Secrets and Lies. Jaishree Misra

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 definite ‘yes’. The next was an invitation to a private party being thrown by liquor baron Ramsy Fernando on his Madh Island home—hmmm, probably a ‘yes’. At least there wouldn’t be much of the film crowd there, Ramsy was too much of a brown-sahib snob for all that. But…what was this? The unseemly scowl returned to Zeba’s beautiful face.

      Zeba scanned the words quickly:…soon going to retire as principal of the school…needed to meet her girls…a reunion…a reunion?! Was this someone’s idea of a bloody joke? Zeba turned the letter over as though searching for clues. Gupta must have got rid of the envelope…there was nothing else but a suggested date in December and a small scratchy signature at the bottom. She ran her eyes again over the spidery writing that was both familiar and yet uncharacteristically weak, becoming virtually illegible in the last few lines. Goodness, it was crazy to think of St Jude’s old Princy still alive and kicking and rattling around in that cottage next door to the school. The woman was probably in her mid-seventies now. It was no surprise, of course, that the convent had not retired her yet; school principals like Miss Lamb were hard to come by these days—the archetypal English spinster, willing to dedicate her whole life to the school. Victoria Lamb. What was it they used to call her back then?…Lamboo! Lamboo, for her long, noodle-like appearance. But then girls were cruel creatures under those coy exteriors.

      And that niece of Lamboo’s…Lily. ‘Doan’t be silly, Lily’, they had tittered behind her back on her first day at the school, quoting the villain in that ridiculous film. But they found out soon enough that Lily wasn’t silly at all. Not in the slightest. But that she was very, very manipulative and go-getting indeed. In fact she was clearly trying to become the star from Day One—not the best course of action in a girls’ school that was already full of stars like Zeba. This had always puzzled Zeba: that clever little Lily had not been clever enough to see how many enemies she had made in her short time at the school. She should have considered treading more carefully, but on the other hand she had seemed genuinely not to care about earning anyone’s approval. It was almost enviable, that kind of self-satisfaction.

      Zeba put the mail away on her bedside table and smoothed her fingers gently over the middle of her forehead. She had recently noticed the deep furrows that her mother had between her eyes, a permanent record of the stresses she had suffered in bringing up three rambunctious children under the watchful eye of an autocratic husband. So far the skin on Zeba’s face had remained taut and unlined, but she did have to watch out for bad genes—letters from the past that set off dark thoughts weren’t likely to help. She slipped off her silk camisole and tucked her legs under the sheet, wiggling her toes and taking a few deep breaths.

      Lily D’Souza, good God, what a chest-thumping blast from the past. Even though she hardly ever stopped to remember her old classmate, Zeba did have to admit that, over the years, she—the great film star Zeba Khan—had in fact taken a useful leaf out of Lily’s book when it came to developing a supreme nonchalance to one’s detractors. Enemies were an undeniable part of working in an industry like Bollywood; perhaps they were an undeniable part of life itself, particularly when one was beautiful and accomplished. So what was the point of treading around so carefully that you never got anywhere? Still, even though one never made any real friends in a place like this, it was at least worth knowing who your enemies were. Zeba pulled the sheet over her shoulders, feeling a sudden chill.

      The world probably saw her as supremely controlled but, suddenly, Zeba could feel something inside her quail and shrink as an almost visceral memory tumbled back unbidden, reminding her of how deeply she had hated Lily, virtually from the very first moment the girl had set foot in the classroom. Zeba let her head sink into her pillow, trying to relax her shoulders. She felt a small shiver, born from either guilt or satisfaction as she realised that she was now all the things that Lily had probably imagined she would one day be—an acclaimed star, the adored darling of India’s teeming audiences. Heroine to millions of people willing to queue for hours outside those crummy tin-pot cinema halls in slum areas on the night of a Zeba Khan blockbuster release. Now that was the real thing, an ambition worth fighting for. Quite unlike a stupid, inconsequential little school play. But that was what all teenagers were like, surely, narcissistically allowing the silliest things to take on the kind of significance that was impossible to comprehend in later life. Zeba scrabbled around in her bedside drawer and, finding a phial of Valium, swallowed two tablets with a little water from the crystal flagon that was always kept on her bedside table.

      Two hours later, Zeba awoke from a ragged sleep, sweating profusely. Either the СКАЧАТЬ