The Zoya Factor (51 page)

He sat back and looked at us for a reaction.

Zoravar made a strangled little noise in the back of his throat and lurched out of the van, shutting the door loudly behind him.

Neelo said, 'Fuckin' unreal, man.'

A long silence followed.

'You're serious?' I asked PPK finally. '
That's
the script?'

'Sure,' he nodded. 'That's it. I'd like to add a beatific smiling shot of you, showcasing your divinity, at the end of your dialogue, and cut to an image of the World Cup trophy but yes, that's the lot.'

I looked at Lokey. 'You're Nikhil's agent,' I told him. 'Laakhi's too, I think? What will they say when they see this on TV?'

Lokey shrugged. 'We will have to misspell their names, little bit on thee shirts, PPKji,' he said, 'otherwise it is okay.'

'Is that all you have to say?' I gasped.

He nodded, '
Haan
.'

'But they're
praying
to her, fucker!' Neelo said, revealing unsuspected religious depths. 'That's like...blasphemous.'

Lokey chucked a handful of pistas into his mouth and said patiently, 'Joyaji, it is all good for thee advertising business. Your ad will be seen, thee agarbattis will be sold, thee beedi will sell too. Then Nike and
Zing!
and Nero-Tasha and other sponsors will do more and more ads showcasing their point of view and trying to claim thee World Cup victory as
theirs.
Laakhi and Nikhil will profit from it, they will get much more money than you can even imagine...'

PPK said, 'I'm booked to shoot the Nero-Tasha victory ad one week after the boys get home. Don't worry, Zoya. It'll all work out well.'

I looked at the two of them doubtfully, sitting there like it was all in a day's work, thought about the fifty lakhs in my bank account, and felt a little reassured. Neelo too, I noticed, was already sitting back and endeavouring to wrap his fairly elastic sense of morality around the concept of an unworthy Pappu like me being worshipped as a Goddess. 'Well, you know what they say,' he offered, a little self-consciously. 'Every human being has a spark of the divine in him.'

And then this costume girl traipsed in with my costume and they all had to leave so I could get into it. Wow. I needed sunglasses just to look at it. It was kind of like a Bharatanatyam dancer's costume, with a light-blue divided sari and a low embroidered belt. A shiny, gold-coin-encrusted corset went on top, along with a vast number of gold and bead necklaces and a cardboardy kind of a gold crown for my head. The trident was a flashy blue and silver and a choreographer came in to show me how to hold it.

'Strike a pose like this,' he said, lifting one leg up from the hip and crossing it across the other so he looked like a Nataraj in acid-washed denims and an Eminem tee shirt. 'Toss your mane back. And arch your neck regally - like a queen.'He actually said it.
Mane
.

Of course I've read
Cosmo
magazine and I know that in some rarefied stratospheres the beautiful people call their hair 'mane', their butt 'booty' and their eyes 'peepers', but I'd never actually met anyone who used the word. The fact that he was asking me to wear an Indian mythological outfit while tossing my mane about kind of took the edge off the moment, though. I nodded and tried to emulate the pose. He poked his bony fingers between my shoulder blades till my chest completely jutted out and said, 'That's it. Be proud! Be powerful! Very good.'

And then he left me with the costume and make-up people to get dressed.

Forty minutes later, I walked out looking like someone from the world-famous-in-Karol-Bagh DCM Mills' production of the Ramleela. They'd pumped my hair so full of goop that every curl stuck out of my head like a frozen bolt of lightning. They'd made my eyes huge and fish-like, my face a dead white mask and my mouth vermilion. Two torpedo missiles protruded from my chest.

The only way I got through the whole process was by chanting
fifty lakhs,
fifty lakhs,
fifty lakhs
under my breath. But even that was beginning to lose its charm, especially since I'd realized I'd have to pay a huge chunk in taxes. Somehow
thirty-one point five lakhs,
thirty-one point five lakhs,
thirty-one point five lakhs
didn't have quite the same magical ring.

Zoravar's eyes totally popped when he saw me. 'Wow,' he said finally. 'You in there somewhere, Gaalu?'

Neelo was ruder. 'Look, Asha Parekh made a baby with Tina Turner,' he said. 'Fuck.'

I blinked my extremely stiff eyelashes at them and said, 'I don't have a good feeling about this,' through thickly lipsticked lips.

The shot was still not ready so the spot boys produced three spindly-legged chairs for us and we sat down to wait. The choreographer was lurking in the background looking like he was itching to make me practise the 'Goddess pose'. I hurriedly turned my back on him and almost stabbed myself in the stomach with my trident.

'Namaste, Zoya Devi.'

I looked up warily and beheld a large brown gentleman in a starched white pajama kurta. I brought my hands together into an instinctive namaste and a whole bunch of light bulbs popped in my face. When my eyes finally adjusted to the glare, I realized the large brown gentleman had a posse of photographers lurking behind his large brown shoulders. As they scurried away, the large brown man pulled up a chair and sat down on it, large amounts of him hanging off it from both sides. 'Kuku Prasad, MLA, Bhiwandi,' he said, beaming at me.

'Uh, hello,' I said, as graciously as I could and waited for him to explain himself further. But that seemed to be it. The guy had shot his bolt. He just sat there, beaming. And
gleaming
slightly, as he sweated gently under the studio lights.

Neelo said finally, 'So, Kuku, do you work in film production?'

Kuku laughed, revealing very pink gums. 'No, no, I am here on the party's behalf, to meet Zoya Devi, and her agent Mr Lokendarji. It is about her contesting the upcoming polls, from Ayodhya, on our party's ticket.'

Neelo swivelled around to look at me. 'You're joining politics!' he gasped.

'When were you planning to tell us, Zoya?' Zoravar said in this very quiet voice. But it freaked me out. Because my brother
never
calls me Zoya.

I shrugged evasively. 'It was just an idea,' I muttered. 'Nothing is pukka yet.'

Kuku leaned forward and protested. 'What you're saying, Deviji? High Command has approved your candidature! Everything is pukka! You do not know, you have beaten one freedom fighter, one dowry-victim-with-terrible-burn-scars and one Asian-Games-silver-medallist-who-is-also-a-scheduled-caste for this ticket! Competition was very tough! But don't worry! You are approved! We will seek High Command's blessings first thing tomorrow morning and then file your nomination. Tonight itself, we are doing a press release and printing six lakh posters. That is why the photographers are here!'

Okay, this was news to me. I sucked in my breath and prepared to explode, but Lokey came puffing up just then (which was good, because my exploding would probably have caused my twin torpedo missiles to pop and hit Kuku in his twin Googly eyes and blind him for life, besides leaving me topless).

I said, through gritted teeth, 'What's going on, Lokey?'

'Nothing, Joyaji,' he said grinning shiftily. 'Mr Kukuji's here to meet you regarding thee possibility of your being interested in contesting thee election, that's all. Zoravarji, please take...' and he tried to placate Zoravar by offering him a handful of pistas.

'
Hain hain
, what-what?' Kuku started to say belligerently, but no one heard the rest of what he had to say, because a huge chanting drowned him out. The sound of a million voices shouting:
Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai!

'It's the soundtrack for the ad,' Neelo said, a little uncertainly. 'I mean, it
has
to be, right?'

'Yeah, of course, it must be,' I said, feeling relieved. For a moment the horrible possibility of a real crowd being out there had come to my mind and frozen my blood solid.

But then Kuku said, 'It is your devotees from your soon-to-be constituency. There are ten truckfuls of them accompanying me.'

Before any one of us could take in the seriousness of this information, the ten truckloads broke through Studio Security and stormed onto the set in a saffron swarm. They charged towards the large POP-and-plyboard temple - fortunately for me they just
assumed
a Goddess would be in her mandir - as PPK's crew swooped down on us and hustled us all into the make-up van. The last sound I heard, before the make-up van door shut behind me was of PPK giving mother-sister
ka
abuses on his megaphone, then a little yelp, and then there was silence.

Zoravar gave a satisfied little grunt. 'Good scene,' he said. 'If they break his legs he can cast himself in his ad.' Then he crossed his arms across his chest and levelled his gaze at Kuku. 'You were saying?'

Kuku swallowed hard, 'They are little high-spirited, that's all.... I'm sure if the Devi gives them a darshan...'

I started to say, 'Mr Kukuji, I'm not sure...'

And then the door of the make-up van swung open and two dishevelled dudes surged in, their Gucci sunglasses glinting crookedly above their rumpled grey beards. Truly astonished, I blinked my stiff lashes and said hello to Jogpal Lohia and Lingnath Baba.

'Hello, hello,' Jogpal said distractedly, looking around the crowded van. Then he pounced on Kuku with a little cry, his twin-tunnelled nostrils flaring as he snapped, 'Maderchod, what're you doing here?'

Neelo said, very austerely, 'Whoa, who's the rude dude, Zoya?'

I just shook my head, as taken aback as he was. Meanwhile, Jogpal stuck his hand in Kuku's kurta collar, yanked him up and booted him out of the van, shutting the door with a decisive click. Then he turned to Lokey, who was staring at him completely bug-eyed, and demanded, 'What was that fellow doing here?'

Lokey backed away hurriedly and came up against the wall with a bump so hard the whole van shook. Perspiring profusely, he said, 'He was only here for initial meeting with my client, Lohiaji. You don't like him, no problem, we will reschedule, meet him later. But you, Lohiaji, what are you doing here?'

Jogpal said, completely ignoring the question, his voice shaking with emotion: 'I don't want this innocent child to be sullied by encounters with such scum-of-the-earth type of people.'

Then he turned to me, grabbed my non-trident-holding hand in both his own and said effusively, 'Hello, beta, how are you?'

'What are you doing here? I thought you would be in Australia,' I asked, my head in a daze.

'I had a board meeting. And I wanted to take Baba's blessing for our team.' (Lingnath tinkled self-deprecatingly at this.) 'And I wanted to see
you
shoot your first commercial, beta!'

Lokey said smoothly, 'Mr Jogpal is personal friend of Tauji, you know that, no, Joyaji?'

I nodded my goopy head impatiently. I didn't like the way everybody was trying to control me here. It was about time I made it clear to them exactly whose name was on the door of this make-up van. I sat down gingerly, mindful of my protrusions and said, 'Let's take this one at a time, okay? First, it's great you're friends with Tauji, Uncle, because I want you to tell him I don't like this script.'

A minor ripple ran through the ill-assorted group at this statement.

Zoravar grunted his approval, Neelo muttered a low
too fuckin' right
, Lokey made mild protesting noises and Jogpal's eyes popped. Only Lingnath stayed serene. I continued, 'I don't like this costume. I don't like this trident. And finally, Lokey, I'm sorry, but I don't like your Kukuji!'

Jogal instantly turned belligerently on Lokey and demanded, 'Absolutely! What is all this politics-sholitics, Lokendar?'

Zoravar said, 'Hang on a sec. Let's start from the first item on her list, shall we? Can we do anything about the script?'

Lingnath said smoothly, 'But why, Devi? It is a beautiful script, crafted specially to showcase your divinity.'

That rather startled me, because it was weird, the way he used exactly the same phrase PPK had used earlier. 'How come you know the script so well?' I asked.

He said, without missing a beat, 'Your interests are very close to my heart, Devi.'

'What about Nikhil's?' I couldn't help demanding. 'This script reduces him and the team to cartoons. You're cool with that?'