The Zoya Factor by Anuja Chauhan Read Free Book Online Page A

him that it was a habit that betrayed extreme sexual frustration. (He didn't put it quite so elegantly, though; his actual words had been, 'It reveals you're tharki, Solanki.')
    'So...how long have you been a custard?' I finally heard myself say.
    'Hain?' He looked at me in surprise.
    God, what was wrong with me? 'I meant a -' I cut myself off abruptly. I had been about to say 'cut-surd' but then I thought maybe it wasn't a politically correct question. 'Damn these machchars,' I said quickly, slapping at the mosquitoes on my bare arms. 'Are they biting you too?'
    'No,' he said, brightening up. 'But, pata hai, I know this really cool joke about machchars. There was this one machchar, okay, and he got married to a makkhi, okay? On his wedding night all his buddies pushed him into the wedding suite for his suhaag raat but he kept coming out into the corridor instead. They sent him back in again, but again he came out. Again they sent him in, again he came out. So then they asked him ki why do you keep coming out of the room? And he said, "What to do, the makkhi has put Odomos and slept!"'
    Oh my God, how old was this guy? He was looking at me, expecting me to crack up. So I did. He nodded at me happily and then - with rather obvious cunning - draped one arm over the back of the bench. 'You know, Zeeta,' he said, one leg twitching madly, 'there's a very nice nightclub at the Sheraton, do you want to go check it out tonight?
    'No, thanks,' I managed, 'and it's Zoya. I have a lot of work to do. But if you're so free' - I tried some obvious cunning myself - 'why don't you just shoot my three shots tonight?'
    His handsome face clouded over. 'Nikhil-sir won't let us-'
    I didn't let him finish. I could see Sankar Menon's big bulging eyes before me, telling me to go for the jugular or he'd dock huge chunks off my measly salary. 'Hairy,' I said, sidling closer, 'isn't there any way we could shoot those shots we missed today? They are very important. I can't manage without them. Because you and Shivnath are the...uh... biggest stars in the team.'
    'Really?' he asked eagerly. 'And how do you measure that, Zoya?'
    'We do research,' I told him smoothly, lying through my teeth. 'Among teenage boys and young men. Across five metros, twelve mini-metros, and thirty small towns. They rate celebrities on a scale of one to ten. You are nine, Shiv is eight, and Shah Rukh Khan is seven.'
    'What about Nikhil-sir?'
    'We didn't bother to research him,' I said dismissively. 'We only did big stars.'
    'Oh?' he said softly, like a man in a happy dream. Then something struck him. 'But why have the boys rated me so highly?' he asked worriedly. 'They don't think I'm a chhakka, you know, a homo or something?'
    'No-no!' I assured him, 'they rated you nine on the... uh...I-wish-I-was-him-o-meter.'
    'Wowji!' said Hairy happily. Then he turned to me and said, 'Why don't you speak to Lokendar, Zoya? He'll work out something for your bacha-kucha, leftover shots.'
    It was a 'beautiful-day-at-the-Shere-e-Bangla-Stadium-in-Dhaka' as the sportscasters say, but there was nothing sportsmanlike about what I was trying to do. Basically, I snuck around the nets trying to get Lokendar Chugh to catch my eye so I could spirit the openers away for a quick photo-shoot. Of course, it was totally unethical and unpatriotic and nobody in Delhi knew what I was trying to pull. But it's not like I had a choice here. I'd dreamt they were lobbing massive sums from my cost-to-company, all of last night.
    Lokey was nowhere in sight. His portly form and many flashing rings would've been easy to spot in this drab landscape; so I guessed he was inside somewhere. I looked on the ground for a telltale pistashell trail but I didn't spot anything. The boys waved to me once or twice, and I waved back sunnily, but the man I needed to see was Chugh. After many tries - mobile signals sucked out there - I got through on Lokey's cellphone number. His phone played Ek baar aajaa aajaa aajaa aajaa aa-aaja