Socialite Evenings by Shobhaa De

Author:Shobhaa De
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

The encounter which we were both so keyed up about turned out to be disappointingly tepid.When we presented ourselves at Babaji’s suite, he was being given an almond oil massage, and we were asked to wait. We were amused to hear romantic ghazals being played on the music system instead of bhajans. Mataji came bustling out and her piggy eyes narrowed further at the sight of us. “Nice. Very nice. Good. Good. Good,” she said. “Babaji will be happy. Very happy.You wait. If you want, we can meditate.”

We declined her offer. She sat in front of us staring unabashedly.

“What your husband is doing? Business? Or naukri?” she asked Ritu.

“Naukri,” she said.

I thought Mataji looked disappointed. “Nice.Very nice. And your husband? He is also having job?” That was for me.

“Having job,” I lied.

“Good, good, good. Officer—no?”

“Yes—both officers,” we chorused.

“Government? Police? Or private office?” We pretended we hadn’t heard and started talking animatedly to each other. But Mataji wasn’t the sort to be put off so easily. She butted in. “Babaji is a very holy man. Very holy. Faith—so much faith people are having in him. Simply they worship him. See that rose there—one disciple gave him two years ago. Fresh—it is still fresh. It has smell like best Paris perfume. Ask me why? Because Babaji blessed it. It is always here now. He travels, he takes rose. Never it is fading. Always smelling. Touch it—see, good smell. Soft. That is called faith.”

“How long does Babaji’s massage take?”

“Depends. Sometimes the chakras are all right. So it is shorter. Babaji takes the world’s troubles on his own head. If there is riot, war, floods, anything bad, his chakras take time to calm down. Then the massage is longer.”

We heard a new ghazal tape being switched on. I was getting quite bored. Mataji left us to attend to the phone which had begun ringing almost nonstop. Other devotees began drifting in. Babaji, it seemed, had quite a following and it appeared an exclusively female one. Ritu and I exchanged glances as a beautiful woman, for tyish, came in with two teenage daughters. What seemed strange was the way the girls were dressed. Both of them were in long, lacy gowns—the sort English flower girls wear at weddings. And to top it all, they were wearing tiaras—that’s right—tiaras. Their mother was dressed like an aristocratic Gujarati woman in a standard white organdy sari with tiny daisies embroidered on it.Whopping big diamonds glittered on her shapely fingers, and she was wearing a pretty mangalsutra. She had a pinched, thin face with high cheekbones and very sad, sunken eyes. She would have been stunning had she looked happier. The three of them sat stiffly while Mataji chatted to them (another minion was answering the phone now). They were obviously known to her. One of the girls was holding on to a gift-wrapped package and kept fiddling with the satin bows. Soon the masseur appeared. He resembled Hercules unchained. He must’ve been a wrestler in his youth. Now, he was overweight—gross, in fact—and bald.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.