One evening, when he was walking her home, he said, ‘There’s a party on Saturday, family friends, Juhu. Would you –? I’m going. If you wanted to it’d be nice.’
‘You’re asking me to go with you?’
‘That’s what I’m asking,’ he said. ‘It should be fun, a party after all. I’ll pick you up if you want to go.’
His voice hadn’t changed. She admired his calm, but couldn’t tell if it originated in indifference, or a phlegmatic temperament. And there were practical considerations. Even a late pass at the hostel would only let her in till one o’clock, but it was embarrassing to point this out. ‘Okay,’ she said.
‘About eight? It’s early, I know, but there could be traffic.’
She nodded. They’d reached the streetlight.
‘Oh, okay, so, well, great.’
She turned on her heel. ‘Bye.’
She discussed it with Sathya the next day during a cigarette break.
‘There’s this guy. I see him a lot.’
‘Ah? Something going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ Leela said.
‘Ah.’ It seemed Sathya was not in an inquisitive mood.
‘But I see him a lot,’ Leela persisted.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You like him?’
‘I think so.’ She felt diffident and tried to sum up the case. ‘He’s attractive, nice, clever, he’s studied abroad as well, we have things in common. I like spending time with him.’
‘Ah ha. Doesn’t sound like you like him,’ he observed.
‘I do. I mean –’ She didn’t want the conversation to end.
‘So what’s the problem?’ Sathya stubbed out his cigarette in the sand of the large ashtray and turned to examine her. His eyes were a little red. She wondered if he did like her. Was she being insensitive?
‘I can’t tell what he feels.’
Sathya exhaled. ‘He keeps coming to see you? Keeps wanting to meet?’
‘Yeah, a few times a week.’ She smiled.
He looked distracted. ‘He’s from Bombay? He lives at home here?’
‘With his mother.’
His head went down. ‘I think he must like you. Otherwise why go to all that effort? Come, let’s go back.’
At the hostel, she tried and failed to catch Chitra for a longer conversation in which they could chew it over. On Saturday she slept in the afternoon, and woke in the early evening feeling disoriented. She rooted around in her cupboard, wondering what to wear. Her mother’s voice returned to her. ‘We need to do something about your clothes.’ Most of what she owned was comfortable cotton garments for work. She put on jeans, kolhapuris and a silk top she hadn’t worn since London.
At eight she hung about in the foyer. Fifteen minutes later Vikram arrived. He looked tall and laundered, an air of fresh shaving and a woody smelling cologne about him.
‘You’re ready?’ he asked.
‘Yep.’
‘Here.’ They walked out together, past a couple of inquisitive hostel girls, and into a cab he had waiting.
‘You want to go to Juhu in this?’ Leela asked. She tried to avoid taxis even for shorter journeys.
‘I’m sorry I don’t have the car, but we don’t have a driver for the evenings right now, and there’s no point driving to a party. I prefer not to drink and drive.’
‘Of course, but what about the train? Wouldn’t it be faster?’
Vikram gave her an odd look. He grinned. ‘That’s true. But I don’t think we want to take the local to a party.’
Leela kept quiet. The taxi reached Marine Drive; it sat in traffic but she enjoyed the sulphurous fumes, the sparkle of excitement – Saturday night in the city, lights on, the illuminated old Customs gateway she loved near the Kaivalyadham. They inched their way towards Babulnath, and spent a while opposite Wilson College, talking, breathing in the exhaust emanations, and staring across the leafy road divider. From outside, the stone cloisters looked appealingly monastic. At Pedder Road, near the Hanging Gardens, another bottleneck. It went on like this.
‘Man, the traffic is really bad,’ Vikram said.
Leela looked at him.
‘You can’t go to a party on the train, Leela.’
At ten forty-five they got to Juhu and, about ten minutes later, to a large block-shaped house somewhere near the sea. The gate slid open. The watchman salaamed Vikram. Leela felt dazed, as though someone had said, ‘Bombay? You like Bombay?’ and then forced her to sit down and eat the entire city, spread out on a conveyor belt.
‘How do you know Meena and Tara?’ The sisters who were having the party.
‘My parents used to know their parents.’
‘Oh, so you’ve known them a long time?’
‘Yeah, but mostly when we were kids. We used to have a beach house here, then we sold it when my father died. We met again a few years ago and hung out a few times when I was home from college. I guess that’s when we really became friends. You’ll like them.’
He paid the cab driver and they walked into the front door. A girl squealed, and jumped on Vikram. She was tiny, with long curly hair. ‘Vik! I didn’t know you’d be here. How are you?’ She hung onto his arm, and leant into him, carried on talking. ‘We’re going to have so much fun tonight. Oh my God, I haven’t seen you in sooo long. We have to hang out properly. Promise? Promise?’ She was shaking her head and slapping his arm; Leela stood just inside the door.
‘Excuse me.’ A couple came in just after her.
‘Oh, sorry.’
The man, a little shorter than Vikram, had a shaven head and bright, dark tadpole eyes. He wore a t-shirt and jeans. The girl with him was tall and slim. ‘Come on Adi,’ she said. He gave Leela a glance, of interest or snobbishness, she couldn’t tell. Meanwhile the little girl in heels and her tiny dress was still clinging to Vikram.
‘Shall we go inside?’ Leela asked. She smiled at the girl, though by now she wanted to yelp.
‘Good idea.’ Vikram took her shoulder, and they walked in, the other girl behind them.
‘Who’s that?’ Leela asked, but at this point he met another girl, who gave him a reproving but affectionate look and hugged him hard.
‘Hi, I’m Tara,’ she said.
‘Hi, I’m Leela.’
Tara smiled.
Leela smiled. ‘Um, so what do you do?’ she asked.
Did the other girl’s eyebrows rise slightly? ‘I’m into interior decoration.’
‘Oh, really?’ Leela began a conversation about interior style, minimalism versus opulence, and only then noticed the house, which had obviously recently been reworked at some expense. In pauses of the conversation, Tara, who was smaller than she, slender, and fair, would smile sweetly. Leela felt her confidence drizzle away.
‘Anyway, that must be amazing,’ she said.
Tara smiled again.
Where the hell was Vikram? Leela saw him in a corner, still beset by the small, curly haired woman. As though suddenly, she noticed how well everyone was dressed. Some, like the tiny woman, wore cocktail dresses: hers was dark pink silk. Even Tara, who seemed to be casually dressed, wore a beautifully cut top, jeans, and heels, and her hair was impeccable. Leela tried not to stare at her own battered silver kolhapuris.
‘You don’t have a drink. What will you have?’
‘Anything,’ Leela said.
Tara beckoned a man in a white shirt and black trousers. ‘Can you get her a drink?’
‘Of course,’ he said in perfect English. ‘What would you like, ma’am?’
‘Anything.’
‘We have vodka, gin, tequila, single malt, beer, wine, champagne.’
‘A glass of champagne?’ Tara said.
‘Sure.’
She touched Leela’s arm. ‘Can you excuse me for a minute? I need to welcome some guests.’
‘Of course.’ Leela moved out of the first room, and met the same waiter, if that’s what he was, in the passage. He had a tray and delivered the glass of champagne to her.
‘Thanks so much.’
She carried it, took a swig, and drifted out towards the open veranda and the garden. Maybe there was a corner here where she could sip her drink, sit behind a bush, and be quiet. The bush would inevitably be full of über-mosquitoes or something worse; another worryingly polite minion would appear and ask if she was all right.
She slunk onwards, rounded the veranda, and continued onto the lawn. Never mind getting back to Colaba by one. She was stuck.
Further out on the lawn there was no one. She walked up a rise and found a long pavilion that overlooked the beach. She remembered going there as a child. An uncle worked for a large company, and had borrowed the beach house of someone else in the company. They’d all gone for a few days – she and Neeti, her parents, and some cousins. Neeti, of course, had found a turd in the water and grabbed her, ‘Look didi, look!’ She’d wanted to take it back to show their mother; Leela had eventually dissuaded her. But this was another world. Tara, or the girl in the cocktail dress at whom Vikram smiled indulgently – it was unlikely they’d swum here as children. Perhaps they’d gone to the Cap d’Antibes? Or the Caribbean? She sat on the deck of the pavilion and took off her shoes. The grass was nice, damp and cool. It smelled of the beach: sea salt, something fetid, and a humid rise in the air.
She took another large glug of the champagne and began to feel buoyant. She should go back and find Vikram. She didn’t want to. Duelling with another woman for a man’s attention was an important female skill she’d never had – it seemed to involve things like confidence, hair flicking, talking loudly, touching the man in question, all techniques she’d memorised but never been able to implement. Instead, she went limp when she sensed such a contest had been thrown out, as though she couldn’t bear to fail, but knew she would. She sat on the grass and felt a fictional euphoria – the warmth of the night, the glow of the party below, the champagne, a sense of being able to do anything, even march back into the house and vanquish the cocktail frock girl – without the burden of having to try.
The party and Vikram seemed far away, which felt pleasant. Her life, her parents’ house, though intimate in a way this wasn’t, also seemed removed, only provisionally hers. Even the hostel, though she thought now of her clean, slightly shabby cell with covetousness, was remote.
The sense of lightness gave her a pang of fear. She would go down, she determined, and find Vikram, find out how long they’d be here, what the plan was.
‘Hello.’
It was the bald man from the door.
‘Sorry,’ said Leela viciously.
He sat down less than a yard from her. ‘Why are you sorry?’ He leant a bit closer. ‘You’re not a Brit, are you? You do have an accent.’
‘No.’
‘All right. I was just asking.’ He had something white in his hand, and put it in his mouth. A scratch of flint, a flare, and it was lit. ‘You don’t mind about this?’
‘No,’ said Leela, much more nicely.
‘Would you like to join me?’
‘Mm. Maybe.’
‘It really is very good. Someone brought it from Manali, or that’s what I was told. For once it’s …’ and he paused to hold in the smoke. He exhaled. ‘Ah.’
‘For once it’s?’
He stuck out his hand. ‘I’m Aditya.’
‘Leela.’
His hand was warm and, to her surprise, felt clean and unsuspect.
‘Leela, Leela, Leela.’ His voice was deep and pleasant. She wondered if he was going to irritate her, when he would pass over the joint, how long it’d take for her to get stoned, whether she’d be able to smoke properly, or if she’d have to take a couple of genteel puffs and pass it back. ‘What are you thinking on this beautiful late summer night, in the open air?’
‘I’m thinking when will you pass me the pétard,’ said Leela.
‘The what?’
‘The joint.’
‘What did you call it?’
‘Pétard. It’s slang. It’s French.’
‘Are you French?’ He sat there, joint still in fingers. Leela waited.
‘No.’
‘Ah. Here. You seem to be a most fascinating person, Leela. Last name?’
‘Ghosh.’
‘A Bengali?’
‘Not really.’
‘Leela Ghosh, not really Bengali, knows French – fluently?’ He cocked an eye at her.
‘Not really.’ She took a big hit and concentrated on puffing her chest out and not breathing.
‘Not really fluently, alone in a hut thing in this beautiful garden, what are you doing here Leela Ghosh?’
She waited, puffed out like a night-time toad, reluctant to exhale.
‘I think you may have absorbed the relevant toxins now, Miss Ghosh.’
She giggled and spluttered. ‘Fuck.’ And coughed. She looked at the joint and as a precautionary measure took another smaller hit before handing it back.
‘You smoke very seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite that expression before.’
‘I’d hate to get it wrong.’
He was leaning back, his legs extended. He grinned.
Leela began to feel altered, as though the sensory world still existed, but she apprehended messages from it only after a gap of two or three seconds. He passed her the end of the joint. She extracted what she could, and kept the smoke in.
‘So what are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘Tara, Meena, good friends of mine. Nice girls.’
‘Do you know Vikram Sahni?’
‘Vik, yeah, of course. You came with him?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you –’
‘Am I –?’
Aditya chuckled. ‘Chill out, Leela Ghosh. Otherwise I’m going to feel my good grass from Manali has been completely wasted on you.’
Leela laughed. ‘This is a nice house, isn’t it? Well, very large, beautiful – situation.’
‘You mean having a house like this? I’d say.’
‘That too, but I meant it’s well situated, a nice piece of land, a great view.’
‘Are you an estate agent?’
They both began to giggle.
Leela noticed Vikram striding up. He looked displeased, and grown up, his white shirt still impeccable. He is handsome, she thought, but boring. He looks like a cartoon of a handsome person. This thought made her, and in response her new friend, laugh even more.
‘Hello Adi. What are you two up to?’
‘Vik, come and sit down. Do you want some lovely grass? No, wait, we smoked it.’
‘You’re a charasi, that I know, but I didn’t realise you were, Leela.’ He looked down at her. She was starting to feel sick. At about this time Aditya began to seem superfluous. Below, the house was illuminated; it appeared quite far away. Leela tried to imagine standing up. Even thinking about it felt like a lot of effort.
‘Ugh,’ she said, without realising she’d spoken.
‘Charming,’ said Aditya.
Something occurred to Leela. ‘What time is it?’ she asked Vikram.
‘Nearly one.’
‘Oh.’
‘Do you have a curfew?’
‘Never mind.’
Aditya got up and lit a cigarette. ‘Well, I’m going back down. See you later, Vik. It was nice talking to you, Leela Ghosh.’
They watched his swaying figure move towards the house.
The night was warm and gentle. But Leela felt sick.
‘Come on,’ Vikram said. ‘Or were you planning on sleeping here?’ He put out a hand to her.
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ She pushed away the hand and began to get up, though it seemed to take more marshalling of the limbs than she’d realised. Her legs bounded around like an uncoordinated frog. ‘Ah.’ She stood. I have done something stupid to my body, she thought, with the old sadness. Things weren’t bad, but I misunderstood them, and created a bad situation.
‘It’s all so needless,’ she said.
‘What?’ He looked angry.
‘Doesn’t matter.’
‘I was looking for you, you know. I thought we’d come together to the party. You were talking to Tara, then you weren’t there, and I looked around for you and had no idea where you were. I called your phone six times.’
‘You were talking to that girl anyway.’
‘Which girl?’
‘Oh, bullshit. Fucking bullshit.’
They began to make their way, stumblingly in Leela’s case, down the hill. Vikram grabbed her wrist.
‘Ow!’ she said. The resentment in her voice made her aware she was angry.
‘Okay, walk by yourself. Do you mean Niharika?’
‘That girl in the pink dress who wouldn’t stop staring at you and chirruping.’
‘She’s a friend’s younger sister. I’ve known her a long time.’
‘You didn’t even introduce me. It was like you totally forgot I was there.’
‘I introduced you to Tara.’
‘But then you ignored me.’
‘Don’t be crazy, Leela.’
They were at the foot of the small slope, nearing the main garden.
‘Fuck off,’ said Leela, raising the ante slightly more than she’d intended.
He paused mid-stride. ‘What?’
‘Just stop being horrible to me. Leave me alone. You’re the one who ignored me.’
He came to a complete standstill. They were outside the lit veranda, and Leela had a thought, half paranoid, half interested, that someone might hear.
He looked at her, his face again not easy to read. ‘How do you think you’d get home?’
‘I’d manage.’
‘Well, I’m not going to leave a girl in a part of town she doesn’t know in the middle of the night, sorry.’
They walked through the party, and Vikram got caught near the door to say goodbye to the sisters. ‘Don’t go!’ cried the younger, Meena.
He grinned. ‘I have to get Leela back.’
She regarded Leela with comic hostility. ‘Stay. Aren’t you having a good time?’
‘I’m having such a good time,’ Leela said. ‘I just have to go, I live in a hostel.’
Meena’s face was baffled. ‘So go tomorrow. Vik, do something.’
‘We have to go. Thanks for a great evening.’
Tara said, ‘Let them go, Meenu. They’ve had enough of you.’
‘You bitch.’ She pinched her sister in mock rage.
They finally escaped. The night outside was weirdly normal, a man selling cigarettes down the lane. At the end of it, a rickshawala with whom Vikram negotiated to take them to Bandra. The sea road, then the highway, frightening and anonymous: along it, construction sites and makeshift shelters of tarpaulin, thin men and women around a fire; long stretches of slums. She couldn’t orient herself, and was silently glad not to be alone. She leaned forward onto her knees, wondered if she would be sick, felt tired.
Vikram took her shoulder, and made her lean back.
At Bandra, near the station, they got into a taxi.
Leela leant back in the seat as more familiar parts of town, like Cadell Road, passed.
They were outside the Buddhist temple at Worli when he said, ‘So why were you so angry?’
The roads were nearly empty, just a few drunken drivers and the odd taxi. She said, ‘I don’t know. I felt self-conscious, I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t know what to expect.’
‘I was only being friendly to Niharika, I’ve known her forever.’
‘Good for you.’
He grabbed her wrist. ‘What’s going on?’
I’m going to be sick, Leela thought.
‘I’m crazy about you, Leela.’
It registered on her that they were on Annie Besant Road, passing the high walls of the GlaxoSmithKline compound, popularly referred to as ‘Glasgow’.
‘So am I,’ she managed, her heart dully thumping in the conviction of imminent calamity.
Just before the flyover, Vikram’s face loomed closer to hers, his expression tender, and briefly she caught the taxi driver’s eye in the mirror, cynical, interested.