The Zoya Factor (27 page)

Oh my God! That was it!

I had a sudden, perfect flash into the future. Khoda was going to clinch the final with a huge six. The ball would fly into the stands, knock me on the head, cause a horrible spurting wound and decapitate me in front of a million viewers. An ugly bat-shaped monument would be erected in Shivaji Park in my honour. Khoda would stand brooding before it, blue cap in hand, crying in the rain, as the credits rolled down on the movie of my life.

I zapped off the TV, collapsed on to the bed and covered my head with my pillow.

***

13

The first thing I saw the next morning was Khoda's face in the
Herald Sun.
He was laughing, brown eyes warm as they gazed into the dulcet dark ones of some hot-looking babe showing too much cleavage. Underneath, it read:
Indian skipper Nikhil Khoda with local restaurateur Reita Sing, at the latter's restaurant Sultry South at South Bank, late last night.

Tears sprang to my eyes. I chucked the paper onto the floor and headed for the loo.

When I emerged, a good forty minutes later, Monita and Rinku Chachi told me kindly but firmly that we were all going to the Gold Coast for a day of sun and fun. So I ended up trailing along behind them in the Movieworld theme park while Armaan skipped about ahead of us, sticking his tongue out at everybody who passed us by.

'Armaan, stop showing your tongue to all of Australia,' begged his overwrought mother.

'No, no, Mummy,' he replied earnestly, 'I am not showing my tongue to Australia, I am showing
Australia
to my tongue! Because it lives inside my small, dark mouth hole and doesn't get to see
anything.
See Tongue - see the pretty girl in the shorts, see Tongue, see the fat man in the shorts, see Tongue, see Zahid Pathan...'

I looked up, surprised, and sure enough, there was Zahid, all Mickey Mouse tee shirt and tousled curls. He was waving out to us, flushed and grinning and seemingly oblivious to the fact that he was being tailed by a gaggle of giggly Pakistani girls. 'Hi, Zoya!' he said as he bounded up. 'I just did all the wet water rides, it is superb, awesome, too good,
matlab ki
you will love it!'

He then started telling me that I simply had to do a bungee jump. I told him to go do it himself but he said Dieter-sir would kill him if he tried it. Then Monita chimed in too, whispering all kinds of corny agony aunt stuff like,
C'mon, snap out of it, stop brooding, do the bungee.
Don't let other people take control over your happiness
....

The two of them hauled me over to a huge crane, fully covered in graffiti, where a bloodthirsty crowd had gathered to watch all the deranged loons who were paying large sums of money to risk killing themselves in the flower of their youth.

A guy with tattooed tits, dark glasses and big black jack boots yelled down to us, 'You folks wanna swing?'

'She does!' Zahid, yelled back, giving the guy a big thumbs up sign. The crowd cheered happily. 'Well. Get on up then!'

The guy made us shell out two hundred fifty Aussie dollars. (I started multiplying by thirty-seven, but then Zahid said it was his treat. He actually used that word
- treat,
hello, this was a
treat
?) Then this guy with a video camera started briefing me about where to look and wave while he shot the video of my jump. Which made me get all worked up about the fact that my little cropped top would flip over my head when I fell and my new, specially-bought-for-Australia-bra-encased boobs would be captured on camera for all to see.

I tried to explain this to Zahid. It took a while for him to get it, but then he nodded, whipped off his shirt, and told me to put it on. (A few of the Pakistani girls swooned and Monita instantly started humming
dard-e-disco
under her breath.) Somehow, managing to ignore the seriously lethal torso on display, I put it on, and then he tucked the bottom snugly all the way around into my shorts.

The next thing I knew, I was walking up the first series of stairs, a weird plummeting feeling in the pit of my stomach, which up till now I'd only associated with encounters with Nikhil Khoda.

Below me, the crowd cheered lustily.
What a bloodthirsty bunch of people
, I thought, surveying them from a lofty height. Really, it would serve them all right if I threw up large amounts of semi-digested candy floss and coke on them as I fell....

I took a deep calming breath.

Oh well,
I reasoned, as I walked off the edge,
I'm feeling so suicidal, maybe simulating it will actually be kind of cathartic....

***

I strutted happily into the lobby of my hotel that evening, feeling totally at home in Australia, the adrenalin rush from the bungee jump still very much with me. The guy at Reception got all excited when he saw me. 'Miss So Lanky?' he went (hah, I only wish I was!). 'There's a gentleman waiting to see you. He's been waiting for a long time, two hours or more. He's right over there, behind that screen.'

Khoda. It had to be Khoda, I thought instantly, my heartbeat zooming. So much for not letting other people take control of your happiness.

I spun around and hurtled towards the Aboriginal screen he'd pointed at, fluffing up my hair as I went past, to see a familiar face all right, butnot the lean dark one I'd been hoping for. Plump and fair and shinily bald-pated under the fancy hotel lights, Lokendar Chugh beamed up at me benignly. 'Hello, Joyaji,' he said, all avuncular charm. 'Why you are not picking up thee phone?'

We had a beer at the poolside coffee shop. Lokey chatted about this and that and inquired after my family in such a familiar way that I started to wonder if he had a
file
on me or something. He asked about Gajendraji and Zoravarji. I was almost surprised he'd missed out Eppaji and Meekuji.

Basically he had an offer for me. That was why he was skulking around here. 'It's all very hush hush,' he said, pulling his chair closer to the table and looking at me with round-round eyes. 'You used to be an agency girl, you will understand.'

Hello, used to be? I was still an agency girl unless Sanks had found some other sucker who'd work for less to do my job.

Lokey sweated profusely, looking here and there, like a man in a bad spy movie who's always clutching a briefcase and ends up getting stabbed in the parking lot before one-fourth of the film is over. 'I have an offer for you,' he whispered hoarsely, wiping his sweaty brow with a large white handkerchief, 'to endorse a product.'

Wow, was he serious? 'Wow, are you serious?' I asked him.

He nodded solemnly. 'It is a very big brand. It will be coming on TV for thee very first time.'

Bit of a contradiction there, I thought. If it was such a big product, why wasn't it on TV yet? 'What's this product, Lokey?' I asked him.

He gave this long, impressive pause, shelled a particularly recalcitrant pista, popped it into his red mouth and said, 'Sher bidi.'

'Sher bidi?' I repeated, hugely let down. 'A
bidi
?'

Lokey beamed. 'Not just any bidi, Joyaji, Number One bidi in Indian subcontinent and Middle East!'

'But tobacco products can't be advertised on TV!' I said, scandalized. 'And anyway, I won't endorse smoking.'

'You won't have to, Joyaji!' Lokey said earnestly. 'Because Tauji is diversifying specially into agarbattis for being able to do TV commercials.'

'Proxy ads, you mean, Lokey,' I said. 'Apple juice instead of whisky, playing cards instead of beers, and music CDs instead of white rum.'

'But this is genuine product, Joyaji!' he assured me. 'Otherwise would I ask you to endorse? I also have my integrity.'

I let that pass for now. 'What's it called?' I asked him instead, genuinely intrigued about how a bidi king could diversify into joss sticks and not lose face.

Lokey beamed. 'Ekchully, Mr Jogpal Lohia has suggested very good name. He is a friend of Tauji, you know. The idea to cast you is also his. You must thank him, Joyaji.'

'What's the name, Lokey?' I asked patiently.

'Sheraan-wali,' he said. 'Good name, no?'

It was genius, the name. Genius in a twisted, sick, totally commercial kind of way, but genius all the same - the kind of thing Sanks would have thought of. Because Sheraanwali Agarbatti literally means the tiger's agarbatti, but more importantly it means the agarbatti of the goddess who bestrides a tiger, who of course is Durga Mata, the main goddess of the Hindu pantheon.

'Yes, good name,' I told him slowly as he nodded, looking at me intently, like a fat cat outside a rat hole.

'Tauji is very excited about thee Joya Factor. He thinks you and Sheraan-wali Agarbatti are a match made in heaven. He wants to sell six million packs of agarbatti this year. This is slump time to launch thee agarbattis because all thee festivals are over but the ad will do double-shift and advertise thee bidi also.'

I didn't say anything, mainly because I didn't know what to say. An agarbatti ad. It was seriously SEC D minus. Like doing an ad for Navratan Tel or something. But hello, Govinda, Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan have all done that...why not me?

'They want to shoot an ad with you now, asap, which they will run
only
if India wins the World Cup. It will be thee first thing you see after Khoda lifts the Cup and we cut to thee ad break.'

'D'you have the script?' I asked Lokey.

'
Ufff!
What script-vript?' he shoot his head. 'Joyaji, start thinking like a celebrity, why you are asking for the script? Ask for the money first.'

Yeah, right, stupid me. 'So show me the money, Lokey,' I said, just to humour him. It all seemed so totally unreal.

He grinned happily, held up four stubby beringed fingers in my face and waggled them obscenely, shaking with silent, triumphant laughter.

'Four?' I said slightly insulted. 'Four lakhs?'

Lokey shook his head gleefully. 'Forty,' he chortled. 'That's what I have negotiated. Forty lakhs either way.'

'
Matlab
?' I asked, my head spinning at the thought of so much riches.

'
Matlab
, forty lakhs whether they run the ad or no. Whether India win or no. But they'll only sign the contract if India gets to thee semis.'

Well, that was reasonable enough. Why shell out money to a lucky charm till it's proven itself? Tauji
ka
logic was sound.

'But they'll be booking space on Sony, won't they?' I pointed out. 'Won't they lose a lot of money if we lose and they don't have an ad to run?'

'That is risk they are taking, Joyaji,' Lokey replied. 'Tauji's pockets are very deep. They will make out thee payment thee day you shoot,' he added. 'There's a five-day gap between thee semi and thee final. They will fly you to India for shoot and back.'

'Okay,' I said cautiously, my head in a total whirl. 'I need to think about it, okay? Let me call you and tell you soon.'

'Of course, of course,' said Lokendar magnanimously, reaching for his beer mug like a man whose job was done. 'Definitely. Take your time. What's there.'

Lokey had certainly given me something to think about. I went up to my room, mulling over what he'd said. Of course it was all notional at the moment. I'd only get the money if we made it till the semis, which were still a good ten matches away. Still, it was all very exciting. And to think I had been moping around last night feeling unwanted.

In this gung-ho spirit I strutted up to my room, fluffing my hair out and looking at myself in every mirror I passed. I was looking really good. All that blood rushing to my head during the bungee jump must've been like a facial or something, 'cos I was positively glowing, mate.

Rinku Chachi was all over me the moment I entered the room. 'Zoya,
tabse
number
mila rahi hoon
, that fat man has been waiting downstairs for you for hours!'

I looked at her blankly for a moment. Come to think of it, the first thing Lokey had said to me was, 'Why you are not picking up your phone?' And Zahid had called on the hotel landline too. Hey, maybe there was something wrong with my phone...and Khoda, after trying my number a million times had gone out with that sultry south Indian babe instead and made mad passionate love to her all night just to get over the trauma of my not returning his calls and was, at this very moment, having to make an honest woman out of her!