The Zoya Factor (22 page)

He fished out his wallet and bought two fly-swatter-cum-back-scratchers for the princely sum of ten rupees.

'There's so much energy in this place,' he said, leaping ahead and walking backwards in front of me. 'It's unbelievable!'

He couldn't have said anything to make me like him more. The KB Monday night market is my most favourite thing on the planet. I beamed up at him happily in the light of the bright naked bulbs strung above us, 'Isn't it?' I said, then added, 'Uh...watch out, bull ahead!'

We stepped around the placidly majestic bull and his steaming aromatic droppings and I led him towards a street corner where an old sardarji presided over a massive flat copper skillet, frying mashed potato cutlets to a rich golden brown, sending huge quantities of steaming potato vapours up into the air. The steam, coupled with the magical
tunnnggg! tunnnggg!
of his metal skewer hitting the skillet was attracting people to him in droves. We queued up for our turn, inhaling appreciatively, tucking our hands into our pockets. It was getting a little chilly.

'It's going to take a while, I think,' Khoda said.

The guy in front of us turned around and nodded, grinning. 'Ten minutes at least...Sardarji's very famous.'

Just then a runny-nosed little surdling came and handed us two cups of tea. 'Complimentary
hai ji
,' he said smilingly, exposing a gap in his front teeth. 'Waiting
de vaaste
.'

We thanked him and sipped our tea in silence.

Then Khoda said abruptly, 'Look, I'm sorry about that whole episode with the lawyers. Please tell your father that we'll fix it up any way you want, no conditions, no obligations. The important thing is for you to come to the World Cup with us.'

I didn't say anything, just cradled my glass of hot chai and blew on the icky brown-orange skin floating on the top. A million thoughts went through my head, number one being Anita Chachi's cheap Draupadi crack.

'Why?' I asked him straight up.

He looked surprised. 'You know why.'

I laughed, not very happily. 'Because I'm lucky. You don't really believe that, do you?'

'No,' he said doggedly, 'but my boys do. Even the ones who didn't come with us to Dhaka. They've seen that Australia match footage a million times and are convinced you're a miracle, a Goddess.'

'And
you,
Nikhil-sir?' I asked. 'What do
you
think?'

He said, with mild irritation, 'Will you please not call me Nikhil-
sir?
If you were born in June '83 you can't be more than two years younger than me. And it makes me feel really
old
. Like those dudes in the serials whom all the pretty girls are always calling
Mr
Bajaj or
Mr
Walia.'

'You watch those serials?' I asked, momentarily diverted.

He shrugged. 'Sure. They're pretty hilarious.'

'They're supposed to be
tragic,'
I told him. 'But look... uh...Nikhil, did you read that piece of paper they wanted me to sign?'

'I did today,' he nodded. 'Then I tore it up and threw it away. Forget about it. Just come as a guest, an honoured guest.'

I shook my head, swinging my fly-swatter-cum-back-scratcher around uneasily. 'I felt so cheap. You have no idea. There was this hairy troll in orange robes who went on about my "propitiousness" being directly proportional to my "purity".'

'Sounds like Jogpal Lohia's Lingnath Baba,' Khoda said dismissively. 'He's a joke.'

'Well, the joke was on me,' I said, rolling my eyes. 'And my dad...he was very quiet about it, but I think he was upset at the tone of the whole contract. He was already hassled because the family's been making snide remarks about Zahid and me.'

Nikhil placed his hand on the small of my back and nudged me closer to the sardarji's sizzling tikkis. 'I figured it was something like that,' he said. 'Do you think it'll help if I speak to him?'

I nodded, feeling that this could not actually be happening. 'Yeah, I guess. It should help.'

We'd reached the front of the line then and the old sardarji, a vision in spotless white, glowed at us benevolently from behind his skillet. He dished out four spluttering golden-brown tikkis into two leaf plates, sprinkled them with juicy, freshly grated carrots and sweet white radish, ladled on two kinds of chutneys - a sticky-sweet tamarind one and a lethal green chilli one - and sent us on our way.

Nikhil looked at his tikki gingerly, cocking one eyebrow. 'Isn't this seriously unhealthy?'

I grinned up at him. 'Worried you'll put on weight or worried that you'll get the runs?'

He laughed. 'Both actually.'

'Sports quota variety,' I said disparagingly.

'Karol Bagh type,' he smiled.

We walked home through the park, chatting easily, Khoda swinging the fly-swatter-cum-back-scratchers with one hand as we passed below the huge neem trees. A big gust of wind sent the neem leaves and tiny, star-shaped bittersweet neem flowers fluttering down upon us like confetti. He bought a paper bag of unshelled peanuts from an old lady and we ate them sitting on the swings in the deserted kiddie park.

He did this really nice non-starry thing with the peanuts. He kept shelling them and handing them to me to eat. I didn't have to shell a single one myself. Well, Lokey did the same thing, and with pistas, which are way more expensive than peanuts, but somehow I'd never gone weak at the knees thinking about how considerate he was.

'You know...' he suddenly said.

'What?' I asked, holding out my hand for more peanuts.

He dropped a shelled handful into my palm. 'We could've gone out somewhere fancy for dinner. Some place expensive. Gotten our picture in the papers...'

I looked up at him, puzzled. His tone was odd. I couldn't figure it out. 'But I'd eaten already,' I pointed out. 'And you said you wanted to walk. Sorry...did you want to go somewhere fancy?'

He shook his head. 'No, baba,' he said, looking at me, eyes alight with amusement. 'I didn't. But you're really a cheap date, Zoya.'

'It's all part of my simple unspoilt charm,' I assured him, shovelling peanuts into my face.

'Yeah, right,' he said laughing.

Then he leapt up and started running nimbly back down the lane to my house, while I trailed him slowly, surreptitiously fluffing up my hair and sneaking peeks at his butt. I wondered what Nikhil Khoda was doing here anyway, at a little past midnight, in my brother's grubby sweatshirt, the strings hanging idiotically around his chin, asking me questions about my life? Why wasn't he with the other rich beautiful people doing rich beautiful things? Or with his underwear-model girlfriend? What did he want with me?

Well, he wanted me to come to Australia with the team, that much was clear. But that was just a fifteen-minute conversation. And it was over. So why was he lingering? Was this usual? Did he do this with every mid-level advertising executive he met?

Of course, I didn't ask him any of these questions. I just chattered away as he ran circles around me, ignoring his complaints that I was walking too slowly, and acted like there was nothing extraordinary going on here at all.

And so, by the time we walked up to my gate, I realized I'd told him all there was to know about Tera Numbar and AWB, the twin pillars on which my life was built. He, on the other hand, hadn't talked that much, just nodded and listened, his eyes gleaming appreciatively every now and then.

A slight drizzle had started to fall, so we sheltered under the overhang of the madhumalati and he made me business card my dad's number to him, and then said formally, not at all out of breath, 'Thank you for a lovely evening.'

'Thank you too,' I answered politely. 'Goodnight.'

An awkward silence followed.

I reached out to take my stupid fly-swatter-cum-back-scratcher from him and in the process both of them fell on to the pavement. Khoda bent down to help me pick them from among the thickly strewn madhumalati blossoms and we knocked our heads together hard.

I saw stars and from the dazed look on his face, so did he.

He pulled back and looked at me, rubbing his forehead. 'What is
wrong
with you?' he asked exasperatedly.

'Sorry,' I winced and giggled at the same time.

'No,
I'm
sorry,' he said, rolling his eyes. 'My head hurts.'

'We should bang our heads together again,' I suggested. '
Nahi toh
a black dog will bite you.'

He raised his eyebrows at that. 'And who's being superstitious now?' he asked.

He had a point there. I shrugged. 'Me, I guess. It's just something Eppa says.'

'Maybe she just likes to bang Zoravar and your heads together,' he said, still rubbing his own ruefully. 'Maybe that's how she gets her kicks. Ever thought of that?'

'No, actually,' I laughed, warming up to him for talking about my family like he knew them.

'Anyway, who am I to argue about superstition?' he asked resignedly and came closer to me. 'So, where's your head again?'

I closed my eyes, still giggling, and braced myself for the collision. But nothing happened. There was just the feel of his lean, strong fingers cradling the back of my neck. Suddenly I was almost scared to open my eyes. But after a while, I did. I blinked and looked up. He was looking down at me. His face was very still, his eyes unreadable.

'Your hair's so soft,' he said.

I didn't know what to say. I mean, 'thank you' would've sounded idiotic in the circumstances. So I just looked up at him, though it wasn't easy. His Boost-brown eyes were mesmerizing. Then his gaze slid and I relaxed a little, only to realize that he was now looking at my mouth.

'I really want to kiss you, you know,' he said softly. 'I've been wanting to, all evening.' He touched the centre of my lower lip gently with one calloused thumb. 'Right here.' But then he said, even though his thumb lingered, 'But I'm not going to, okay?'

'Okay,' I whispered back idiotically, really for the lack of anything to say.

He shook his head and laughed, sounding half amused, half amazed. 'Aren't you going to ask me why, Zoya?'

'Not if you don't want to tell me,' I said, striving for a mature tone even though my heart was slamming against my ribs. 'And listen, if you're
not
going to kiss me, do you think you could get into your car and reverse it out of here, quickly? This is my Gajju Chacha's parking slot and he gets really antsy if anybody else uses it...'

'Well, of course. We can't go upsetting Gajju Chacha...' Khoda said, sounding faintly irritated and pulling away from me entirely. 'So why don't you run into the house now, isn't that your mongrel stirring again?'

Sure enough, Meeku's quick little feet had pattered to the gate and now he had his paws up against it and was beginning to bark up a storm. I picked him up in an effort to silence him and he started licking my face thoroughly.

Khoda watched wryly for a bit, then handed me my flyswatter-cum-back-scratcher. 'So, goodnight then,' he said. 'And make sure your dad picks up my call, okay?'

'Okay.'

He waited for me to get to the gate, open it and latch it behind me. Then he got into the car and drove off.

***

11

Dad drove up to the gate a few days later, the car loaded with goodies from the farm. Warm, tangy buttermilk, round pats of fresh, white butter, bearing the imprint of my Dadi's palms, coarsely ground bajra flour and best of all, a massive lump of sweet, sticky, browny-orange gud.

Eppa had just finished watering the lawn, so it was cool and fragrant outside. I carried our evening tea out onto the veranda and we sat down to a cup of gud-sweetened tea with Meeku sniffing about hopefully at our feet. I sipped my tea, and listened to my dad as he gave me all Dadaji's news and wondered how best to broach the whole should-I-go-to-Australia subject.

Apparently, my grandfather had managed to set up an Internet connection in the village and was addicted to a Friends Reunited website. He'd propped an ancient photograph of his passing-out parade from the NDA next to the comp and was contacting all his old pals on it, one by one. I thought that was rather sweet till Dad snorted and said that Dadaji had got into the rather ghoulish habit of inking a marigold garland around the necks of all his batch-mates who had died, and crowing about the fact that he was still going strong. 'There are just seven ungarlanded faces left on that photograph, of a class strength of fifty-three.'