buzzing, not an unpleasant feeling. I had been hovering uncertainly on the outskirts of the party, but now Shriela Shetty, the gossip diva, took me under her wing. Shriela wields an acid pen and her column, ‘Pssst’, takes the piss out of just about everyone. Maybe I’m too insignificant for scandal fodder, so she’s kind to me.

  ‘I
am here as a friend, Priya,’ she smiled, ‘not as a media person.’ She examined the glass of champagne in her hands, then gulped it down as though it were a truth serum. ‘Do you want to know why Suzi Sethia dumped Gaurav Negi to marry Junior Bhandpur?’ she asked, a werewolf sort of expression moving into her sculpted features.

  Of course I did not, I said. Shriela began testing her speculations on me. Social snobbery apart, it was a pragmatic arranged marriage to protect the Sethia-Bhandpur sports cartel. Bucky Bhandpur owed Manoviraj Sethia an enormous sum of money and the marriage was a safeguard, a sort of IOU. Besides, Dhruv Desai’s daughter was in love with Negi. Some people said that it was Dhruv Desai who was in love with Negi and had the younger man’s name tattooed across his posterior. Each of these conjectures was prefaced by a disclaimer: ‘I don’t know why people get upset with my column . . .’ Shriela would smile, flashing a set of flawless teeth.

  Shriela began again on newly minted gossip, how the Minister for Civil Aviation was always abroad, in the company of . . . But she could no longer hold my attention. Ved Anand was standing before me, in the flesh. The evergreen hero of Bollywood, the one and only Ved Saheb. When I was young, my heart had belonged, briefly but intensely, to the filmstar Rajkumar Khanna. Ved Anand was a generation ahead, the greatest and truest romantic of Hindi films. Even in my dreams he was out of my league. I was happy just to stare at him, at his youthfully crinkled eyes, his creased and gallant smile. He was just as happy to be stared at. A crush of fans, assistants, hangers-on, were all fussing over him, bursting into ingratiating laughter in anticipation of his every wisecrack. I basked in the halo of his unfading charm, wishing my mother was alive to view me in such filmi glory.

  Then, a roll of drums and a pretty girl in a golden lehnga walked into the spotlight. ‘Hi and Hello everybody—I’m Suzi’s sister Suki,’ she announced. ‘Ani’s saali, though not his aadhi gharwali.’ Catcalls from the distinguished audience. ‘On behalf of the Families—Bhandpur and Sethia—I want to announce a special Family Entertainment, humbly presented for our Esteemed Guests!’