Club You to Death by Anuja Chauhan (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📗

‘Just do the gentlemanly thing and apologize, Mehra,’ Bhatti says testily. ‘You’ve no business gossiping about Urvashi.’

‘Well she has no business to trying to desecrate a garden laid in my wife’s memory!’

‘Yes, but if you win the election, she won’t be able to!’ Bhatti sounds quite fed-up. ‘So why not just beat her in a fair fight and leave it at that?’

Urvashi gives a tinkling little laugh. ‘Gen. Mehra hasn’t fought fair in his life.’

The general stares. ‘What do you mean by that, madam?’ he demands. There is actual foam on his lips.

Urvashi looks amused. ‘Exactly what I said,’ she says coolly. ‘You prefer to have an unfair advantage over people.’

He leans forward. This is his game face. The one that Amitabh Bachchan had so much trouble replicating in Jhelum Bridge. ‘What are you alluding to?’ he hisses.

‘Oh, so many things! But most recently, poor little Ganga Kumar whom you have been pestering with your unwanted attentions.’

There is a collective gasp from the room.

Mehra gets to his feet, shaking a little.

Urvashi continues to sit, smiling composedly.

‘Leave it, Mehra.’ Pankaj Todi puts a restraining hand on his friend’s arm. ‘#MeToo ka jamana hai. Don’t get into a battle of words with a woman. Save your fire for the election.’

‘As will I.’ Urvashi looks around the room, her eyes flashing. ‘I know I don’t have the votes of the old boys’ club in this room – but there are some women members, and other people, who want the DTC to be more than some sordid adda where old men get drunk and hit on hapless young women! I will get those votes, and then, when we have sensible leadership—’

She turns her gaze on the general, ‘Then we will dig up the kitchen garden.’

Balbir Dogra frowns. Urvashi’s voice seems disproportionately threatening. What’s with this obsession with the kitchen garden?

Behra Mehra holds up one shaking finger. ‘Over my dead body.’

Urvashi tips her glass to him in a polite salute. ‘Oh, I hope not.’

My inner thighs are still so sore,

But the man responsible is no more,

Leo, you were the best trainer, ever,

Heaven just gained a stronger Core!

These immortal lines on Cookie Katoch’s Facebook wall, accompanied by a candid, laughing photograph of Leo and her, flexing their biceps, starts an unofficial but desperately fierce contest among Delhi’s poshest ladies to put up the best possible ‘mourning’ post for Leo, featuring a trainer–trainee photograph and a heartfelt paragraph describing how close the two of them had been.

‘Babe, I haven’t seen something as nuts as this since Wendell Rodricks died!’ Cookie confides to Roshni smugly. ‘Everybody was hunting through their photo galleries then, remember, trying to dig up a pic with him? Some of them toh were shameless enough to just photoshop it! Of course, I had a genuine pic because Wen and me were just too close, na, and now it’s the same thing happening all over again, but with Leo, and in gym clothes!’

And Roshni, who had never unbent enough to click a candid pic with Leo, has to swallow her bile and agree with Cookie that what is happening on FB is too vulgar.

Pictures and videos of Leo trend on Facebook all day – flexing with a bride-to-be here, doing a side plank with a grandmom-to-be there, pulling a crazy face at the end of class somewhere else.

Alternately wiping tears of genuine grief and scanning each other’s photographs mercilessly for signs of underarm sag, back fat or belly pudge, all of Delhi’s chic set spends a satisfying day scrolling through each other’s timelines and coming to terms with their ‘grief’.

Lose It with Leo posts a sober little video by the evening, featuring a handsome, laughing image of the trainer, and sharing the details of the funeral mass which will take place at the Sacred Heart Cathedral at Gol Dak Khana the next day. Cynics and statistics both assert that a large online following does not translate into a large following IRL, especially in such cold, foggy weather, but come the next morning the huge church is quite decently half full.

Bhavani, huddled into the second-last pew with Kashi and Bambi, watches over the proceedings with indolent interest.

Altar boys are readying the church for mass. The organist is tuning up, talking to the choir in hushed voices. A woman Bhavani recognizes from her pink ombre hair and no-nonsense air as Sho is walking around with a camera, shooting the congregation – presumably for the final episode of Lose It with Leo.

Bambi scoots in closer to Kashi. ‘My money’s on Mehra,’ she whispers. ‘Out of us four blackmail victims, I mean. He either did it himself, or he chaabied Mukki into doing it.’

‘Where’s your feminism?’ Kashi demands sternly. ‘Four people got sent the song, and you zoomed in on the only man on the list? Are you saying a woman can’t be as good a murderer as a man?’

She makes some laughing reply, which he counters immediately. Their voices grow lower and more intimate.

Vakeel sa’ab and Bambi ji are looking very happy today, Bhavani thinks as he watches from the sidelines. Well, well, good for them! And meanwhile, the early rising girlfriend is busy constructing a roof in Kalahandi! Things are going to get terribly complicated for young Kashi soon …

His mind shifts to complications of his own. He had had an in-depth briefing from Inspector Padam Kumar earlier that morning.

‘Sir, we interrogated all staff at the Todi residence on 6, Aurangzeb Road. Guards, drivers, maids were all clean-chitted, but we managed to establish that an old drunk gardener, now deceased, used to be quite friendly with Leo! Yaari-dosti, drinks and all! He got him sports shoes and fancy watches and let him drive his fancy motorcycle even! We’re guessing ki he was the Leak. And that this was Leo’s modus operandi – to cultivate servants and staff of rich people, and pump them for dirt on their employers! We are now checking to see if he had similar contacts in the