The Zoya Factor (2 page)

I had just got my first glimpse of the toasty brown midriff when my phone rang. Shah Rukh said, his shirt still only half off, 'The signal's better outside,' and I nodded maturely and exited the van.

'This had better be good,' I snarled as I punched the answer key.

'Um...Zoya, how are you? Hope there's no rain tonight?'

It was Sanks. Now I know why Monita calls him old coitus interruptus. He was talking to me in this mild, nice way, which of course set all my alarm bells ringing. 'Nope,' I said cautiously, 'though we haven't really started yet. They're setting up for the truck shot.'

Sanks made little clicking noises as I spoke, like he couldn't wait for me to finish. It's one of his most irritating little traits, right up there with his tendency to come in to work at eight a.m., and then go
Good Afternoon, Good Afternoon
smirkily from behind his bristly moustache when we stagger in at half past nine. The moment I finished, he said, still in that nicey-nice voice, 'Well, Zoya, I'm sorry but you'll have to come back to Delhi right now.'

You're kidding, right
?

'It's the ICC Champion's Trophy in Dhaka and I need someone I can trust to go shoot the team. Ishaan's dad is in the ICU so it's going to have to be you.'

The ICU! I knew Ishaan (my one and only flunkie) had trouble at home but I hadn't realized it was so bad.

But the even worse news was that
Zing!
Co. had obviously gone and signed the cricketers
again
. I mean, when were these people ever going to learn? Wasn't the last World Cup - where our 'best batting line-up in the world on paper' had got out right at the very first stage itself - enough of a lesson for them? They'd sunk seriously obscene amounts of money into an intensely patriotic
Zing! Together Now, India
campaign, and then they'd had to scramble to take it off air before the irate public burnt down their trucks and hoardings and totalled their factories.

All of us at the agency had had to scurry around, creating new ads for them to run on the World Cup slots they'd paid so much money for. Whole consignments of
Zing! Together Now, India
armbands, wristbands, bandannas and tee shirts had had to be pretty much thrown away. It wasn't safe to wear them any more. Really. You could get beaten up if you were foolhardy enough to wear one and walk the streets.

The whole sorry circus had turned me into a cricket cynic for life.

The cricket team had slunk back to India, under cover of darkness, police jeeps trailing behind their BMWs, protecting them from the wrath of the people. The IBCC called a council and there had been massive amounts of name-calling and buck-passing. And a little bit of soul-searching. With the result that about eighteen months later the 'greatest batsman in the world', the 'wall' and the 'comeback kid' had called it quits from ODI cricket. A new Australian coach was produced from somewhere and India had gone about building a whole new cricket team, pretty much from scratch.

It was a team of rookies and wild card IPL discoveries, with a couple of leftovers from the old order. The board had rotated the captaincy till it had become a bit of a joke, but about six months ago, the Aussie coach had thrown a stink and the Board had finally plumped for one particular candidate. Since then, things had steadied a bit. Still, nobody was expecting the ill-assorted team to exactly cover itself with glory at the mini World Cup. Except, it seemed, eternally optimistic
Zing!
Co., who had gone and signed them on all over again!

'They got them cheap, I suppose?' I said snidely.

'Kind of.' Sanks was evasive.

I sighed. 'What's the tack we're taking this time?' I asked. 'Or is it too early to ask?'

'Oh, it's a campaign celebrating the spirit of cricket,' he said glibly. 'The Joy of the Game, as it were. No narrow jingoistic side-taking. It's not about winning or losing but how you play the game.'

That figured.

'So when can you get on a plane, Zoya?' Sanks said again. 'We've been working on getting your visa done here.'

'Sanks, can't it wait a couple of days? I've really been looking forward to this shoot,' I said feebly, thinking of Shirtless Shah Rukh in the make-up van.

I had to hold the phone away from my ear. 'Have you any idea how
difficult
it is to get a window to shoot with these guys? One day later and they'll go into
training camp
. And if we disturb them
then
, the media will
crucify
us!'

'But I don't know anything about cricket!' I wailed desperately. 'I don't even know who the captain is, for heaven's sake.'

'Of course you do,' said Sanks irascibly. 'It's that guy you like, the one'- he made his voice all squeaky and produced what he fondly assumed was an imitation of
my
voice - '"with the cute butt."'

Oh,
that
guy.

Well, he did have a point, the new skipper looked pretty good when he leapt about fielding, all lithe and leonine, which is a huge thing to pull off if you're wearing those awful light-blue track pants.... And I could shop for pretty saris in Dhaka. Also, there was no way I couldn't do what Sankar Menon wanted and survive. The man is a butcher, an absolute kasai. Sanks was still talking. 'Besides, didn't you once have lunch with the whole team in Bombay, Zoya? You
know
these guys.'

'Breakfast,' I corrected him automatically. 'Right before some big match. But that doesn't really count. You sent me there to get some No Objection Certificate signed and they just let me sit at their table for, like, fifteen minutes. No one talked to me or anything.'

'See?' said Sanks, happily ignoring what I'd just said. 'You know them! You're going. It's just a two-day thing. And might I remind you that a lot of people would give an arm and a leg for an opportunity to observe world-class cricket up-close.'

Ya-ya, people who lived, ate and dreamed cricket. I wouldn't cut off any body part for the dumb game, except maybe the extra two inches of subcutaneous fat on my cheeks
.

'Okay, Sanks,' I shrugged, bowing to the inevitable. 'I'll go.'

I hung up and gloomily retraced my steps to Shah Rukh's make-up van. I tried the handle Monita style (i.e., authoritatively), but it didn't budge. Then one of the spot-boys loitering outside the van dug out this little strand of dried snot from his nose, rolled it between forefinger and thumb and flicked it in the direction in which Shah Rukh had (presumably) gone. I looked that way and managed to spot him in the distance, atop a giant
Zing!
Cola truck parked in the middle of the square, practising dance steps with the choreographer.

A crowd of about a thousand extras milled below him.

I sighed.

So much for Veer-Zoya.

***

2

The next day I caught an insane flight back to Delhi and hired a kali-peeli to take me home, rattling up to the gates of Tera Numbar around midnight. The cabbie and I bickered amicably over the fare and parted friends. I swung open the rusty iron-sheeted front gate, lugged my bag through the garden and up the veranda and peered through the fly-screen door into the drawing room.

The room was dark but the TV was on, and Eppa, our severe, fifty-plus maid, who's looked after me and my brother since we were born, was catching some late-night television with Meeku, my mother's aging-but-feisty, one-eyed hairball. Eppa rules our house and has been with the family since '79 when my dad was posted in Cochin Cantt and my harassed Ma took her on to help cope with my horrible older brother, Zoravar. 'Hoo's dyuere?' she called.

'
Bhooooot
,' I said in my best spooky voice.

Eppa snorted as she unlatched the door. 'Zoyaaa!' she said. 'Why yu are skaring me, notty gul?' I gave her a hug as Meeku yipped eagerly around my heels and then collapsed right in front of the AC again, his duty done.
'Kaisa tha
Shah Rukh Khan?'

'He was hot, Eppa!' I told her. 'I saw him shirtless, can you imagine?'

She leaned forward excitedly. '
Photu liya
?' she asked, and I had to sheepishly confess that I hadn't managed any photographs. She sniffed in disgust; she'd really been looking forward to showing off a photo of me in a clinch with SRK to her entire social circle.

I collapsed on the sofa and scratched Meeku behind the ears. 'What are you watching, Eppa?' I asked her placatingly.

'Paap Ka Ant,'
she said, a little sulkily.

The End of Sin. 'Cool! What's it about?'

I really like watching TV with Eppa because it's something she does only late at night, after her work for the day is done - the dishes washed, the kitchen swept, the copper gas burners meticulously cleaned with a skinny number 18 knitting needle and the glass lid firmly closed over them for the night. It's the only time she relaxes, squats before the TV, combs out her wiry grey hair and giggles girlishly over WWF wrestling matches, high-level politics in the Viraani and Aggarwal dynasties and the occasional sex-and-violence movie. Now she spoke in her gentle late-night voice, so different from her shrill quarrelsome day voice: 'The hero, no, he is loving rich girl, and her family is not happy, so her vicked brother, what he doos, he takes the hero sister and spoils her. Now she will have to kill herself...'

I choked on the glass of water she'd handed me. 'Excuse me? What d'you mean, Eppa, if he spoi - uh - rapes her, why should she kill herself?'

'She have to! That is the only way.... Spoilt girls have to kill themselves. Or become nun. They can take badla on him first if they want.'

'Revenge?' I asked. 'You mean they should
kill
him or something
?
Why can't she file a case, win it, then meet some nice man and marry him?'

Eppa shook her head vigorously. 'That is not the way, Zoya Moya! She
havtu
die!' She looked at my appalled expression and added charitably, 'And go to heaven, of course.'

I woke up around eight and came out to have my tea in the garden. Our house is on this very busy main road that links Delhi to the industrial town of Rohtak. Huge, smoke-belching trucks, illegally overloaded with mysterious merchandise, trundle up and down it daily. But my grandfather's house has a huge wall all around it and masses of bougainvillea and bamboo thickets that muffle the sound and create this really cool secret-garden feel.

I watched Eppa watering the flowerbeds, humming to herself. 'Good morning, sex bomb!' I said cheerily and flashed a benign smile as Meeku hurtled into the lawn and started digging vigorously in the purple masses of verbena blossoms. 'Where's Dad?'

Eppa sniffed, 'Dyuere!' and I turned and saw my father walking up, the sun gleaming on his smooth bald head, his moustache bristling. He was still in his pajamas and looked really worked up about something. 'It's that damn Gajju again,' he grumbled, without looking at me. 'He keeps parking in my spot all the time.'

Eppa made soothing noises and poured out the tea.

My grandfather built this house in the early thirties and I've often wondered why he bothered because all he does is hide in his village and avoid it like the plague. Of course, according to my grandmother, Karol Bagh was a happening address back then. 'It was all the Punjabis coming in post-Partition,' she'd told me once with a disdainful sniff, 'who ruined the neighbourhood.'

I don't really see her point. I love the Punjabi-ness of Karol Bagh. It's chock-full of colourful fabric markets and sinful, ghee-drenched sweet stalls and peopled with rocking Punju auntiejis with flashing eyes and massive shelf-like uniboob bosoms.
My
theory is that my grandmother, who's a little - uh
- girlish
in the chest department, found them hugely intimidating. That's why she beat a prudent retreat to the haveli in the village some twenty years ago, hauling my granddad off with her.

When he left, my granddad divided the house among his four sons. My father, Vijayendra Singh Solanki, is the eldest, followed closely by my trio of Chachas: Mohindra, Gajendra and Yogendra. 13, New Rohtak Road or Tera Numbar, as we call it, is an ungainly white two-storeyed bungalow with pillared verandas and overgrown lawns in the back and front, and we all live in different bits of it. We cousins love it, because the division created some really eccentric architecture, like a kitchen in a garage, a dining room you enter through a loo, a perfectly circular drawing room or gol kamra, various secret passages, and a bathroom window through which members of all four families can talk and lend and borrow stuff.