The Zoya Factor (5 page)

I figured he was waiting for me to ask, 'What kind of messes?' I did want to know, but I decided to get my cheap thrills by looking totally incurious instead.

Lokey deflated a little. 'Sorry Khoda isn't here yet,' he said, returning to his businesslike manner. 'He had to go for some official debriefing.'

Of course, we were missing Nikhil Khoda, the leader of the eleven yoddhas.

'That's why all these fellows are so jolly,' Lokey said, raising one pudgy shoulder and indicating the players behind him. 'See them! When he gets here they will all pipe down...'

I turned around and looked at the boys. They
were
looking pretty chirpy. They were quibbling about what music to play while we shot - everybody wanted something different, but finally they settled for Ricky Martin's
Cup of Life.
Vishaal's assistant pumped up the volume and they all sat around and lip-synced the lyrics while the make-up and hair people buzzed around them, making them look all grim and sweaty by squirting water from spray guns all over their faces, hair and chest.

One of them, a floridly good-looking type called Nivi, was a bit of a player. He slunk up to me and asked if I was a model. I said no and he acted all surprised. '
Par
you are so beautiful!' he exclaimed in a loud, fake voice. 'So' - he looked me up and down - 'slim-trim also!'

I got seriously embarrassed, sneaking looks at Vishaal who shoots with supermodels every day of his life and must think this remark was a bit of a joke. Luckily, I don't think he heard.

'He's always like this,' Neelo said dampeningly, after Nivi had walked away. 'He always asks all the models what school they go to, and then when they say they finished college two years ago, he goes all fake-ily, "
No way, you look like schoolgirls!"
It's all for show anyway, he's shit scared of his girlfriend. She was Miss Universe, you know.'

Uh, thanks, Neelo.

The openers came up then, to check the shots on Vishaal's laptop. They seemed nice - earthy and engaging in spite of their fancy cellphones and the sunglasses (hello, inside a
banquet
hall?) perched on their noses. They made some basic PC with me: where are you from, how long have you been working, and Shivnath even asked me what my sun sign was (which means he was officially flirting, right?).

I was just about to tell him when Robin Rawal came up and whinged to me: 'I don't like these shoes,' he announced baldly.

Huh? So?

But Neelo said smoothly, 'No problem Rawal-sir, the shoes won't be in the frame, look....' He showed Rawal the shot we were framing for on Vishaal's laptop. Sure enough, it showed all of them only up to their knees.

Rawal grunted. 'But they're uncomfortable to wear. I won't be able to smile properly.'

Hairy and Shivnath started sniggering at this and Vishaal shot them a dirty look. I wondered if I should tell Rawal that we didn't want smiling shots and the grimmer he looked the better, but before I could, Neelo said pleasantly, 'We can shoot you in your socks, sir.'

But Rawal wasn't falling for that. 'Then I'll look short,' he said.

So Vishaal said, somewhat ill-advisedly, that we could give him a little stool to stand on. Hairy and Shivee sniggered even more loudly at this and Rawal started to look thunderous. So I got into my in-charge mode and hurriedly asked him, as politely as I could: 'So what do you want us to do, Rawal-sir?'

He looked at me like I was super-dumb or something. 'Get me new shoes, obviously. A UK nine-and-a-half. These are UK nines.'

Man, this was an all-time low. This is why I'd gone to management school, apparently. So I could scurry around buying a pair of
shoes
for some dumb-ass whose only claim to fame was that when he hit a small round object with a stump of wood it travelled very far indeed.

'Okay,' I told him, smiling through gritted teeth. 'I'll go get you a new pair of shoes.'

'Nike,' he called after me. 'I can't wear anything else. I'm on contract.'

I nodded and ran for the door. 'Keep shooting,' I told Vishaal as I left. 'I'll
jugado
something.'

Luckily there was some kind of shopping arcade in the hotel so I hurtled in there and told the guy behind the counter the size I wanted. He was showing this lean dark dude some shoes but looked up long enough to shake his head and say in a singsong manner, 'No UK-nine-and-half-in-Nike-madum.'

Shit! Should I buy some other brand? Or appeal to Lokey for help? But Lokey'd probably just say Rawal's Standing-in-thee-Society would go down if he wore anything less than a genuine pair of UK nine-and-a-half Nikes.

'Okay,' I told him rapidly. 'D'you have one in
any
other brand?'

He waved to an underling, who came up and started showing me the size in lots of other brands. I grabbed a pair of Montu shoes (very-good-local-brand-madum-very-cheap-madum!) whipped out a black permanent marker and blacked out the logo. Then I asked the dark guy (who was signing a credit card receipt at the counter) for his blue ballpoint pen and made an artistic little Nike swoosh on the side of both shoes.

Then I dashed back to the banquet hall and presented the UK nine-and-a-half Montu-Nikes to dumb-ass Rawal, panting slightly.

He nodded regally and cracked a constipated kind of smile.
Get a move on, you lid.
I thought. We're losing
time
here. Man, did he expect me to put his shoes on for him or something?

'They're Nike,
na?'
he asked, one fat foot sliding reluctantly into the right shoe.

'Sure,' I said heartily as I turned away. 'They're Ni...'

And found myself face to face with the dark dude whose pen I'd just borrowed. And then Lokey hurried up, puffing a little, and said, 'Joya! Meet Nikhil. Nikhil Khoda. Thee skipper, you know.'

I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and looked thee skipper in the eye. I mean, what else could I do? 'Hi,' I said, shaking his hand firmly and praying he wouldn't squeal on me. 'Nice to meet you.'

Nikhil Khoda was tall. His shoulders were broad under his navy-blue India blazer, and his slightly overlong hair was very black against his creamy white shirt. His brown eyes were warm in a strong, bronzed face. As his lean fingers gripped mine an insane little voice in my head instantly started warbling,
Yeh toh bada toinnngg hai...

I shook my head to clear it.

'Zoya's from servicing, Nikhil,' Lokey was saying. 'She's here to keep everything running smoothly.'

'And I'm sure she does a good job of it,' Khoda said to Lokey in a deep easy voice. Then he turned to me, 'I've seen you before.'

'Yes, I know,' I responded hurriedly, my heart sinking. I sneaked a look in Rawal's direction, lowered my voice and said, 'Look, I'm sorry but it was an
emergency...'

'Oh, not when you were buying those
genuine
Nikes,' Khoda said, his mouth twitching just a little. 'Earlier.'

'When?' I asked blankly.

'Yesterday. It was you, wasn't it? The pyromaniac who was letting off all those mini-Scud Missiles on the parapet last night?'

I flushed a little and Vishaal said, 'She can't help it, dude, it's in her genes. These Rajputs smell baarood and their nostrils flare. They start rolling their eyes, tossing their heads and pawing the ground, frantic to rush out into war.'

'Brave but stupid,' Neelo said, chiming in happily.

'Definitely the latter,' Nikhil Khoda said dryly. 'You could've hurt yourself, you know.'

Great. This was going
so
well. The captain of India's loser cricket team had just called me
stupid
in front of a whole bunch of people. What made it worse was that right away e
verybody -
includingVishaal and Neelo who'd been with me last night
-
started nodding sycophantically and murmuring,
Yes-yes-very-unsafe-very-risky-not-good-very-bad-small-children-make-them-in-Sivakasi-causes-pollution-also.

I wanted to tell them that, hello, Truly Spiritually Evolved persons behave exactly the same in front of a king as they do in front of a beggar, and that they didn't have to slavishly agree with everything Nikhil Khoda said, but all I managed was a defensive, 'Oh no, I've been lighting crackers in my colony for
years.
I've got loads of experience,' which made Khoda raise a disapproving eyebrow. And then Neelo said jovially, fully putting the chopped green coriander on the bharta of my mortification, 'You can take the girl out of Karol Bagh but you can't take Karol Bagh out of the girl.'

It was awful. I was
this
close to tears.

So, of course, I squared my shoulders and smiled so brightly my cheeks hurt. There was an awkward little pause as everyone stood around grinning foolishly at
famous
Nikhil Khoda and then he said, 'Would you like me to change?'

'Sure,' I nodded, quickly giving the fully professional once-over. 'The make-up room's through there.'

He nodded, hitched his kitbag a little higher onto his shoulder and walked away. Automatically, my eyes strayed towards his fabled butt, but just then, he turned and smiled at me, in a very no-hard-feelings sort of way, and his eyes were suddenly so warm that my stupid Non-Truly-Spiritually-Evolved heartbeat zoomed to about a thousand beats per minute and I couldn't help smiling back.

I was still smiling idiotically when Hairy came up, a full two minutes later. 'What's this about you being a fireworks freak, Zenia?' he demanded as the make-up man touched up his face.

'It's Zoya,' I told him. 'And yes, I
am
a bit into fireworks, but that's just because the day I was born so many crackers went off it kind of got internalized into my DNA.'

'You were born on Diwali?' Shivee asked.

'No,' I said laughing. 'I was born the day India won the World Cup. You know, in '83.'

'Twenty-fifth of June,' said Hairy promptly.

I nodded and then Vishaal said testily, 'Harry, if you've finished your touch-up can I have you two back in the frame, please?'

I don't think they liked the way he said it, because right away, the two of them started messing around. They got hold of the
phuss phuss
sprayer the make-up people were using and started spraying serious amounts of water onto Zahid Pathan's face, chortling happily.

I think they were picking on Pathan just because they'd spotted he was a total heart-throb in the making. A simple boy from Sangrur district in Punjab, with tousled copper curls, fair Greek god looks (except for a delightfully snub nose), and big brown eyes. The most attractive thing about him was that he didn't have a clue how hot he was, though I'm sure there were a billion girls out there who'd be happy to enlighten him. And I think that's what was getting Hairy and Shivee's goat.

Pathan was being good-natured about all the kidding around. I could see Vishaal was getting hassled though, but was too intimidated to protest. Damn, I hope I wouldn't have to go over and intervene. I nudged Lokey: 'Do something,
na.'

'I don't have to,' he whispered back. 'Look, Khoda's coming now.'

And sure enough, the moment Nikhil Khoda took his place between them they got all sober and cooperative.

The rest of the shoot was pretty orderly. Zahid went off for a bit to read his namaz while Saif hung around guiltily, but didn't go. Neelo was looking more relaxed now, as one by one he ticked off all the shots on his list. I studied Khoda while we shot him because I was curious to see how he would react in front of the camera. Most cricketers freeze when the lights come on, they smile this stiff, too-wide smile and their eyes get a panicked deer-in-the-headlights look. You have to shoot reams of film just to get
one
decent shot where they don't look like halfwits. Or they make their eyes all
big-big
, as Eppa would say, and end up looking idiotically startled. Orthey get that cocky grin that Hairy and Shivnath had perfected. The one with that cheapie
meet-me-outside-baby-I'll-show-you-my-quick-middle-wicket
quality to it.

Nikhil Khoda did square his shoulders just a little when the camera came on, but he didn't turn into a halfwit. I was pretty impressed, till I remembered that he probably had a lot of experience doing this kind of stuff. I mean, he's done so many ads for Vodafone that people have started calling it Khodafone. The only telltale sign that he wasn't absolutely comfortable facing the lights was the way he sort of narrowed his eyes down to slits before every shot. Luckily for us, though, that ended up looking good.