Club You to Death Anuja Chauhan (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📖

‘Come!’ she says.

2

Rasputin

A rapt silence rules over the East Lawn. More than a thousand people are bent over their tambola tickets, completely attentive. When Akash approaches the Dogra family table with Bambi in tow, Natasha’s eyes widen speculatively, but she’s too swamped to comment. Her hair has escaped from its neatly coiled bun and she looks a little crazy.

‘Help me!’ she whispers urgently, thrusting tickets in their faces. ‘We’ve got ten tickets to mark! I’m barely able to keep up!’

Her son stops sucking on the straw of his Fanta long enough to look up at Bambi and state, with polite firmness, ‘Nana’s going to vote for Behra Mehra, not the stinky cheese lady. Move along please!’

‘Dhan!’ Brig. Dogra is appalled. ‘Don’t say Behra Mehra!’

‘Don’t say stinky cheese lady either!’ adds his wife.

‘Yes, of course, of course. The lady isn’t stinky,’ the brigadier explains earnestly to Bambi. ‘The cheese is.’

Bambi smiles at him sympathetically.

‘Have a lot of ladies been nagging you to vote for Urvashi auntie, uncle?’

He looks here and there in a harassed manner. ‘No … no … nothing like that …’

‘Hullo Bambi beta!’ Mrs Mala Dogra’s voice is so disproportionately affectionate that the Dogra siblings look at each other and cringe.

But then—

‘Hullo Mala auntie!’ Bambi beams right back at Mrs Mala Dogra with equal effusiveness.

‘Your parents aren’t here?’ Mrs Mala Dogra wants to know and Bambi’s high-beam smile dims a little. She replies that her mother’s in the US, visiting her brother, but her Dad will definitely show up for the voting tomorrow.

‘Sorry I’m late, Dadi!’ Kashi says as he drops down cross-legged on the grass in front of his grandmother’s wheelchair. He studies her tickets. ‘Wah, you’re doing well!’

‘Jaldi five and four corners and top line–bottom line are already over,’ Natasha fills them in. ‘But middle line and full house are still on!’

‘Shusssh!’ the brigadier hisses. ‘Focus on the calling!’

Dirty stares are being directed at the noisy new arrivals from several of the other tables. Bambi and Kashi exchange comical looks and subside.

‘Still in my twenties, twenty-nine!’ intones the familiar voice of Club Secretary Srivastava. The bulldog-y old man has been calling out the tambola numbers for as long as Kashi can remember. ‘Two and nine, twenty-nine!’

This is followed by the rhythmic, well-remembered sound of the wooden number balls tumbling inside their wire-frame cage. It’s a sound Kashi would’ve recognized anywhere in the world.

He doesn’t have twenty-nine. Or thirty-seven or fifty-three, which are the numbers that are called subsequently.

But as he sits there in the grass next to Bambi Todi and stares down at the bright pink tambola tickets in his hands, he acknowledges that he is tingling all the way to the tips of his fingers with a sort of helpless, giddy exhilaration. Happy gas, Nattu would say, with a warning waggle of the index finger and a knowing shake of the head. Hugely addictive and very deceptive – as close to the real thing as broken glass is to diamonds. Never trust that shit, little bro.

Unfortunately, she had yet to give him all this gyaan when he was five years old and heart-whole, standing by the Lady Darlington Swimming Bath in his electric-blue swim trunks, all excited about his first swimming class. The inflatable arm band of the small, brown girl standing next to him – a pink-and-white polka-dotted affair, he still recalls – had gone phuss and she asked him to blow it up for her. When he handed it back, turgidly inflated, she had smiled at him, revealing the winsome gaps between her teeth. The hit of the happy gas had been so intense that as she watched open-mouthed, he had cannonballed into the water out of sheer animal excitement, causing a mighty splash that drenched her completely.

They’d ended up on the same school bus a year later. He had been sitting alone by a window when she walked over and sat down next to him like it was the most natural thing in the world. Ten years later, she had reached up and kissed him like that was the most natural thing in the world too.

‘Theme for a dream, sweet sixteen! One and six, sixteen!’

His grandmother digs him in the ribs, dragging him back to the present.

‘Sixteen,’ she indicates, blinking and pointing a wavering finger at the ticket in his hand. ‘We have that.’

‘Awesome Dadi!’ Kashi punches the ticket, then turns to look up at her curiously. ‘But how are you able to hear the calling? Your hearing aid isn’t even—’

She pokes him with a bony finger, directing him to look up. Her eyes are starry and her cheeks very pink.

‘No listening, Kashoo, looking!’

Kashi looks up to the stage, and realizes that though the old tambola wire-frame cage and the brightly coloured number balls are still the same, and so is old Mr Srivastava, there has been at least one daring innovation to the ancient ritual that is the DTC Bumper Tambola. A dark, muscular and strikingly attractive man is holding up the numbers – drawn on two-foot-high, black-and-white placards – as they are being called.

‘Hey, cool!’ says Kashi.

‘Thank you,’ Bambi whispers. ‘It was my idea.’

Kashi wonders uneasily whether the casting call had been hers too.

Probably in his mid-thirties, the man on stage is dressed in a fitted dark blazer, loose black dhoti pants, and has a muffler bundled tightly around his neck. His thick hair is pulled back from his high forehead into a messy man-bun that somehow emphasizes the chiselled, sensuous masculinity of his features and the hypnotic pull of his hooded eyes. As he puts down 1 and 6, and picks up 7 and 4 and holds them aloft instead, his movements have a smooth, fluid, slightly animal quality. He pivots from left to right, showing the numbers to each section of the lawn clearly. As he flashes white teeth in a smile that lights up his dark, exotic face, Kashi realizes that he knows him.

‘Arrey! That’s … Lokesh …