The Bollywood Breakup Agency Read online

  Thinking quickly, she came up with a solution. She’d tell her mother she’d accidentally added too many spices to one particular dish, and there wasn’t enough of the other food to go around. Her mother would insist on eating that one, leaving the affected food for Girish and his family.

  Carefully stirring the various saucepans of rich curries, V looked about to make sure no one was watching, then quickly tipped the powder into three of the four dishes.

  V was finishing off the chapattis when the doorbell chimed, and her mother raced into the kitchen, clapping newly painted hands to a carefully made-up face at the state of her. ‘Do something about your shiny nose, and put on that purple tunic with black trousers. It suits you.’

  Through the glass in the kitchen door V could see Girish. He was wearing grey trousers and a bright pink shirt. Pink! Spinning around to shake hands with her father, a nicely developing bald spot was revealed.

  Bald too. Great.

  Dragging herself upstairs and throwing on the required clothing, V appeared in the front room to a loud cheer of happiness.

  ‘Here she is!’

  ‘How nice to see you, darling.’

  ‘Um, er, hello.’

  The Patels appeared to be quite excited about the arrangement. Given the state of their son, V wasn’t surprised. ‘Vidya will make an excellent daughter-in-law,’ Mrs Patel declared cheerfully, chucking V’s cheek as if she were two years old. ‘So polite, so respectful, so quiet, she is well educated, and she can cook too. And I am sure she will look pretty enough in her wedding outfit.’

  Clearly, the woman thought V didn’t look pretty enough now. V couldn’t believe she was expected to live with this lot.

  ‘Yes, indeed.’ The parents all looked very pleased with V, and themselves.

  What was left unsaid, of course, was that V had no relationship history. Therefore, there was no baggage to feed the community gossip mill. It was the one thing V had over Neela and other good-looking girls like her.

  ‘Perhaps we should sit for dinner?’ V said, forcing herself to keep smiling, and offering the table to their guests. The sooner the plan was implemented, the sooner the Patels would depart.

  As they ate, V avoided her plate and offered the Patels the affected food, careful to ensure that both they and her parents stuck to the correct dishes.

  To her relief, the potato and cauliflower curry, in which the majority of the constipation cure had gone into, was a clear favourite of Mr Patel and Girish, so much so that the rest of the table barely had a chance to sample it before it was gone.

  ‘Delicious, I cannot wait for her to cook for us every night,’ Mr Patel said.

  V pulled it away. ‘I work, actually, so I get home quite late.’

  There was a flash of worry in the face of Mrs Patel, but it was quickly replaced with the ubiquitous semi-smile of the un-amused. ‘Not when the children come. You’ll be home full-time soon enough. You want to be a good mother, after all.’

  ‘You won’t need to work, I make plenty,’ Girish informed her through a mouthful of curry. ‘Enough to buy you anything you want.’

  ‘Lovely, isn’t that lovely, V?’ V’s mother said.

  ‘Extremely.’ V tried to concentrate on making it look as though she was eating. The thought of being stuck in some box of a house in Stanmore with the Patels put paid to any thoughts V had of keeping any food down anyway, even though she knew what could be consumed safely.

  Mrs Patel noticed her expression: ‘Are you alright? She’s not a sickly type, is she?’

  ‘I’m fine, Aunty.’ It was the only suitable answer.

  ‘She’s just a little nervous about getting married,’ Vidya’s mum responded on her behalf.

  ‘There is no need to worry about all that,’ Girish’s mum replied, with curry and rice still in her mouth. She swallowed her food and continued, ‘You will fit right in with this family. We have tried your food, you know how to cook and you are well behaved. We are happy.’

  Woopee. ‘Thanks,’ V said meekly.

  Suddenly, Mr Patel groaned, and held his stomach.

  ‘Everything alright?’ V’s mum asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Patel said. ‘This curry is lovely,’ she continued, complimenting the dish again. ‘Girish’s father hasn’t been feeling well, weak bowels.’

  V suddenly perked up. Excellent news. ‘Thank you,’ she said again, this time with more feeling. Looking over to Girish, she asked if he was enjoying his food too. So far, there wasn’t any sign that the powder had worked its magic on him.

  ‘Such a good girl she is, making sure her husband is eating properly,’ his mum said, viper-like eyes still not betraying any fondness.

  Vidya could only mentally roll her eyes and keep her lips facing upwards. Ten minutes later and Girish was still cheerfully shovelling food into his mouth. Why wasn’t it working? There was a really potent laxative in the food. Was he immune to it? No one can consume that much drug-laced food and not get sick.

  Suddenly, Girish did break wind. Loudly.

  Here it comes. V held her breath, both in anticipation and from the smell, but everyone else pretended not to hear anything. Then, her husband-to-be held onto his stomach, just like his father was still doing.

  ‘Girish, we are in company,’ his mother said.

  V’s own parents looked down at their plates, slightly horrified.

  Waiting for the race to the toilet, V was disappointed when both Girish and Mr Patel seemed to recover enough to decamp to the other section of the room, where the sofas were, along with the other guests. Why? Why wasn’t it working?

  ‘We need to talk about this wedding,’ her mother said. ‘First of all, we need to do a pre-engagement ceremony, to show everyone these two lovebirds are seriously interested in getting married.’

  As they spoke of the ceremony, V herself began to feel properly ill. Everything became a blur, and all the talking just became a static white noise. She could hear the voices, but couldn’t listen.

  Why the hell wasn’t the powder working? Staring at the floor, she hoped for a freak earthquake, or anything to break the tension of waiting and praying for the laxative to take hold.

  But the conversation continued into the next hour, and just when V was about to pass out from boredom and horror, a loud squirming on the plastic cover of the sofa could be heard.

  Looking up with anticipation, V saw Mr Patel looking very, very uncomfortable. Finally.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Mrs Patel asked him, annoyed that she had to stop talking to deal with him.

  ‘Where. Is. The. Toilet?’ her husband managed to spit out, before he began a crazy run towards the hall, in a vain attempt to get to a bathroom before his bowels disgraced him.

  V’s dad pointed to the stairs, and as Mr Patel disappeared, his wife thought it was a good idea to break the silence by explaining in detail about her husband’s sensitive bowels.

  Suddenly, Mrs Patel herself stood up, holding her stomach, her mouth in a silent ‘o’. The rake thin woman raced up the stairs.

  V’s parents looked at her in distress. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The food. It must have been the food.’

  Suddenly, a voice from the other side of the room saved her. Girish! ‘I’m perfectly fine. Those two are always rushing to the toilet. They eat too much junk at home. Not used to good cooking, like Vidya made.’

  V supposed she should have been grateful to him, but all she could think was why isn’t Girish running for the toilet, why isn’t he squirming? Is his stomach made from iron or something? Besides, it didn’t do for him to defend her. The plan was that the Patels insulted her cooking, and V’s parents broke off the match.

  An excruciating half hour later and the Patels returned, looking sheepish. Girish’s mum was sweating and his father had turned pale.

  Astonishingly, they too didn’t connect the illness with the food.

  ‘I think that we had better go, he is not feel
ing well and I think that I am becoming bimaar as well.’

  ‘They always do this,’ Girish added, unhelpfully.

  ‘Oh, I do hope it wasn’t the food,’ V said quietly, fully hoping it was.

  But Mrs Patel shooed away the notion. ‘No, no, the food was lovely, we get like this sometimes. Don’t worry about it, it wasn’t your fault.’

  Relieved that their daughter wasn’t being blamed for poisoning her future in-laws, V’s parents happily bid the Patels good night, with promises to call up and discuss the pre-engagement ceremony in more detail later in the week.

  As V watched the group shuffle towards their X-reg Nissan, she tried not to think about what living with them might do to her. Obviously, that sort of behaviour was normal. Running to the loo in another’s home. How could she associate herself with that sort of thing? It was disgusting.

  And Girish? He had a cast-iron stomach. Which meant that as the years wore on, it would probably expand to such an extent that V would be tied to a stove half the day, just to feed him.

  After helping her mother clean up, and having to listen to at least forty-seven suggestions for her wedding outfit, V escaped to her room.

  Lying on her bed, she sent a single, short text message to Neela. It was time for her friend to really start earning her money. This wasn’t going to be a quick fix.

  It didn’t work. I’m doomed.

  Chapter Eight

  DRAGGING HERSELF OUT OF BED at the hideously early hour of 6:30 a.m., Neela got ready and was picked up by V a little after seven. They had an hour and a half before V was due at work, plenty of time to commiserate over the tragedy of the night before. She brought some caffeine and a muffin to help wake her up as they chatted in the car.

  ‘I honestly can’t believe it.’

  V shook her head, stirring her cappuccino fitfully. ‘I am marrying into a family that clearly thinks racing off to the toilet after a meal and shitting themselves is perfectly normal. What the hell am I going to do?’

  V’s words were cringing. Neela was used to her blunt turn of phrase, but still, sometimes, her friend was too explicit. ‘Well, to be fair, it wasn’t Girish. That’s good news.’

  ‘Only if I plan to marry him, which I don’t.’

  Neela was still amazed her drug-in-food scandal hadn’t worked. ‘You’re sure you put enough in?’

  ‘The whole packet, and Girish ate enough to feed half of India.’

  ‘Interesting.’ Neela bit thoughtfully into her muffin.

  ‘No, not interesting. Horrifying and terrifying. Now, what’s your next plan?’ V was glaring at Neela.

  ‘Calm down, you’ll get your money’s worth. I’ll come up with something even better.’

  ‘You’d better. And next time, make sure it has nothing to do with food poisoning, because the smell of those Patels will be in our bathroom until the year 2015.’

  Neela went back home, arriving at 9:00 a.m. on the dot, just in time to witness the latest nonsense on PAL.

  Lohit and the lookalike bride returned to their marital home. It was a magnificent building that appeared to be made entirely out of marble. His family were the founders of the Ramchand Business Group, one of the top businesses in the state, so they could afford a luxurious home. It looked like a palace and had been decorated entirely with lights and flowers for the occasion.

  They waited by the door while Lohit’s mother carried out a small greeting ceremony in the doorway, then the married couple entered to begin their lives together. Payal dipped her feet in red liquid and walked in, making red footprints on the floor.

  Everyone was smiling crazily. Everyone except for Ishika and the evil cousin Navin, that was. Those two were glancing at each other pointedly. They were clearly thinking about the plan to poison the matriarch and send her mad. But everyone else was too busy congratulating the newlyweds to notice the calculating faces of Navin and his wife.

  ‘That Navin is really hot,’ Neela said to herself, then looked over to Soorbhi, who once again seemed to be in a PAL trance, eyes locked to the screen.

  Her mother was still in no mood to be nice to her daughter, and snapped her head around to remind her that it was the engagement of her cousin Nikhil that day.

  ‘How could I forget?’ Neela’s weekend was mapped out, beginning with a morning spent in the small conference hall of a nearby hotel, watching the family carry out a religious ceremony in front of their nearest and dearest. And somewhere in amongst all the festivities, Neela needed to think up a new plan for V.

  ‘Then get dressed. And look good. Who knows, there might be a boy there you haven’t yet rejected.’

  ‘Well if there is, I am sure you’ll have him round to the house before the day is out,’ Neela replied, walking out of the kitchen and straight into Daadi-ji, who was already dressed for the big day.

  ‘What is wrong now?’ her grandmother asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Neela told her, continuing her journey upstairs.

  ‘Make sure you look nice today, we might be able to find you a husband,’ Daadi-ji called after her. ‘There might be someone from India you haven’t rejected yet.’

  Neela resisted the urge to scream.

  Later, Neela walked through the doors with her parents and grandmother to see Yogeeta masi and Indra masa standing next to Seema’s parents. Seema and Nikhil were elsewhere, getting ready.

  A family wedding was usually a much anticipated event, but Neela couldn’t get into the spirit of the thing. Nikhil’s words about Neela letting him down played on her, and V being none too pleased about the total failure of the drug-in-food idea was worrying her, too. It was difficult not to feel guilty about V; especially as Neela had been stupidly convinced her plan would succeed. Even if the idea, in retrospect, wasn’t the most brilliant, it should have made some impact. According to V, the only impact was on the air quality of her living room.

  Watching as Daadi-ji over-enthusiastically greeted her elderly friends, and, as usual, pointed out her beautiful granddaughter, Neela threw the old biddies a shy smile before turning away. Pretty soon, it wouldn’t matter how good she looked. If she reached 30 and remained unwed, her family would probably want to lock her in a closet rather than bring her to these events and suffer the embarrassment of supporting an aging spinster. They could always spin it and say she chose not to get married to look after her parents, but after all the rejections she dished out, who would believe that?

  Sitting on one of hundreds of chairs dotted about the room, Neela put her head in her hands. De-arranging arrangements might not be as simple as she thought. But she needed to keep going – she’d mentally (and actually) spent a good deal of V’s down payment.

  Someone put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Boy troubles?’

  Looking up, Neela saw her cousin Hira, resplendent in a modern olive Lengha outfit, made up of a long skirt, a halter-neck top, and a long piece of material that draped over her arms. It accentuated her many curves.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Sitting down next to her, Hira threw over a questioning look. If anyone knew about boy troubles it was her older cousin Hira, daughter of one of Soorbhi’s cousins. Popular in secondary school and throughout college and university, she’d had plenty of boyfriends. When it was time for her to settle down, she refused to have an arranged marriage, and like Neela, would not pick someone to settle down with. To the distress of her immediate family, Hira had relationship after relationship, and had even been engaged twice.

  Many of the aunties in the room were looking at her with distain, even though there was a new boyfriend with a brand new BMW, and the loud pronouncement from Hira’s mother that this time, Hira had found ‘the one’ and everyone could be expecting to find their engagement invitations in the post very soon.

  Unfortunately, not a single aunty batted an eyelid, although many did tut, shake their heads and gossip whenever Hira and her parents’ backs were turned. Hira made up for the shame on her family by becoming an even bigger gossip than
the aunties. Any news, confirmed or otherwise, would be broadcast as fast as Hira could dial a number into her iPhone.

  ‘Come on, tell your Hira-didi all about it.’

  Neela hated that Hira used ‘didi’. Normally, girls call their sisters and elder female cousins ‘ben’, but her cousin had to use the more intimate sister name. It added to the faux-closeness Hira insisted on having with everyone, primarily so that she could gain access to as much information as possible.

  There was no way she was sharing the new business idea with Hira. It would blow the whole concept if everyone in the entire UK Indian community knew about it. ‘No it’s okay. I have to go help Yogeeta masi.’

  Nikhil’s mother, however, had plenty of help, so Neela just stood by as the traditional Sagai engagement ceremony began. Seema was sitting on the stage in the hall, dressed in a beautiful pink sari, her sister by her side and the biggest smile known to man plastered on her carefully made up face. Nikhil’s sister, Rani, was standing on one side with gifts from the family, which were accepted by Seema’s family.

  As the ceremony progressed, Yogeeta masi placed a red dot on Seema’s forehead with her finger and gave her a decorated coconut to hold in her hands. There was also a sweet for her mouth. Next, Nikhil’s sister, Rani, decorated the bride with gold jewellery, purchased especially for her by her new family. Then both mother and sister took a green sari that they had bought for Seema, wrapped it around her, covering her head. Seema’s own mum followed afterwards, again with the dot and the sweets.

  Neela continued to watch quietly as Nikhil came forward and sat down beside the bride. His mother put a dot on his head, a coconut in his hand and a sweet in his mouth, and then Seema’s mum repeated the procedure for her future son-in-law. Nikhil cracked a joke, which no-one else had heard, and Seema started laughing.

  It went on and on. One by one, all families present walked up to the couple, put a sweet in their mouths, and gave gifts. When it was Neela’s turn, it took a major effort not to burst out laughing. Neela preferred not to put her hand in or near anyone else’s mouth. Her mother saw her daughter’s lips purse and shot her a look that said ‘don’t even think about it’.