The Zoya Factor Read online

  THE

  ZOYA

  FACTOR

  ANUJA CHAUHAN

  ***

  For Niret, Niharika,

  Nayantara and Daivik John.

  You are my world.

  ***

  1

  'Zoya, chal, it's time to go.' Monita's husky voice had an edge to it. She sounded both totally wired and hugely relieved. I told her I'd be down in twenty minutes and jumped to my feet, smiling excitedly at my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe.

  The two of us had been chafing in the luxurious embrace of the Taj Mumbai for the last three days. We'd demolished tinfuls of salted cashews and trayfuls of fancy chocolate, sweated in the sauna, primped in the parlour, and watched television mindlessly. All with one eye on the massive bay windows, down which smooth sheets of snot-coloured water had been pouring for thirty-six hours straight.

  'It could be an award-winning ad for Coldarin or something,' Mon had said, gloomily surveying the rain that morning, lying on her tummy with her chin propped up in her hands. 'One of those intense, Cannes-Lion-winning type of ads, made on a million-dollar budget. God has a thunderous phlegmy cough and a rainy runny nose. The mortals, drowning in celestial snot, spray the skies with Coldarin mist. The satanic streptococci flee, the Almighty recovers and a huge double rainbow forms in the sky and morphs into the Coldarin logo. Slow fade out.'

  I'd shot her a concerned look - it wouldn't do for my creative director to have a nervous breakdown bang at the beginning of the biggest cola ad-shoot of the year - and quickly handed her the Room Service menu for some light eating. 'It'll stop today, Mon,' I said soothingly, after she'd ordered two Prawns-Pepper-Salt platters and a Triple Hot-Choc-Fudge in a tearful voice. 'We'll shoot tonight. You'll see.'

  Sure enough, by seven in the evening the rain had reduced to a slow snivel and an apologetic-looking sun had put in a cameo appearance before drowning itself in the Arabian Sea, leaving behind a clear, star-studded sky.

  And now Monita had called.

  The Zing! Cola shoot was finally on!

  Humming happily to myself, I dived into the shower cubicle at seven forty-five, and emerged in a cloud of steam at five past eight. Then I wiped the steamed-up mirror and examined my face critically.

  People are always saying so cute! when they see me and grabbing my cheeks and squeezing them with gusto, which is okay when you're a moppet in red corduroy dungarees but not so good when you are a working woman armed with a degree from a lesser business school, frantic to project a mature image in your job as a mid-level client-servicing executive in India's largest ad agency and twenty-seven years old to boot. By that age, people should be more interested in squeezing your butt, right?

  Wrong.

  'I don't know what it is, Zoya,' Sanks, my boss, (a forty-three-year-old, hardened adman, not some cheeky, empty-nester auntieji, okay) once told me, 'but just looking at your cheeks makes my thumb and index finger sort of spasm - I want to squeeze 'em and squeeze 'em and squeeze 'em till they pop.' He got a manic gleam in his protuberent eyes when he said this and I backed away from him hurriedly, thinking, Okay, here's conclusive proof that the CAT and IIT JEE exam formats totally suck.

  Oh well, at least I'm not hideously deformed in any other way. I mean, my skin's okay, and my hair's actually quite nice - it's dark and shiny and cascades halfway down my back in a mass of bouncy ringlets. I never tie it up.

  Now I shook it out and yanked open my duffel bag.

  It wouldn't do to be late.

  The call time for the shoot was nine p.m. and it was only a short drive from where I was to the location, Ballard Estate. We'd cordoned off the whole ilaka and got police permission and protection for the entire week. We needed both because we were blocking busy roads and because we were shooting with one of the biggest stars in the country. Which brought me back to the all-important question of what cool outfit I was going to wear.

  I obsess a little about being 'cool', because, hello, when people ask me where I stay I have to look them in the eye, smile brightly and say 'Karol Bagh' with casual unconcern. Which is agony in advertising because when all the snooty ad-people think Karol-Bagh-type, they imagine a pushy wannnabe in a chamkeela salwar-kameez with everything matching-matching. Someone who says 'anyways' instead of anyway, 'grands' instead of grand and 'butts' instead of butt. (As in: She has no butts, earns twenty grands a month and lives in Karol Bagh. Who does she think she is, anyways?)

  Of course they don't know anything. They have no clue that the fancy south Delhi movie halls where they all throng to see the latest Hollywood films are owned by an enterprising Karol Bagh boy who lives down my road, still, even though he now owns houses all over Delhi, including one in Golf Links, the poshest quarter in the capital.

  Because Karol Bagh has Soul.

  It may be a loud, expansive, dhik-chik dhik-chik music-loving soul that died and became a soul because its arteries were clogged with too much high-cholesterol, ghee-laden Punjabi food, but it's a soul nonetheless.

  Think lousy old Golf Links has Soul?

  Naah.

  I finally settled on loose khaki cargos and a skinny black ganji. Then I fluffed out my hair, yanked on my red sneakers, grabbed my matching-matching red rucksack (fully uncool I know, but what to do - control nahi hota) and slammed out of the room, hugely excited.

  Monita was waiting for me in the lobby, grinning happily, tall, helmet-haired, strong-featured (her cheekbones are fully out there) and strong-minded too. She's nursed me through not one but two major heartbreaks that I don't like to talk about. She wears fusionish clothes and writes some pretty zany scripts. She's very cranky nowadays though, being fully nicotine-deprived. Her younger son (twenty-six months old) is refusing to relinquish his rights to her Goddess-like breasts. 'I swear, Zoya,' she'd said on the flight in from Delhi, 'seven whole days away from him, this time I'm going to pull the plug for good.'

  Anyway, she said I looked nice and made some cheapie remark about how I'd duded up to meet movie stars. I beamed like a besharam and shamelessly admitted that I had as we stepped out jauntily into the dripping world, hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to Ballard Pier.

  'Wahan barrier laga hai, shooting chaalu hai,' he said dourly and I got major thrills out of replying, 'Pata hai, it's our shooting only!'

  Monita rolled her eyes at me, but I just giggled. Hey, she'd shot a million films but this was my first! I was allowed to chirp a little.

  We wove our way through the crowd, holding our official CREW tags before us like talismans. The 'sikorty' was very tight, guards were everywhere, prodding a million curious people to stay behind the cordons. Finally, we reached the crossroads, the location for the night, and Monita waved to the director, PPK - fifty-ish, with a bushy beard, hat and ponytail - who signalled to the guards to let us through. 'Hi girls,' he said grinning, 'What do you think?'

  I looked around, totally awestruck. The chowraha was at the centre of four massive roads, black, gleaming and (rare for Bombay) pothole free, because the crew had doused them all with water from huge pipes as far as the eye could see. Noble colonial buildings loomed behind huge lattice-leaved neem trees, their pillared corridors and Gothic balconies shining white in the moonlight. Bang in the middle of the crossroads was an old fountain and a statue of a crouching gargoyle that the art department had mocked up to exactly match the architecture of the period.

  'Gotham City,' grinned PPK. 'Just as I promised!'

  'How come I've never seen this place before?' Monita asked as he led us to a semicircle of blue plastic chairs placed next to an open garbage dump. I wrinkled my nose at the stench but no one else seemed to care.

  'You have,' he said in answer to Mon's question. 'It's just that it's always choc-a-bloc with traf
fic so you've never noticed how pretty it is.'

  'Uh, why are we sitting here?' I indicated the trash heaps behind us.

  'So that, along with the garbage, we're not in the frame,' said PPK.

  'And what's this little TV thing?' I asked pointing to a set in front of us.

  'A video-assist,' PPK said sweetly. 'Exactly how long have you been in advertising?'

  'Two-and-a-half years,' I said defensively. 'But this is my first big film shoot.'

  'That, my dear, is obvious,' he said breathing heavily. 'Kenny, come and give young...uh...Zoya here a crash course in film-making while I discuss the storyboard with Monita.'

  An earnest looking boy in a red baseball cap hurried up and led me away even as Mon said, 'PPK, get off my bachcha's case. She's a good kid.' I wasn't too hassled, though. I've figured out that if you wander around looking smart and never ask any questions - stupid or otherwise - you don't learn much in life.

  Kenny walked me around the location. He introduced me to the cameraman, who lay flat on his stomach on the road, peering rather macho-ly down into a camera eyepiece like it was the barrel of a sub-machine gun. 'He's framing for the shot,' said Kenny. 'Anything he shoots there, PPK can see on the assist where you guys were sitting.' Next, he pointed to a guy sitting hunched over some equipment, with earphones on. 'There's a sound system too, it'll play the track so everybody can lip-sync the words. And these,' he stopped and indicated with his arm, 'are the make-up vans.'

  I looked up to see three big white vans the size of minibuses, lined up next to each other. A huge fourth van - a generator van, Kenny said - was parked alongside. Each van had a sheet of paper stuck to the door: DIRECTOR, AGENCY and a third that made my heart race a little faster.

  SRK.

  'Is he here yet?' I asked Kenny eagerly.

  He nodded. 'That's his car,' he said, reverentially eyeing the vehicle, but apart from noticing that it was silver-coloured and longish-looking I didn't give it much attention. I just don't get it with guys and cars.

  Then Mon was hurrying up to me. 'Zo, I'm going in to check out Shah Rukh's costume. Wanna come?'

  I nodded, giggling idiotically, and she looked at me in disgust. 'Do you know, Young Zoya,' she said, 'that Truly Spiritually Arrived People behave exactly the same way when they meet kings as they do when they meet beggars? They don't go all pink and sweaty-palmed and fuss with their hair and they definitely don't giggle.'

  'You mean to say your heart doesn't beat faster when you talk to Shah Rukh Khan, Mon?' I asked disbelievingly as I skipped along behind her.

  She gave me this really superior look. 'No,' she said baldly.

  'How about when you talk to Amitabh Bachchan?' I asked slyly.

  She went a little pink and snapped, 'Come along now,' and striding up to the door of the van marked SRK, turned the handle authoritatively and stepped in.

  There was no one there. 'He's in the other half,' Mon whispered.

  I nodded, stifling more nervous giggles, and looked around curiously. It looked a bit like an AC-first coupe, only bigger. There were flowery curtains in the windows, a folding bed along one wall with matching flowery bolsters, and a little folding table, on which were placed a thermosy-looking black and steel coffee mug and a pack of cigarettes. There was a music system built into one wall, and a TV too, but the major part of the 'room' was taken up by a dressing table. The mirror had all these yellow bulbs stuck along its frame. Our shirt options for the shoot, draped on hangers, hung from the clothes-hooks on the wall. Monita looked at each of them critically, debating which to pick. 'All these are crap,' she muttered. 'But this plain white one might do, don't you think, Zo?'

  I was muttering something idiotic in reply when the connecting door opened and SRK emerged, saying 'Heyyy!' to Monita. They hugged and then he smiled at me, quite sweetly, and said hi.

  It was pretty unreal. Shah Rukh Khan saying hi to me. And I behaved all grown up too, like I was on autopilot, or something. I shook his hand, smiled into his baby-browns and sat down again. Like I met superstars every day of my life. Monita and he made some small talk about his recent movies (she vowed she loved 'em all) and the Knight Riders' performance at the last IPL. Then they discussed what he should wear for tonight's shoot while he smoked a cigarette and sipped his coffee. Monita looked wistful when he lit up, and sidled a little closer to him, but all she said was, 'Why don't you try on these three shirts and we'll pick one.' He nodded, and reached down to pull off the navy-blue sweatshirt he had on - right there, outside the bathroom. Wowie! I thought, and perked up and paid attention.

  I had just got my first glimpse of the toasty brown midriff when my phone rang. Shah Rukh said, his shirt still only half off, 'The signal's better outside,' and I nodded maturely and exited the van.

  'This had better be good,' I snarled as I punched the answer key.

  'Um...Zoya, how are you? Hope there's no rain tonight?'

  It was Sanks. Now I know why Monita calls him old coitus interruptus. He was talking to me in this mild, nice way, which of course set all my alarm bells ringing. 'Nope,' I said cautiously, 'though we haven't really started yet. They're setting up for the truck shot.'

  Sanks made little clicking noises as I spoke, like he couldn't wait for me to finish. It's one of his most irritating little traits, right up there with his tendency to come in to work at eight a.m., and then go Good Afternoon, Good Afternoon smirkily from behind his bristly moustache when we stagger in at half past nine. The moment I finished, he said, still in that nicey-nice voice, 'Well, Zoya, I'm sorry but you'll have to come back to Delhi right now.'

  You're kidding, right?

  'It's the ICC Champion's Trophy in Dhaka and I need someone I can trust to go shoot the team. Ishaan's dad is in the ICU so it's going to have to be you.'

  The ICU! I knew Ishaan (my one and only flunkie) had trouble at home but I hadn't realized it was so bad.

  But the even worse news was that Zing! Co. had obviously gone and signed the cricketers again. I mean, when were these people ever going to learn? Wasn't the last World Cup - where our 'best batting line-up in the world on paper' had got out right at the very first stage itself - enough of a lesson for them? They'd sunk seriously obscene amounts of money into an intensely patriotic Zing! Together Now, India campaign, and then they'd had to scramble to take it off air before the irate public burnt down their trucks and hoardings and totalled their factories.

  All of us at the agency had had to scurry around, creating new ads for them to run on the World Cup slots they'd paid so much money for. Whole consignments of Zing! Together Now, India armbands, wristbands, bandannas and tee shirts had had to be pretty much thrown away. It wasn't safe to wear them any more. Really. You could get beaten up if you were foolhardy enough to wear one and walk the streets.

  The whole sorry circus had turned me into a cricket cynic for life.

  The cricket team had slunk back to India, under cover of darkness, police jeeps trailing behind their BMWs, protecting them from the wrath of the people. The IBCC called a council and there had been massive amounts of name-calling and buck-passing. And a little bit of soul-searching. With the result that about eighteen months later the 'greatest batsman in the world', the 'wall' and the 'comeback kid' had called it quits from ODI cricket. A new Australian coach was produced from somewhere and India had gone about building a whole new cricket team, pretty much from scratch.

  It was a team of rookies and wild card IPL discoveries, with a couple of leftovers from the old order. The board had rotated the captaincy till it had become a bit of a joke, but about six months ago, the Aussie coach had thrown a stink and the Board had finally plumped for one particular candidate. Since then, things had steadied a bit. Still, nobody was expecting the ill-assorted team to exactly cover itself with glory at the mini World Cup. Except, it seemed, eternally optimistic Zing! Co., who had gone and signed them on all over again!

  'They got them cheap, I suppose?' I said snidely.

  'Kind of.' Sank
s was evasive.

  I sighed. 'What's the tack we're taking this time?' I asked. 'Or is it too early to ask?'

  'Oh, it's a campaign celebrating the spirit of cricket,' he said glibly. 'The Joy of the Game, as it were. No narrow jingoistic side-taking. It's not about winning or losing but how you play the game.'

  That figured.

  'So when can you get on a plane, Zoya?' Sanks said again. 'We've been working on getting your visa done here.'

  'Sanks, can't it wait a couple of days? I've really been looking forward to this shoot,' I said feebly, thinking of Shirtless Shah Rukh in the make-up van.

  I had to hold the phone away from my ear. 'Have you any idea how difficult it is to get a window to shoot with these guys? One day later and they'll go into training camp. And if we disturb them then, the media will crucify us!'

  'But I don't know anything about cricket!' I wailed desperately. 'I don't even know who the captain is, for heaven's sake.'