The Zoya Factor (52 page)

'Nikhil is like a son to me,' Jogpal said instantly.

'Then don't you care that the sports media worldwide is laughing at him? At our team?'

Jogpal shifted his bulk a little and shook his hands about dismissively. 'Bete, why are you worried about these white people's campaigning? They are all hypocrites. They are accusing us of voodoo but they are only doing it because they are
scared,
they want to play mind games with our boys.'

'Okay, tell me,' I said. 'Just supposing I don't go back, do you think the outcome of the match will be affected? Seriously? Honestly?
'

Jogpal and Lingnath pondered this question for a while, doing a cool sort of a double act where Jogpal's nostrils expanded and contracted in perfect time to Lohia's ominous tinkling. Outside, my wannabe-constituents were going all out. Ominous thumping sounds filtered through into the make-up van, along with the sound of a shrill thready voice leading the ten truckloads of people in their mindless chant.
'Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai!'
Finally Lingnath said, 'Of course the outcome will be affected. You have not seen your astrological chart. Your stars are sublime. Perfect. Unique...'

But I was looking at Jogpal. He said slowly, 'You should have more faith in your God-given powers, Zoya beta.'

I replied, 'And you should have more faith in your team.'

'Yeah, dude,' Neelo piped in. 'As president of the IBCC shouldn't you be worried that public opinion is going against your boys?'

I was worried Neelo's tone would anger Jogpal, but he just looked at me fondly and said, 'I have to worry about my girl too. I can't leave her to Lokendar here, can I? He is letting her fall into the clutches of corrupt politicians.'

Lokey almost choked on the pistas he'd been chomping absently while waiting for me to get over my conscience pangs and get on with the shoot. While he was coughing and going red in the face, and trying to say that all the high-minded objections were simply because Lingnath supported another political party, Zoravar, who had reached absently for my trident and, much to my disgust, started to dig into his plaster with the back end of it, said matter-of-factly to Jogpal, 'You want total control of her, you mean.'

Jogpal said, pleasantly, 'I want to keep her exclusive to cricket, yes.'

'You know what
I
think?' Zoravar's voice rang out clearly in the crowded little make-up van, even as he continued to dig casually into his stinky plaster. 'I think you're purposely building up Zoya's status so
she
gets all the credit for Nikhil Khoda's World Cup victories. You want to make him into a lame-duck captain so you can slowly ease your convalescing blue-eyed boy Rawal into the captain's post.'

It was like he'd casually pulled out the pin of a hand grenade, and tossed it, smouldering, onto the floor of the make-up van. Suddenly, everything went very still.

Well, if you didn't count Lokey going '
O behenchod'
under his breath.

As I waited for the bomb to burst, I thought,
wait a minute, that actually makes total sense.

Jogpal was the one who'd picked me and built me up. Nikhil was the one who'd hated to have me foisted on him. Somewhere along the way, Jogpal started making it look like it was all the other way round. Like Nikhil wanted me, and he was just supporting his captain. All his recent interviews, while seeming to defend India in the 'white' media were really subtly undermining both Nikhil's capability and his captaincy.

Rawal was his favourite, always had been, for a million shady reasons none of us would ever know. God knows what kind of dodgy shenanigans the two of them - the three of them, if I counted Lingnath - had planned for Indian cricket in the coming decade. Jogpal had probably never imagined that Nikhil Khoda would manage to lick the loser rag-tag Indian team into shape as a world-beating side. He must've figured that this team would never make it to the Super 8 and when they came home, fully disgraced, the Indians would hate Khoda and then he could chuck him out and get Rawal in as the new captain.

Of course he couldn't do that if Khoda's Eleven emerged as champions, which is why he must have zoomed in on me at the IPL, thinking, here was a way to bring Rawal back as captain - just in case Nikhil did bring home the World Cup! It was
he
who'd put Lokey in touch with Tauji, I recalled now. He probably wrote that cheesy script himself! He wanted to turn Nikhil into a laughing stock. What a snake! And Nikhil thought the world of him!

I turned towards him, ready to speak my mind but winced when I saw his face. Zoravar's bomb was about to burst. I resisted the urge to stuff my fingers into my ears and waited for the detonation.

Jogpal exploded.

He ranted and raved and said he'd been
insulted
, it was an
outrage,
that Zoravar was clearly a deranged lunatic or had been left out in the snow too long. He said I was a thankless little
witch
who had abused his hospitality and a total slut at that, look how I'd been carrying on, unable to leave the Muslim boys alone. He said Nikhil and Rawal were both like sons to him. He said if we dared to go public with these nonsensical allegations, he would sue us so hard we'd be taking chukkars of the criminal courts all our lives. He said, didn't we know how much
Standing
he had in thee
Society?

When he finally paused for breath I said steadily, 'You can say what you want. I think what my brother says is true.'

Jogpal reared forward and glared at me so manically, I thought his eyeballs would pop and land like two slimy lychees on the floor. He ground his teeth at me, unable to speak, but Lingnath didn't seem to be having any such problems. He leaned towards me, grabbed my gold-coin-encrusted shoulder, fixed me with his horridly hypnotic eyes and hissed: 'Prove it.'

And just then, the door of the van burst open and we were all face-to-face with Kukuji's saffron sena, all pantingly eager to take a dekko at the Devi.

When my 'devotees' saw me, standing there frozen in the doorway of the make-up van, resplendent in my Goddess get-up, an ecstatic, collective groan rippled through their ranks and the chanting started up again, accompanied by the manic tinkling of about fifty little brass bells.
'Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai!'

If this was ten truckloads-full, Kuku must have packed them in pretty tight
, I thought, blinking down at them through my three-inch-long eyelashes. There seemed to be thousandsof them, all wild-eyed and frantic and hysterical-looking. A lot of them looked drunk. Some of them held banners that read: '
Zoya Devi ka Chamatkaari Balla'.
Some sported bright red tinsel dupattas tied like bandannas across their foreheads. Music blared loudly in the background. I recognized the tune, it was the standard aarti:
Om Jai Jagadisha hare
, but the words were new. The chorus, sung in a sonorous male voice, extolled the virtues of my miraculous bat, or
chamatkaari balla
and rhapsodized about how one whack from it was enough to blow the opposition to bits.

As Lingnath and Jogpal pushed past us, with one last malevolent look, and headed for their cars, the 'devotees' surged towards me, hands reaching out frantically. Zoravar, Neelo and Lokey surrounded me from three sides and tried to reason with the crowd as they waved cricket bats in my face, and begged me to bless them. Some of them had injuries, acquired on the cricket field, which they claimed that they wanted me to cure.

I distinctly heard Zoravar tell one of them, exasperatedly, shaking his crutches about, '
Dekhiye
, I'm her brother. If she can't cure me, how can she cure you?'

Some of them got down onto their knees and were praying to me, their eyes closed, tears streaming down their cheeks, smoking, ruby-tipped, Sheraan-wali Agarbattis held in their hands. The sickly sweet smell of synthetic mogra blossoms filled the air. And all the time, the frantic fervent chanting continued.
'Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai! Zoya Devi ki Jai!'

'
Abbey
Kuku!' Lokey shouted above the din. '
Abbey
Kuku, control your crowds.... Where are you?'

But Kuku had vanished. So had PPK.

And then a guy with a CREW tag yelled out at us from the temple structure, 'Today's shoot has been cancelled! You ought to - '

But we were never to hear what it was we ought to do. Because, with a crash and a groan and a massive puff of dust, the entire POP-and-plyboard Benares temple collapsed under the onslaught of the fanatical mob, taking large numbers of 'devotees', some production people and a very expensive camera down with it.

'The false temple has been reduced to rubble,' Neelo mused as we rushed to the car, strapped on our seat belts and prepared to flee. 'Kinda symbolic, don't you think?'

***

'I wouldn't have thought it of you, Zoya!'

Zoravar, Dad and I were sitting in the garden at Tera Numbar. We'd just finished filling him in on the day's happenings. Predictably enough, he was really mad at me for getting mixed up with political types. 'The trouble is,' he said, smoking gently at the nostrils, 'that you children don't have any concept of history. These people have done nothing but create national strife ever since their wretched party came into existence. I can't believe you even agreed to have a meeting with them, Zoya!'

'I wasn't thinking clearly at the time,' I muttered. 'I was very upset.'

'About what?' he asked, genuinely bewildered. 'You went off on a fully-paid holiday, stayed in the fanciest of hotels, you went bungee jumping! You were an effective lucky charm too. They didn't lose a single match with you present....
What
did you have to be upset about?'

'Dad,' Zoravar said soothingly. 'I think she was under a lot of pressure.'

My dad snorted. 'All self-imposed!' he said. 'She started believing she's Durga Mata!' He turned around to glare at me. 'I told you, Zoya. I
told
you when you were leaving, enjoy the attention, but don't let it go to your head!'

'It wasn't like that!' I said, stung to the quick. 'You have no idea. There were so many mean, sniggering articles in the papers every day, I just thought, okay, if I'm going to be called materialistic anyway, I might as well make a little money on the side!'

He shook his head at me. 'You were always scatterbrained,' he said. 'Zoravar was always the sensible one.' We both turned to look at sensible Zoravar who was digging into his plaster with the back of a teaspoon, his eyes closed in ecstasy. Sensing our eyes on him, he looked up, pulled the spoon out of his cast and started stirring his tea with it.
'Tu kucch bhi bol,
Gaalu
,'
he said. 'That was an inspired moment I had back there, in the make-up van. That Jogpal jumped like a scalded fish. He knew I'd wised up to his plot.'

'You were right,' I said grudgingly. 'I could see it in his eyes.'

Zoravar took a sip of his tea and smacked his lips. 'It's all these strategic warfare courses they send us for,' he said modestly. 'They train you to get inside the enemy's head - to think like him. Of course,' he added, 'the fact that I'm naturally brilliant helps.'

I said waspishly, 'So, what do you recommend I do now?'

He opened his eyes very wide. 'Nothing,' he said. 'I mean, if you
cared
about Nikhil Khoda the smartest thing to do would be to refuse to go to back to Australia. Let him win it on his own, if he can.'

I didn't say anything. My oversmart brother was trying to get a rise out of me in front of dad.

He continued infuriatingly: 'But seeing as you
don't
care, go ahead, do the ad and fly back tomorrow. How does it matter to you that Jogpal is out to shaft Nikhil, as long as you get your money?'

***

It was a chilly evening. I tucked my hair in a golfing cap, put Meeku on a leash and skulked out to the Ajmal Khan park for a walk.

Crows were cawing in hordes in the neem tree canopies. Old ladies, with set, determined faces and PT shoes under their salwar kameezes, were power-walking briskly in the ladies park. Vendors with big brass pots swathed in red cloth, festooned with fresh mint and bright yellow lemons were selling kulcha channas to lounging youths on black Hero bicycles. There was the distinctive
thwacckk
sound of bat striking ball from somewhere in the distance. Nearby, some snotty little urchins were trying to fly a kite.

I inhaled the magical mixture of neem blossom, burning leaves and the susu of a hundred stray dogs and smiled to myself.