Jaishree Misra - A Scandalous Secret

At the Chaturvedis’ parties, however, guests came safe in the knowledge that there would be no press presence – if one did not count people like Girish, that is: a golfing buddy of Sharat’s who happened to be the head of India’s biggest television channel. What the couple generally aimed to do with their list of invitees was ensure that guests were either among their own kind or thrown together with people it would be advantageous for them to meet. Both Neha and Sharat liked to be generous in this matter and, partially due to the understated and tranquil atmosphere of the Chaturvedi home, their guests’ guards were often let down in ways that invariably led to the most exciting meeting of minds. Not everyone saw it like this, of course; and once, when a nasty piece appeared in a gossip magazine accusing Sharat of what the journalist referred to as ‘control freakery’, Neha was tempted to ring up the editor to give him a piece of her mind. Sharat eventually dissuaded her from making that call but Neha had felt terribly hurt on behalf of her gentle husband, knowing as she did that the really gratifying part of the whole exercise for Sharat was when people he had helped called up later to thank him for the part he had played in their good fortune. ‘Completely inadvertent and pure chance,’ was the modest manner in which Sharat generally responded, although this too wasn’t entirely true. He gave away far too often, and in often unsubtle ways, his total delight at having been involved in transactions that were important enough to make it to the national papers. Sharat’s pleasure in the parties they threw was really very simple: he genuinely liked putting people together in fortuitous circumstances, hoping that some mutual good would come of their meeting, even if there was no particular or immediate advantage to him. He sometimes joked that he had probably been a marriage broker in his previous life.

Only this morning, Sharat had appeared on the veranda while Neha was overseeing the decoration of the garden shrubs with fairy lights. He had looked with pride at the pair of massive bottle palms that straddled the entrance to the sweeping driveway.

‘Remember their names?’ he enquired with a laugh.

‘Of course,’ Neha had replied absently, her attention now on the marigold flower chains that were being looped around the pillars running the length of the veranda. She had earlier tried explaining to the man on the ladder that the two faux Doric columns flanking the front entrance had to be exact mirror images of each other, the flower garland on the left spiralling clockwise while the one on the right went anticlockwise. It was the kind of feature no one would probably notice, but attention paid to such seemingly insignificant detail was what made for a perfect evening, in Neha’s opinion. It was also what led Sharat to call her ‘OCD’ but he would be just as quick to admit how much he relied on her exacting standards.

‘Zurich and Americana,’ Sharat grinned, still looking at the palms with his arms crossed over his chest and rocking on his heels, obviously continuing to enjoy the memory from five years ago.

The palms had acquired their names because they were a present from Arul Sinha, the head of global investments at Zurich Bank, who had sent them after a lunch party where he had struck a lucrative deal with American Steels. Neha remembered the glee with which Arul – a schoolmate of Sharat’s youngest uncle – had greeted the news that Doug Fairbanks III was going to be at their lunch too. (‘You know Doug? Hey, you guys know everyone, yaar,’ he had said, only pretending to be jealous given the vast spread of his own network of contacts.)

Neha cast a glance at the elegant palms whose fronds were a lush green in the morning sunshine. ‘I’m always astonished that these two giants didn’t just survive, but even thrived in the heat of that summer,’ she said. ‘Do you remember how they arrived in the middle of May, Sharat? Ten feet tall, and with such massive root balls, in the back of a truck? I used to expect every morning to wake up and find them all dead and shrivelled up in the garden. But just look at them now – and they’re probably not even fully grown yet!’

Sharat laughed at the memory of that chaotic morning. ‘Typical Arul, that kind of attention to detail. Sending not just a pair of palms but a complete team of labourers and gardeners who set to work planting them with some kind of crazy Swiss efficiency. I bet he even ensured that they would grow to identical width and height before shipping them over from China!’

‘Well, whatever he did, it worked – our Delhi heat notwithstanding. If anything, they’ve grown a bit too big now, towering over everything else in the garden,’ Neha said, turning her attention back to the flower wallah who was perched on his ladder awaiting his next instructions.

‘I’ve always wanted to ask Arul if his business deal enjoyed as swift a growth as the trees, but that would be prying, I guess,’ Sharat continued.

Neha smiled. She had no doubt that the deal would have been hugely successful, not just because of Arul Sinha’s business skills but also Sharat’s famed Midas touch. But he would be embarrassed if she said that, and now she was distracted by the large roll of black insulation tape that the flower wallah was using to tape the end of the garland to the pillar. ‘Ooffo, yeh kya leke aaye ho?’ she asked, her voice exasperated as she turned to call for her own roll of imported extra-strong and, more importantly, colourless sticking tape.

It was Sharat’s turn to grin. Neha was a fine one to joke about Arul’s attention to detail. She was at least as finicky as the best Swiss bankers, and on the morning of their big parties, Sharat generally made it a point to stay well out of her way. He put an arm around his wife’s shoulder and dropped a discreet kiss on her neck. ‘Going to go have a shave. Got that meeting with Prasad, remember?’ Sharat explained as he turned to go indoors, although Neha was by now too preoccupied to even register his departure.

He was still smiling as he walked down the corridor, thinking of Arul’s typically flamboyant present. Generally, the gifts he and Neha received took more veiled forms, people’s gratitude for useful introductions coming in subtle ways, via favours and preferential treatment and, quite simply, the kind of magical opening of doors without which life in India could be very difficult. Sharat recognized this and, in his customary pragmatic way, knew that the goodwill caused by his generous networking would do no harm when the time came for return favours to be called upon. Neha did not get this, though, remaining always a little discomfited by what she considered a mild form of nepotism even though she quietly indulged him whenever necessary. In a strange way, that was what Sharat loved most about his wife: she was exactly as she seemed. With Neha, what you saw was what you got. There was no hidden agenda, no gossip, never any secret deal-making, nothing underhand at all.

Neha surveyed the crowded drawing room again and flicked her eyes at a passing waiter, signalling that the Home Minister’s wine glass required topping up. She couldn’t help noticing as she walked on that the dapper politician was deep in conversation with V. Kaushalya, the rather comely head of the Indian Institute of Arts whom Neha regularly met for lunches at the Museum of Modern Art café and who was beautifully turned out tonight in the most gorgeous cream silk Kancheepuram sari. Now, what interesting transaction could be brewing there, Neha wondered. It could just as easily be personal as professional, given the minister’s reputation for enjoying the company of beautiful women and Kaushalya, an ex-Bharatanatyam dancer, still cut a stunning figure, even in her fifties.