Jaishree Misra - Secrets and Lies

‘Okay Thank you, thank you,’ the girl gushed, pulling out a bright yellow notepad. ‘Madam, Zebaji—may I call you Zebaji? Okay, Zebaji, please tell me when you first took up acting? I mean, when did you first think to yourself, “I am going to be a superstar”. A Bollywood thespian. Maybe Hollywood even!’

Zeba parted Bollywood’s most famous luscious lips to dish out the usual reply… ever since I was a child…my parents, recognising my unusual talent, used to…la di la di la la la …Her patter had been perfected over the years. And the old Hollywood question too—she was sick to the teeth of it! As if all her hard-won success in India amounted to nothing if she failed to get the nod from Hollywood. Which Hollywood star could claim to have a fan-following that stretched to a billion people, for God’s sake! Weren’t journalists supposed to be intelligent people? But, just as Zeba was formulating her reply into polite language, she spotted Gupta hurrying across to her.

‘Madamji, you are being called onto the set. Immediately please!’ he said, taking his cue from Zeba’s glowering expression.

Zeba threw a falsely apologetic look at the girl, who looked like a child that had suddenly had her lollipop snatched away from her. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, getting up and smiling sweetly before turning to Gupta and saying, ‘Gupta-sahib, please take this author’s details and arrange a time with her for a proper interview. She is writing a book and we must help her. Okay?’

Gupta nodded, his face a mask. Madamji’s acting was so good that he sometimes had to check later with her whether she really meant what she said in front of other people. Zeba had already turned away from the girl, thinking it best not to wait for a reply. Security in this place was not what it used to be, Zeba thought crossly as she hurried back to her rooms, carefully picking her way over the network of cables and wires that lay strewn across the floor of the studio. In the era of the big stars, journalists knew their place and never wrote badly of the celebrities, no matter what they got up to—bigamous marriages, name changes, even changing religions to suit their convenience. Nobody questioned anything. They were like Gods in those days, lording it over ordinary mortals from the big screen. Now everyone thought film stars could be their friends , thanks to their TV sets that took them right into people’s living rooms. But why journalists considered it their job to expose film stars and find something—anything—to destroy them, Zeba had never been able to work out. Didn’t they have politicians to chase any more?

She closed the door behind her in relief, throwing herself down on the bed. Suddenly remembering the hours it had taken her hairdresser to get her seventies-style beehive hairdo just right, she hastily sat up again. Casting a quick look at the mirrored wardrobe, she breathed a sigh of relief. No damage done, thankfully. Zeba angled her face to examine herself in the mirror. Her skin glowed alabaster white, just turning a pale rose over her cheekbones. Her neck was smooth and curved downwards quite marvellously to shapely shoulders. She looked into tawny brown eyes that, she had on excellent authority, were capable of making hardened underworld dons swoon. Then she fluttered her lashes, trying to see what it was that other people saw, smiling, lips together, then lips carefully parted, revealing a sparkle of fine even teeth inherited from her father.

The journalist wanted to know when she had taken up acting. Well, Zeba knew exactly when she had: aged two, when she had first become conscious of her ability to make people coo over her merely by pouting coquettishly and swinging her little hips. But she wasn’t exactly going to divulge all that, was she? Nor that there was one particular day when she had realised that she would kill—yes, kill —to be the star. An image of Lily D’Souza clad in a white robe, declaiming for all she was worth on the school stage, flashed into her mind. Zeba could even remember the words… ‘Oh God, that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive thy saints? How long, oh lord, how long?’ She remembered the electricity of that moment: the pain that seemed to drip off Lily’s beautiful face, the silence pervading the school hall, and, most of all, the awed expression on the old drama teacher’s face as he gazed up at Lily with the kind of expression none of Zeba’s own histrionic efforts at school had ever elicited. Oh yes, if a knife had been handy at that moment, Zeba would have happily leapt onto the stage, killing St Joan right there in the middle of her bloody audition. She could imagine the reaction if she ever told a journalist all that. Wouldn’t they just love it? The story of how Zeba Khan, aged seventeen, had fought for her role in the school annual production with a new girl, Lily D’Souza. Beautiful, brilliant Lily D’Souza, who was later found dead in the school’s rose garden. Oh how the press pack would love it, dementedly carrying the story on all their networks, reporters standing outside her house, breathlessly exclaiming over the unsolved case in which top star Zeba Khan was clearly involved! She remembered the time a careless remark she had passed about a local politician had made the morning news, thereafter being repeated all day on an endless loop in red ticker-tape at the bottom of the TV screen. They were starved for stories, these 24-hour news channels, and fell upon the smallest scrap of celebrity news as though it were manna from heaven! This story would not be a scrap of news, though. It certainly would not be difficult for a reporter to find interviewees—old schoolmates jealous of her success, teachers she had been rude to, any number of people who would no doubt delight in giving chapter and verse on how stuck-up Zeba Khan had been at school. There was a lot of stuff from those days that was well worth keeping hidden, after all.

In the mirror, Zeba saw fear and guilt darken her face at the memory of Lily and reminded herself angrily that nobody had liked the new girl. ‘Thinks too much of herself,’ someone had said, and, ‘What does she think, that she can just walk in and take over from us?’ But, even after it had been well established that Lily was the most conceited little bitch they had ever met, Zeba had been astonished to hear that Lily had had the nerve to put her name down for the lead role in the play that year. It wasn’t just that Zeba always, always played the lead—everyone knew that—but Lily was new , an outsider, for heaven’s sake! A new girl didn’t ever show such impudence if she knew what was good for her. It was no less than arrogance to think she could waltz in and steal things that had always belonged to others. Besides, it was Zeba’s final year at the school and the part of Joan of Arc had been virtually written for her. Why, old Moss, the drama teacher, had even adapted parts of the script to suit her accent as he had heard that scouts from both film school and the National School of Drama were going to be in attendance. Zeba had toiled all year for the role, neglecting her schoolwork to practise for hours before her bathroom mirror till each line had been perfected like a carefully chiselled jewel. Did everyone think she would quietly stand by and let some cocky brat from the sticks just waltz in and rob her of all that? All that effort, all that work, her ticket to film school and her dreams of stardom? Well, the bottom line was that it was not Lily D’Souza who shone in the limelight at the annual production that year. It was Zeba. It was Zeba Khan, as it always had been and was always meant to be. And, despite the circumstances surrounding that fact, Zeba could still—even after all these years—take some satisfaction from it.