don’t know how we ever…’ She turned back to Anita, but her friend could see that Sam’s dilated pupils were unable to focus on her own. A glass of wine was usually all it took to make Sam a little drunk, but this, Anita knew, was something else altogether. Poor Sam was clearly trying to gather herself together, her voice trembling as she continued speaking in a low voice, now seeming unable to stop her thoughts. ‘You know, it was only much, much later that it really sank in. The enormity of what we had done. I know I just wasn’t myself that winter…death seemed almost to be stalking me like some evil beast…but still…I shouldn’t try to find excuses for myself…’ Sam stopped abruptly and shivered. The women sat in silence for a few minutes before Sam squeezed Anita’s hand, which was still in hers, indicating forgiveness for her earlier remark.
‘Such a terrible time. I still dream of it sometimes. Not just think of it, but dream of it. There’s a difference, you know. My Emotional Freedom therapist once said so,’ Bubbles put in.
Normally, Bubbles’ array of therapists was meat and drink to Anita’s sarcastic sense of humour, but today she didn’t have the heart to rise to the bait. The friends fell quiet again and Anita looked away. Her stomach churned with guilt as she saw Sam press a tissue over her eyes and put an arm around Bubbles, who had also started to weep.
MUMBAI, 2008
Night had fallen in its usual glittering manner over the pulsing city of Mumbai when Zeba Khan lay back in the claw-footed bathtub of her sumptuous designer bathroom. She took deep breaths of the Yves Rocher bath oil recently purchased from Zurich, sighing with relief and pleasure as her tiredness melted slowly into the tepid water. She had asked for all the Jo Malone scented candles to be lit, and now she half-opened her tawny brown eyes, seeing the flames flicker quietly, turning the cream Italian marble of the walls and floor to molten gold. It had been a long, long day. Despite her superstar status these past ten years, she knew better than to mess with up-and-coming directors like Rohit Mirchandani and had stayed the course, out in the midday sun with the rest of the crew, despite being desperately jet-lagged from her European trip. As the son of a legendary director, Rohit had no doubt enjoyed a head-start in the industry, but his last two films had both been massive hits and Zeba had heard about a new one due to start filming this winter. She had done her damnedest today to find out if the casting had been done but couldn’t get anything out of the canny young man, who was obviously enjoying the power he could suddenly wield over her.
Zeba felt a few tendrils of hair escape the luxuriant pile on the top of her head, and reached out for the silver seashell that housed an array of clips. She sighed as she slid a few more bobby pins into her hair and sank back into the water. Rohit had always secretly loathed her, having grown up with the knowledge of her decade-long liaison with his father and, as a result, immersed in his mother’s bitterness. It was to Rohit’s credit, though, that he had never advertised his abhorrence, careful to stay not just on his father’s right side but Zeba’s as well. It wouldn’t do for an up-and-coming director to upset Bollywood’s top actress. And so they continued to play this ridiculous cat-and-mouse game with each other, dodging and side-stepping but never confrontational, and always, always most carefully and deliberately civil to each other when they were on film sets. Was it any wonder she felt so exhausted today?
Zeba leaned back again, massaging her temples. Rohit was one of a whole new breed of directors that were changing the landscape of Bollywood unrecognisably these days. Now they were all American-educated and slick and media savvy. And, consequently, far less inclined to be worshipful of her own star status. The older boys had been so much easier to read and seduce, but they were all fading into obscurity in their hillside mansions, seemingly content to feebly hand the directorial reins over to the next generation while they totted up figures in ledgers and kept a tight hold on their purse strings. Half of the new crop of directors were gay too, and that didn’t help one bit.
Zeba knew the time had come to tread carefully. She was thirty-two this year, it was most unusual for a heroine in Bollywood to have stayed at the top for so long. At first people said that her popularity was because she looked equally sexy in both Indian and western clothes, but as she had got older and her attractiveness to audiences had not diminished, she was gradually acquiring the makings of a legend. Despite an astute unspoken self-awareness regarding her own meagre acting talent, Zeba could not help hoping she would become as iconic as Nargis or Madhubala someday. After all, like those two actresses, she was equally beloved to audiences whether playing mother, sister, lover or even prostitute. It was almost touching how her fans just couldn’t seem to get enough of her, and the only reason why producers and script-writers had kept running to her door these past ten years, trying to keep up with the demand and putting a steady supply of roles her way. Indeed, her popularity in India was of such a scale that she could quite safely turn up her nose at Hollywood, a place that—as journalists sometimes liked reminding her—had never shown any interest in her. Oddly, it was India’s great unwashed that particularly adored her—the market vendor, the paan-wallah, the coolie—doggedly spurning the new stick-thin, size-zero girls flooding the industry from modelling agencies in favour of her own more traditional curves. It was they—those sun-darkened, wizened figures that thronged the city’s streets and sometimes tapped piteously on the smoked-glass window of her Mercedes—who had made her what she was. She had never forgotten that—hence her recent idea of founding a charity for street children.
Zeba sighed, reaching out for the loofah. She scrubbed her elbows, thinking of what hard work it was constantly thinking up new ways to climb that very shaky pedestal marked ‘legend’. Firstly, there were a hundred others clawing at her ankles, trying to pull her down, upstart teenagers with bigger bust-lines and tighter butts and, of course, new top directors to be their godfathers. Sometimes in Bollywood the latter was the only attribute required to become a legend. Which, if she was to be honest, had worked out rather well for her. Old Shiv Mirchandani had, after all, been completely loyal to her all these years, both professionally and in a personal capacity, and despite being aware of her other occasional dalliances. He had even said something sentimental the other day about growing old together which had quite terrified her, given the ravages of age he already wore so cheerily on his cheese-grater face.
Zeba raised a long, shapely leg from the bath water and eyed it contemplatively as it shone wet and gleaming in the candlelight. Perhaps she should call for Najma to scrub and exfoliate her heels. Feet and hands were what first gave away a woman’s age, her Ammi had always said. Additionally, Zeba had spent all afternoon in an excruciatingly uncomfortable pair of stiletto heels, playing the role of a corporate boss in Dubai. But she had to be up again early tomorrow morning and was on the point of dropping off right here in the bath. She sat up in the water, her ample breasts glistening as they floated among the shiny bubbles. Perhaps she would treat herself to one of Sylvio’s famed pedicures at the Taj instead, after tomorrow’s shoot. They were wonderful there and always used their private suite at the back of the salon to assure her complete privacy. Zeba reached out for the bell by the bathtub to summon Najma who would help wipe her down and fetch a fresh silk nightie. She hoped that the hot bath and her familiar bed would dismiss jet-lag and aid a good night’s sleep.
After Zeba had been carefully patted dry by her maid and massaged with Crème de la Mer, another recent acquisition from Zurich, she padded her way through her dimly lit, cavernous bedroom. Someone—Gupta probably—had left a little stack of papers for her to go through under the bedside lamp. She picked up the rubber-banded bundle after she had climbed into her white leather water-bed and pulled a silk razai over her legs. Freeing the pack from their band, Zeba scowled, her sweeping eyebrows meeting in a furrow above her nose. The first letter was from a cousin, asking for a loan—that would have to be a ‘no’—it wasn’t as if she hadn’t helped him before and he would merely surface again after another few months with some new tale of hardship. She had much better things she could think of doing with her hard-earned money than passing it on to blood-sucking relatives. Her newly founded charity, for one.
Discarding the letter onto the floor by the side of her bed, where it would be picked up and binned by the sweeper in the morning, she reminded herself to stop frowning so much and swiftly cleared her brow. Luckily, the next letter offered much pleasanter fare—a request from Vanity Fair to be cover girl on their inaugural Indian publication—a