A Bollywood Affair (3 page)

“You bastard,” Neha shrieked as she rushed toward the railing-less staircase, tangled up in his sheets like a careening Venus de Milo.

“Shit, Neha.
No!
”

Before he knew what was happening, she tripped. Her body twisted around the fabric and toppled sideways onto the stone stairs. One end of the sheet hitched on the top step as she fell over the edge and rolled out of the sheet like Cleopatra rolling out of the carpet. He ran to her but didn’t make it. She landed on her face with an ungodly thump, the white sheet flapping like a flag over her motionless, naked body.

“Neha! Fuck, Neha?” He fell to his knees next to her, his heart hammering. A trickle of blood seeped from her mouth and Samir thought he was going to vomit.

“Neha?” He stroked her face. She coughed, opened her visible eye for a second, mumbled something, and then closed it again.
Thank you, God.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here. You’re going to be fine.”

He flew up the stairs, grabbed his cell phone and their clothes and ran back down, pulling on his jeans with one hand and punching the number for the ambulance with the other.

A busy signal. Fuck.

He dialed his doctor and prayed for better luck.

“Sam? What’s wrong? It’s six in the morning,” a groggy voice answered.

“I know what the fucking time is,” Samir barked into the phone, pulling his T-shirt over his head. “Neha fell down my stairs. Long story. She’s conscious, I think. Can you get to the clinic?”

“Yeah. I’m leaving now. See you there.”

He rolled her over, being as gentle as he could. “Neha, sweetheart?”

She moaned. With quick movements he dressed her, keeping up a steady stream of words. A house full of servants and today there wasn’t a soul to help. But he always gave his staff the night off when his girlfriend slept over. His housekeeper’s granddaughter lived in his home, and Neha wasn’t exactly the kind of person who could handle a child like Poppy.

He lifted Neha’s limp body and carried her down to the building lobby. His driver wouldn’t be in until eight. He was going to have to drive himself. Except he found a ten-ton water tanker blocking the building gates. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Get the damn tanker to move. Now!” Samir yelled at the watchman and headed for the car.

The man fluttered about like a headless chicken, opening and closing his mouth, and did absolutely nothing.

“What?” Samir snapped.

The watchman jumped back. “Sir, the tanker driver went off to get some chai.”

This day just got better and better. “Go get a taxi or a rickshaw. I need to get to a doctor.” Samir raised Neha higher, just in case the nitwit had missed her, whimpering and half-conscious in his arms.

The nitwit didn’t move.

“What?” Samir snapped. The man jumped back as if Samir were about to put Neha down and tear him limb for limb. “What?” Samir gentled his voice.

“Sir, today is the thirteenth.”

“So?” It took all Samir’s strength not to shout. He wanted to shake the guy until his teeth rattled.

“Sir, it’s Mumbai
shutdown.
The opposition party has called for a citywide public transport strike. No taxis. No rickshaws. No nothing.”

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK.”

Neha convulsed in his arms. The watchman made a squeaking sound and mopped his forehead with his elbow.

Without another word, Samir walked past him, past the chugging driverless water tanker blocking the gate, and stepped onto the dusty, dug-up street. The roadwork had been going on for over six months. The good news was that Mumbai didn’t wake up until eight a.m. The street was isolated. Samir pulled Neha close and started to run.

4

M
ili loved the mile-long walk from her apartment to her office in Pierce Hall. Truth be told, she loved everything about Ypsilanti, the quiet university town in Michigan she had called home for four months, except maybe the tongue-twister name. She loved the neat roads, the redbrick facades, the rolling expanses of lush green grass. But most of all she loved the wide-open blue sky with perfect white clouds that looked like they had been drawn with a crayon.

Back home in Rajasthan the sky was a more purple blue and the clouds were more feathery brushstokes than distinctly etched curves. And yet it was the sky that eased Mili’s ache for home. Ypsilanti was the only place other than Balpur where she had seen so much sky. In Jaipur the buildings lining the lanes cut the sky in half. As for the few days’ worth she’d seen of Delhi and Mumbai, you’d have to fall over backward to get even a glance of sky through all that concrete.

As she neared Pierce Hall she had the strangest feeling, not quite as if she were coming home but as if she were going to a dear friend’s house. She swiped her card in the reader and took the half flight of stairs down to the basement. The musty old wood scent filled her nose. Everyone in the office complained about the smell. But the painted timber pillars that lined the open courtyard at the center of her grandparents’ house had this exact smell. Mili had spent so many afternoons with her cheek pressed against a pillar while her
naani
dispensed advice to the village women that the smell was infused with all the warmth of her childhood.

The office was empty. The rest of the graduate assistants and the professors who ran the Applied Research Unit wouldn’t start to arrive for another thirty minutes. But it was Tuesday and on Tuesdays Mili came in early to use the office phone to call her
naani.
She used her own calling card of course and she had cleared it with Jay Bernstein, her boss. She hung her mirrorwork sack on the coat hanger and dialed the number. Her
naani
would be waiting at the village post office for her call. Naani had steadily refused to have a phone installed in her house. “There’s no one I want to talk to whom I can’t talk to on the face,” she always said. And now her granddaughter had run off where she could no longer talk to her “on the face.”

“Did you eat your dinner?” Always the first question.

“Yes, Naani.” Except it had been breakfast.

“How much longer before you come back home?” Always the second question. “He called, you know?”

Mili pulled the phone away from her ear and groaned. “No, Naani, he didn’t. No one is going to call.” At least not yet. But she was here and she was going to make something of herself, make herself so worthy no one in their right mind would turn her away. And then she’d call him, instead of waiting. Maybe.

“He’s going to call. You mark my words,” Naani said with so much conviction Mili wondered what scheme she was cooking up. “Have I ever been wrong?”

“No, Naani, you’re never wrong.”

“Do they feed you well? I’ve heard horrible things about hostel food. The other day at the Delhi University hostel thirty students died because a lizard fell into the dal.”

“There’s no hostel, Naani. I told you, I have a flat and a kitchen of my own.” No point mentioning that soon she wouldn’t have a roommate. If she told
naani
she lived alone, her grandmother might not need to pretend a heart attack like she’d done when Mili had decided to leave for college in Jaipur three years ago. She would have one for real.

“How much does dal cost there? The price of dal went up to eighty rupees a kilo yesterday. And unless you’re rich you can’t even think about onions, let alone put them in your mouth.”

Mili hadn’t eaten dal in four months. She had seen a bag of dal marked “yellow split lentils” in the grocery store last week. She had picked it up and held it to her cheek when no one was looking. But it cost twelve dollars, so buying it was out of the question. She practically lived on potatoes. French fries cost a dollar in the union. And chocolate was really cheap too.

“It’s a good thing onions give you gas then, Naani. Are you taking your blood-pressure medicine on time? Are you making sure you don’t eat too much salt?”

“
Hai,
what’s the point of living like this? Don’t eat salt, don’t see your granddaughter. Take care of myself at my age when I raised an able-bodied granddaughter with an able-bodied husband. An officer no less.” Naani started to sob and Mili had to squeeze her nose to make sure she didn’t start.

“Naani-
maa,
please. It’s just another four months. Before you know it I’ll be back to take care of you.”

“Your
naani-maa
will die in that time.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll outlive me.”

“
Hai hai.
Let the witch take your tongue. What a horribly inauspicious thing to say. Let your enemies die. Is this what they teach you in that America?”

“I’m sorry, Naani, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s been fifteen minutes. I can’t talk anymore. I’ll call again next Tuesday, okay?”

Naani let out another sob. “Go, go, learn your books. Make me proud.”

This was why Mili came in half an hour early on Tuesdays. It would take another fifteen minutes for the tears to stop. Every time she spoke to Naani, Mili had an overwhelming sense of having run away from her duties. Did everyone who left their country feel this way—ground between the millstones of courage and cowardice? Or was it just her?

Mili often wondered if other people felt the same way about things as she did. She was perfectly aware of the fact that there was nothing normal about her life. Even in her village, she was the youngest girl to have been married. And she had to be the only girl on earth who had no idea what her husband looked like after twenty years of marriage. She had never left her village until she was twenty years old, except for a school trip to New Delhi when she won an essay contest at fifteen. And until she was twenty-four she had never even left her home state of Rajasthan.

College in Jaipur had opened up a whole new world to her. A world where girls competed shoulder to shoulder with boys in the classroom without apology. And here in America her classmates wouldn’t even understand what that statement meant. There was no fear in the women here. None at all. And Mili loved that. Sometimes when she watched them in class, the way they stood, their spines erect and proud, their chins up, their laughter loud and unencumbered, she wanted the women at home to have what they had. And she wanted it so badly it made tears burn in her eyes.

No, no matter how much it hurt to hear Naani’s sobs, being here felt too right to be wrong. And this was only going to bring her closer to what she wanted, what Naani wanted. Mili was sure of it.

 

“I’m not running, you bastard, and that’s final. And don’t fucking give me that look.”

But DJ being DJ continued to skewer Samir with his patronizing gaze. If the bastard wasn’t half his size, Samir wouldn’t think twice about pummeling his agent’s face.

“Listen, Sam. The scandal from the bar last month isn’t cold yet. This is going to look really bad.” DJ leaned back in the hideous red velvet chair that totally fucked up the richly wood-paneled conference room at the studio. The ugly chairs were one of the updates the owner’s son had put in, undoubtedly to prove to the world that running the studio he’d inherited from his erstwhile superstar father involved some actual work. Samir wished he’d leave the décor alone and focus on upgrading the recording and editing equipment instead.

“I thought my trusted agent likes that my scandals keep me in the news.”

DJ gave him that look again—as if Samir-the-brat was throwing a tantrum and swami DJ in all his patient glory refused to indulge him.

But Samir wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit. He had to get back to the editing studio and finish up the edit on the ad film, which by the way he’d done only as a favor to one of DJ’s other clients. A fact the bastard seemed to have conveniently forgotten. “Being accused of punching a few hundred-kilo fuckers is different from being accused of hitting a woman. And just to jog your lazy-arse memory, I only pounded their ugly faces because they were dragging a struggling kid into the bathroom. I was actually rescuing her. So much for fucking heroism.”

DJ’s face softened. Oh,
now
he cared. “The girl’s parents called again, by the way. They wanted to thank you for keeping it out of the press. Her dad just made another donation to the Tirupathi temple for your long life and success.”

Samir waved away his words. Whatever. Now DJ wanted to go all hero-worship on him. Last week he couldn’t push hard enough to use the girl to make Samir look good.
This is your chance to salvage the Bad Boy, Sam.
But no way was Samir going to ruin some teenager just because she was too stupid to know what kind of bastards guys were. He didn’t need to give her any more life lessons. Those bastards in that bar had done the job well enough.

“Those pictures in the
Times
today are really god-awful, Sam.” His trusty right-hand man could always be counted on to gnaw off all the sugar coating from every bitter pill.

“She fell down my stairs and landed smack on her face, naturally she looks bad. And before you look at me like I’m a bastard, let me remind you that I ran two kilometers with her in my fucking arms. Fuck, I have to stop being such a hero. For all the good it does me.”

Someone pushed the door open and both DJ and Samir turned to see the errand boy poke his head into the room. One look at their faces and he started to back away.

“Hey, Ajay, come on in, boss.” Samir pulled the door open and the boy limped in with two glasses on a tray, his polio boot thunking on the ceramic tile.

“No sugar, all black, Sam-Sir. Just way you like.” He handed Samir a glass of what had to be the strongest coffee in all of Mumbai. “They asked me to tell you they’re ready for you in the studio.”

“Thanks, this is perfect.” Samir took a sip and ruffled his hair. “I’m going to look at the final cut of an ad film and Ria Parkar’s in it. I know you’re her biggest fan. So give me ten minutes and you can come and watch, what say?”

The boy’s face split into the widest grin. He nodded furiously and hurried away.

DJ’s jaw worked as he took a sip of his coffee. Twenty years ago DJ had been an errand-boy at this exact studio. “At least make a statement telling the press what happened, Sam.”

And they were back to the inquisition.

“Sure, I’ll run right along and tell them: ‘I didn’t hit my girlfriend. She tripped and fell down the stairs.’ They’ll have no trouble believing me. And while I’m at it why don’t I tell them ‘we’re just good friends.’ They should lap that up too.”

DJ opened his mouth.

But Samir had had about enough. “Before you start your broken record again, no, I won’t run and I won’t lie low. I’ve done nothing wrong.” His phone vibrated in his pocket. “Neha is just being vicious. She’ll clear the record with the press when her anger dies down. I’ll talk to her.”

“Sam, you know how conservative Shivshri Productions are. The whole playboy image is one thing, but an abuse scandal and they could drop you like a hot potato.”

“They’re not going to drop me. I’ve worked my ass off giving them three hits in three years. And I spoke with Shivji this morning. Unlike my agent, he had no trouble cutting me some goddamned slack.”

DJ rolled his eyes and raised his hands in surrender. Good. About time the harassment section of the meeting was over and they got some work done. Except DJ chugged down some more coffee and jumped straight to uncomfortable topic number two. “How’s the script coming along, by the way?”

He fucking knew how it was coming along. It wasn’t.

His phone vibrated again. Samir reached for it. No way was he telling DJ he still hadn’t been able to write one single word. It had been half a damn year and nothing. He didn’t need another lecture on finding someone else to write his script for him. Samir always wrote his own films. And that was never going to change. Usually he could pull scripts out of his ass at two weeks’ notice. Now he had the green light for the project of his heart and he was frozen. Frozen. Hours at the laptop and not one word to show for it. He tapped his phone.

It was his mother.

He pulled the phone to his ear. “Yes, Baiji?” he said in Hindi, holding up his hand at DJ, asking for a minute.

His mother didn’t answer. He heard a sob, then silence.

The room went completely and utterly still around Samir. “Baiji? Hello?”

Another muffled sob. “Samir . . . Samir,
beta . . .
”

His mother never lost her cool. She rarely even frowned. The only time he’d ever seen her cry was when she’d held him that last time his grandfather had made like Charlton Heston in
Ben Hur
and whipped his back to shreds.

He wanted to ask her what was wrong but nothing came out.

The voice on the line changed. It wasn’t Baiji anymore. It was Rima. Only it sounded nothing like his sister-in-law. It sounded like a dead woman with Rima’s voice. “Samir?” she said.

Of course it’s Samir. What the hell is wrong?
He wanted to scream, but he said nothing.

“Come home,” the hollow voice said. “Your brother . . . Oh God, Samir . . . Virat’s plane went down.”