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

himself with all the suspender snapping. ‘You’ve been rigging it for thirty years, you mean!’

‘Hullo … take it easy, uncle,’ Leo steps forward, inserting his powerful frame between Khurana and the shaky old man.

It’s like he’s held a lit match to petrol-doused wood. Mukki explodes.

‘You be quiet!’ he hisses with disproportionate venom. ‘Bloody item number!’

The crowd gasps. People turn to each other. Whispers turn to full-on babble.

‘Well, that escalated fast,’ Kashi says to the girls. ‘Do these guys have history?’

Natasha and Bambi exchange glances.

‘There’ve been some … rumours,’ Bambi admits. ‘About Leo … and … uh … Mukesh Khurana’s wife.’

Kashi chuckles, amused. ‘The lady candidate? Your Urvashi auntie?’

‘Don’t laugh,’ Bambi whispers, worried. ‘She’s the star of Leo’s Zumba class and her husband hates it.’

On the stage, Leo is holding up one hand, veins throbbing in his forehead.

‘Watch your mouth, old man.’

‘You watch your mouth!’ Mukki draws to his full height, managing to reach almost up to Leo’s nipples. ‘This man is your known-to! You know him! You’ve rigged it so he wins!’

Leo shakes his head in exasperation.

‘I don’t know this man from Adam!’

‘I don’t know him either!’ Sweater Guy says shrilly. ‘I’ve never met him before in my life!’

‘O ya, O ya?’ Mukki, at a loss for words, makes up for it by snapping his suspenders again.

‘It’s like watching a chihuahua take on a Dobermann,’ Natasha whispers, riveted. ‘You’ve got to give it to Mukki – he’s got guts.’

Kashi looks a little wistful. ‘I’d love to go up there and O-Ya-O-Ya with him!’

His sister pinches his arm hard. ‘You sit here quietly!’

On stage, Leo seems torn between fury and laughter.

‘Dude, what exactly is your problem?’

‘Don’t use that tone with me!’ Mukki pants. ‘Bloody outsider! Bloody PT master! Hired help!’

‘Okay, that’s it!’ Kashi jumps lightly to his feet.

‘Akash, don’t get involved,’ the brigadier rumbles warningly, but Kashi is already striding towards the stage, pushing up the sleeves of his navy-blue sweater to display well-defined, sinewy forearms. The Ghia-Lauki gang low-key cheer him as he passes. He flashes them a grin. Supreme Court regulars would have recognized that trademark cocky courtroom grin.

‘Gentlemen! A little gentleness, please!’

His voice is deep, pleasant and authoritative.

The tableau on stage whirls to eye him belligerently.

‘Tu kaun hai, bay?’ Mukki snarls. ‘Who the hell are you? Your middle line also came or what?’

This draws a laugh from the crowd.

‘Go Mukki!’ somebody hoots. A few people clap.

‘Akash!’ Leo is looking surprised and a little wary. ‘You hang with this crowd?’

‘My dad’s a member,’ Kashi admits sheepishly.

‘Akash who?’ Mukki glares from one to the other. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Leo Matthew’s lawyer,’ is Kashi’s cool reply. ‘I’ve been studying your language and your demeanour from my seat in the audience, and I’m confident Leo can sue you, and your precious club—’

Brigadier Dogra chokes on his beer.

‘—for libel, defamation, character assassination, manhandling and criminal intimidation. For way more than ten lakh.’

There is stunned silence both on the stage and off it. Then Leo chuckles deeply and holds up his right palm to Kashi, who grins back and slaps it.

‘Har har Mahadevvv!’ yells old Mrs Dogra, with sudden and supreme aggression, rising shakily to her feet. Bambi and Natasha leap up to placate her.

‘Dadi, shhhh!’

‘Everything’s fine.’

Mukki’s voice rises to a thin nasal scream. ‘You will sue me? You will sue me? You will sue me?’

‘It’s not talaq you know,’ Kashi drawls, turning to face him. ‘You don’t have to repeat it three tim—’

But Mukki isn’t listening. ‘He’s not even a member!’

‘Which means he’s probably a decent person,’ Kashi retorts.

‘O ya?’ Mukki snaps his suspenders combatively.

‘O ya!’ replies Kashi, now hugely enjoying himself.

Mukki licks his lips. ‘I know the best lawyers in this country! I know the whole gourmint! I know …’ His eyes dart this way and that. ‘I know everybody! Oho!’ He chuckles pleasurably. ‘I will screw you two completely—’

‘Or we could just split the winnings fifty-fifty and finish this right here,’ the man in the red-and-white sweater whom everybody has forgotten about interjects plaintively. ‘Sharing kar lete hain na, bhaisaab?’

This appeal gives Mukki pause. He licks his lips again.

‘Yeah dude, just share,’ Leo’s tone is patient and perhaps just slightly patronizing.

Again, it has a galvanizing effect on Mukki. He turns to face the much taller man, rising to his toes. ‘I don’t share,’ he spits, breathing heavily. ‘I’ve never shared anything.’

There is an odd, pregnant pause. Kashi, standing so close to Leo, senses an internal struggle taking place inside the large, powerful body.

It was like a horned, black Leo was battling a halo-ed, white Leo, he tells his sister later.

The horned Leo wins.

His handsome face curling into a sneer that’s decidedly unpleasant, he leans in closer to Mukki Khurana.

‘That’s what you think,’ he whispers tauntingly.

There is a collective gasp from the crowd.

Khurana utters a loud, wordless scream and charges in, fists flailing wildly. Leo throws one contemptuous punch, and drops him instantly to the ground.

‘Darling, it was absolutely appalling. They were abusing and hitting each other in front of everybody.’

‘How too delicious! I can’t believe I missed it. What a day to go to the spa!’

The two Zumba buddies are tapping out WhatsApp messages thick and fast with exquisitely manicured fingers on their respective phones, while their two long, smooth cars speed down different roads in Lutyens’ Delhi, set to converge at the DTC in about seven minutes for Leo Matthew’s early morning class.

‘Serves you right for wanting to look like a hoor on Election Day, Cookie! You should’ve sacrificed the denting-painting and come for the tambola only. At least you would’ve witnessed the tamasha of the year!’

‘Are you SURE you aren’t exaggerating, Rosh?’

‘Babe, I swear! Mukki Khurana said I’ve never shared anything, Leo said, that’s what you think, and then Mukki screamed and went for Leo and Leo knocked him down!’

‘He actually hit him in the face? Matlab dishoom dishoom? Full-on mukka-mukki?

‘Haan haan, Cookie, I’m telling you! Khoon all over the kilim-kaleens.’

To underline her point, Roshni releases a series of fist emojis at the