Separatists sprinkled like sequins

"OMG, Separatists seems sprinkled in our states as plentifully as sequins upon a desi dress", Tara mused.

"Only in the outposts, dah-ling", Lola scoffed, raising her hot pink talons emphatically.

"Really?" Tara sipped her champgane, and the little festive trinket around the stem of the glass glittered in Swarovski shimmer in the dim lights of the trinket laden Christmas tree.

The room around them eddied as usual with Mumbai's best dressed and best groomed. Ananya and Surily dresses her, Wendell and Armani Prive shirts there.

A posh duo moved towards Tara and Lola, the man's broad arm around the babe's tiny waist.

"Hello", trilled the super straight haired babe in skinny spandex dress sewn with sequins.

"How Mumbai", Lol quipped. "But lovely dress, doll."

"Thanks", cooed the babe.

"So where do you live?" asked the man, after introductions were done.

"Malabar Hill" replied Tara.

"Did you grow up there?"

"No. I grew up in Bareilly."

"Really?", the man seemed amazed. "Bareilly to Bombay, and straight to Malabar Hill?"

"Yeah, truly, you can spot outsiders from afar."

"Manoos and others, you mean?"

"No, no. Just all who grew up here and those who did not. I am a Bawa who grew up on Napean Sea Road. I always find it amazing to meet people who move into Mumbai. I find it so hard to relate to. It totally changes the nature of the city."

"There should be a law against it, or what?" laughed Tara, horrified to be hearing this in a posh living room overlooking the Arabian.

"Not a law, dear. But there's more of them in the Western suburbs, isn't it?"

"Not quite an outpost, then, Lola, is it?" Tara said, walking away, amused and outraged at this. Separatists can come in all garbs then, she thought. They can be Zegna-suited too!

The Mad Birthday Party Dash - all for naught!

'I want to come look at the paintings in an hour', said the man on the phone, mentioning Mrs. Mewawala, one of Tara's key buyers as his friend. 'I fly back to the States tonight and I want to pick up a couple of pieces before I leave.'

'Sure', groaned Tara, glancing at her watch. She had promised Ro to take him to a birthday party. She needed to leave now to pick him up for the party. What with Gul away on travel, Tara was manning the gallery alone and Gul would go into an apoplectic fit if she heard that Tara had closed shop on a prospective client for an afternoon with sugar-high rapscallions.

Instead Tara phoned June, begging her to pick up Ro, guiltily explained the new arrangement to her five year old, and waited for the unknown art lover to arrive.

A broken-toothed lad in a sharp suit arrived an hour later, pledging support to the world of art, something he 'casually picked up' on journeys around the world on business. He toured the hall, admiring the works by the young Baroda school artists, and suddenly went into a lengthy quiz on returns on investment and art portfolios.

Tara sighed. ROI on art, a flaky concept at best was a total black box when considering a young unknown artist. Like betting your dosh on a lottery. Chances are pretty slim. The minute the man started speaking ROI and debating merits of Indonesian painters versus Indian painters, Tara knew it was a lost cause.

The clock on the wall suggested the party must have started. Time to cut the idle dialogue short. Tara hurriedly ended the conversation and madly dashed to her car. By the time she reached the party, after endless twists and turns along clogged lanes, the party was ending. Ro was still mad- that child held onto grudges! A promise broken, and for naught!

Fascinated by Fascinators

'What the heck's a fascinator?', Tara mulled when she first heard the word fascinator.

Fascinating as the word seemed, it could mean anything. Like in Legal-ese, there could be the Fascinator and Fascinatee, opening up an entirely new dimension of human relationships. It could be a nouveau combo of fascist terminator, like a Chechen or Serbian fascinator.

Maddy came to the rescue again, showing Tara an ad e-tailing the eponymous items. Mini tiaras concocted out of scraps of lace, feathers, sequins, and flowers.

'What's this- Princess Di meets grunge look?', Tara queried.

'Oh you American philistine!' Maddy shook her head. 'It's the Princess Di at Ascot look! What you need to wear at the races!'

Tara shook her head in amusement. She hardly found occasions to doll up in her Indian finery in India. But when it came to the Rock Star look, the Grunge look, the Halloween look, and now even a Racing Day look, she suddenly had options!

The inner shopaholic took over. 'That tiger moth one!' she exclaimed. 'It will be perfect for my beige dress. Or perhaps...', she mused,'that amazing purple one.'

Maddy nodded at the image of a cascading confection of tulle, feathers, and Swarovski. 'I adore that purple one. I could buy a dress to match that fascinator.'

'Fascinating', giggled Tara.

The rote at 'Tote'

'So, how is your dinner, Sir?', 'So, how is your dinner, Mam?'

As the waiter as Tote went around the table, repeating the exact question to each and every person in his sing-song voice, Tara could not help smirking. The Tote School of Culinary Service, was it, memorized by rote and regurgitated by rote.

In the expansive courtyard, size zero teens in teensy plunging dresses hung onto their mobiles and their spiky-haired guys, while inside the glass-walled party room, in the flickering razzmatazz of disco lights, plump ladies twirled with balding men. The hip and happening of Mumbai out for a typical Friday night. Mercs and beemers queued to disgorge more evening revelers, and somewhere in the distance, from between the makeshift fence of foliage, a slum dwelling teen peeked at its new nightly neighbors.

Still, a walnut-mushroom tiramisu, heavy like a buttery foam cloud, and a plump steak soaked in its jus, were not to be sneered at. Sipping her blue champagne, Tara dug into her food.

Dinner parties, such a big no-no!

Who wants to go to a dinner party? Not Tara, for sure! Who eats at parties anyway? All the la-di-da glam girls insist on soup and salad before 7m. Even the hubbies and BFs are following the steamed fish and grilled vegies in evening diet. No, the thing to do is to host and attend cocktail parties- appetizers and desserts(well, may be a teeny weeny forkful, ok?), all washed down by a shot of grey goose on water or a glass of bubbly. Didn't you know, dearies, that the fizzy tizzy has fewer calories than vino or that a shot of vodka is better than whiskey on ice? The perfect "Madly Malabar" party!

Quelle Horreur!!! Going out without a blow dry?!

"Shit, shit, shit", Tara switched her mobile phone off, hopped off the spin cycle, and scuttled out of the gym into the warm dense morning, up the narrow bumpy path. A breath caught in her dry throat. Sputtering a cough, she blotted her upper lip against the sleeve of her t-shirt and reached her building.

Up the elevator, already feeling rushed and late, Tara quickly washed her gym-sticky hair, dressed hurriedly, slid lip gloss against her lips, and combing her hair with her fingers, ran out of the door, to get into the car. She had to reach the gallery in time for an unexpected meeting with a potential client, some Belgian businessman who had a half hour in Colaba before being whisked away to the airport for his flight back home, and business successfully concluded, wanted to buy a painting he had seen in a magazine review for Saloniere Star as his take home memento. 

With Gul away for  family wedding, Tara was alone, manning the sales till at the gallery. Energised by the thought, she kept drumming her fingers against the back of the front seats, muttering, "Faster, faster", to the hapless driver.

Once at the gallery, she quickly escorted Herr De Vos inside, while his hotel merc stalled along the road, waiting to take him back.  

"Prachtige, Prachtige", Herr De Vos kept repeating as he stood in front of a large abstracted village scene, which Gul had been ruing over- would it sell, would it not sell. The piece by Paras Patel had seemed different in digital image, but on canvas the excessive detailing- the scooping and gouging of layers and spattering of shapes and shades- gave it a psychedelic feel in a way that didn't quite work. But, hey, if Herr De Vos liked it, who was Tara to complain.

"Its a wonderful piece", Tara chimed in brightly, smiling at Herr de Vos, fingering her wet strands, as she looked up into the large moss-green eyes above the broad flat chest encased in grey suit. "Paras is one of our upcoming stars. Truly experimental, yet he retains the ethnic idiom of India.

Herr De Vos had a plane to catch and was already sold on the idea. He simply zipped out a bundle of Euros when Tara told him the price, and walked away, the painting bundled in layers of tissue and brown paper and bubble wrap.

"Hurrah", Tara exhaled excitedly. What a wonderful start to the day. A painting sold. One of the not-so-better-ones, that too! Time for some good coffee, then.

Locking up the gallery again, Tara clattered along the narrow footpath, towards Indigo Deli only to bump into known faces.

"Tara", Maddy called out, hair pouffed into elaborate curls, ropes of funky beads over a skinny dress in palest peach. 

Tara winced, looking at all the sleek women, with tousled curls and flat-iron straight hair, forgetting that she had spent some ten years in the US never bothering about weekly blow dries. Oh to be caught out in Mumbai without a blow dry!!! Quelle Horreur!!! 

Life- a soap opera for servants

One evening, as Raj and Rohan swished Jedi Knights and Stormtroopers in a mock-battle, I watched them, struck once again by the rarity of this sight. So commonplace it had been before, the slow lingering of simple fun in the US. Despite rush hour of weekday traffic on Georgetown Pike and countless errands crowded over weekends, the delicate orb of family life had shimmered like a pearl in the shell of busyness. I recalled walks along wooded trails banking the Potomac, picnics among rhododendrons, the woodsy smell of summer barbeques, the sharp scent of mulled apples and crunchy red-gold leaves in autumn, and the gorgeous fireside chats in winters. I recalled the cosyness of desi parties as families and children gathered in each other’s homes for late nights over homemade gulab jamuns.

Now that seashell was fractured, and the once-beautiful pearl had lost its sheen to salty tides and slimy flotsam. The petty troubles of life dominated, the gauze of glitz suffocated and the joys of stillness were dulled.  

Even more so, because, intimacy, once a part of ordinary moments- hands held tight while driving some place, an impromptu hug as we dried dishes after a good meal prepared together, unaffected kisses in the park or at my own doorstep- seemed impossible in India. Bedrooms were no sanctum, shadowy presences hovered outside the door, dusting, mopping, listening, and to create that separation, beyond two levels of doors under lock and key, demanded precise plans that became impossible to organise. There were people everywhere, eyes and hands, curious and watchful, tongues flicking like monitor lizards, carrying gossip, currying favours for rumour. My life had become a television soap opera for the benefit of my maids and my cleaners and my drivers. The closest we came to togetherness was in a crowded five-star restaurants, marriage on meal slots. How could, then, intimacy survive?