Over green tea Shulka began talking about that new novel everyone but everyone was reading, the one about the Delhi girl on the husband-hunt and her many suitors, the scandalous one, An Eligible Boy. Everyone but everyone but Jasbir.
Help! he subvocalized into his inner ear.
Scanning it now, Ram Tarun Das said. Do you want a thematic digest, popular opinions or character breakdowns?
Just be there, Jasbir silently whispered, covering the tiny movement of his jaw by setting the tea-pot lid ajar, a sign for a refill.
‘Well, it’s not really a book a man should be seen reading…’
‘But…’
‘But isn’t everyone?’ Ram Tarun Das dropped him the line. ‘I mean, I’m only two thirds of the way in, but… how far are you? Spoiler alert spoiler alert.’ It’s one of Sujay’s Town and Country expressions. Finally he understands what it means. Shulka just smiles and turns her tea-bowl in its little saucer.
‘Say what you were going to say.’
‘I mean, can’t she see that Nishok is the one? The man is clearly, obviously, one thousand per cent doting on her. But then that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?’
‘But Pran, it would always be fire with him. He’s the baddest of badmashes but you’d never be complacent with Pran. She’ll never be able to completely trust him and that’s what makes it exciting. Don’t you think you feel that sometimes it needs that little edge, that little fear that maybe, just maybe you could lose it all to keep it alive?’
Careful, sir, murmured Ram Tarun Das.
‘Yes, but we’ve known ever since the party at the Chatterjis where she pushed Jyoti into the pool in front of the Russian ambassador that she’s been jealous of her sister because she was the one got to marry Mr Panse. It’s the eternal glamour versus security. Passion versus stability. Town versus country.’
‘Ajit?’
‘Convenient plot device. Never a contender. Every woman he dates is just a mirror to his own sweet self.’
Not one sentence, not one word had he read of the hit trash novel of the season. It had flown around his head like clatter-winged pigeons. He’s been too busy being that Eligible Boy.
Shulka held up a piece of sweet, salt, melting fatty duck breast between her porcelain forceps. Juice dripped on to the tablecloth.
‘So, who will Bani marry, then? Guess correctly and you shall have a prize.’
Jasbir heard Ram Tarun Das’s answer begin to form inside his head. No, he gritted on his molars.
‘I think I know.’
‘Go on.’
‘Pran.’
Shulka stabbed forward, like the darting bill of a winter crane. There was hot, fatty soya duck in his mouth.
‘Isn’t there always a twist in the tale?’ Shulka said.
In the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC Deependra checks his hair in the mirror and smooths it down.
‘Dowry thievery; that’s what it is. They string you along, get their claws into your money, then they disappear and you never see a paisa again.’
Now Jasbir really really wants to get back to his little work cluster.
‘Deep, this is fantasy. You’ve read this in the news feeds. Come on.’
‘Where there’s smoke there’s fire. My stars say that I should be careful in things of the heart and beware false friends. Jupiter is in the third house. Dark omens surround me. No, I have hired a private investigation aeai. It will conduct a discreet surveillance. One way or the other, I shall know.’
Jasbir grips the stanchion, knuckles white, as the phatphat swings through the great mill of traffic around Indira Chowk. Deependra’s aftershave oppresses him.
‘Exactly where are we going?’
Deependra had set up the assignation on a coded palmer account. All he would say was that it required two hours of an evening, good clothes, a trustworthy friend and absolute discretion. For two days his mood had been grey and thundery as an approaching monsoon. His PI Aeai had returned a result but Deependra revealed nothing, not even a whisper in the clubbish privacy of the Number 16 Gentlemen’s WC.
The phatphat, driven by a teenager with gelled hair that falls in sharp spikes over his eyes – an obvious impediment to navigation – takes them out past the airport. At Gurgaon the geography falls into place around Jasbir. He starts to feel nauseous from more than spike-hair’s driving and Deependra’s shopping mall aftershave. Five minutes later the phatphat crunches up the curve of raked gravel outside the pillared portico of the Haryana Polo and Country Club.
‘What are we doing here? If Shulka finds out I’ve been to shaadi when I’m supposed to be dating her it’s all over.’
‘I need a witness.’
Help me, Ram Tarun Das, Jasbir hisses into his molars but there is no reassuring spritz of silvery music through his skull to herald the advent of the Master of Grooming, Grace and Gentlemanliness. The two immense Sikhs on the door nod them through.
Kishore is sloped against his customary angle of the bar, surveying the territory. Deependra strides through the throng of Eligible Boys like a god going to war. Every head turns. Every conversation, every gossip falls silent.
‘You… you… you,’ Deependra stammers with rage. His face shakes. ‘Shaadi stealer!’ The whole club bar winces as the slap cracks across Kishore’s face. Then two fists descend on Deependra, one on each shoulder. The man-mountain Sikhs turn him around and arm-lock him, frothing and raging, from the bar of the Haryana Polo and Country Club. ‘You, you chuutya!’ Deependra flings back at his enemy. ‘I will take it out of you, every last paisa, so help me God. I will have satisfaction!’
Jasbir scurries behind the struggling, swearing Deependra, cowed with embarrassment.
‘I’m only here to witness,’ he says to the Sikhs’ you’re-next glares. They hold Deependra upright a moment to slap his face and bar him forever from Begum Rezzak’s Lovely Girl Shaadi Agency. Then they throw him cleanly over the hood of a new model Li Fan G8 into the carriage drive. He lies dreadfully still and snapped on the gravel for a few moments, then with fetching dignity draws himself up, bats away the dust and straightens his clothes.
‘I will see him at the river about this,’ Deependra shouts at the impassive Sikhs. ‘At the river.’
Jasbir is already out on the avenue, trying to see if the phatphat driver’s gone.
The sun is a bowl of brass rolling along the indigo edge of the world. Lights twinkle in the dawn haze. There is never a time when there are not people at the river. Wire-thin men push handcarts over the trash-strewn sand, picking like birds. Two boys have set a small fire in a ring of stones. A distant procession of women, soft bundles on their heads, file over the grassy sand. By the shrivelled thread of the Yamuna an old brahmin consecrates himself, pouring water over his head. Despite the early heat, Jasbir shivers. He knows what goes into that water. He can smell the sewage on the air, mingled with wood smoke.
‘Birds,’ says Sujay, looking around him with simple wonder. ‘I can actually hear birds singing. So this is what mornings are like. Tell me again what I’m doing here?’
‘You’re here because I’m not being here on my own.’
‘And, ah, what exactly are you doing here?’
Deependra squats on his heels by the gym bag, arms wrapped around him. He wears a sharp white shirt and pleated slacks. His shoes are very good. Apart from grunted greetings he has not said a word to Jasbir or Sujay. He stares a lot. Deependra picks up a fistful of sand and lets it trickle through his fingers. Jasbir wouldn’t advise that either.