The Zoya Factor (30 page)

Rinku Chachi's phone rang the moment she switched it on after we landed. I winced and waited for her to hand it to me. It had to be Baap, snorting fire about my photo with the nanga Pathan. But then she said a hurried
wrong number
and hung up, so I relaxed a little, but not enough to put my phone on, no way.

I got a surprise when we reached the hotel. The guy at the desk went, 'Oh, Miss So-Lanky, we're holding a message for you,' and handed me this letter in a fancy envelope.

I opened it, and found it was a really polite note from Jogpal Lohia, asking me - and my family - to have dinner with him that evening.

I showed it to Mon, who grunted and said, 'About time, he's been neglecting you a little, don't you think?'

Rinku Chachi got all overawed and said she couldn't possibly meet him, wouldn't know what to say to him and that she would stay in the hotel with Armaan.

'But you were so cool with Nikhil yesterday,' I said.

'He's a young boy,' Chachi said, 'and that was my duty, you know, Zoya. I promised Vijay Bhaisaab I would look after you properly. But this dinner, all those forks and spoons,
baap re
, I can't come. You and Monita go.'

I was a little puzzled. It wasn't like Rinku Chachi to miss out on any fun stuff - and this was a guy Gajju Chacha had such a high opinion of. Still, I didn't press her. She
was
looking a little tired, but Mon insisted she wouldn't foist Armaan on Chachi if she wasn't well. 'I'll take him along,' she said, 'after all, he's invited
all
of us.'

And so it was settled that Mon, the Monster and me had a date with the Big L that evening.

The three of us reached Jogpal Lohia's hotel a little late. This was partly because we'd overslept and partly because Armaan had thrown up huge amounts of vile-smelling
Zing!
and peanut puke just when we were leaving and had to be put under the shower again. Mon had towelled him off, crumpling her crisp chikankari sari in the process, cursing the stewardesses for slipping him so much junk food. 'And of course he could never have said no to them,' she said, as she grabbed his chin and sliced a parting viciously through his damp curls. 'Their skirts were so short!'

Anyway, the moment we got out of the car, this minion in a dark blazer came up and said, 'Zoyaji? Please come,' and ushered us smoothly to this fancy suite on the first floor. He rang the doorbell, all the while bowing repeatedly to us, almost wilting with relief when it opened and he could hand us over to another minion inside. This second minion smiled and led us into a room smelling vaguely of incense. The suite was full of ornate Indonesian furniture, with a photo of Lingnath Baba on one wall, which clashed horribly with the sweeping view of the glass and chrome city from the window.

'Please be seated,' the second minion said in a hushed voice. 'Sir will be with you shortly.'

He retreated, without turning his back to us, as sure-footed and silent as a cat. When he vanished Mon giggled, really loudly - one of those snorty, through-the-nose giggles.

'Shut up!' I whispered. 'Shut up, Mummy,' Armaan whispered too, delighted that somebody else was being yelled at for a change.

Red-faced and contrite she nodded, and then looked up, eyes fully round. Armaan and I both turned to look at what had just walked through the door.

I'd read articles that had described Jogpal Lohia as 'vulpine', so I'd imagined him to be like Amitabh Bachchan in
Sarkar.
Brooding and droopy-eyed and exuding power from every pore, you know?

The man in the doorway looked more like a warthog. He had massive, gently undulating nostrils peering coyly out from above a huge walrus moustache, large, startled-looking eyes and a trapezoid grey beard that came halfway down his chest. He was chewing gum too, his beard moving busily, but somehow he managed to make it look like he was chomping paan. 'Zoya!' he chuckled, folding both hands into an extravagant namaste. 'How are you?'

I shook my head, clearing it. 'I'm fine, Uncle,' I said dazedly.

He nodded, breathing heavily, his nostrils going big-big-big and then small-small-small. Then he turned to Mon and Armaan and greeted them politely. Armaan nodded vaguely, he probably thought he was meeting Pumba from
The Lion King
. Then, noticing that a tray of chilled
Zing!
had just been borne into the room, he brightened up and reached for it with both hands, reverentially, the way people reached for blessed prasad in temples.

Mon glared at him, her face above her (still slightly crumpled) sari quivering in reproach, but before she could say anything Jogpal boomed in his strange Bikaneri-Yankee accent: 'So! Ladies! How are you? How are you finding Australia? Are you enjoying?'

Yes, we assured him enthusiastically. 'We love cricket! Thanks for sponsoring our trip.'

Then Jogpal sprawled onto the sofa and, without any preamble, started telling us the story of his life.

It was pretty interesting, actually. He was a self-made man, he told us. He had spent his childhood playing cricket and looking after his uncle's grocery shop. A cricket scholarship got him into college where he did a B. Com and then joined a detergent company and started selling kitchen cleaners door to door. It was while pushing detergent that he met his wife-to-be. She opened the door when her mum was out and the young Jogpal came in and cleaned the gunk off the kitchen sink and wormed his way into her heart for ever. A runaway marriage followed as her folks were very rich, and from a different caste. But after the first bouncing baby was born, the father-in-law set Jogpal up with a grocery business and adopted him as his son.

'My wife is my good luck, ladies,' Jogpal said. 'Everything has turned to gold since I met her. Business went up and up, my sons look after it now and I am free to pursue my first love, cricket.'

'So were you a batsman, Uncle?' Mon asked, smiling at him.

Lohia slapped the table so hard, she jumped. 'What batsman-shatsman!' he demanded. 'I was all-rounder. Batting, balling, fielding - I was good in all.'

Armaan, of course, zoomed unerringly onto the one juicy word in that sentence. 'Balling,' he repeated happily. 'Balling. Uncle is good at balling.'

Lohia nodded benignly at Armaan, humming to himself a little and then suddenly said, 'Tell me, Zoya, I found you a good business opportunity through my friend Tauji. You are pursuing it?'

I nodded. 'Yes, thank you,' I said.

'Don't mention,' he said graciously. 'I myself was feeling very bad that Board is not giving you any fee without a contract, so I organized this instead. It will be good for everybody concerned.'

Wow, he's a nice guy
, I thought, surprised. I told him as much and he waved his hands about. 'No, no,' he said, 'it is my duty to look after all the children, that's all.' Then, turning his nostrils on Mon, he asked suddenly, 'Monita, you like music?'

It was rather unexpected. We'd been brushing up on our cricket GK in anticipation of meeting him. We both nodded, very relieved, blithely unaware of the horrible trap he was setting for us.

'Sure,'we chorused. 'We love music.'

'Nothing like music,' Jogpal said. 'Music is our culture, our soul, our heritage. Who needs alcohol or doctors when they can have music, I say? Music is life.'

He then glanced at one of his hovering minions, who bowed respectfully and went out of the room, to return in a little while bearing a strange looking string instrument and a bow. While we gaped open-mouthed, Jogpal took the instrument, placed it solemnly on his lap and set bow to string. He nodded at us over the stem a couple of times, cleared his throat and announced in a hushed, intense voice, 'Raag bhairavi. On the sarangi.'

And then he started to play.

Very badly. Very, very badly. And if that wasn't enough, he started singing too. It was a poignant little song about the cowherdess pining for Krishna and Jogpal attacked it with full gusto.

'
The sun is setting,

The cows are fed

Only I am hungry,

Krishna Krishna, you are my bread

I am a timid tremulous deer

Wandering hither and thither

Slay me with your lotus-smile

Oh my navy-blue hunter...'

It was like a bad dream. The little song had just eight lines, but Jogpal warbled on, repeating the words again and again, scraping his bow across the sarangi strings enthusiastically. Mon and I somehow managed to keep our faces straight, but Armaan started to giggle and fidget. A quick-thinking minion smoothly slid a huge bowl of potato chips in his direction and he grew still and just crunched steadily through the whole recital.

Jogpal cunningly kept varying the tempo, so we'd keep thinking the end was near but whenever we got our hopes up, he'd slow down again, toss one little curl off his forehead with an almost feminine gesture, and keep on going. A good twenty-five minutes had passed before he hit the high notes with an awful flourish, his nostrils working overtime:
'Oh slay me with your lotus eyes, my navy-blue hunter!'

And then he dried up, teary-eyed, flushed and obviously expecting applause.

We clapped enthusiastically.

Jogpal smiled modestly and took a delicate sip of water. 'So did you like my song, beta?' he demanded of Armaan, his Yankee twang coming and going in waves. With a gracious wave of the hand, he indicated that the sarangi was to be taken away. Monita and I perked up instantly.

Armaan surveyed Jogpal solemnly over the rim of his third
Zing!
glass for a bit and then asked, 'Now can
I
sing a song?'

Jogpal looked a little taken aback, he obviously hadn't thought of himself as a mere opening act. 'By all means. Of course of course...' he said with fake heartiness and Armaan nodded quietly, hopped onto his feet, wiped the golden-brown
Zing!
moustache off his upper lip, clasped his hands together and chirruped:

There's a bear in there

And an elec-tric chair

There are hand grenades

And people with AIDS

Come on inside

Commit soo-cide

Welcome to Gay School
...

Welcome to Gay School...

Monita muttered something incoherent in Bengali, moved as far away from her son as she could, and started fanning herself with her pallu. Her whole attitude was one of I-disown-this-demon-child-he-has-so-not-emerged-from-my-womb.

I gave a stupid, nervous laugh. 'It's a social service song,' I told a stunned Jogpal. 'Armaan bete, very nice,
ab Zing!
piyo,
drink your
Zing!
'

Armaan nodded, and after giving Jogpal a triumphant 'beat-that-if you-can-you-amateur' look, promptly disappeared behind his
Zing!
glass.

'
Arrey
, by the way,' Lohia said, swivelling his nostrils towards me with a whistling sound, 'your papa phoned me today, Zoya.'

I almost spilt my drink. I'd been nodding politely, wondering how quickly we could leave, and this remark caught me off-guard. 'How come?' I asked, with a sinking heart, but I knew already.

My dad had basically bypassed Rinku Chachi and rolled out the big guns. Or maybe she knew. Hey, no wonder she'd passed up dinner with Jogpal Lohia this evening!

With a numb feeling of inevitability, I watched him pull out the photo of the nanga Pathan and me from a file and put it down on the table. Then he looked at me, his nostrils suddenly resembling the bores of a double-barrelled gun and inquired mildly, 'What is this?'

Armaan instantly leaned forward to have a look. Monita looked from the chubby old warthog to me and stood up smoothly. 'Armaan,' she said, 'let's go look at the view from the balcony. You can see the bridge and everything.' She made him put the picture down, taking a quick look at it herself, and then they moved away.

I looked Jogpal in the eye and said, 'It's Zahid and me. So?'

Lohia frowned. 'So? So? That's what your papa wants to know,' he said. 'I told him, "Colonel Saab, Zoya is like my daughter too." I told Zahid also
ki
...'

'You spoke to Zahid about this?' I squealed, horrified.

He nodded. 'Then what?'

Oh my God, how horribly embarrassing!

'But,
bacche
,' said the Lohia, breathing heavily, 'have I not been a good host? Are you not staying in the best hotels? Three members of your family are travelling with you! Why you're doing all this?'

'All what?' I demanded hotly. 'I haven't done anything! And as you rightly said, three people are travelling with me. It's their job to look after me - not yours!'

'But it is also your papa's job, no?' he said simply. 'And he requested I find you and connect you on the phone to him so that you both can talk.'

Oh my God. I can't believe that my dad would gang up with this, this...
Lohia
on me. Rinku Chachi... she knew too. Only Zoravar was on my side. I knew it had been a bad idea to put my phone off!

I stood there, smoking gently, as Lohia punched the familiar number of the house in Karol Bagh on his fancy cellphone.

Really, how old did Dad think I was?

'
Haan,
Colonel Saab?' Lohia said, lumbering to his feet. 'Zoya wants to talk to you.' He handed me the phone, and actually had the gall to smile at me.

'Hi, Dad,' I said, as calmly as I could.

'Zoya.' He sounded angry, anxious, affectionate, all at the same time. He even sounded, I thought, embarrassed, like maybe he was feeling he'd overreacted a little by getting Lohia involved. But the embarrassment was evenly balanced out by a defiant tinge of why-the-bloody-hell-shouldn't I-overreact. The moment I heard his voice, I felt terribly homesick. I knew exactly where he was standing, in the pillared veranda, speaking on the cordless phone. It would be late afternoon in Delhi, the prettiest time of day to hang out in the lawn. Eppa and Meeku would be running around in circles on the grass, and Dad would be trying to keep his voice down so that Anita Chachi didn't overhear and go all I-told-you-so.

'Why aren't you using that new phone I gave you?' he demanded.

I felt instantly guilty, remembering how sweetly he'd given it to me at the airport, and how good I'd promised to be. I mumbled something about switching it off for the flight to Sydney and forgetting to put it on afterwards.

'I called Rinku a million times when I couldn't get through to you, but she's such a coward...she just kept saying
wrong number, wrong number!
' my dad fumed. 'Must've seen that photo, I suppose.'

I felt a sudden surge of affection for my Rinku Chachi. 'Uh, Dad, the photo.... It's nothing
, kuchh nahi
, okay?'

'If it was all so innocent, why have you been avoiding my calls?'

'I haven't,' I said, untruthfully. 'It's just that I haven't figured out how to use that new phone properly yet....' Then as calmly as I could, I told him how I had gone bungee jumping just before the picture was taken. 'That's why I was looking so excited and hanging on to Zahid so animatedly.'

Bad mistake. 'Bungee jumping?' Dad exploded. Across the room, Lohia, who was humming horribly to himself and trying to look invisible, jumped a little. 'You could've been paralysed for life! Those things are dangerous.
What is that bloody Rinku doing?
'

'Dad, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Relax, I'm fine, nothing happened.... They even took a video, I'll mail it to you, okay? I'm not seeing Zahid or anyone else. You can ask Lohia Uncle. I just see them all for fifteen minutes every five days or so. Honest!'

I was fibbing, of course, there was no way I was going to tell him about my 'NZ' bracelet and all the close dancing I'd been up to, or how good Zahid's gorgeous washboard abs had felt under my fingers. But I did make a promise to myself, right there and then, to keep my distance from the cricketers for the rest of my stay. After all, my propitiousness was directly proportional to my purity, according to old Lingnath whose picture was grinning at me from the wall across the room. And from the way Dad was yelling, my being disowned by my only living parent was directly proportional to my purity too....

To calm him down, I started telling him about Sydney and the match and our fancy hotel.

'Okay, okay, don't you try and manage me,' he said at last, with bad grace. 'And keep your phone on, I want to be able to get through to you at a moment's notice,
suna tumne
?'

'
Haan, haan,
Dad,' I promised. 'Love to Eppa and Meeku.'

He muttered something in reply and hung up.

Feeling extremely stupid, I walked across the room and handed the phone back to Lohia.

The evening ended pretty soon after that. Lohia had to go out for some high-profile dinner, so we cleared out of his ornate suite fairly early.

Mon was fully mortified about not having kept a closer watch on me. The first thing she did after getting into the car on our return was to message her number to my dad and assure him that she'd pick up his calls 24/7.

They all slept late the next morning but, of course, I had to be up bright and early for breakfast. I'd set the alarm for six a.m., but I needn't have bothered. Zoravar woke me up at five-thirty in the morning, calling from Poonch. 'You alive, soldier?' he yelled down the line.

'Yes,' I said grumpily. 'Thanks for the warning.

' 'Anytime,' he shouted.

'And listen, just for the record, there's really nothing going on between Zahid and me.'

'Never thought there was!' he yelled. 'Now what about the
other
guy?
You
know, Kuptaan Saab? Don't bullshit me, now, I know you like him, Gaalu.'

'Well...' I giggled happily, looking at the pretty gold bracelet on my wrist, 'it seems he likes me too!'

There was absolute silence at the other end; just the wind whistling through the mountains of Poonch. I'd just started worrying that a Pakistani sniper had put a bullet through my brother when he finally said, very quietly, 'Really? How d'you know?'

I told him all about my dinner date in Brisbane. Well, not all, but most of it.

He heard me out and then said urgently, 'Gaalu, look I've gotta go, but listen, ask yourself why this guy's being so nice all of a sudden? He's surrounded with hot babes constantly, why's he training his sights on you?'

I started to protest but he cut me off. 'He's a good captain, I'll grant him that. Maybe sucking up to you is part of his winning strategy. Fair enough. But keep your defences up. Guys keep using you all the time - and I don't want you to become collateral damage, okay?'

'Zoravar, listen,' I started to say, but he'd hung up, leaving me absolutely shattered.

I sat down on the loo floor, thinking,
Oh thanks, Zoravar.
Obviously, I am so damn ordinary, so damn boring, so damn
ugly
that no one could possibly like me just for myself. There would have to be an ulterior motive, wouldn't there?

And thanks for reminding me I've been a dumpee twice before.

As if I've ever forgotten it....

The first time hadn't been so bad, actually, I'd come out with nothing more than a slightly bruised ego and a real appreciation for heavy metal music. (The dumper in question had played bass guitar in a Delhi University band called
Hymen Busters
and had dumped me for the husky-throated lead singer. In his breaking-up speech he'd confessed he was only going out with me because Dad had let the band practise on our terrace.)

But the second time - that had been bad.

My second dumper, with his sexy Bangalore drawl, his Hubba Bubba grapefruit-flavoured deep kisses and his brooding intellectual brow had destroyed me utterly when he wrote to me from Columbia University (where he'd got a scholarship basically because G. Singh had pulled a lot of strings) that he felt the two of us should give each other 'space'.

We'd been going out for four years. I'd met him at a college social, he'd just walked up and said hello, we'd slow-danced to Enrique Iglesias's 'Hero' and then sat on the college steps and chatted for hours. He was super-bright, had maxed the CAT and gone to Ahmedabad for his MBA. (Unlike me. I'd got mine from some shady place in Ghaziabad.)

I should have seen it coming, really. After all, anybody with an IQ that high was sure to work out that once the scholarship came through, he had no further need for a loser like me.

And now Zoravar was implying that Nikhil Khoda was dumper number three - my
third
tryst with a destiny that just couldn't seem to get enough of rubbing my chubby face into the mud.

I brooded as I showered and brushed my teeth, thinking resentfully that Zoravar didn't know what he was talking about. He had no notion how much integrity Nikhil had, what a straight guy he was. Why, he'd tried so hard to keep me away from the team table before finally capitulating after the IPL benefit match! I was going to pay no attention to my big brother's stupid ravings, I decided, as I brushed my hair so viciously that it crackled. And headed towards the car in time for breakfast.

Breakfast this time was at the Sydney Cricket Ground itself. We drove into Moore Park by 7:15 and the place was still pretty quiet. Actually, I was starting to miss India, where the World Cup fever was way higher than here. In India, Durga pooja pandals had the goddess decked out in the Indian uniform - bats, balls and stumps in every arm - a good three months before the event started. By now, self-styled cricketing gurus would be explaining India's position, or rather
'poishun'
at every street corner, and calculating if we would make the Super 8. Neelo and gang would be writing banner lines feverishly and firework stalls would be coming up everywhere. There would be the inevitable match-fixing allegations, cursing of sponsors and
tsk tsking
over the crass commercialization of the sport. All the cool people would be pretending to be unaffected by the fever, talking about how painfully slow ODIs were compared to Twenty20s and then running to the TV frantically when a big wicket fell. And, of course, Sony Entertainment Television would be charging obscene rates and raking in the moolah by the truckload.

The boys looked almost ready to leave when I showed up. They grinned at me and shifted to make room. The sofas had been moved out of the way and the tables pushed together to form a long one.

Rawal, of all people, called out from the other end of the table: 'Not fair, huh? Zoya won't really be at
our
table.'

Wow, he was being friendly. I gave him a rather-too-bright smile out of sheer surprise and he responded with a constipated one of his own. I wriggled in between Shivnath and Hairy, even though there was a little space next to Zahid. He didn't seem to notice though. He was looking really intense as he chewed furiously. Khoda, of course, was at the top of the table with Wes, Dieter Rund and Laakhi. He looked up, flashed a grin, and I smiled back, thinking what a suspicious piece of shit my brother was....

Shiv and Hairy, usually so animated, were very quiet. It was a very big match and they must have all been stressed. But this time, I didn't feel so resentful, or like an intruder. I grabbed some toast, reached for the butter, ignored the Vegemite, and poured myself some coffee.

I think they had been waiting for me to show up, because the moment I'd downed one cup, they were ready to go.

'Umm, best of luck, guys,' I said through a mouthful of toast as they all wriggled out from behind the sofas and started grabbing their stuff to leave.

Everybody smiled at me, some of them said thanks, some just slouched away, like they were embarrassed to say anything at all. But my trio of diehard fans - Hairy, Shivee and Zahid - grabbed me one at a time in a bear hug. I hugged all three back, fervently wishing them victory.

Khoda caught my eye as he left the hall. He had a strange expression on his face. He didn't look upset but definitely wasn't happy either. I smiled at him, but he didn't return the smile, just nodded and pushed his way through the swinging batwing doors.

Julius Caesar lost the toss. Khoda decided to bat, and I relaxed, thinking that the charm was working. Thank you, God. Mon and Armaan were bunking today's match but Rinku Chachi joined me at the stadium by nine. We'd had a little chat, she'd fessed up to avoiding my dad's calls and I'd told her not to feel too guilty. We settled down happily in the Members' stand, flanked by the dressing rooms on either side, so we could watch the players come and go and hoot rudely if we so wished.