Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan Read Free Book Online Page B

a drum set and gets his hair cut once a year. He is supposed to be highly intelligent and is studying to be an engineer, but to her he seems distinctly half-witted. Besides, the Sridhars are appallingly clannish. None but a pure Tamil-Brahmin girl will ever be good enough for their darling son. A romance between Satish and Eshwari can only end badly.
    ‘So how’re you gonna top Dabbu’s act, huh, Bihari? With basketball? India doesn’t even have a proper basketball team. You’ll have to run away to Bombay and join the movies.’
    ‘Excuse me, that’s a really sexist thing to say!’ Eshwari exclaims, pulling a face. ‘It implies that my options are purely bimboesque.’
    ‘Not true,’ he parries promptly. ‘You could become a director. A cinematographer. A producer. Don’t put your narrow little thoughts into my big broad mind.’
    ‘Jog in front of me and I’ll put my narrow little foot into your big broad behind,’ Eshwari invites him sweetly. ‘Stupid.’
    Satish chuckles and ducks nimbly out of the way of her swinging foot.
    ‘You just wanna lech at my butt,’ he says coyly. ‘Not that I get that. I mean, why this obsession with guys’ backsides? Shouldn’t you be interested in their, um, frontsides?’
    Eshwari turns on him. ‘I’m holding eggs ,’ she tells him, starting to open the brown paper packet threateningly.
    The ghost of Holis past makes Satish backtrack hastily.
    ‘Or you could top the school,’ he says. ‘To be better than Dabbu, I mean. Now that’s doable.’
    Eshwari, whose studies aren’t her strong point, glares at him. ‘I am not competing with my sister,’ she says coldly. ‘Hence, I do not need to consider any of these stupid options. Directing movies, topping school, etc etc.’
    ‘Stupid people always say hence and etcetera etcetera when they wanna come across smart,’ says the incorrigible Satish and vanishes into the driveway of Number 8 before Eshwari can think of anything to say. She glares, shrugs and picks up her pace – he was slowing her down anyway.
    But when she gets into the house, nobody seems hungry. Her parents are sitting at the kitchen table looking solemn, while Dabbu, still in her nightie, her hair scattered wildly about her, sits between them sobbing tragically.
    ‘What?’ Eshwari asks uneasily. ‘Did one of the laindi pie dogs get run over again?’
    Debjani holds out the paper, her hands trembling, her eyes huge and tear-filled. ‘It’s the India Post .’ She hiccups tragically. ‘Calling me Dolly. Saying I’m en-en- enthusiastic . And naïvely overwhelmed. Everybody must be laughing at me. DD’ll never call me back to read again! I’ve never been so hu-hu-humiliated in my life!’
    And with that she puts her head down on the table and sobs like her heart will break.

    ‘What ruddy histrionics,’ the Judge mutters as he stirs his evening tea. ‘I live in a house full of Meena Kumaris. It’s just one person’s rant in one miserable publication. Will somebody tell that girl she’s overreacting?’
    Mrs Mamta Thakur puts the teapot down with a sigh.
    ‘You know how shy she is, LN. She’s just started to step out of the shadow of her big sisters and bloom a little.’
    Mrs Mamta is much given to nature metaphors. She often refers to her girls as birds, who confusingly (but poetically) bloom . Anjini was an early bloomer, Binni was a late bloomer. Chandu, she hopes, though she has no news of her, is finally in full bloom. Even in her fervent tête-à-têtes with the Almighty, when she beseeches Him to let her girls reach their full potential, she asks Him to let them ‘bloom’. The Judge, though an avid gardener, doesn’t like the word. It feels too wishy-washy to him, too fragile and suggestive of flowers. He’d rather his girls grew into something more substantial and well-buttressed – like a row of sturdy sheesham trees, say.
    ‘That Anjini is to blame for everything,’ he says now, promptly going off on a tangent.