The Bollywood Breakup Agency Read online

  ‘Not according to my parents,’ Neela said. ‘But you are just as desirable, when you make an effort.’

  Her friend snorted. ‘Hardly. I’ve never even been on a proper date.’

  ‘But have you even met this guy since you were kids? What does he even look like, exactly?’

  V described a man a few years older than them, with lumpy body and ill-fitting clothes. ‘He was born in London but moved to India with his parents when they found work in Mumbai. He now has his own company and is looking for a wife. From what I can tell from the photos he has thinning, 1980s-styled, curtained hair, which he obviously oils to promote growth but clearly never washes it out afterwards. Looks as if he has lived his entire life being taken care of by his mother, and is now looking for a wife to take over the duties.’

  ‘Sounds lovely,’ Neela said, sarcastically. ‘What are your parents thinking?’

  But V wasn’t finished with the bad news. ‘Plus, we have the same surname, so it is possible that somewhere down the line we are related. My parents say that we definitely aren’t, but that doesn’t stop me worrying about birth defects.’

  ‘Patels get married to each other all the time, doesn’t mean they are related.’

  ‘Well, any kids are still going to inherit his genes, aren’t they?’

  ‘You get that problem whenever you marry into your own caste,’ Neela said, raising neat eyebrows in the age old manner of stating the obvious. ‘When you marry into your own group, you may be related six, seven, eight generations down the line. It’s the reason I want a love marriage.’

  ‘Even if he was from Mars, the kids would be freaks.’

  Neela leaned forward and took the shisha pipe out of V’s hand. ‘You need to get yourself out of it, now. Before it goes too far.’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ V protested. ‘There haven’t been many offers, Neela. I told Mum to find me someone.’

  ‘But you can’t marry him.’ Neela couldn’t believe what she was hearing. V had never struck her as one who would settle.

  ‘Of course I don’t want to marry someone like him, but unless I can find a real reason to say no, I will be stuck with him for life. If I reject him, like you reject guys, my parents say it will be impossible to find another match. And I do want to have kids, be a mother.’

  ‘Me too. Eventually. But the majority of girls manage it without parental interference, don’t they?’

  V looked at her sadly. ‘But they don’t have our parents. I mean, you can’t introduce Kiran to yours, can you? Not with those police cautions.’

  ‘I don’t love him, so I don’t really care. But there’s got to be a way to get you out of this, without tarnishing your marriageable status.’

  Her friend didn’t appear to be listening. ‘And the best part is, his name is Girish.’

  ‘Girish? Is anyone called that anymore? I think my grandfather had a friend with that name. I remember, because he had six toes on one foot.’

  ‘His parents don’t realise it’s as old-fashioned as they are.’ V slumped onto the table. ‘Oh God, Neela what am I going to do?’

  ‘Isn’t this the same guy your parents have been threatening you with for years?’

  ‘Yep. They’ve had him in mind for a long time.’ Neela knew that V had always seen asking her parents for help as a last resort. However, now it wasn’t a case of finding the right person – V could not find any person. After years of being ignored in favour of more attractive women, V seemed to have just given up. Neela had to help her friend avoid a lifelong horror story, but how?

  Head in hands, V was groaning in mock pain. ‘I’ve got to do something, Neela. He’s even more horrible than I imagined, and believe me, I am not picky.’

  At Neela’s urging, V continued with ‘Girish, The Early Years’: ‘He was a friend of the family’s, but how much do you really know about a person?’ V argued. ‘Especially when he has been living in a different country for over twenty years? I found out that his parents had moved to England because it was decided a long time ago that he and I would be married.’

  ‘Horrific.’

  ‘A set up. From birth,’ V said, sadly.

  ‘And what about him, does he want this marriage?’

  ‘Who knows? From what I gather, he doesn’t seem reluctant. Then again, he isn’t exactly a Bollywood prince, is he? Any woman is preferable to none.’

  Neela’s thoughts hopped to the smoky leads of the soap operas her mum watched. ‘No, he’s not!’ Thinking of PAL and its ridiculous plot gave her an idea. ‘What we need to do is find out exactly what, or who, could tempt him away from you.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t say no. My parents will disown me. My mother will throw herself into the Thames.’

  ‘No, listen. You need to make him say no to you. Or, better still, make him look like the bad guy so that your parents call off the engagement.’

  For the first time that evening, V’s pretty face appeared animated. ‘How can I do that?’

  Neela raised an eyebrow deviously. Obviously V hadn’t been overindulging in rubbish TV, like Neela had.

  ‘Plenty of ways. You find out his faults, and capitalise on them.’

  Poor V. Despite her relative success in business, she looked confused at the suggestion.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Set him up with some busty girl? Show him to be a gambler. Anything that Indian parents hate. Just think of what will horrify your parents the most.’

  ‘The only thing I can think of that will do that is me refusing to marry Girish. Oh God, every time I say that name I feel sick,’ V moaned, holding her stomach.

  ‘I’ll help you, don’t panic.’ Neela wished V would realise just how special she was – it was totally unnecessary for her to hook up with a loser. After all, there were plenty of guys in London who would appreciate her rather abrupt nature, womanly curves and love of museums, wasn’t there? Said men might not win the approval of her parents, but so what?

  ‘I can’t do it,’ V insisted.

  ‘Yes you can. It’s not that hard.‘

  ‘I will pay you money to get rid of him,’ V said quickly.

  ‘Yeah, right,‘ Neela laughed.

  ‘Come on, Neela, think about it. You’re good at these sorts of things.’

  ‘Breaking people up? Since when?’

  ‘Saying no to family, standing up for yourself.’ V’s huge brown eyes pleaded with her. ‘You’re the person I need to free me from this match with Girish. Who else would have the guts to do it?’

  Neela couldn’t argue with that. If V would let her, she’d tell Girish to bugger off back to India in front of every single Patel in the city. ‘Of course I’ll help, I can’t take your money. I’ll do it for free.’

  Her friend shook her head. ‘I want a professional approach. I don’t like owing people, you know that. Besides, I have no idea how to get rid of him, and you do. That’s got to be worth something.’

  Neela stared at V, shaking her head slowly.

  ‘Look we’re both in need here – ‘You need money, and I need Girish–’ V almost spat out the words, ‘Gone. It’s perfect. And you never know, it might be the start of a new business venture for you.’

  Laughing out loud at the crazy suggestion, Neela thought the idea of earning money from the very thing that had her practically evicted from her own home was pretty ironic. Honestly, Vidya was now officially nuts. Imagine Neela as the official breakup girl. Send me your gross, disgusting fiancés. I guarantee they will be gone in a week! Perfect for a business card!

  But V wouldn’t give up. ‘Come on, start with me and Girish. And think about the business idea – there are loads of people I know who could use your services.’ V’s nose was that deep red colour, the colour it went when she was exhausted or excited. She was serious.

  Giving way to the lunacy, Neela asked: ‘Well, how much should I charge?’

  ‘I have just over two grand in my instant access bank account, and would be willing to give up £
500 of it in order to get rid of one Mr Girish Patel.’

  ‘No way.’ Neela shook her head. ‘It’s too much money to take from a friend.’

  ‘Well, it might take weeks. We charge double that to do a small company’s corporation tax – and I get that done in a few hours. Of course, if you get rid of Girish in under an hour then that is the easiest money you’ve ever earned.’

  Good point. Neela wasn’t really into hard work these days. Well, hard work and Neela had never been perfect bedfellows, if truth were told. This could be the ideal business for her. And she had exactly zilch cash on hand, and unlike V, Neela’s savings had gone into shoes and dresses.

  ‘Look at it this way. It is actually a bargain if it means I will never ever have to share a house and a bed with that man.’

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Neela said, finally, still not sure about taking V’s money. ‘But you do know, the simpler thing is to tell your parents no. I do it all the time.’

  V reminded her that as a result of her saying ‘no’, Neela was without money, therefore without transport, and couldn’t go anywhere for the foreseeable future unless she got a job, which in this economy was extremely unlikely.

  ‘Alright, alright, I see your point.’

  ‘You’ll do it?’

  ‘Let me think about it,’ Neela repeated.

  C hapter Four

  THE NEXT DAY, NEELA LAY in bed at 11 a.m., thinking about V’s offer. If she could manage to get started in some sort of business, it might be possible to put off eviction and marriage for quite a while. As long as she was paying her own way, Rishi wouldn’t boot her out into the street, would he?

  But how to get rid of a putrid husband-to-be? It was one thing to make suggestions to her friend on a night out. It was quite another to de-arrange a marriage in the cold light of a Thursday morning.

  Still, V needed help. She was a good person, but was overly-honest and many people mistook that for rudeness. Boys of their generation liked their girls to be bubbly and fun. Neela had both attributes in bucket loads, while V, on the other hand...

  Lots of girls hated the idea of arranged marriage and told their parents to leave off when it came to men. But this was a delicate situation because V had actually asked her parents for help. How could she know she would be hooked up to a childhood nightmare? On the one hand, V could say no and look like a bad person to the extended family and community and ruin any chance she had of finding a partner among its thousands of members; or she could make Girish look like a bad person, thereby making V the victim. Or better still: make the parents so mad at Girish that they would be the ones to call off the marriage.

  It wasn’t hard to believe that V hadn’t managed to find a man, though. Neela thought back to when they had first met, during one of the events at freshers’ week at university. V looked really uncomfortable while a tall, over-enthusiastic, over-gymmed, Brit-Asian cliché had tried to move in on her ‘just for a chat’. V had shielded herself with her arms and tried to look away, even as he insisted on talking to her. Poor guy could not take a hint, even when V’s entire body was facing away from him in the hope that he would leave her alone. Eyeing up the situation, Neela had marched over, telling the boy to ‘take off’. V had breathed her thanks, but, unfortunately, that was the last time a guy had ever tried to chat V up.

  Despite the fact that Vidya was hardly shy when it came to giving her opinion, she was also a girl who felt uncomfortable around guys. Even back at uni, V’s fashion-sense was more ‘accountant in a wind-tunnel’ than ‘single fresher’.

  Way back then, Neela was immediately struck by V’s blunt turn of phrase – ‘That girl needs some Spanx!’; ‘That one needs a nose job before she chases a guy like that!’; ‘That professor smells a lot like Aunty’s cauliflower curry!’

  And V, in turn, was no doubt attracted to Neela’s fairly outrageous behaviour when it came to men – making them weep was a particular speciality back then. The memories made Neela determined. Business or not, Neela vowed it was time to protect her from unwanted male attention once again.

  She sat up and made her decision. Girish Patel was going down. Taking up a pretty Paperchase pad with adorned with diamonte butterflies, Neela began making notes on how to go about evicting the man from her best friend’s life, when she was interrupted by the buzzing of her BlackBerry.

  Kiran.

  Sorry about before but please think about the parent thing. Love K xx

  So he threatens her and now he grovels, what the hell is wrong with him? Why couldn’t he understand? Well, if he did make good his threat to tell her parents he would understand soon enough, with the aid of Rishi’s boot on his backside. She threw the phone back on to the bed. This was just getting annoying now. Honestly, were there no normal guys left out there?

  Giving up on her notes – she was sure something brilliant would come to her soon enough, Neela brushed her teeth while she waited for the shower to perform properly (her dad had decided they only needed one combi-boiler for three en-suites). She tried to put a stop to the thoughts that were swamping her brain. It seemed as if everyone wanted her to do something. Her parents wanted her to get married; her boyfriend wanted her to think about getting married; and V wanted her to stop her own marriage.

  Right now, V was the only person she could be bothered with, so in Neela’s mind, she was the priority. Especially when the priority was willing to pay a sweet £500 to get rid of the revolting-sounding Girish.

  Finally the shower released a decent spray and Neela used the last of her pricey salon shampoo and conditioner. Why hadn’t she stocked up last week, instead of telling her hairdresser she’d do it next time? That’s right, Kiran honking the horn of his Polo, that’s why. He had been parked in a loading zone and Neela barely had time to pay for her monthly cut and condition.

  Which reminded her, now, thanks to V’s business idea, she could afford to pay her stylist. At least until the money ran out. She decided to call V after work to discuss the financial arrangements.

  Ready for the day in a cute Mango dress and jeans combo she’d bought on Rishi’s credit card a month ago and still hadn’t worn, Neela went downstairs to find her mother watching PAL.

  Lohit was staring at his bride, the lookalike Payal. His voice-over narration said he could feel something in his heart, the same feeling as when he had first seen her again, after a whole year thinking that she had died when she was actually just narrowly escaped being trapped underneath a freak avalanche. This time the feeling was stronger because they were about to get married, but there was doubt too, because under certain lights, there was something different about her. Something Lohit couldn’t put his finger on.

  The priest began chanting prayers, instructing them to pour spoons of ghee into the wedding fire.

  The camera panned to the real Payal in the crowd, in tears, because her true love Lohit was over halfway through the wedding ceremony and hadn’t yet realised that he was about to marry an impostor.

  Then the view cut to the impostor, who was about to take everything from the real Payal. She turned and looked the girl and her sari-covered eye.

  ‘Beti,’ Soorbhi said, testing the curry she was making without taking her eyes off the screen, ‘what are you doing today?’

  So, they were talking to her again. Neela was suspicious, because cooking in the morning only meant one thing – visitors. ‘Why, have you got some new losers to parade past me?’

  That caused her mother to suck in her breath, exasperated. ‘You are impossible. More difficult that the people on these soaps. They have proper things to worry about. You, you worry about how straight your hair is.’

  As true as that was (Neela hated her naturally curly hair to frizz up), she simply shrugged and grabbed a banana. Proper things? Yeah right. Like whether your lookalike would be exposed as a fiendish scammer before it was too late.

  ‘You’re too thin,’ Daadi-ji called from the sofa in the corner, ‘not like that friend of yours. She has a stom
ach like an idli. Yet still, she finds a man.’

  ‘She does not.’ Neela defended V from Daadi-ji’s jibe of a ‘rice cake’ like appearance, although she knew the family all loved V. Why wouldn’t they? She was doing the right thing, marrying a foul freak to please the community.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, Neela spied her credit cards, which Rishi had stupidly left on the sideboard, below a dazzling array of useless gold trinket boxes. Walking over to them, she made sure her mother was glued to the TV, and then slipped the Amex into her pocket. A bit of retail therapy was just what she deserved, especially after the shock of Rishi’s decree. Plus, if he hadn’t cancelled the card, she could stock up on hair stuff and anything else she needed before he got around to it. He’d never check when she’d actually bought the items, would he? The thorough investigation was saved for his clients.

  Relieved that she had something to do, Neela snuck out the front door to the strains of PAL’s theme music. It sounded like a singing cat being strangled.

  Jumping into her cute red Mini, the first thing she did was hit the local service station, and filled her car to the brim. Enough petrol for at least a week. Pity she didn’t have a car with a bigger tank. Holding her breath as the attendant swiped the card, she exhaled gratefully when he handed her the slip to sign. So the card definitely hadn’t been cancelled. Thirty minutes later, she was heading for the Selfridges car park. Might as well make the best of a good situation.

  Finally on foot, Neela strolled up to the main shopping strip. She loved to walk up and down Oxford Street; everyone ignores you because they are always in a rush. Not like Harrow, where everyone knows who you are and wants to talk, or more accurately, to ask whether you were interested in one of their children, nieces, nephews or grandchildren.

  Breathing in the dirty Central London air, Neela forced herself to stop thinking about arranged marriages. Sure, she should be thinking of how to extricate V from the grimy hands of Girish, but nothing gave you the brain space to think like buying new clothes, did it? New clothes generated new ideas.