Those Pricey Thakur Girls (2 page)

‘My first words were
Eshu eat.
’ Eshwari grins. ‘Anji didi’s were
I sabse pritty.
And Binni didi’s were –’

‘Never mind all that,’ her mother remonstrates. ‘Today is
Dabbu’s
day.’

‘Dabbu-ka-debut!’ the Judge beams, praying fervently that this newsreading stint works out better than the job in advertising did.

‘Traffic is being block,’ the guard tries again.

‘So, um, bye, you guys,’ Dabbu says, turning down the chrome handle and grabbing hold of her sari pleats.

But her family isn’t done yet.

‘I remember,’ says the Judge as he kills the engine and rests comfortably against the steering wheel, ‘when we all went to see
The Magik of the Vunderful Vladimir
. In Lucknow, you know. I wrangled VIP passes through that IAS whose son I defended for drunk and disorderly conduct. Vladimir – huge intimidating chap with bloodshot, kajal-rimmed eyes – asked for a volunteer and I raised my hand. He called me up, made me wear a dam’ foolish looking satin bathrobe and then shut me in a box. Dabbu started to cry – she was only three years old. When he started to stick swords into the box, she started shouting. I could hear her through the box, although its walls were six inches thick. And when he produced a shiny saw to cut the box into two pieces –’

‘She leapt off her seat and charged up to the stage, pulled out a sword from the box and attempted to impale the Vunderful Vladimir,’ Mrs Mamta Thakur finishes, her eyes moist with sentimental tears. ‘Right through the crotch. The sword was too heavy, though – she dropped it on her own foot. The doctors had to put six stitches.’

‘Gutsy,’ the Judge says gruffly.

‘Bloodthirsty little beast.’ Eshwari grins.

‘No, no.’ Mrs Mamta shakes her head. ‘So
gentle.
You used to hit her all the time but she never once raised a hand on you, Eshu.’

‘Traffic,’ the guard implores. ‘Move kijiye. Please.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Judge huffs as Dabbu finally alights. ‘We are moving. Oho… ahhh… hrmmph! Left the cranking handle at home. You! Guard babu! Can you give our car a push?’

Okay, that was the most embarrassing moment of my life, Dabbu thinks, mortified, as she walks down the pillared corridor towards the green room with small cautious steps, holding on for dear life to the pleats of her sari. How could BJ do that to me? And what was the need to give Ma the wheel and get out and push the car
himself
, thus revealing his pyjama naada and bathroom chappals for all the sniggering guards to see? I bet everybody out there is laughing at me. And then he made it even worse by shouting ‘Best of luck, Dabbu’.

Dabbu!
But I won’t be intimidated, I won’t. I’ll be coom and caal. I mean, cool and calm. I can
do
this. I’ve wanted to be a newsreader since I was three. And now I am. I maxed the auditions. I cleared the GK test, the voice test and the camera test. This is not advertising, where I have to be witty every single second. Here I just need to look neat and not hunch, and read from a prepared script. I’ve got this.

She walks into the green room, her hands clammy but her head held high, and suddenly finds herself navel deep in children dressed in red-and-black striped towels, with knitting needles sticking out of their hair. All of them, regardless of gender, have three little dots painted upon their chins like a ‘therefore’ sign.

‘Er, hello.’ Debjani peers through the sea of red and black. ‘I’m here for my make-up.’

The sea parts to reveal a bald man with a belligerent air and a hearing aid, sweating profusely in spite of the air-conditioning. He jerks his head at her questioningly. ‘Adivasi dance?’

‘Um, no,’ Debjani says. ‘Newsreader. For the English news.’ His expression turns to one of disbelief. ‘So early?
Nine
o’clock news?’

‘They told me to be here three hours early.’

The make-up man smirks, not unkindly. ‘Come back after one hour.’ And he goes back to painting large red circles on the cheeks of the children milling around his knees.

Dabbu, her own cheeks red, goes out and stands in the corridor. I must look like such an over-enthu idiot
,
she thinks, showing up so early, all trussed up in a sari.
Of
course
the professionals drift in late. And they probably don’t even wear a sari – they just drape the pallu over their jeans or whatever. Why didn’t I think of that?

People walk past without giving her a second glance – a short, bearded man with a clipboard, some scruffy technicians, an important looking bearer loaded down with a tray full of steaming teacups that Debjani doesn’t dare help herself to, even though she’s dying for a cup of tea.

I’ll never fit in, she tells herself miserably. What was I thinking? That I could waltz in here and read the primetime news live on DD? I’m going to be a disaster. Just like I was in HTA. My voice is drying up. Maybe I should sneak off and do some voice modulation exercises in the loo? But where is it?

She turns around – and is hit by a strong scent of imported aftershave. A face she knows as well as her own is bobbing before her eyes. Smoothly handsome, ruddily fair and ending in a neatly clipped beard. A voice like growling honey trickles into her ears. Growling honey with exquisite diction.

‘Well, hello there. Are you the newbie?’

Debjani nods, overwhelmed. It’s Amitabh Bose, she thinks, stunned.
The
Amitabh Bose. The
It is with great sorrow that I tell you that our Prime Minister has been assassinated
Amitabh Bose. The
Today Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian in space
Amitabh Bose. And sure, BJ claims he wears a beard to hide a weak chin and Eshu says she can’t shake off the feeling that he farts, sneakily and soundlessly, even as he reads so fluently and flawlessly – but still, he is famous. And he is talking to her.

‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘I’m Debjani.’

‘Babejani.’ He smiles. ‘How nice. We’ll be reading together tonight. They told me to look out for you. Do you want me to show you the ropes?’

She stares up at him, still a little stunned. The ‘Babejani’ comment is strictly cheesy but this is Amitabh Bose – dare she take offence?

He assumes she is taking him up on his generous offer, turns around and starts walking, and just like that, the spell is broken. He has a large wobbly bottom, the kind (according to Eshwari, the butt aficionado among the sisters) that jiggles about and actually
talks
to people, so that even when the bum-owner’s got his back to you, you don’t feel socially neglected.

‘Are you familiar with the set-up here?’ he asks.

Debjani shakes her head. ‘I just got the telegram,’ she explains breathlessly. ‘Saying I was selected.’

‘Ah.’ Amitabh Bose winks conspiratorially. ‘The famous DD telegram! Have you seen the newsroom at least?’

Debjani nods. Frankly, the newsroom had disappointed her. It was a dusty, dingy space, smelling of stale beedi, housed in some squalid barracks behind Akashvani Bhavan. There were towers of dusty cassettes piled all higgledy-piggledy on the floor, and she had found it hard to believe that the news India heard every night, read out with such grace and elan, was put together
there.

‘This is Studio Number 2 to your right,’ Amitabh Bose is saying, ‘where all the big shoots happen. There’s an Assamese dance going on there today. And that’s Number 3, from where we do the news broadcasts. Take a look.’

Debjani peers into Studio Number 3. It’s not very big, the set is blue, with a rotating globe, a gleaming tabletop and two high chairs. One of those is for me, she thinks, oscillating madly between panic and pride.

‘And that’s the autocue,’ Amitabh points. ‘You’ve had some practice?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m not very good with it, though.’

He laughs. ‘You’ll be fine. Ah, here’s young-Uday with our scripts. Go through them, check for grammatical errors, there are usually plenty.’ He mock-frowns at young-Uday, who looks dutifully sheepish. ‘And see if you have any questions.’

She takes her sheets from pimply young-Uday, who look even more nervous than her, and scans them quickly. Her lines are marked ‘Newsreader 2’. I’m Newsreader 2, she thinks happily. This is easy, actually, lemme see, President’s visit to an engineering college in Tirunamalli… Foreign Minister’s speech at the SAARC summit… Okay, all good… nothing here I can’t pronounce.

Back in the green room, the make-up men attack her hair and face, powdering, dusting, spraying. Their hands smell of Charmis cold cream and onion. She demurs a little at how thick they are laying it on, but they assure her that she’ll need it under the strong studio lights. There is an awkward moment when one of them picks gently at her mole. ‘It’s real,’ she says apologetically and he smiles in a friendly way. And then young-Uday – who appears to be the floor manager – leads them back to Studio Number 3 and they sit, and he tells her where to look, and the DD News theme music starts to play and Amitabh flashes her an encouraging smile and young-Uday counts down to one and the cameras whir to life and Amitabh says easily in his famous baritone: ‘
Good evening and welcome to the Friday Night News at Nine. I’m Amitabh Bose…
’

Dabbu takes a deep breath, smiles and says, not at all like someone whose heart has clawed its way up to her esophagus and is about to leap out of her mouth, ‘
And I’m Debjani Thakur.
’

‘Dabbbuuu! I’m so
proud
of you!’

The Thakurs are at Bengali Market, eating chaat. Well, they’re holding it and talking excitedly around it but not much is going into anybody’s mouth. The chaat-wallah, a thin bronze personage with a grey handlebar moustache, looks at them indulgently and doles out the golguppas extra slowly.

‘How was I?’ Debjani asks for the fourteenth time since they picked her up.

‘I told youuuuuuuuu! Perrrrrfect!’

‘I had tears in my eyes,’ Mrs Mamta Thakur confesses. ‘You were every bit as good as that Bose, and he’s been reading for twenty years!’

‘Shhush, Ma, somebody’ll hear you.’

‘The princesses are eating very slowly,’ the Judge says to the golguppa man. ‘I apologize on their behalf.’

But that mustachioed worthy shakes his head. ‘No problem,’ he says, nodding towards Debjani with an avuncular smile. ‘I saw baby on TV. Read very well. Eat slowly slowly. Golguppe free hain.’

The girls squeal in excitement. The rest of Bengali Market turns and stares.

‘Thank you ji.’ Mrs Mamta smiles at him graciously. Then, in a lower voice, ‘Keep it down, girls. Always be ladylike. All this shrieking isn’t good for Debjani’s image.’

‘I have an
image
.’ Dabbu gulps, her eyes widening, and promptly chokes on a golguppa.

‘Ey, bring one Campa!’ the golguppa man shouts.

Eshwari immediately starts coughing too.

‘Bring
two
Campas.’

‘Do you think,’ breathes Debjani after a tingly swig, ‘that the Prime Minister saw my broadcast?’

‘Hmm?’ The Judge looks up from his aloo tikki. ‘Of course, of course. What else is there to see on TV?’

‘Be
have
, LN,’ Mrs Mamta starts to say but right then a group of boys emerges noisily from Nathu Sweets. A general air of repletion and loosened naada strings hangs about them, they are picking at their gums with toothpicks and eyeing the kulfi stand in anticipation. Then they spot Debjani sipping her Campa Cola and do a double take. Furious whispering ensues.

‘Same sari.’

‘Mole on chin.’

‘You aks.’

‘No,
you
aks!’

Finally a large hairy one approaches the Thakurs bashfully. Dabbu pretends to look unconcerned (because what if he just wants to ask the time or something?).

‘Excuse me, you are…?’

Dabbu fiddles with her bottle of Campa Cola.

‘Yes,’ says the Judge a little testily. ‘She
is.
’

A huge grin spreads across the boy’s hairy face.

‘Arrey wah! You are my first famous person! That I have met personally, I mean. Matlab ki, I saw a two-foot bona with three legs in a mela once, but that’s not really the same thing, is it?’