Priya

by Namita Gokhale

  There are rumours of a cabinet reshuffle. Inflation and oil prices and the iffy yes-no nuke deal has the jai-ho ‘we Indians will rule the world one day’ atmosphere rapidly de-escalating. There’s also Climate Change, and the unseasonal rains that have flooded the capital city. Sometimes, when I go through the newspapers, I start wondering about our country, and what an ajeeb society we are. It’s all too jagged really; the highs and lows, and the haves and the have-nots, all seeming to live in mutual ignorance of each other. I mean, maybe it’s true that there is a trickle-down effect or some such thing, but more people having cellphones cannot possibly make up for people starving and dying of hunger, and the other half not even noticing. Or so it seems to me . . . Maybe it’s Lenin’s influence. But then I’m not an economist or a politician or even a journalist. I’m just a housewife, even if my husband has gotten to be an important man.

  The more I think about it, the more I worry about Kush. He doesn’t seem to have any obvious friends, and yet he’s out all night sometimes, and surfaces with dark shadows under his eyes and a visible hangover. He wants to be a politician, but his lifestyle is more like a young prince. He hasn’t met Suki again, after that dinner they had together. What is he up to? What does he want from life?

  I think of Lenin a lot. What must it have been like, to be an idealist, to want a just society, to have your heart bleed for the poor and helpless and not to be able to do much about it? I’ve resolved to keep the wedding as simple as possible. No show, no unseemly extravagance.

  But Indian marriages have a momentum of their own, as I’m rapidly learning. First, the struggle with the dates. Geeta is determined not to delay the ceremony.

  ‘Lenin wouldn’t have wanted us to postpone it,’ she insisted. ‘Besides, I don’t believe in long engagements, they are potentially very dangerous.’ Geeta threw me a significant look when she said this, and I gave her a similar meaningful one in return, though I couldn’t understand what she was hinting at or why she was getting so agitated.

  Their family priest has suggested two possible dates, when the stars are in perfect conjunction. These are supposed to be the luckiest marriage muhurats in decades. Wedding planners and venues across India have been booked months in advance for the auspicious Thursday and Friday. Geeta wants the marriage to be on the Friday.

  We have begun preparations for the wedding. I’m drawing up guest lists, to-do lists, shopping lists. Our dhobi’s daughter Dayavati has got an internship with Jerbanoo Darzi, the high-profile fashion designer, and she’s planning wardrobes for all of us. Jerbanoo is making a full-skirted velvet lehnga for Paromita at a hefty discount. It will be a Mughal ensemble in royal purple zardozi, costing a don’s ransom even after the discount. Not that it bothers Geeta.

  Silence from Pooonam for a while. The gossip columns and Page 3 paparazzi are treating her wedding plans like breaking news. I’m glad to have her out of my hair—for as long as that lasts.

  Suresh brought me a bouquet of silver-sprayed orchids again, with a card that said: ‘To the Mother of my Sons, and Mistress of my Life.’ Flowers still make me suspicious; they smell of a cover up. Not that I can smell anything these days. And orchids aren’t fragrant, anyway.

  ‘I’m your wife, not your mistress,’ I said, as I arranged the flowers in a crystal vase on my dressing table.

  ‘My beautiful wife,’ he replied. ‘You seem to be growing younger every day.’

  My new beauty regimen is serious business—the whole eye cream, neck lotion, under-eye unguent, rejuvenating re-invigorating oxygenating de-pigmenting discipline. A woman is as young as she feels; but she feels as young as she looks.

  Because of the imminent cabinet reshuffle, I’m glued to the television these days. But there’s only the usual stuff, about the Sensex, and bird-hit airplanes, and terrorist threats—most recently, an unexploded bomb in a shopping mall. This afternoon there was news that the Maoists had blown up another railway line. I switched to the Ranjit Verma show. ‘Breaking News!’ the oily anchor announced, a new octave of excitement entering his shrill voice. ‘Socialite falls into Man Hole! City sanitation system breaks down with downpour!’ And there was Pooonam, being wheeled away into an ambulance as bystanders braved the rain to stare and gape at her and the camera, alternately.

  ‘Drainage disaster!’ ‘Criminal neglect of the sewage system!’ ‘Businesswoman Pooonam UmaChand falls into manhole outside Bank!’

  Comic justice! The world is a strange place, I decided, but sometimes there is sense to the strangeness. Curiosity disguised as compassion got the better of me. I dialled Pooonam but her phone was switched off. I searched the channels for a repeat of the news headline, but only the sensationalist Ranjit Verma had considered Pooonam’s tumble into a manhole worthy of national news coverage.

  The morning papers didn’t carry anything about Pooonam’s fall. There was too much competing for our attention: Sachin Tendulkar and ten other Indian batsmen scoring centuries against Afghanistan and being felicitated by the President, Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition. India announcing its own Mission- to-the-Moon. Bomb blasts in yet another State capital. ‘India Flaming’, a collage of sati memorabilia, including strips of curtains from the burns ward of a Delhi hospital, fetching a million pounds at a London art auction. Two more farmers committing suicide in Maharashtra. The sensex in free fall. Pooonam UmaChand falling into a manhole was yesterday’s news. Still, I couldn’t resist phoning, to see how she was coping. She didn’t take my call, and I sent her a sympathetic sms message instead.

  Ghafoor’s son has returned. Kush helped bring him back. He won’t say where he’s been, or what happened to him in police detention.

  ‘They have broken his leg,’ Ghafoor said sorrowfully.

  ‘Who is “they”?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean the police?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ Ghafoor replied. His son stood beside him. Was that anger in Afzal’s eyes, or fear? He was walking with a slight limp. It’s so difficult, in these situations, to tell what’s what.

  LUV HAS BEEN DESIGNING THE WEDDING CARD. HE CAME UP WITH AN odd one-eyed Cyclops, inspired, we were told, by Picasso. ‘It’s to say that Paromita and I shall see things together, with one eye,’ he explained. ‘It’s very symbolic’.

  I used my motherhood entitlement to throw a fit. Suresh joined me in discouraging the modernist vision. ‘India is a traditional society,’ he argued, ‘and marriage is a traditional institution. So it’s best to have a traditional card.’

  Luv agreed, reluctantly and a little sulkily. We’ve settled now for a square invitation card in expensive recycled handmade paper, with a brocade border, a gold embossed Ganesha, and an appropriate Sanskrit shloka. Luv added a creative touch to it, grains of rice glued on scraps of yellow fabric on the inside fold.

  Suresh wanted to insert a ‘No Presents Please’ line in the invitation, next to the RSVP. I told him no. What’s wrong with a young couple receiving gifts when they are starting out in life? Should they be penalized because they are from a political family? I can’t see what’s wrong with getting presents.

  Kush agreed with me. ‘I would want to receive wedding gifts if I got married,’ he said. ‘Luv will set a precedent and then I might be penalized for it.’

  ‘When, not if,’ I said firmly.

  It was to be what Suresh repeatedly described as a ‘sober, simple affair’. His office staff handled all the invitations very effectively. I had a card specially hand-delivered to Bucky Bhandpur, Junior and Suzi. Bucky sent back a scribbled note, expressing their regrets, and a miniature silver cricket bat in a velvet box.

  Poonam is getting married on Thursday, the Very Auspicious Date which is the day before Luv’s wedding. ‘I’m not taking any chances with my luck,’ she declared. ‘I’m determined to be happy, whatever the cost. Or consequences,’ she told me. The two weddings are scheduled back to back. We have planned an ostentatiously simple ceremony, followed by a dinner reception the same day. No such pretensions for Pooo
. There’s to be a week of hectic festivities for her. The Page 3 media crowd is already jumping with excitement about her elaborate wedding plans.

  There’s also news that Pooonam has fallen out with her numerologist Nnutasha. The gossip columns say she has begun consulting Mangaul Warsee, who has moved from Mumbai to New Delhi, presumably because politicians have more at stake, and more hard cash, than mere filmstars.

  Suzi Bhandpur’s father Manoviraj is getting married to Pooonam, but the Bhandpurs aren’t planning to attend the ceremony. Suzi can’t stand her future stepmother, so they are all going off on a cruise. The family boycott is compounded by Manoviraj Sethia’s older brother Rajan being stuck in jail. Rajan Sethia is charged with bribing defence and income tax officials, and his bail application has been rejected. But Pooonam isn’t deterred. ‘The lesser the merrier,’ she asserted emphatically, in an interview to a Saturday supplement. ‘That’s my rule for family.’

  Her wedding planners have come up with a ‘fortress’ theme. I guess that works for defence agents. The card has crossed swords as an improvised heraldic emblem, with a rising sun in the background. She insists that this is their new ‘family logo’.

  ‘Tell your friend that she must have a motto as well,’ Luv joked. I told Pooonam this, when she called me next. (The frequency of her calls is decreasing.)

  ‘But we do, already,’ she responded. ‘Do or Die—that’s our motto!’

  The card arrived with tri-colored ribbons and the motto embossed in gold. Some of the snooty sophisticates are mocking her over-the-top taste and cracking private jokes about Pooonam’s successful guerrilla tactics in becoming Mrs Manoviraj Sethia. The rest, as is usual in Delhi, simply couldn’t care less; they are ready, always, to party at someone else’s expense.

  It’s rumoured that she’s hired a hundred firangi white men in smart black suits as guests from the UK, through a casting agency, to add international gora glamour to the festivities. The Blue Orchid hotel in Gurgaon has been booked for five days for the celebrations. It’s to be dressed up as a fort, with false ramparts, and cannons and elephants at the gate.

  Suresh says we should attend only the final wedding reception. ‘It’s prudent to keep away from these wheeler-dealers. In the end, they spell trouble,’ Suresh said philosophically, with what I guess is the wisdom of hindsight. ‘Attending one function is quite enough.’

  ‘Can I attend the hen night?’ I asked. I’m really looking forward to that, I’ve never been to one. It sounds like a load of ‘girlz will be girlz’ fun.

  ‘Hen night will be a ladies function, Priya, not like a stag night. No harm in your going, I’m sure,’ said my husband graciously.

  ‘Hen night will be a ladies only function, Priya, not like a stag night. No harm in your going . . .’ my husband had said. But Pooonam had warned me already.

  ‘It’s going to be a daring evening. I’m not afraid of having fun! We have to show these men who’s on top, don’t we?’ she had giggled. I wondered about what to wear. I was determined to shine, to show her that I was somebody too.

  The theme for the party, the ‘motto’ as she called it, was ‘Young and Old—Go for Gold’. I arrived at the hotel-that-was-now-a- fortress in a shimmering gold tissue sari, for which Dayavati had assembled an elaborate pleated chiffon blouse. The banquet hall had been given a makeover. It’s walls were swathed in embossed gold satin, and the circular tables had tall golden candles piled around with gold-plated coins. Good-looking waiters wearing shiny gold cummerbunds were tripping over themselves to be helpful. There were a lot of bubbly champagne-like women too, all dressed up and raring to go, looking forward to the evening of their lives. Many of them were a bit drunk already.

  Each table seated five ‘ladies’ and a male host. The men had familiar faces, which I could recognize but not identify. They seemed like fringe models, actors and operators. I was seated with Llilly Vaish, the art dealer, and some society types I didn’t recognize.

  The host at our table was—hold your breath—the film star Rajkumar Khanna! The Prince of Hearts had been the personification of romance. Women across India swooned at just the mention of his name. The love triangle of Toote Phool had the whole of Bombay weeping. I had fallen in love with him then, we all had, a generation ago.

  Now here he was, sitting before me in a suit one size too large for him. The brown eyes, tinged with sadness, that I remembered from the dark of the cinema hall, stared soulfully at me. ‘Welcome, beuteous lady,’ he said, in that deep, familiar tone. ‘I am Rajkumar’

  ‘I am Priya Kaushal,’ I replied, in a faraway voice.

  ‘My favourite leading lady in Aakhri Shaam was called Priya too,’ he said. Then he took my hand and kissed it. Ooooh!!!

  A short, plump stand-up comic came on the ramp, and strolled about, mike in hand, cracking half-hearted jokes, the sort of SMS jokes that Suresh sometimes receives from his lawyer friends. Not very daring, not very funny.

  ‘And now we will raise a toast to our one and only Pooooonam!’ he announced, rolling out the extra letters in her name even further. ‘To Pooonam UmaChand—who is as cool as vodka, as hard as tequila, warm as cognac, exotic as Malibu, mixed up as cocktail, and special as champagne! CHEERS!’ I wondered if he meant ‘mixed up’ as a compliment.

  ‘CHEERS!’ the women in the room echoed, raising their glasses. Pooonam was bouncing up and down, as though she was on something. Her breasts were looking larger too, suspiciously so. There was a sudden roll of drums, and a male stripper sashayed hesitantly into the room. I gasped, in horror and disbelief. I’d never seen a nude man in public, ever, except for sadhus and madmen roaming the streets.

  This one was naked except for a narrow gold cummerbund wrapped tight around his groin. He walked halfway through the lit-up ramp and stood there, gaping at us.

  The women were whistling and cheering. Nobody seemed surprised or shocked. The stripper was a good-looking young man, with a chikna face and a classically sculpted body, and his you-know-what was enormous, the cummerbund barely concealed it. He began a provocative breakdance, but perhaps he hadn’t practiced enough He wasn’t managing to keep pace with the music, and seemed to be forgetting the steps. Suddenly he stopped, bunched his hands over the bulge in his cummerbund and gave the audience a pleading look. He crouched a little and began to step back slowly. He looked terrified.

  The women roared out their disapproval. ‘Money back!’ one of them jeered. ‘Paise vasool karo!’ A desi bottle-blonde glamazon from the next table threw a handful of gold coins at him. They hit the boy between his thighs, and he winced. The audience began pelting him with more coins.

  The boy turned back and stumbled towards the stage entrance. The cummerbund was tied in a bow at the back, revealing half his bum.

  ‘No show . . . no show!’ the women screamed. ‘Come back, handsome! . . . Back here, you chikna launda!’ Llilly Vaish was whistling and hooting too. She threw a champagne bottle at him; it hit him on his knee. I couldn’t believe my ears. All these respectable wives and mothers had clearly gone mad. What was wrong with the world?

  Rajkumar had been downing his whiskies at a furious pace. I was observing him anxiously; there had been rumours about his alcoholic decline. ‘This is shameful’ he declared suddenly. ‘Let’s go backstage and rescue the chap. He’s an entertainer, not an animal. Come with me, Priya ji!’

  Well, I couldn’t refuse Rajkumar, could I? We ducked through the velvet curtain to the makeshift green room. The young man had swathed a towel around his crotch. He was weeping. He smelt of sweat, and fear. He was younger than my sons.

  ‘I am from poor but decent family of Ludhiana,’ he sobbed, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘I too have a mother and a sister at home. Mein gareeb hoon magar meri bhi izzat hai . . . The agent told me this was an important modelling assignment. He never said that . . . that . . .’ The enormity of his humiliation struck him afresh. ‘What am I doing here?’ he wailed.

  Pooonam swayed in. Her perfectly outlined
lips were contorted into a snarl. She took the young man by the shoulders and shook him violently. ‘Return the money!’ she said. ‘Cough up the ten- thousand-rupee advance I’ve paid you, saala! Now, this minute.’

  The boy looked trapped and afraid. ‘The agent only gave me six thousand rupees,’ he replied. ‘And I’ve spent it.’ He held on to his towel as he spoke.

  Rajkumar Khanna reached for the pocket of his oversized suit, and extracted a faded leather wallet which had seen better days. He counted out ten crisp one-thousand-rupee notes and handed them with a flourish to the astonished Pooonam.

  The Prince of Hearts. He was a real-life hero. Filmstars don’t fade so easily, the stardust remains in their style.

  ‘No swear words, Madam, sweet words are always better,’ he said to Pooonam, with perfect Bollywood delivery. ‘Now here’s the money, honey—let this bechara boy go home, and we can return to the party.’

  ‘Don’t throw your filmi dialogue at me, Mr Phatichar! Do you know who I am, you has-been?’ Pooonam frothed. ‘You couldn’t even manage to rent a suit that fits. I’ve paid you to attend the party, haven’t I? Five lakhs of rupees for a dinner appearance! You can double that up with a nanga naach, if you want—not that anyone would pay to see you naked anymore.’

  ‘No refunds on the box office, Madame,’ Rajkumar replied. He was still smiling.

  Pooonam took a half-drunk glass of champagne from the side table and flung it at my hero. I could smell her heavy perfume, and the stale cigarette smoke, and the sour odour of spilt champagne. I was sickened. ‘I’m leaving,’ I said quietly, ‘and if you have any self-respect, you will too, Mr Khanna.’