The Benefit Season (5 page)

‘
Hardly a comic act- more
of a chronic attack’, I say when Paz is taken away to wet her
whistle. My friends chuckle and order a second wave of
drinks.

‘
What’s her claim to
fame?’

‘
She’s done a few gigs in
the US, and now is one of the very rare foul-mouthed Indian female
comedians. Corporates hire her for random shock therapy to the
staff, and I guess she has even got a slot for a column in a
leading daily. She’s a performing monkey for people with bad
taste’.

‘
I wonder who is letting
her loose on the general public. She’s so raunchy she makes even
bad look good’, Lily says.

I ponder on that a bit and think of what
Monal had told me. An idea, absurd as it might seem, comes to my
desperate mind.

‘
I am going to pitch to
her’, I announce. Lele chokes on his beer and Lily drops the Burra
Kebab she is inserting into her parted mouth. ‘I am going to ask
Monal to secure this woman’s interests’.

‘
Are you out of your
mind!’

‘
Monal is going to
marinate and spit roast your booty over a slow blaze’.

‘
Start with someone good,
not a loser man! You don’t want this blot on your calling! They
will build a monument to the shortest lived career
ever.’

‘
Be that as it may’, I
mutter; despite caring little for this cliché phrase abhorred by
the nun who taught me English at school as being a clumsy, pompous
device, though much in vogue with the conceited speaker, since she
believed its merit in dispelling from the audience’s mind the
cobwebs was suspect- but what the hell- she wasn’t watching, was
she?

I rise; the eyeballs of my friends tail me;
as I move confidently to the semi-lit corner where the upholder of
feminine right to low jesting is attacking one by one a long
line-up of Jack Daniel shots.

‘
May I join you’, I bow
and ask, propping my card against a glass.

‘
And equal what’, she
asks, ignoring the card.

I shake my head and raise the left brow a
tad.

‘
If we become joint, what
do we become?’ She says.

I smile and sit, drawing my chair close to
her, within darting distance of her toxic tongue. She dips my card
in her drink and swills from it.

‘
That tastes good’, she
says, and pulls the card out and deigns to read it in the light of
the dim lamp.

‘
Arjun something- what may
I do you for?’

‘
I was impressed with what
you have here’. I lie.

‘
Ahem. I can see that;
words smoother than butter and softer than oil, yet like drawn
swords’, she says, seeing through me like knife through
butter.

‘
Can I buy you a round of
drinks’, I ask.

‘
It would be of little use
to me here- drinks are on the house for me pal-occupational hazard.
I could get
you
a
drink- I see you have come to the table with empty hands’. She
signals to the manager, who is lingering in the shadows and snaps a
finger: ‘scotch for the rosy-cheeks here’.

‘
Or would you rather care
for milk’, she turns to me and asks, peering over the fingers
curled around her shot.

‘
I am here to offer our
services madam’.

‘
I am married you know, I
said it back there- don’t tell me you weren’t
listening.’

‘
I am not asking to marry
you…’

‘
Really? I am offended! Am
I not desirable?’ she says, pinching her non-existent breasts and
squirting a powerful jet of imaginary milk in my face.

‘
I meant professional
management services madam’, I say, imaginarily wiping my face. ‘I
am already spoken for’.

‘
What’s her
name’?

‘
Monal’, I blurt out;
strangely that’s the first name that comes to the lips.

She relaxes and smiles; ‘ and how were you
planning to service me?’

‘
We are the top celebrity
management company in the country…’

‘
You call me a celebrity
but don’t want to marry me’?

I pause as the waiter brings the scotch, and
I ask him to bung rocks into it. I take a deep swig and a good look
at the coarse woman knocking back the bourbon, half-turned away
from me. I start over.

‘
Who is managing you
now?’

‘
My husband’, she laughs
and nearly chokes on the olive. I don’t know how that’s
funny.

‘
From what I heard back
there, you don’t seem pretty impressed with him’.

‘
The phallus part? That
was a joke; what makes a female comedian lick, Arjun? Click, I
mean’, she winks at the contrived slip of tongue.
‘Tick?’

‘
How much do you make- a
couple of thousands per night? What about contracts, endorsements,
talk shows, the works? Nothing? We could take you from here- to
there’; my hand swooshes through the air like a plane.

‘
Just what do you have in
mind, A P,’ she says, making it sound like “
a pee
”.

‘
What I have in mind is
that we sign you on; we start an exclusive talk show for you on
STAR TV. We have cricketers on our rolls; you talk funny to them,
shake a leg with them, let their egos sprout wings and fly; you get
us the eyeballs, we bring the fat to your plate.’

‘
Why me? I am new in
town’.

‘
For one, you are a woman-
look around you – the small tribe of comics has a heavily skewed
sex ratio. Does the feminine form grace the comic horizon as you
look far and wide- no sir, it doesn’t; all one espies is a glut of
deep-throated, goateed-Billy’s with moustaches on their lips and
plumes on their crowns. ‘

‘
And two?’

‘
And two- you talk dirty.
You are porn audio- you are a comic strip act. Men will sign blank
IOUs to watch you and women will love to hate you; to them you will
be the dartboard of hatred. Why would I take their love and their
hatred from them; after all, these are sides of the same
coin.’

‘
I guess you may be
right…but I don’t know if I would fit in. But, what have I got to
do?’

‘
Take the weekend and
think it over. Call me on Monday and make a pitch to my boss. Crack
a couple of nasty’s and tell us how we are going to sell the idea
to the studios’.

‘
Monday it is’.

‘
Monday- is the day your
life is going to change. Pip-ship,’ I say, and return to my
friends- spent with curiosity.

ϖ

On Monday I knock and enter Monal’s
office.

‘
I have an idea I wish to
share with you’.

‘
Really, I was beginning
to wonder if we have recruited a sleeper cell’.

‘
I spent all week chasing
these guys, but couldn’t come up with a single catch.’ I brief her
meticulously on the clients I had spoken with, and their reactions.
She seems amused with my spirited attempts.

‘
Just keep at it. The fish
will bite. Forget about them, what was the idea you
had?’

‘
On Friday we’d gone to
this standup comic act by a US returned lady, and my, she was
god-awful! She had these vulgar jokes- hardly jokes, on everything
that we never talk of- poop, toilets, sex, ovaries and what not.
She offended and embarrassed people present- even the vilest of
them; which gave me an idea’.

‘
Which is?’

‘
That we make a move to
sign this lady on, and get her to host a talk show with the
cricketing fraternity- we have a ready supply in our own backyard
to begin with. Then, once the show floats, we move to others and in
the process get those guests to sign with us.’

‘
But you just said she was
pathetic. Only a mad man would hire her. Who would come to her
show? After just a couple of episodes the channel will pull the
spectacle out. Seriously, are you trying to make us look bad, Mr.
Pasricha’?

‘
Exactly! You are spot-on.
But for a moment consider this; she is one of the only lady standup
comics out there; even corporates are hiring her for electrifying
parleys with their staff, and she has just landed a column for The
Times. What were these people thinking? She might be raunchy and
crass, but she is a raunchy and crass
woman
- and therein her USP lies. A
broad that bawdy is still hard to come by in our country madam;
abroad none may brood’.

‘
I am a little confused
here. Are you telling me we’re hiring her or are we
not?’

‘
If you had heard me
carefully, I said, we will
move
to hire her- not that we
will
hire her.’

‘
Thereby…?’

‘
You once mentioned our
competition follows our moves closely. I remember this Prerna
trying to filch our ideas and clients from right under our nose.
All I am saying is that we spread the word that we’re hiring this
lady, and as surely as the clouds above, Prerna or someone will
make a move to steal her. This Paz thing is all over the media- you
will notice- for the right or the wrong reasons. So our move will
appear legit.’

‘
Then?’ Monal is beginning
to drum her fingers on the table.

‘
When they bet their money
on Paz, they will shoot a lot of episodes in one go before it
actually goes on air. After the first couple of shows itself- my
bet is three episodes, the idea will come a cropper. Their clients-
from what I have seen of her show- will tear up their contracts in
disgust and come running into our waiting embrace. And that will
make our competition look bad and we’ll look like the saving
grace.’

‘
You are deeper than I
thought. It just might work. You haven’t got me any clients so far,
but you’re losing others theirs, which I guess is quite all right
with me. How do you say we go about this?’

‘
I’ll call this lady to
pitch in front of you. We’ll make it appear that we’re interested
in hiring her, and plant this news at the right places. Once word
gets out, others will make a beeline for her, and we’ll let her
slip through our fingers-
careless rookie
that
I am
. We will
just let things take their own course from there, and I’ll be
waiting with a net when the stars tumble out of her
show’.

‘
Don’t underestimate our
competition. They might not bite’.

‘
Either way, what have you
got to lose?’

‘
You’re’ right! Ok, I’ll
play along, just to humor you. But don’t stop looking around for
fresh faces for my businesses.

‘
Yes madam, thank you
madam’. I bow and exit, to plan the risky gamble.

Paz has left a couple of messages for me at
the reception. I call her up and she seems excited at the chance to
be represented by a famous MNC brand like ours; having her name
etched in stone alongside the biggies of page-three. I feel a
little guilty at the sham I’m playing with her, but what the heck-
she might just strike lucky there and move to a different plane
with all the mileage that she’s going to earn out of this. I invite
her to meet my boss and pitch to her whenever she’s ready. She
wants to come right away. I tell her that’s not possible and put
her on hold and ask Monal when she can take some time out for some
bad entertainment. She laughs and puts her down for an appointment
in the next week; ‘don’t let us appear too anxious to hire her’,
she advises.

I tie up for the meeting with all concerned
and get back to my diary and phone; getting so many rejections has
somehow steeled me as I cheerily thank the next wicket-keeping jerk
who goes,’ I was hungry when you called- now I’m plain fed up!’

As the day wears on the list of insults I
pile up on my desk and my self-respect grows till I can’t remember
when it was last that someone had been nice to me. Lele and Lily
rescue me briefly over the next few days during coffee and lunch
recesses, but its not helping. I wonder if I’m really cut out for
marketing and sales, and whether my sworn tormentor Khosla was
right about this being a lousy job, and about me being better off
in the army- a fine place for proud, fit and upright men. But I am
not a quitter and I need the cash to prove to Khosla, Aarti and my
mom; the only three people that matter in my life at this instant,
that I am a responsible man o’ the house capable of surfing in
choppy seas and breaking ashore with the fat of fine flour, milk,
honey and balm.

ϖ

Office is agog with talk of the impending
visit of the crass and cross Paz. Monal and I had planned for an
audience of just the two of us for Paz’s pitch. But people are
begging Monal to let them also watch. She resists initially but
then gives in with amusement. Fun is rare in office where we are
usually at the receiving end of a very demanding, obnoxious, and
eccentric clientele. People are agape that a rookie like me would
gamble his career on such a risqué bet. They are also sure that my
not draping the customary veil of secrecy over the wooing of the
new client is not likely to go down well with the company’s morals
and ethics department.

On the appointed day the comedian arrives to
a hall full of eager staff. All the nerds are there- adjusting
their glasses and waiting for their first oral-porn experience. Her
first two columns have already made it to the papers, which make
her a potential personage of uncertain denomination. But they do
not care for the written word; all they want is to hear her obscene
profundities, and in that she does not disappoint them.