He stressed perfect, using his long lean hands, turning them ninety degrees at his wrist in her direction.
Tara was stunned, tongue-tied, and her mouth was still pretty full. What was the guy even trying to tell her? Was he kidding? Was he a weirdo? He did look a bit like one, with his unkempt, salt-and-pepper beard and wild hair. She swallowed her pani puri, almost gagging on the sharp juices.
“Miss, would you model for Raj Jewelers? It is a just a day’s job, and you will be compensated well. This is a prestigious campaign. Say yes, miss.”
Tara shook her head, bewildered, wondering how to get out of the situation. “I’m not into jewelry,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What would it involve?” asked Anita. Abhi pulled over a chair, sat down, and made himself at home with the girls, propping his elbows on the table.
“Just a series of still photos in beautiful clothes and expensive real jewelry. That’s all. You girls can keep her company if you wish. My wife will be there too.”
“Do you own Picture Me Photography?” Shyamala didn’t seem certain.
“Yes, madam.” Abhi dug into his pocket and fished out a few business cards, glossy ones with a glamorous Indian bride on the front. He distributed them among the girls, like he was dealing cards.
“Picture Me Photography,” it said. “Glamour photos, portraits, weddings, events.”
Below was the salt-and-pepper guy’s name, Abhilash Sorte, and his contact details. Shyamala studied the card and raised an eyebrow at Tara, whose blank eyes gave no answers.
“Give us some time. She will get back to you tomorrow,” Shyamala said, taking charge.
“Sure. Take your time. But please, miss, say yes. You have a perfectly divine face. I picked you out from a mile away.”
Tara looked at the photographer. Her eyes flickered as a memory came rushing back. Divine face. Someone else had once said that to her. That voice rang in her ears again, after all these years. Her mind raced back to the summer of 1982, placed her atop Morgan Hill, then led her down the road that led to Saldanha Villa where her childhood isolation had ended, just as she stepped into her teens.
School was out. After lunch every day, when her grandparents rested, Tara slipped out and ran up the hill to her new friend Annette Saldanha’s house. She always remembered to carry a couple of books with her; it gave her an excuse for her absence—she was at the library to exchange books. Of course, this meant that she never had time to actually go to the library, but it didn’t matter. Daddy’s bookshelf had enough English, Russian, and American classics to last her a few more years. Besides, she didn’t read much that summer because she had become a hoarder of words. When she was in her room, she read stacks of Reader’s Digest that Daddy had subscribed for her, focusing on the section, “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,” learning the definitions of new words such as egregious and malign and anachronistic, and storing them all in her brain. Then, each afternoon, she took her stock of words with her to Saldanha Villa.
Annette was tall, with a silky bob cut that framed her rather square but attractive face. She was Tara’s senior at school, but they had become friends after Annette had offered Tara a ride to school from the bus stop in her chauffeured foreign car. The car rides had quickly become a regular affair. Annette talked nineteen-to-the-dozen all the way to the school gates, and called Tara a sweet angel for being an attentive listener.
Tara’s new friend lived in a sprawling, traditional Mangalorean villa near Second Bridge. The villa had a warm ochre frontage and was enclosed in a high, white-painted compound wall that shielded it from outside pedestrian view. The front yard was large, and the red brick driveway that led up to the house cut through manicured lawns lined with pretty rose bushes.
The Saldanhas were Catholic. Annette’s father, Roy, owned vast coffee plantations in Coorg. Her mother, Mariette, stayed back in Mangalore and helped manage their two luxury hotels. She was on the board of an education trust and a children’s orphanage, and was a regular presence in the local newspapers for her philanthropy. Big brother James was broad shouldered, and had the square Saldanha jawline. But it was his friend Cyrus, who lived next door to the Saldanhas, who threw Tara into a tizzy these days. She lived in a constant, conflicted state of self-consciousness and abandonment.
Cyrus was tall, rakish, and all of sixteen. Tara had learned from Annette that Cyrus’s father was Catholic, his mother a Parsi. Cyrus hadn’t seen his mother since he was a baby because she had run away with a Punjabi businessman and was not heard of again.
Tara knew that the Parsis, who followed the Zoroastrian faith, had migrated to India from Persia several centuries earlier. The Parsi gene, perhaps, explained Cyrus’s fair skin, but his eyes remained unexplained. Often, Tara went home and mulled over a burning question of earth-shaking importance. What color were Cyrus’s eyes? Brown, hazel, green, gray? They could be any of these colors. Each time she stole a sidelong glance at him, they appeared a different tint. Someday, she would muster the courage to look at him eye-to-eye, and then she would know for sure.
Cyrus was gregarious, and his voice had broken fully. When he laughed at his own ribald jokes, deep dents appeared on his cheeks and made Tara wonder how he could be so happy when his mother had abandoned him. He had a mop of straight hair that fell over his forehead and covered his right eye, which he tossed back nonchalantly every so often. A couple of times, Tara had felt his gaze on her, and she had wanted to disappear. But why on earth would he look at her? And why couldn’t she be more worthy of his exotic gaze? Why hadn’t she inherited Amma’s hair and light skin? Every afternoon, when she got to the villa, she stopped by the gate and tamed her hair with her fingers, pursing her lips hard to draw some color to them. Yet, in his presence, she couldn’t help but freeze like an ice maiden.
During the holidays, two of Annette’s cousins came visiting from Goa. Angela, the older of the two, was in the ninthclass. She had big breasts and an eager face that lit up often. She laughed a lot, and even more loudly so at Cyrus’s jokes. Michele was thin and pretty, with a heart-shaped face and a pointed chin.
Every afternoon, the Saldanha cousins hung out in the large verandah, sipping orange flavored Tang and polishing off Shrewsbury biscuits that the maid brought out. English songs played on low volume in the background. They argued over what record to play. James wanted to play Bob Marley songs. Annette liked the old Beatles hits. But Cyrus was a disco music aficionado, and his constant demand was for “Funkytown.” He was voted down more often than not, because “Funkytown” was too loud for the afternoon. It might wake her mother up from her siesta in the inner chambers of the villa, said Annette.
They also played Ludo or carom. At other times they formed two teams of three each to play a word game. One team would pick out words from the Reader’s Digest feature, “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,” and the other team would have to explain the meaning of the words. Then, the teams switched their Q & A roles. The team that got the most words out of ten correct won the game.
Tara discovered she was good at the word game, better than everybody else. Her team always won, no matter how difficult or rare the word. Soon, they all wanted her on their team.
“Tara, Tara!” Cyrus would chant loudly, making fist pumps and jumping up and down every time she charted their team to victory. “Tara and Cyrus make the best team.”