French Lover Read Online Free

leaned to the right and whispered, ‘No, not like Rekha; I’d say a little like Meenakshi Seshadri.’
    ‘No,’ Sanal jumped up, leaped over three or four people, squatted down in front of Nila and said, ‘No, she doesn’t look like Rekha or Meenakshi. Our bhabhi looks like,’ he put on as sombre an expression as he could, ‘exactly like Nilanjana Mandal.’
    Everyone laughed.
    Sanal was a physicist. He had been in the country for ten years and wasn’t married. He lived alone and had bought a house in Noisee. He was around six feet tall with a toned body and long hair that reached his shoulders. When Sanal shook his head and talked, his hair swung back and forth. Nila looked at Sanal and then at Kishan. She gave Sanal eighty-five on one hundred and Kishan fifteen. Nila thought she could easily have married Sanal. But she didn’t. Fate ordained strange things for everyone. Did it really ordain anything at all? If only Sunil had sent Sanal Edamaruku to Calcutta to get married, Nila’s life would have been different. But that’s not what happened.
    Nila whispered to Chaitali, ‘That man, the French girl’s husband, what does he do?’
    ‘He writes. He lived in London, but now he’s married the French girl and stays here. He’s written quite a nice book! I don’t remember the name . . .’ Chaitali rubbed her middle finger against her thumb and tried to recollect, ‘It’s name is . . . Sunil, what’s Tariq’s book called?’
    Sunil answered swiftly, ‘
Why I Am Not a Muslim
.’
    ‘Yes,
Why I Am Not a Muslim
.’
    Nila said, ‘Like Bertrand Russell’s
Why Am I Not a Christian
. Tell me, has anyone ever written a book,
Why I Am Not a Hindu
?’
    Chaitali shrugged and shook her head slowly—not to her knowledge.
    Sunil was engrossed in summarizing the qualities of the whisky. He took a minute off it and said, ‘Yes. It’s by Mr Sunil Chakravarty.’
    Ha, ha.
    ‘Kishan, what is all this? Fetch the malt, quick.’
    Kishan brought out a bottle of Glenfiddich in one hand and a bottle of Lafroige in the other as he swayed towards them.
    The crowd went crazy.
    ‘We’ll wind up with Springbank.’
    ‘Oaao ho,’ Sanal whistled.
    The conversation flowed between English, French and Hindi. Gradually the voices rose, one by one. Nila sat in a corner of the sofa, close to Chaitali—Nila, the bride, the doll, the visitor. Everyone went into the kitchen and poured themselves orange juice, water or whatever it was that they needed. Nila and Sahana were drinking orange juice. Some had their whisky with water and some had it on ice. Tariq drank his neat. At least twice he’d remarked, ‘The taste of whisky is ruined if you mix it with water. This is the problem with Indians—they don’t know how to drink and yet they have to’
    Rajesh said, ‘We don’t really drink for the sake of drinking. We drink so that we can get drunk, however that may be.’
    ‘I agree with you, my friend.’ Babu Gogini guffawed.
    Sahana nudged him and said, ‘Why are you laughing like the devil? Are you drunk already?’
    Sanal caught her out, ‘Why did you say “like the devil”—have you ever seen the devil laugh?’
    ‘I have, I have. I’ve seen La Jaconda laugh.’
    The room was filled with laughter. Nila wondered whether Odil declared that smile, made famous by Da Vinci, as a devilish one simply to make people laugh or was that truly her belief. She couldn’t find out because Sanal had already leaped up to her again.
    He poured a little vodka into her glass, which had only orange juice, shook it and said, ‘Now drink this screwdriver like a good girl, our new bride. By tomorrow it’ll tighten all the screws that are loose in your head.’
    There was another roll of laughter. When Kishan laughed, his shovel-teeth were exposed. Babu Gogini had a golden smile. Two teeth in the upper row were made of gold and they sparkled when he smiled. Tariq Ismail laughed with his lips closed and his whole bodyshook from head to toe.