The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Author:Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780312593490
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2010-10-12T04:00:00+00:00

16

A week before she was to testify in court, Nalini Chopra’s phone rang just as she was leaving for a direly needed touch-up job to keep the blonde streaks in her hair intact.

She did not make it for her salon appointment. Instead, twenty minutes later, she was on her way to meet her daughter at the Taj Mahal Hotel’s Library Bar, a hastily arranged rendezvous to confer on the latest development in her life.

‘How did that slimeball get hold of you?’ Tara Chopra, thin as a rail, with her mother’s bedroom eyes, looked stunning in a calf-length denim skirt and a beige leather jacket.

‘He was quite clever; he rang on my cellphone.’ Their landlines were under police scrutiny.

Tara sipped at the double Scotch she had ordered. ‘I hear he’s pure evil.’

‘He was actually quite polite, beta.’

‘But he’s, like, this politician. And he’s from Delhi or something!’

Nalini Chopra gazed philosophically into her brandy snifter. The minister had said that if she denied in court that Malik had been present at Maya Bar on the night of the murder, he could help her by making the police forget about the bar’s missing liquor licence.

This was no small matter. If they were convicted, mother and daughter would end up in the slammer themselves, giving a whole new twist to the term ‘jailbird’.

‘I can’t believe the hell we’re going through!’ Tara twirled her hair with her fingers. ‘All because some chick was shot in my bar.’

‘I know, baby,’ her mother purred. ‘I know.’

‘I mean, it was a party, for God’s sake. People get drunk. Stuff happens, y’know what I mean? This is life. And life is beautiful and twisted. You gotta take the good with the bad.’

‘Of course.’ Nalini Chopra toyed nervously with the bead necklace around her haggard neck.

‘It’s so unfair for the police to go after us. And not one person has come forward to defend us!’

‘Now it’s you and me against the whole cruel world, Mummy!’

‘These two-faced high society scumbags give brown trash a bad name! As for that scoundrel Bunty Oberoi…’

‘Oh, don’t say a word about Bunty…’

‘If he’d stuck to his statement, we wouldn’t be in this mess. His word would have been enough to carry the case through and we would not be in such a vulnerable position.’

‘Well, maybe not…’ Tara had quite a crush on him. He had walked the ramp for one of her shows and she had gone down on him only a few months ago, during the Delhi Fashion Week. ‘But he’s kinda cute.’

Nalini Chopra sniffed, not quite sure what being cute had to do with any of this.

‘You remember, Mummy,’ her daughter was saying, ‘how I passed out as soon as I saw Zaira lying dead on the floor?’

‘You were in shock, beta. It was only natural; you’ve always been a sensitive girl.’

‘And to think that now we’re being treated like petty criminals! Like, HELLO!’ she said, pointing her index finger in the air. ‘There’s no justice in this world.’ Her voice was wobbly with emotion, like a hippo on stilettos.

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