Pretty Vile Girl Read online

  ‘Did the party go on long after I left?’ Jazmeen asked absent-mindedly, as the rhythmic beats of the song started to create a pattern in her head. ‘Chhoti choli te bada bawaal’—her brain kept repeating the words persistently. Within seconds, her mind had started working furiously on an idea—in fact, almost putting together an entire plan where she could see the outcome clearly. Jagdish was responding to the question she had just asked, but she had already stopped paying attention to what he was saying.

  In a flash, Jazmeen had figured out what she had to do about her boyfriend’s predicament. And her own, too. She instructed the surprised driver to immediately turn the car around and return to the bungalow on Hailey Road that they had left barely fifteen minutes ago.

  ‘It may be tough but I think I have an idea on how to fix your rat problem,’ she said as soon as her boyfriend picked up her call.

  Chandrima Bhan plucked one of the background dancers in the troupe to go fetch Jazmeen from the make-up room backstage where she had been resting. It had already been over forty-five minutes since they had stopped rehearsals. It was time to get back to practice if they had any hope of putting up a decent performance tonight.

  ‘Go tell our Maharani Victoria that we have not come to relax at some child’s mundan ceremony here—to just watch, smile, eat some samosay and then say Ta-Ta. If we don’t get this right, we might as well start preparing for our own mundan!’ she jeered.

  The young girl simply stood there in rapt attention, waiting for the enraged Masterji to finish.

  ‘So, why are you still here?’ she yelled, noticing how the girl had not moved within two seconds of her command. The girl scrammed.

  Meanwhile, inside the make-up room, Jazmeen was giving the final touches to her eyes when someone rapped the door softly from outside.

  ‘Come in!’ she said, expecting Sareen, her assistant, returning with a cup of coffee from the Siri Fort pantry. Instead, she saw a petite girl in a sequined costume and heavy make-up.

  ‘What is it?’ Jazmeen demanded gruffly.

  ‘Masterji is asking for you to come quickly,’ the short girl spoke hurriedly.

  ‘Is the fatso getting angry?’

  The girl flushed and Jazmeen noticed it despite the garish make-up on her face. It made Jazmeen laugh.

  ‘Did you know that I brought your Masterji back from the dead?’ she said, applying more mascara around her right eye. ‘No one was even willing to as much as spit in her direction until I did the “Inspector saab, meri chaabi toh ghumao” song with her. You remember that song?’

  The girl nodded and her lips broke into a big smile. Even her teeth were tiny.

  ‘She has won all the major choreography awards since that item number. Because of me, I should say.’

  The visitor continued to stare doe-eyed.

  ‘Should we go ask that bhains why she treats us all like grass to chew and then shit on?’

  The girl said nothing, so Jazmeen ragged her a bit more.

  ‘Will you ask her, or should I?’

  The girl looked mortified.

  ‘Arre, I am only joking, yaar. Ease up!’ Then, rising from the chair in front of the three-way mirrors lit up under the brilliance of twenty bright bulbs, she walked up and sat on a sofa ten feet away. She pointed at the flat sequined shoes lying near the door and asked the girl to fetch them to her.

  ‘Since when have you been dancing with this chudail?’ Jazmeen asked the girl gently.

  ‘About two years now.’

  ‘Hein? Then how come I have never seen you before?’

  ‘Oh, I have been around! But I am so small, na, people sometimes don’t notice me!’ she explained quite matter-of-factly. Jazmeen was instantly charmed by the girl’s innocence.

  ‘If that road roller has brought you to Delhi for this event, you must be good!’

  ‘Yes, I am better than everyone in the group. Except Ketaki. She is very flexible.’

  ‘So innocent!’ Jazmeen thought. ‘She is not trying to be egotistical, she is simply stating facts as she sees them. I like such practical people.’

  ‘Did you always want to be a dancer…? Arre, what’s your name? You haven’t even told me your name!’

  ‘Latika. You know, like Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire? That Latika!’

  ‘And your original name?’ Jazmeen confronted.

  The sheepish girl mumbled, ‘Charu…’ almost inaudibly. ‘Everyone just started calling me chaalu, so I changed it. Only Mummy-Papa call me Charu now.’

  The innocence reminded Jazmeen of an old, almost forgotten life. Her own. She spurned the memory instantly.

  ‘And you became a dancer when you got to Mumbai?’ she asked.

  ‘I came to Mumbai to become a model and actress…’ the girl answered, leading to loud guffaws from Jazmeen. Within seconds, the good-natured girl joined in the laughter as well. Obviously, she had realised early on that four-feet-and-chillar was not the kind of height the glamour masters of Mumbai were looking for in their models and actresses.

  ‘You have always been my idol, Madam,’ the girl continued.

  ‘And how so, my dear Charu?’ Jazmeen asked, stressing the girl’s real name.

  ‘You came to Mumbai to make it big too. And you have! On your own terms. Whatever they have flung at you, you have grabbed it and used it to your advantage.’

  Jazmeen made a proud face in response. It was always nice to hear unadulterated praise. Especially the kind that came from a heart that truly meant it.

  Charu hadn’t quite completed her eulogy yet. She went on.

  ‘With whatever films you got, whatever material you got—even when it was just one scene or one song—you have built your place. You have taken whatever media exposure you got and turned it to your advantage. In this haraami place, you scare people with your guts. Initially, men are scared of women like you—but slowly, they start respecting you. They realise that whatever they have, you have it too!’

  ‘Oh, stop it! You’re just trying to make me cry, aren’t you?’ Jazmeen interjected mockingly.

  ‘But it’s all true!’ the girl continued vehemently. ‘And you know why people like you always succeed? Despite their past history or present situation? It’s because all they focus on is the future. Just that! Only the future. It’s their only karma! Not the shit that’s already happened, who cares about that? The future is all that matters!’

  The last comment made Jazmeen freeze.

  ‘The future is all that matters!’

  Just like that, every element of vacillation and doubt that had racked Jazmeen’s mind for the past few weeks was gone. The strain that had tormented her body, almost making her feel leaden, up until a minute ago, seemed to ebb suddenly. The answer had been right in front of her eyes all this while, clear as day. She was surprised that she hadn’t seen it.

  ‘The future—THAT is all that matters.’

  ‘Madam, are you all right?’ Latika asked anxiously, noticing that her listener had suddenly gone quiet. Hearing her question, Jazmeen snapped out of her trance. She looked at the girl and smiled wickedly.

  ‘I think you and I had better go back to motee,’ she said, suddenly springing from the sofa. ‘She is probably plumping up with anger with every passing second.’

  Her visitor laughed coyly.

  The rest of the afternoon was hectic but uneventful. Masterji was pleasantly surprised to see the spring back in Jazmeen’s step. In fact, there were several occasions when Chandrima was forced to acknowledge the quality of Jazmeen’s dancing. It was lustful, artistic and perfect. If the rehearsals were any indication of the final performance, the men in the audience were unlikely to need Viagra when they got home to their wives after the show.

  ‘You have made me very happy! Now I can see for myself why I deserve the National Award!’ Chandrima said as she kissed Jazmeen’s forehead after the final practice.

  ‘Yes, continue to think that if it tickles your pea-sized brain, jaaneman.’ Jazmeen smiled politely
at the stupid woman. She couldn’t help but think back on how deftly her boyfriend had worked behind the scenes to get a live performance of ‘Chhoti choli te bada bawaal’ included in the itinerary of the prestigious National Film Awards that evening. After all, whoever had heard of a live Bollywood song performance at a staid government function before! It was he who had impressed the importance of adding some masala to the awards show upon the chief organiser of the event—of finally ridding it of its bureaucratic orthodoxy, and driving it into the twenty first century. And, in his own magical way, he’d even made the organiser think that it was the latter’s idea!

  ‘We had better show the world that the Government of India also knows how to have some fun. It’s a film award function, for goodness sake! It gets shown live on TV. Let’s make it a bit more interesting this time!’ he’d said to National Film Awards Convenor, Chandrachur Singh, a couple of weeks ago. It was a good thing that Singh was a close friend.

  ‘In the President’s presence?’ Singh had asked, his voice going up a couple of notes in surprise.

  ‘That’s the other thing—who has created that protocol? Our President is an academic man who likes to do serious things. Why should he have to attend a film function? The PM is so popular these days, wouldn’t he be a better fit? Let the audience see that the man they elected also enjoys cinema as much as they do. You could include a couple of dance numbers like they do at Filmfare. You know, shake things up a bit!’

  ‘I can’t imagine someone like, say, Jazmeen doing a song on stage and our 80-year-old budhau President ogling her! Those thick glasses of his will crack!’ Singh had said.

  Both men had laughed at that mental image.

  ‘So, get the PM instead. Simple!’ her boyfriend had said encouragingly.

  ‘I have heard on TV that he loves that new “Chhoti choli” song. If I manage to get her for the awards, our glamour quotient will skyrocket!’ Singh had thought out loud.

  ‘Exactly!’

  ‘I think the PM will enjoy meeting that bimbo too,’ the convener had said winking at the minister. ‘It will be an invitation he won’t refuse!’

  ‘It sounds like a really great idea!’

  ‘I will schedule some appointments tomorrow.’

  The plan had nicely fallen into place with minimal fuss.

  And thus, the scene was set for the biggest night of Jazmeen’s 25-year-old life. She felt as ready as she could ever be. Bollywood’s newest rising star was going to perform the sensual ‘Chhoti choli te bada bawaal’ at the usually solemn National Film Awards function at Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi. She was going to dance in front of the most accomplished members of the film fraternity and the political establishment. One of the people in attendance, the Chief Guest in fact, was going to be the most important man in the country. Jazmeen had every intention of enticing the single man with her youthful lusciousness until his heart galloped faster than a Derby winner and his mouth salivated like a raging waterfall.

  She felt it was the least she could do for the Prime Minister before she killed him.

  Contents

  Prologue

  The Choli ThatHides a Big Secret

  BOOK ONE

  1Hair Today and Nowhere Tomorrow

  2Girl, Interrupted

  3Endless Night

  4You Should Meet This Girl

  5A Bitch’s Old Tricks

  6Girl-on-Girl Action

  BOOK TWO

  The Eager Bait

  7The Icy Policeman Cometh

  8The Futility of Remorse

  9The Goodbye Girls

  10Prince, Charming

  11Pretty, Vile Girl

  BOOK THREE

  Setting The Backstage

  12Wind Beneath My Wings

  13Returned From Heaven’s Door

  14A Season of Double-Crossing

  15All That Glitters is… a Mirage

  16The Endgame – Part I

  17The Endgame – Part II

  Epilogue

  The Lull Before the Next Storm

  BOOK ONE

  1

  Hair Today and Nowhere Tomorrow

  Six years ago

  She still remembered the morning she had stepped out of Mumbai Central with the fake Louis Vuitton suitcase she’d bought from Lajpat Nagar. It was the first day of the dreaded monsoon. She had never seen that kind of rain in her entire life—incessant, colossal, rampaging. In her childhood dreams in Faridabad, she had always imagined herself stepping into glittering Mumbai in style, with the poise and grace of Madhuri Dixit in a chiffon suit from Dil Toh Pagal Hai. Instead, the lashing of gallons of water on her crepe kurta had reduced her to a bawdy Mandakini in Ram Teri Ganga Maili, if Mandakini had been drowning in brown filth rather than enjoying a virginal Himalayan stream.

  The first person she had ever spoken to in her new city was an autowala. The man had communicated almost entirely with her bosom. She had been more amused than angry, especially when the man had refused to take his fare when they reached her destination. He had even helped her with her heavy suitcase as he slowly climbed the stairs behind her, his eyes not once moving from the imprints that her black underwear made inside the wet, white tunic.

  The next few months had seen the same struggle that every independent young girl trying to gain a foothold in the City of Dreams is destined to endure. Many people see Mumbai like a prostitute selling her wares at a street corner—it is, after all, a city that is willing to be whatever you want it to be, depending upon how loaded your wallet is. To the rest, it is no more than a voiceless pauper, destined to be continually trampled under a million uncaring feet. But that wasn’t so to her. To her, Mumbai was no whore or starveling. If anything, the megapolis was a teacher, eager to part with invaluable lessons on life at the mere asking. And she was willing to be its pupil, imbibing all that came her way, analysing the information, and then coming back for more.

  One of those lessons had been the name she had chosen for herself. A new identity in a new city.

  ‘Full name, with spelling!’ spat the woman behind the teeming BEST bus-pass counter, not even bothering to look up at the pretty girl facing her.

  ‘Jazmeen. J-A-Z-M-E-E-N. No surname,’ she answered. Her confidence belied that it was the first time she had called herself that in public.

  It was not the name she’d been born with.

  The new name originally belonged to a woman she had destroyed back in Faridabad some years ago. A monster named Jasmine Nagra. She hated the name as much as she had despised the woman who bore it. And yet she had decided to adopt it. She wanted it to serve as a constant reminder of the demons of the past she had left behind. Of why she needed to keep running away from them for as long as she lived.

  Far, far away.

  Of course, she had tweaked the name slightly to make it her own. To make it a bit masaledaar for Mumbai. ‘Jazmeen’ sounded stylish. Sexy. Catchy. Tasty. Like some spiked lassi served at a posh lounge.

  Decidedly better than Deepika Ahluwalia, the name Jazmeen had been known as for the first nineteen years of her life.

  In three months, Jazmeen found a job at a hair salon in Chinchpokli, Lal Bagh. The establishment was hardly top class, but its location was great, situated right by the ITC Grand Central Hotel. The salon was rather clownishly called Hair and There Beauty Parlour. When Jazmeen joined it, there were no customers to be found, neither here nor there. The owner was a 60-year-old rotund Punjabi woman with pencilled eyebrows and shoulder-length, hennaed hair. She had a sunny disposition, and in spite of the emptiness of the salon, a generous bank balance on account of a legacy from a dead husband. Her name was Leena Bindra.

  At first sight, Leena Aunty, as she liked to be called, fit the bill of someone who spent all her time flitting from one kitty party to the next, not someone who ran a small business. Reality was not much different—Leena Aunty may not have had too many kitty parties to attend, but she was not much of a businesswoman either. She had started her beauty parlour w
ith great expectations (and a bountiful grant from her benevolent daughter) a decade ago, but had failed at turning it into a success. Success, after all, involved hard work and creative planning, two attributes almost entirely missing from Leena Aunty’s makeup kit. The dream of having the most immaculate salon in town had long been abandoned. No wonder, then, that her parlour usually had only flies and spiders lounging in its air-conditioned confines. A fact that always made Leena Aunty a trifle despondent.

  But, at long last, Leena Aunty had felt that she had made an advantageous decision for her parlour. She had hired Jazmeen as soon as she had laid eyes on her.

  Leena Aunty had kicked out her previous assistant at the parlour just a couple of days earlier. That girl used to smell, whine and steal—the most lethal combination in an employee. And, to add insult to injury, she also had an infuriating nasal voice that grated on Leena Aunty’s nerves like nothing else. After a nasty skirmish over a missing shampoo bottle, Leena Aunty had finally shown her the door, inconvenient though it was. When the tall and attractive Jazmeen, with her bouncy hair, impressive figure, and easy, confident tongue, knocked on the parlour’s glass door looking for a job a couple of mornings later, Leena Aunty had thanked her luck and Wahe Guru above in equal measure. She had smelled immense potential in Jazmeen immediately. After all, what more did a middle-class rotund woman want than to look alluring, and who better to make her just that than a young, alluring girl herself? So, without much ado, Jazmeen had been hired, and at a relatively generous salary too.