The Zoya Factor (6 page)

The players seemed to like Neelo. He'd shot with them tons of times and they were all fairly matey. Over tea he told me that some of them, specially Hairy, were curious about me. 'They asked me who that little girl was and I told them you're this major executive who only does the Bollywood shoots,' he grinned. 'Now they all want to know if you'll go out with them.'

I knew he was pulling my leg of course, but he'd definitely created some trouble in my life, because the next thing I knew, Shivee and Bala were on my case demanding to know why I didn't make an ad featuring them and Deepika Padukone. '
Arrey
, we'll never be able to get three big stars like you together on the same dates,' is all I could come up with. 'But it's a great idea, all the same. We'll get our creative team to work on it.'

They went off gratified and I slumped back in relief, only to notice Nikhil Khoda looking at me with amusement in his eyes. 'Nice save,' he said quietly.

'Save?' I replied, widening my eyes as innocently as I could.

He nodded unconvinced, and then leaned forward suddenly and touched my knee. 'Look, I'm sorry, but we have to leave now.'

'Huh?' I said, a little wildly. 'Neelo, d'you have any shots left...?'

He did. Three vital shots with Shivee and Hairy for a promo we were going to run called OPEN YOUR
ZING!
COLA WITH THESE TWO OPENERS. I whispered to him what Khoda was saying and he said all he needed was the openers for forty-five minutes more.

'Sorry,' said Khoda, when I told him this as nicely as I could. He got to his feet and suddenly loomed hugely above me. 'The boys have to leave now
-
practice. And Harry has an appointment with the physio.'

And that was it!

In spite of the obscene amount of money we put into this stupid sport, they all just grabbed their kitbags, muttered goodbye, and left! Lokey, the snake, who pockets this huge commission from
Zing!
Co. as well, didn't say a word! And of course my idiot client Ranjeet just smiled weakly and thanked them in a servile way. The best part was, remember that dumbass Rawal? The one who'd caused us to lose a good half an hour at least? He took away three pairs of shoes with him! His own, the Montu-Nikes, and the pair
he claimed didn't fit!
What kind of cheapskate was he, anyway?

Now I was stuck in bloody Dhaka, with a bunch of shots left to shoot and a deadline staring me in the face.

Damn! I thought wildly. What the hell am I going to tell Sanks?

***

4

Neelo, Vishaal and I had a distress meeting after the players left and tried to figure out if we could manage without the opener shots. 'I could do some Photoshop, I guess,' Neelo said dubiously. 'Shoot some guys in office and stick Harry's and Shiv's heads on their torsos, but it'll look fake.'

'Besides,' I reminded him, 'we cost separately for those shots and if we don't get them
Zing!
won't cough up that money.'

That made Vishaal sit up and take notice. 'Fuck, do something, Zoya!' he pleaded. 'You're in servicing. This is your thing! You didn't just come to Dhaka to meet a lot of hot cricketers, you know.'

Hello, that was so uncalled for! I had done nothing but concentrate on work the whole day. Okay, except for one quick peek at Nikhil Khoda's chest as he'd switched shirts (totally biteable, sculpted toffee,
awe
some). Still, these creative types panic easily, so I didn't take offence. Just looked into his wild staring eyes, patted his arm and told him reassuringly, with more confidence than I felt, 'Chill, okay? I'm on it.'

That evening I took a long walk past the hotel property and down a tree-lined lane. I even did some jogging, and each time my feet hit the ground a voice in my brain went '
don't panic, don't panic
' in an insanely martial rhythm. But it was useless. I was completely and totally panicked. The shots I'd missed were actually
vital.
We needed them for a promo that was breaking ten days from now. Two litre and 600ml
Zing!
bottle labels had to go in for printing in three days' time.

I collapsed onto a conveniently placed wooden bench as little pulse points twitched all the way up and down my legs. I twisted my sweaty hair, curling wildly in the humidity, into a knot at the nape of my neck and sighed. What was an unsporty person like me doing taking all this exercise, anyway?

'Excuse me, is this seat empty
?'

The inane question was uttered in a smoothly sing-song voice, which I recognized instantly. Sure enough, I looked up to see Hairy the opener smiling down at me. 'No, it's cool,' I managed to answer and he promptly folded up beside me. He'd obviously been out jogging too; he was all sweaty and smelly. He pulled out a bottle of Gatorade and chugged it down while I looked at him warily, not quite knowing what to make of the situation.

'The batti went in the Sonargaon
,'
he announced eventually. 'Instead of waiting for it to come back, I decided
ki
,
chalo
, ditch the treadmill and hit the road!'

'Oh,' I said inadequately.

Then, Hairy Harry started jerking one leg
up
and
down, up
and
down, up
and
down.
It is a very irritating habit. My brother Zoravar used to do it a lot when he was younger, but he stopped when one of his Military Academy instructors told him that it was a habit that betrayed extreme sexual frustration. (He didn't put it quite so elegantly, though; his actual words had been, 'It reveals you're tharki, Solanki.')

'So...how long have you been a custard?' I finally heard myself say.

'Hain?'
He looked at me in surprise.

God, what was
wrong
with me? 'I meant a -' I cut myself off abruptly. I had been about to say 'cut-surd' but then I thought maybe it wasn't a politically correct question. 'Damn these machchars,' I said quickly, slapping at the mosquitoes on my bare arms. 'Are they biting you too?'

'No,' he said, brightening up. 'But,
pata hai,
I know this really cool joke about machchars. There was this one machchar, okay, and he got married to a makkhi, okay? On his wedding night all his buddies pushed him into the wedding suite for his suhaag raat but he kept coming out into the corridor instead. They sent him back in again, but again he came out. Again they sent him in, again he came out. So then they asked him
ki
why do you keep coming out of the room? And he said, "What to do, the makkhi has put Odomos and slept!"'

Oh my God, how old was this guy? He was looking at me, expecting me to crack up. So I did. He nodded at me happily and then
-
with rather obvious cunning
-
draped one arm over the back of the bench. 'You know, Zeeta,' he said, one leg twitching madly, 'there's a very nice nightclub at the Sheraton, do you want to go check it out tonight?

'No, thanks,' I managed, 'and it's Zoya. I have a lot of work to do. But if you're so free' - I tried some obvious cunning myself - 'why don't you just shoot my three shots tonight?'

His handsome face clouded over. 'Nikhil-sir won't let us-'

I didn't let him finish. I could see Sankar Menon's big bulging eyes before me, telling me to go for the jugular or he'd dock huge chunks off my measly salary. 'Hairy,' I said, sidling closer, 'isn't there
any
way we could shoot those shots we missed today? They are
very
important. I can't
manage
without them. Because you and Shivnath are the...uh...
biggest
stars in the team.'

'Really?' he asked eagerly. 'And how do you measure that, Zoya?'

'We do research,' I told him smoothly, lying through my teeth. 'Among teenage boys and young men. Across five metros, twelve mini-metros, and thirty small towns. They rate celebrities on a scale of one to ten. You are nine, Shiv is eight, and Shah Rukh Khan is seven.'

'What about Nikhil-sir?'

'We didn't bother to research him,' I said dismissively. 'We only did big stars.'

'Oh?' he said softly, like a man in a happy dream. Then something struck him. 'But why have the boys rated me so highly?' he asked worriedly. 'They don't think I'm a chhakka, you know, a
homo
or something?'

'No-no!' I assured him, 'they rated you nine on the... uh...I-wish-I-was-him-o-meter.'

'Wowji!' said Hairy happily. Then he turned to me and said, 'Why don't you speak to Lokendar, Zoya? He'll work out something for your bacha-kucha, leftover shots.'

It was a 'beautiful-day-at-the-Shere-e-Bangla-Stadium-in-Dhaka' as the sportscasters say, but there was nothing sportsmanlike about what I was trying to do. Basically, I snuck around the nets trying to get Lokendar Chugh to catch my eye so I could spirit the openers away for a quick photo-shoot. Of course, it was totally unethical and unpatriotic and nobody in Delhi knew what I was trying to pull. But it's not like I had a
choice
here. I'd dreamt they were lobbing massive sums from my cost-to-company, all of last night.

Lokey was nowhere in sight. His portly form and many flashing rings would've been easy to spot in this drab landscape; so I guessed he was inside somewhere. I looked on the ground for a telltale pistashell trail but I didn't spot anything. The boys waved to me once or twice, and I waved back sunnily, but the man I needed to see was Chugh. After many tries - mobile signals sucked out there - I got through on Lokey's cellphone number. His phone played
Ek baar aajaa aajaa aajaa aajaa aa-aaja
for a long time and then Lokendar's voice suddenly cut off the tinny, nasal Himesh Reshammiya track, sounding surprisingly deep by sheer contrast. 'Hello?'

'Hi,' I said fluffing my hair out nervously as I spoke. 'This is Zoya from AWB. What's the scene on sneaking Shivee and Harry out for a half-an-hour photo-shoot tonight?'

A little pause. God, the man was slow. 'Where are you?'

'Right by the OB vans...' I waved up at the players' balcony, where I imagined him to be. 'Can you come down here and talk to me?'

'On my way,' he said in a low strangled sort of voice.

I lurked around the OB van and waited for him, my face feeling warmer and pinker with every passing moment in the hot Dhaka sun. The sporty-looking journalist boys smiled at me perfunctorily, and then looked beyond me, got all excited, and started adjusting their cameras frantically.

I turned.

Nikhil Khoda, dishevelled but dishy in white tracks and tee, was heading straight towards me with long loping strides. He looked like a sleep-deprived superhero who'd been up all night saving the planet. His jaw was set and his brown eyes had that steely killer light that's been patented by the Boost ads. You know, the ones where the bowler tosses the ball up in the air in slow-mo and then catches it again, all the while glaring menacingly at the poor non-Boost-drinking batsman at the other end of the pitch, before stumping the hell out of him and winning the match for India. As I watched him stride up, a female chorus singing
yeh toh bada toinnngg hai
wiped Himesh's sonorous singing clean from my brain. I gave myself a little shake. And moved out and away so he could take the OB van guys apart for showing up and destroying his team's concentration.

Instead, he swung in right beside me. 'Zoya?' he said, politely enough.

Wow, I didn't think he'd remember my name and everything. I smiled a bright smile and said, 'Yes! From AWB.' I held out my hand, oozing professional charm.

He didn't take it. Instead, he slowly held up his own hand, which held a cellphone. I looked at him blankly. 'Lokey happened to leave his phone with me...'

Nice one, Zoya. You are so up excreta creek.

I couldn't think of one single thing to say, so I continued to stare at him, the smile frozen stupidly on my face.

Khoda took a deep breath, swept a look at the journalists looking on curiously from the OB vans and then reached out and grabbed my hand. He walked me away from there to a spot behind a big Bong tree and then glowered down at me. This close to him, I observed that not only were his eyes agleam with that Boost-ad gleam, they were also the exact chunky brown colour of Boost powder with Advanced Energy Boosters.

'Do you have any idea how sacred the evening before a match is, Zoya from AWB? It's not the time for holding a product so that the logo faces the camera, or for striking smiling poses. A good player prepares for a big match in the way a warrior prepares for war.'