The Zoya Factor (19 page)

This was the first I'd heard of it. Thank you, Dad and Ma, for not naming me after a shoe.

My dad said, 'Yes, yes, Gajju,' and looked like he wanted to change the subject, but then Kattu piped up, 'Zoya's very friendly with all the team, she was mentioning it when we went out for a' - he looked here and there and actually had the grace to blush - '
friendly
dinner the other day...'

I choked at that, but it got worse, because Anita Chachi joined in the conversation. Adjusting her pallu so it showed a little more cleavage, she murmured, '
Arrey,
the whole world knows that it's Zoya
, jis par Zahid Pathan ne dil khoya....'

Ouch.

I tried a casual laugh. But before I could speak, Yogu said smoothly, 'What terrible rhyming. Is that original-Anita, or are you quoting someone?'

Chachi flushed, but stuck to her guns. 'It's from
Mid-day
. Where Zoya's being featured regularly. I'm surprised you allow it, bhaisaab.'

'I'm surprised you read that rag,' Yogu started to say, but my dad cut in with, 'Zoya's life is her own.' He spoke calmly, though his nostrils did flare, just a little: 'She showed me the article in question herself, by the way, Anita. Sorry if she stole your fire.'

Then Mohindar got up and raised a toast to Neha and Kattu and everybody started cheering. I cheered the loudest, a fake smile plastered on my face, hating Anita Chachi's guts.

I know my dad, and I knew there was trouble ahead.

Monita dispatched Neelo to Bombay the next day to carry out all the changes on the Shah Rukh film. She was full of guilt for not going herself, but she was also full of guilt because her older son, Armaan, the panty-peeker, was going through a weird phase where he wouldn't leave the house without carefully arranging a dupatta around his shoulders. This had totally horrified her homophobic husband. And Aman, the just-turned-two-year-old, had apparently kept her up the whole night, insisting that if he was too big to be allowed a snack at the maternal bosom, he could at least be allowed to keep a firm hold on it all night.

'On top of
everything,
Zoya,' she sighed into her coffee cup on Monday morning, 'Armaan stumbled into my room in a blind panic at five this morning and announced that he had to go to school dressed as a Polluting Chimney.' I nodded sympathetically, not really listening. 'So then I had to run around rolling him up in chart paper and making smoke out of bathroom tissue because he
always
wins the fancy dress contests. He'll be totally traumatized if he doesn't....' She suddenly realized I wasn't listening and demanded: 'Why are you looking like such a bheegi billi today, anyway?'

I told her about the lunch yesterday, the cocky Kattu, the beauteous Neha and what my cow of an aunt had said.

'What a kutiya,' said Mon matter-of-factly. 'Don't worry, Zo, she probably has all these kinky Men in Blue fantasies herself. Hey, maybe she makes Mohindar dress up in cricket blues and then beats him up with a Sahni Sports
groin
guard.'

I laughed, feeling a little better, 'So you don't think that's what everybody in office thinks too, do you?'

'Naah,' said Mon comfortingly. 'Besides, why would you care? You should just care about what your dad thinks.'

We started talking about work after that. Sanks had handed me a new HotCrust brief for Mon and I quickly filled her in on it. 'They want to do a big awareness-building campaign on fast deliveries. Presently, Benito's Pizza owns that turf with their promise of half an hour for delivery or the pizza is free.'

'So why can't HotCrust make a twenty-nine-minute promise or something?'

I shook my head. 'That was the first question I asked. They won't. Too me-too. Besides, they don't have the infrastructure to make that promise come good. Too few kitchens. Also, there was a spate of accident cases in the US involving pizza delivery guys who mowed down a lot of pedestrians because they were speeding to meet the half-hour deadline. It made a big stink. We'll never get approvals from the head office in the US.'

'But you're saying
fastest
deliveries,' Mon pointed out. 'How can you say that if it isn't true?'

'Don't
say
it,' I told her. 'The legal people say if you just
imply
it, very strongly, our ass is covered.'

Mon rolled her eyes. She hates the legal guys with a passion. They keep ruining her taglines with their quibbling. (Once, just because there's no actual
nimbu
juice in Belinda Lemon, they made her change,
Belinda Lemon, Made in Heaven
to
Belinda Lemon flavour, Made in Heaven
and couldn't understand what she was mad about.)

'Okay,' she said, 'anything else you want to tell me?'

'Well, we do have this one thought starter,' I told her eagerly. 'How about if we promise Hot deliveries? That will imply fast, because they're still hot when you get them, see?'

Mon didn't look too impressed. 'When do you want this?'

'This evening,' I told her.

'Balls,' she said, without rancour. 'Day after tomorrow, second half. Now run along, okay?'

I ran along. And sat, totally at a loose end, at my table. There was nothing much for me to do on
Zing!
because all they were doing was cricket. As I fiddled with the Dealer Board layouts lying around the servicing area and looked wistfully at close-ups of Khoda's face smiling out at me with GOLA RESTAURANT
ZING
! RS 10 ONLY emblazoned across his front, the phone rang.

It was some dude from IBCC. He wanted to meet me to hammer out the details and 'firm up' my contract with the Board! I bit back my panic, acted as savvy as I could, asked him to call me again in the evening, and rushed into Sanks's room screaming 'Help!'

Sanks has this spondylosis problem that acts up now and then and basically makes him even more cranky than usual. 'What?' he snapped, as I burst in.

I told him.

He rolled his eyes at me. 'Just tell the guy you'll meet him tomorrow with your lawyers.'

My lawyers
? Hello, I'm a lowly account executive, drawing a twenty grand basic every month! I don't
have
any lawyers! I tried to say as much to Sanks but he just waved a hand dismissively. 'Now get that HotCrust thing done, will you? Those guys are really on my case.'

I told him what Mon had said, that we'd get nothing before day after tomorrow, second half. He snorted, muttered
totally unacceptable,
hauled himself out of his chair and headed for her room, the tuft of hair on the back of his head bristling dangerously.

Five minutes later, the door of her cabin opened and Sanks emerged. He looked at me and said, 'Day after tomorrow, second half.'

'Okay,' I nodded, totally straight-faced.

'What you grinning about?' he snarled. 'Go call up that IBCC guy and get your meeting organized.'

I ducked into Mon's room again.

She was on the phone with Neelo, discussing the Shah Rukh film changes, bloody but unbowed. 'I don't care what the post guy says,' she was raving, 'we can't have any flab around the girl's navel! Clean it up, frame by frame if you have to! And don't lose that list of seventeen changes I gave you. Bye!' She slammed down the phone and pulled out a cigarette. I eyed her warily as she lit up with shaking hands, exhaled a long stream of smoke, and said, in a very mild voice, 'I told Sanks I can't give you HotCrust earlier.'

'I know,' I said. 'D'you want to brainstorm on it?'

She glowered at me for a bit. These creative types hate it when they feel the servicing people are
managing
them. Then she shrugged. 'Okay,' she said. 'What we need is a symbol, something that cues speed and swiftness without our having to say it.'

'Cheetahs?'

She gave me an impatient look. 'No, Zo! Like Formula One racing.'

'But the delivery guys ride bikes...'

'That's true. So we can't do cowboys drawing their guns at lightning speed either. Hey, maybe we should get Abhishek Bachchan and do something
Dhoom
-ish?'

'Too expensive,' I said gloomily. 'These guys bust the bank getting Javed Jaffrey to endorse them.'

Mon scowled. She hates working on stuff that doesn't have a huge budget. She's quite a snob about it.

'What about our Hot delivery idea?' I asked her tentatively. 'Nothing there?'

She shook her head emphatically. 'Nope. It's too layered. The other guys are saying
fast.
We have to say fast too...'

I didn't expect her to come up with anything till day after, so I was surprised when she came and folded up on the chair next to me while I was talking to the IBCC dude on the phone that evening. 'I've cracked your HotCrust thingie,' she said smugly, exhaling a long stream of smoke into the air. 'What do you think of when I say fastest deliveries?'

I shrugged. 'What?'

'Zahid Pathan!' Mon said grandly. 'The world's fastest delivery record holder. 169 kmph!' Then she added, in a more prosaic voice, 'Actually, that's second-fastest but who cares?'

Huh?

Basically, she wanted HotCrust to tie up with Zahid. And get him to deliver HotCrust pizza for a week. On a
Dhoom-
type bike, or something. It was strange, but it could work. Except that Zahid wasn't on contract with HotCrust.... But if HotCrust gave some free
Zing
! away with the pizzas,
Zing
! Co. might be willing to let HotCrust have him free. Of course, the bike idea may be unfeasible because of security reasons but I'd voice that concern later. Right now, I had an insane deadline to meet and also, I had a feeling that if I said anything negative Monita Mukherjee might start bawling. She looked pretty pushed to the edge to me...

Sanks liked Mon's HotCrust concept. We took it along and got approvals from both
Zing!
and HotCrust the next day. Now the next crisis was, of course, Zahid's dates. So I called Lokey.

'Where are you, Joyaji?' he demanded. 'And who's looking after your legal affairs?'

I told him what Sanks had told me. That the head of
Zing!
Legal would come along for the meeting with the IBCC guys today at five.

'That buffoon Saldhana?' Lokey snorted. 'Take me, Joyaji! In advisory capacity only if you like. No charges.'

I told him he was welcome to come along. The whole conversation felt totally unreal. 'But what about Zahid's dates?' I said, remembering why I'd called him in the first place. 'We'll need to take him through the scripts.'

Lokey chuckled fatly. 'He and Nikhil are in Delhi only, to judge the Miss India Contest. You know he will make himself free, Joyaji. He thinks of you very highly.'

I muttered something non-committal.

Lokey said he'd see me at the IBCC meeting and hung up.

***

We rolled in to the Taj Mansingh business centre at a quarter to five. Me, Sanks, Joel Saldhana from
Zing!
Co., Lokey, trailing pista shells behind him like an overfed Hansel, and, looking a little bewildered by it all, my dad.

The smiling lady showed us into a long conference room where four guys in dark suits and one bulbous dude in bright orange robes, sporting Jimi Hendrix dreadlocks, were seated. We all did some hello-helloing, and then they handed us the contract they wanted me to sign:

This is a contract between ZOYA SINGH SOLANKI (henceforth referred to as the Undersigned) and the INDIAN BOARD OF CRICKET CONTROL (henceforth referred to as the Board). It pertains to a six-month contract of employment by the Board of the Undersigned in the position of third additional coach to the Indian Board of Cricket Control Team (henceforth referred to as the Team).

The Undersigned is bound to EAT EVERY MEAL with the Team for the time period of the World Cup 2011 if the Team so wish it. The term 'meals' pertains to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and any snacks at any other time of day.

The Undersigned is EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN FROM EATING ANY SOLID FOOD WHATSOEVER WITH THE MEMBERS OF ANY OTHER TEAM, participating in any Cricket World Cup whatsoever.

The Undersigned is to REFRAIN FROM FASTING OF ANY KIND at all mealtimes for the duration of the World Cup 2011 in spite of any religious injunctions or reasons of health.