relief. No damage done, thankfully. Zeba angled her face to examine herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed alabaster white, just turning a pale rose over her cheekbones. Her neck was smooth and curved downwards quite marvellously to shapely shoulders. She looked into tawny brown eyes that, she had on excellent authority, were capable of making hardened underworld dons swoon. Then she fluttered her lashes, trying to see what it was that other people saw, smiling, lips together, then lips carefully parted, revealing a sparkle of fine even teeth inherited from her father.
The journalist wanted to know when she had taken up acting. Well, Zeba knew exactly when she had: aged two, when she had first become conscious of her ability to make people coo over her merely by pouting coquettishly and swinging her little hips. But she wasn’t exactly going to divulge all that, was she? Nor that there was one particular day when she had realised that she would kill—yes, kill—to be the star. An image of Lily D’Souza clad in a white robe, declaiming for all she was worth on the school stage, flashed into her mind. Zeba could even remember the words…‘Oh God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, oh lord, how long?’ She remembered the electricity of that moment: the pain that seemed to drip off Lily’s beautiful face, the silence pervading the school hall, and, most of all, the awed expression on the old drama teacher’s face as he gazed up at Lily with the kind of expression none of Zeba’s own histrionic efforts at school had ever elicited. Oh yes, if a knife had been handy at that moment, Zeba would have happily leapt onto the stage, killing St Joan right there in the middle of her bloody audition. She could imagine the reaction if she ever told a journalist all that. Wouldn’t they just love it? The story of how Zeba Khan, aged seventeen, had fought for her role in the school annual production with a new girl, Lily D’Souza. Beautiful, brilliant Lily D’Souza, who was later found dead in the school’s rose garden. Oh how the press pack would love it, dementedly carrying the story on all their networks, reporters standing outside her house, breathlessly exclaiming over the unsolved case in which top star Zeba Khan was clearly involved! She remembered the time a careless remark she had passed about a local politician had made the morning news, thereafter being repeated all day on an endless loop in red ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen. They were starved for stories, these 24-hour news channels, and fell upon the smallest scrap of celebrity news as though it were manna from heaven! This story would not be a scrap of news, though. It certainly would not be difficult for a reporter to find interviewees—old schoolmates jealous of her success, teachers she had been rude to, any number of people who would no doubt delight in giving chapter and verse on how stuck-up Zeba Khan had been at school. There was a lot of stuff from those days that was well worth keeping hidden, after all.
In the mirror, Zeba saw fear and guilt darken her face at the memory of Lily and reminded herself angrily that nobody had liked the new girl. ‘Thinks too much of herself,’ someone had said, and, ‘What does she think, that she can just walk in and take over from us?’ But, even after it had been well established that Lily was the most conceited little bitch they had ever met, Zeba had been astonished to hear that Lily had had the nerve to put her name down for the lead role in the play that year. It wasn’t just that Zeba always, always played the lead—everyone knew that—but Lily was new, an outsider, for heaven’s sake! A new girl didn’t ever show such impudence if she knew what was good for her. It was no less than arrogance to think she could waltz in and steal things that had always belonged to others. Besides, it was Zeba’s final year at the school and the part of Joan of Arc had been virtually written for her. Why, old Moss, the drama teacher, had even adapted parts of the script to suit her accent as he had heard that scouts from both film school and the National School of Drama were going to be in attendance. Zeba had toiled all year for the role, neglecting her schoolwork to practise for hours before her bathroom mirror till each line had been perfected like a carefully chiselled jewel. Did everyone think she would quietly stand by and let some cocky brat from the sticks just waltz in and rob her of all that? All that effort, all that work, her ticket to film school and her dreams of stardom? Well, the bottom line was that it was not Lily D’Souza who shone in the limelight at the annual production that year. It was Zeba. It was Zeba Khan, as it always had been and was always meant to be. And, despite the circumstances surrounding that fact, Zeba could still—even after all these years—take some satisfaction from it.
DELHI, 1993
By the time Lily D’Souza had been at St Jude’s for two weeks, there were not many classmates left still trying to befriend her. She had, on her very first day, managed to upset half the population of the class by declaring that Delhi was a crass city because of its Punjabi business population, not stopping to consider that half the girls in Class XII were the daughters of Punjabi businessmen. Then, granted exemption from studying Hindi on the basis of having come from another state, she airily dismissed what was the mother-tongue of most of her classmates as ‘the language of politics and corruption’.
Even the normally peaceable Sam and uncomplicated Bubbles had retreated hurt, burnt by Lily’s acid tongue on too many occasions to persevere any more with amiable overtures. No one wanted to befriend the new girl, for that was what Lily was still persistently called.
‘It’s because she’s so horrible that we can’t stop calling her “new girl,” I think,’ Bubbles remarked as their group sat under the gulmohar tree sharing their lunches one day.
Startled by her bench-mate’s unlikely astuteness, Anita agreed. ‘Absolutely It’s not like I haven’t tried seeing it from Lily’s point of view. I mean, it’s never easy to break into an established group. But we’ve done everything to make her feel welcome, haven’t we? Well, at least Sam has.’
‘And me!’ Natasha chipped in. ‘I even offered her my Mont Blanc pen set, you know, when her crappy ball-point ran out in Biology the other day. But would she take it? Like heck! Just too nose-in-the-air, that’s what.’
‘Essentially, Lily’s done nothing to try to belong,’ said Anita firmly.
‘It’s like she’s in another world, floating way above us. Just because she’s pretty’. Zeba spat out the word.
Only Sam was still faintly doubtful. ‘Maybe we should give her more time…I mean, we don’t know yet exactly why she was brought here, but it’s almost certainly because something bad has happened in her past.’
‘But then she should tell us about it. We can only sympathise if we know.’ This was Nimmi speaking, a cheery sort of girl whom Sam knew was usually quite reasonable.
‘Definitely We’re all so open with each other, aren’t we?’ Natasha was starting to sound quite indignant now.
‘Maybe she will be too, once she’s settled down and starts coming out of herself,’ Sam replied.
Natasha spluttered on a mouthful of ham and cheese. ‘Coming out of herself! You’re not suggesting shyness is her problem, Sam? Have you seen the way she looks around the classroom? Looking without seeing, that’s what she does. As though we’re all too far beneath her to be noticed. You’re the only one she’ll deign to talk to, Sam, and even that is only when she needs something.’
‘Yeah, and have you seen how she only ever sits in the front row? Because that way she doesn’t need to look at anyone else,’ Zeba grumbled.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Sam murmured, ‘maybe we’re reading too much into all this. The front bench is just the place she was given. I sit in the front row too.’
‘But you’re different, you’re class monitor,’ Bubbles said, adding, ‘you’ve always sat in the front row. And you keep looking back at us at least.’
‘Yeah, only to say “ssshhh…quiet” and suchlike!’ Sam replied.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam—even you should be able to see that Lily’s just a stuck-up, arrogant little bitch,’ Zeba