The Benefit Season Read online

  ‘Cricket is fine,’ Tom says. ‘ But it’s a crowded market out there. You guys are doing fine work here, by Indian standards, but not as good as many of our other branches in Asia, and certainly nowhere close to our European team. You can’t strut around with a handful of cricketers and afford to get complacent; I don’t even know what their shelf life is- most of them already look way past their prime- in fact they look more like flabby desk clerks than prim athletes. My parting advice would be to move beyond cricket; move beyond sports if necessary; crawl out of that niche you’ve carved out for yourself. And if you need anything, I’m just a thought - not even a phone call- away’.

  He ends by lauding the team, and leaves with the Nagraths for lunch at the iconic Taj Hotel, built by Jamshetji Tata after he had been denied entry in the Watson’s Hotel in Mumbai, which didn’t allow non-white guests!

  ϖ

  The office never sees or hears of Tom again, but I do; as early as the first thing the following morning when Monal summons me, before I could even lick my fingers and part my hair and check in the washroom if any blemishes remained on the hurriedly scrubbed face. I’d gotten late during my ritualistic run, having enjoyed it barefoot on a beach for the first time in my life.

  ϖ

  I do not know why she always stands with her back to the person she talks to, but she does.

  ‘You heard what Tom said,’ she asks. She wastes no time in coming to the point either. She is direct, curt, but doesn’t face you. You don’t interest her, you don’t matter and you don’t need to be treated as an equal, is what she probably means. My ego, which never was on steroids is now mothballed away, as I start to admire the slim waist and the loud, birthing hips, and miss the next question, as I did during our first meeting.

  ‘ Dreaming again, Mr. Pasricha’?

  The way she wraps her tongue around my name and spits it out makes it sound obscene. ‘Yes Monal- no Monal’, I reply foolishly, as she catches me staring again, in the reflection in her floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows.

  ‘That we need to move beyond cricket - is it not what Tom had said?’ She mutters.

  ‘Indeed’.

  ‘I am assigning you this new responsibility. You will answer directly to me and assist me now onwards. The other teams are managing their clients pretty well; I don’t want to disturb the harmony or make violent changes here, as yet. But you are new- you don’t have an established mindset. I want you to identify celebrities- from any and every field- and bring them into our fold. Talk to them, pitch to them and set up appointments with me if necessary. Speak to Lily- she’ll give you a list of probables that you can tap. She’s an old hand- she will give you a running start.’

  ‘Fine’.

  ‘We are industry leaders; people follow us closely, so confidence is important, Mr. Pasricha. We have just begun top-secret discussions for a contract with a TV channel, and I am told; even as we stand here and speak; Prerna from Plagiaristix- that’s our competition- is already trying to filch our idea from right under my nose. So discretion is what I would advise as you start work here. You must learn to covet closely the value of information; give none and take all you can, and run. Listen closely and keep your mouth tightly shut; say nothing unless you are planting information calculated to cleverly serve your ends- in the end’.

  ‘I read you loud and clear Monal’.

  ‘And another thing Tom had said- shelf life- is it not?’

  ‘Yes, short shelf life of cricketers- he’d meant I think’.

  ‘He wasn’t very right there actually. Cricketers here have a very long shelf life- they never let any new talent come in! People die playing Ranjis without ever making it to the national team. IPL is changing all that now, but still you will find the old timers choking the competition of all sunshine and rain. If their shelf life does get shortened- it gets so by their own doing. Do you watch TV, Mr. Pasricha?’

  ‘Not lately’.

  ‘Our Malabar Mallet- our star performer- Kunju- whom we were so proudly mentioning yesterday, is all over the news, running butt-naked down hotel corridors, chasing cheer girls equally unattired; shocking decent people. The hotel cameras captured the scene early this morning I believe, and some nosy reporter got hold of the footage, and now it’s prime news’.

  ‘We should be worried, I guess?’

  ‘ You bet we should be; we are a nib away from signing on the dotted line for a kids nutritional-drinks company’s advertisement campaign for our star here. The memory of his retreating bums on TV is hardly going to inspire our tiny tots’ moms into investing in the drinks he pushes.’

  ‘How true’!

  ‘I got a call from the company just now. We need to pull his ass out of the screens, and get him out of lock-up where they’ve hauled him for disturbing the peace.’

  I wonder why she’s giving me all this info on Ninkush’s star account. Then I remember I am to assist her in everything, which I guess loosely means office lackey.

  ‘I want you to accompany me to the police station and snatch his sorry ass before there’s any more damage’.

  She walks out while I’m still standing there. After a pause I rush out after her and follow her into the company cab. We drive to the station and meet the SHO. Monal seems to have made a few calls already because our lawyer is waiting with the paperwork and we make bail before I can hit the high spots with a useful comment. The SHO leers across at her when she signs and asks,’ madam, what is your relationship with Kunju?’

  ‘The same relationship that your mother has with you, that is if you know who she is’, she replies coolly as we leave him struggling with the filth that halts at his lips parted in a dark scowl. She is obviously much more than just a desirable woman; I salute her.

  Kunju is sitting barefoot on a concrete bench in the lockup and crying like a girl, surrounded by some curious, some amused men who it seems are not going to let him last a butt virgin another night in there. We take Kunju out through the back door, avoiding the cameras up front and speed him to the hotel.

  ‘Should we go to another hotel’, I ask, thinking it’s a smart comment.

  Monal has already thought of that one; her silence tells me.

  Kunju has stopped crying and is back to being the star that he was, or is, or will remain. ‘Does he work for me,’ he asks Monal, pointing at my nape. She nods.

  She calls up the manager of the hotel where we are headed and asks him to be ready.

  ‘Get me some decent clothes’, Kunju pokes me; he’s wearing pajamas with nude girls printed on them.

  ‘I have your clothes in the back. We checked you out of that hotel this morning’, Monal replies, saving me the trouble. She thinks of everything; works with a quiet efficiency and doesn’t make a fuss. I like that. My Aarti; a smile creeps to my lips as I think of her; on the other hand is bubbly and can’t keep anything down and lets the whole world know what she’s up to.

  ‘You think of everything, baby. I knew I didn’t make a mistake bringing you in my employ’.

  Monal smiles wryly and looks out the window. I happen to briefly look back at her and see when Kunju lets a hand fall carelessly on her bare knee and gently kneads it. When we reach the hotel the driver takes the car to the backside where the staff elevators are. Although there are no orders for me I sense Monal’s discomfort and come out and hold the door ajar for Kunju.

  He looks at me and then at his hand that is still on her knee. She has not moved. He shrugs, raises the hand to his nose and smells it deeply. ‘ I will not wash it’, he tells her.

  Monal tosses her mane and turns away, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses.

  ‘Come for a nightcap?’ he asks her. It is noontime.

  She breaks into a laugh. ‘Go home Kunju, you’ve had enough excitement for a day’.

  ‘I want to take it from where I’d left last night actually’, he explains.

  ‘Then take it up with the same people. I have a meeting with the STAR TV studio boss- remember that dance contes
t we’re arranging for you- sponsored by none other than Puma? It’s 150-episodes long and it will get us the eyeballs that we want so badly. And eyeballs lead to the rustle of the crisp and the shiny notes. Do you like the jingle of coins in your pocket, Mr. Kunju?’

  ‘I love it- better than the smack of my ball against the wickets, honey’.

  ‘Then let me go make that music for you Mr. Kunju.’

  ‘Can’t we make some music in my room- just a few moments?’ the idiot persists.

  ‘I make my music in the office, where I will see you’.

  ‘Thank you sir.’ I interject, bend and touch his arm lightly; ready to drag him out if he wants. He suddenly remembers the creeps in the lockup and decides he’s had enough for the day.

  ‘Music…’ he says, cupping his ears, smiling at Monal, and steps out.

  ‘There are no cameras in the corridors here Kunju’, she says. Kunju ups his thumb and grabs his crotch.

  ‘Room 403’, Monal calls after me as I haul his bags out and take him through the kitchen to his room by the staircase. The manager is waiting there and takes over from me.

  ‘Where’s the bar at’, Kunju is already asking, as the manager fawningly closes the door after them.

  I traipse down the stairs, glad to be rid of my charge. I edge into the front seat but Monal asks me to sit behind, beside her. I am careful to tuck my elbow out of her slim side.

  After awhile she goes,’ two days into the company and we are already feeling possessive, Mr. Pasricha?’

  I remain quiet, hoping she doesn’t notice that my ears are red.

  ‘You need to hold your horses; there’s little need of getting physical with our clients’.

  ‘I couldn’t stand it…couldn’t stand him’.

  ‘Athletes have a naturally higher libido than normal people- you should know it better, Mr. Pasricha’.

  I wonder whether if the same holds true for her and me as well, but it is not my place to ask.

  ‘Men like him are always falling over themselves to get cozy with me Mr. Pasricha- I can handle them without your help’.

  ‘Yes ma’am’.

  ‘What do you think I would have done if he’d asked me to fire you- on your second day at work?’

  I sit still, and then face her for the first time that day and say,’ I don’t think, Mrs. Nagrath, that you were in any mood to give him what he wanted today’.

  She chuckles and that’s that then.

  ϖ

  It’s beginning to drizzle and the wind sets up a howl. Drivers get impatient and there is such a cacophony of horns on the streets that inside the car we cannot hear each other speak. So though we like the feel of cool breeze on our faces we roll up the windows and wait in silence to reach the office.

  I go sit with Lily who gives me a folder containing portfolios of likely celebrities we can tap afresh or poach from other companies. There are stick-it posts with useful comments on our previous encounters with them. I discuss them with Lily briefly and tick a few likely victims I am going to start pitching to from the next day. I start working on them but meet with little success; they say:

  “Doesn’t fit into my schedule right now”.

  “We would love to work with you on another project some other day, but not right now”.

  “Monal sucks best, remember me to her will ya”.

  “ I’ll sell my soul to the devil but wouldn’t do business with you people”.

  “ Yeah I’ll call you back if I change my mind- in another lifetime”.

  “Sure you would love to represent me- who wouldn’t?”

  I realize now how much thick-skinned effort would have gone into acquiring our existing portfolio. After three days of a hundred telephone calls daily I am getting nowhere. I avoid running into Monal but I’m sure she’ll summon me anytime and from down that pert nose freeze me with a stare, or worse, singe me with rebuke.

  With nothing to show for a glum week at the new job, my shop shuts down for the weekend, and with nothing else to amuse me with, good friends Lele and Lily plan on taking my bruised spirit to QuBa to slip on the nosebag, quaff the frothy and catch the latest standup comic act in town; “Hassled, Heckled and Hustled” by Radhika Paz. A Jat girl with a sense of humor? Now I’ve really seen it all. I am told she promises to be everything the title says, and worse.

  We strut into the softly lit pub with the scantily robed Lily perched on the protective elbow of a splifficatedly fortified Lele; they seem to be on the verge of finding love in each other, but can’t bring themselves to take that last step of commitment to close the deal. It will take a long leave-taking to make the heart grow fonder, as it did in my case. I speak to Aarti everyday now, three-fold and more, whenever I can steal a moment alone. She will hit it off with these two, of that I’m positive.

  Drinks are served, the mics prepared; and to the center stage is ushered a lady with closely cropped hair, pinched face and a cruel mouth. Hands about to light a cigarette pause, lips that caress the froth linger on the rim, as all eyes come to rest on this curious, tall, spindly woman. Without so much as a cautionary preamble she quickly begins to belt out a perfectly nuanced tirade on everything that makes women in this world feel oppressed and violated: household chores, oral sex, motherhood, pussy farting, gassy husbands, singing vaginas, expired grocery coupons, blocked credit cards and lastly, not enough chivalry to go around. The men scan her loosely fitting shirt for signs of a breast while the women tick off the boyish hips, the parched lips, and her dull mop of matted hair. She believes in spitting filth for effect and like an angry serpent stretches each final venomous vowel with a hiss. She describes in excruciating detail the bodily functions of processing human waste- during coitus especially, the diminutive manhood of her husband and the vastness of her desire insatiate till even the most twisted of minds raise their hands and bow their heads to the drink, the smoke, the green leafies and the meat on the table. Noone is amused, and noone bothers to clap even when she pauses tellingly at the end of her flat punch lines, or towards the end of the act when she wants to go down on the knees and beg for applause.

  ‘Hardly a comic act- more of a chronic attack’, I say when Paz is taken away to wet her whistle. My friends chuckle and order a second wave of drinks.

  ‘What’s her claim to fame?’

  ‘She’s done a few gigs in the US, and now is one of the very rare foul-mouthed Indian female comedians. Corporates hire her for random shock therapy to the staff, and I guess she has even got a slot for a column in a leading daily. She’s a performing monkey for people with bad taste’.

  ‘I wonder who is letting her loose on the general public. She’s so raunchy she makes even bad look good’, Lily says.

  I ponder on that a bit and think of what Monal had told me. An idea, absurd as it might seem, comes to my desperate mind.

  ‘I am going to pitch to her’, I announce. Lele chokes on his beer and Lily drops the Burra Kebab she is inserting into her parted mouth. ‘I am going to ask Monal to secure this woman’s interests’.

  ‘Are you out of your mind!’

  ‘Monal is going to marinate and spit roast your booty over a slow blaze’.

  ‘Start with someone good, not a loser man! You don’t want this blot on your calling! They will build a monument to the shortest lived career ever.’

  ‘Be that as it may’, I mutter; despite caring little for this cliché phrase abhorred by the nun who taught me English at school as being a clumsy, pompous device, though much in vogue with the conceited speaker, since she believed its merit in dispelling from the audience’s mind the cobwebs was suspect- but what the hell- she wasn’t watching, was she?

  I rise; the eyeballs of my friends tail me; as I move confidently to the semi-lit corner where the upholder of feminine right to low jesting is attacking one by one a long line-up of Jack Daniel shots.

  ‘May I join you’, I bow and ask, propping my card against a glass.

  ‘And equal what’, she asks, ignoring the car
d.

  I shake my head and raise the left brow a tad.

  ‘If we become joint, what do we become?’ She says.

  I smile and sit, drawing my chair close to her, within darting distance of her toxic tongue. She dips my card in her drink and swills from it.

  ‘That tastes good’, she says, and pulls the card out and deigns to read it in the light of the dim lamp.

  ‘Arjun something- what may I do you for?’

  ‘I was impressed with what you have here’. I lie.

  ‘Ahem. I can see that; words smoother than butter and softer than oil, yet like drawn swords’, she says, seeing through me like knife through butter.

  ‘Can I buy you a round of drinks’, I ask.

  ‘It would be of little use to me here- drinks are on the house for me pal-occupational hazard. I could get you a drink- I see you have come to the table with empty hands’. She signals to the manager, who is lingering in the shadows and snaps a finger: ‘scotch for the rosy-cheeks here’.

  ‘Or would you rather care for milk’, she turns to me and asks, peering over the fingers curled around her shot.

  ‘I am here to offer our services madam’.

  ‘I am married you know, I said it back there- don’t tell me you weren’t listening.’

  ‘ I am not asking to marry you…’

  ‘Really? I am offended! Am I not desirable?’ she says, pinching her non-existent breasts and squirting a powerful jet of imaginary milk in my face.

  ‘I meant professional management services madam’, I say, imaginarily wiping my face. ‘I am already spoken for’.

  ‘What’s her name’?

  ‘Monal’, I blurt out; strangely that’s the first name that comes to the lips.

  She relaxes and smiles; ‘ and how were you planning to service me?’

  ‘We are the top celebrity management company in the country…’

  ‘You call me a celebrity but don’t want to marry me’?