Short Story: 'Indebted' By Roopa Swaminathan

She…of the mocha skin, narrow waist, long auburn hair streaked with blond and red streaks, a heart-shaped face, naturally red cupid lips, and hazel-green eyes with perfectly shaped eyebrows and eyelashes that went from here to Sunday…beautiful.?

She…of the literal traffic-stopping beauty whose amazing visage was the one that drunk-out-of-their-collective-wits wannabe poets who wrote verses and verses filled with emo and senti lines about…beautiful.

She…whose beauty drove men mad craving with lust and dreaming of taking her to a motel and closing the door behind them and doing unspeakable things to her for three days straight…beautiful.

She who drove women crazy with envy and anger and wistfulness and imagining what it would be like to be THAT. F***NG. BEAUTIFUL.?

But where everyone expected her to mimic plastic and have the personality and wit of a credit card, Tara won everyone over, especially the women, with her kindness. She won them over by shrugging off her skin-deep accoutrements and never taking it or herself too seriously. And she naturally and organically made everyone feel good about themselves.?

She was realistic. She looked in the mirror every day and had seen enough pictures of herself to know that she was, indeed, stunningly beautiful. But while she shrugged off what she had no part in creating — the world around her deified her for something that hadn’t earned.?

She started to give back the only way she knew how.?

She was honest enough to admit that barring a minuscule fraction of the world’s women population, none of the rest who stood next to her even imagined that they had any chance in the beauty stakes when compared to her. But they still did not want her to praise them for being a witty raconteur or having a polished accent or for astounding, stupefying, unnerving, disconcerting the world with their incredible vocabulary, or for having an enviable innate poise or for owning the dreaded ‘p’ word in abundance — personality. Tara understood early on that for most people — being lauded for what truly mattered did not matter a whit, especially when it came from a sublimely stunning beauty like herself. So, she found and zoned in on at least one physically appealing quality about each person close to her and sincerely complimented them.?

Sonya! How do you have such blemish-free skin? God! I’m so envious!

I love how tall and elegant you are, Pen! Man! What I wouldn’t do to have a few extra inches!

Can your eyes be any more mysterious, Swati? I feel like I drown in them every time I see them!

By themselves, none of them would’ve paid attention to their physical ‘qualities’. But when Tara complimented them, they took it seriously. And while she herself never took her ‘beauty’ seriously, she acknowledged others did and ‘handled’ it as best as she could.

It helped that most expected her to be very self-aware and snooty about her appearance. Instead, it pained them to admit just how much they liked her because…how can anyone that stunning be that…nice??

But Tara was.?

It also helped that ‘She is rustic as f**k, man!” She was. She slurped when she drank her soup, she greedily took a huge bite from her McD’s double cheeseburger with ketchup dripping all over, and stuffed her mouth with fries because “I can’t wait! I’ve been dreaming about the burger and fries all day!” She made a mess of her food and could easily finish a bottle of pickles in one sitting that she ate lustily and loudly.?

She also never pretended that she ‘worked’ it all out. “Oh, God, no! I loathe exercising and am grateful to every God out there for being blessed with my ‘skinny’ genes and making full use of them!” she’d wink and finish a gooey chocolate cake.

Those who knew Tara equal parts envied her, secretly hated her, but also genuinely loved her. She was intelligent, street-smart, earthy, sexy, loud, funny, and nice. Given God had taken his/her own sweet time to create her — she should’ve been born stinking rich. But she wasn’t. She also wasn’t poor. She was just…somewhat uncomfortably lower middle-class. ?

*

Niharika Bhosale lived up to her name. Well, lived up to what her name evoked in the city that was the Gateway to India itself — Mumbai.?

Those who didn’t know much about the Bhosales simply assumed that Niharika Bhosale belonged to “some illustrious family” who could “probably trace their ancestors over 300 years back”.

They assumed that hers was probably a legacy family filled with graduates from the elite Doon School, one of the IITs, then Oxford, and then Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and that there was probably a Bhosale Library, a Bhosale Theater, and a Bhosale College of Reproductive Health in these tony colleges.?

They imagined her living in a mansion in Mumbai, even as her family probably owned a three-story apartment with a private elevator at Mayfair in London and on the Upper West Side in New York, a beachside mansion at Hamptons, a retreat in Martha’s Vineyard, and a pied-a-terre in Paris, and that she and her sisters and brothers wore Kanjeevaram sarees weaved with 24-carat gold and had front row seats to private fashion shows from some of the best designers from Delhi to Paris to Milan to New York jockeying to get the Bhosale heirs to wear their clothes when they went to Ludlow House or for a tasting by a James Beard-winning chef’s latest offerings or to the MET gala or the opening of the latest exhibit at MOMA.?

They figured that she probably did not have a 4.0 GPA but a 5.0 GPA because that was what was expected from a Bhosale scion.

And they were right. Niharika Bhosale was all that.

The Bhosales were old-school money who traced their lineage back two centuries and had royalty, political, cultural, and educated superstars in their extended families. Her appellation came with much heft and weighed so heavy, so profound, so lofty, and so loaded with meaning that it automatically induced a deep self-loathing sense of inferiority complex in everyone else — from other equally rich (but nouveau riche) neighbours to the hordes of the upper, upper-middle, middle and lower classes who lived right next door or among the faraway ethers of the city and far, far away from their astounding 50k-plus square foot mansion in the city’s most tony Altmanount Road.?

If Niharika Bhosale had been Brit, she would’ve rightfully been anointed as the next in line to Queen Elizabeth.?

But since she was a true-blue Indian, her last name was taken with hushed awe like those of the Gaikwads of Baroda, the Mewars of Rajasthan, the Jaipur Royals, the Wadiyars of Mysore, and the Bhosales of Bombay.?

Most looked at her always-polished exterior with all the right clothes and the right hairstyle and impeccable taste and envied her. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t ugly. She was just…middling. She was always five pounds heavy, her face was thin, long, and homely and when she smiled you could see her prominent gums that made her self-conscious. They secretly wondered if she felt shortchanged by her appearance.

They were right. She did.

*

It was completely shocking but also inevitable that Tara and Niharika’s paths would cross.

They both met as first-year students at St. Francis College in South Mumbai. It was a new and prohibitively expensive private college that had come up right next to the city’s most elite college — St. Xavier’s. Tara was determined to get a good education and applied for what she knew would be crippling student loans and enrolled in St. Francis’s International Studies program. She had no clear plans on what she would do with the degree but as she joked weakly when asked, “I like international. I like relations. So…!” No one laughed at the joke, but they laughed with her because…she was Tara.

Niharika had her future clearly planned. She’d get her Bachelor’s in International Relations at St. Francis and then Harvard Law. Then she’d join her family’s international law office in Mumbai or New York. Maybe she would make a go in the Indian political scene. Niharika’s last name, stellar academic grades, extracurriculars including launching her own non-profit at 13, medals in fencing, having her ‘art’ displayed at a prominent art gallery in Mumbai at 15, and many more had earned her a merit scholarship at St. Francis which the Bhosales graciously waived since they could afford it and requested that it be offered to someone else who needed it more.

Tara needed it more. And that’s how Niharika and Tara met. And their destinies were forever joined.?

For someone who had planned to starve for the next four years and save money to repay the loans she had applied for at the Mira Nagar branch of the State Bank of India, getting the scholarship money felt like the noose around the neck was cut off just before she choked. A deeply grateful and thankful Tara thanked Niharika for giving her the scholarship money. Niharika shrugged it off as if it was nothing because it was nothing to her and everything to Tara. The opposites in everything between them connected and they soon became thick as thieves.

As Niharika’s friend Tara saw a world she never knew existed. Getting her passport and traveling for the first time abroad and on a private jet. Mega-mansions in various cities around the world with Italian marble flooring and chandeliers with Swarovski crystals and original Rembrandts and Van Goghs on walls. Speed thrills and chills on Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Golf clubs and nightclubs. Tara had a front-row seat to how those from the other side of the tracks lived.?

And Niharika saw a world beyond south Mumbai that she had no idea existed. The first time Tara invited her over to her house for the best homemade masala dosa to Mira Road, she looked on Google Maps to ensure it was actually a real place. As her chauffeured Bentley wove through the many dinky and uneven streets and lanes and bylanes of Mumbai, Niharika was convinced it was a shorter path to get from her own helipad to another continent on their jet than it was to get from South Mumbai to Mira Road — wherever that was.?

And when she finally made it — she blanched when she saw the tacky carpet that was a dark red under the sofa where the sun couldn’t catch it with its harsh rays and faded to pale orange in the rest of the one-bedroom apartment that Tara lived in with her almost-always buzzed mother who worked as a packer in the local grocery store. For someone whose every friend and acquaintance had teeth that shone like the moonlight, Tara’s mother’s cigarette and coffee-stained teeth were a revelation. Niharika couldn’t believe that Tara’s entire apartment was smaller than her private bathroom at her mansion.?

Every time she visited Tara at her apartment, Niharika saw something new that she’d never seen before. Tea in cups which were in different colors and patterns and shapes. And not in an intentionally mismatched way either. Tara’s clothes were inside plastic boxes shoved underneath the bed she shared with her mother. They had no dishwasher. They washed their clothes in their kitchen sink.?

While Niharika could trace back their lineage to over 300 years, Tara’s mother had no idea who Tara’s father was.

To Niharika, Tara represented poverty in all its shocking forms and she had never seen anything like it in her life. And it astounded her that a heartbreakingly beautiful woman like Tara came from such filth.

“Nihu is my best friend!” Tara would tell everyone followed by a huge guffaw and a slug of some cheap beer. And Niharika would visibly cringe and shudder at her ‘nickname’. While Tara took to Niharika’s world and her beauty walloped everyone —from the Bhosales’ chauffeur to Niharika’s siblings and her stuck-up snooty parents and the rest of the South Mumbai snobs— Niharika was too finicky, too uptight, too stiff, and just too rich to ever fit into Tara’s world. But Niharika stayed with Tara over her years at St. Francis because while Tara’s economic background was a bridge too far to cross, Tara’s stunning beauty and vivacious personality opened its own rarefied world to Niharika that she would never be allowed entry in despite her last name —a world comprising of the mega-rich, the mega-poor, and the ones in-between— as all of whom stopped what they were doing every time Tara entered a room. That brought with it its own sense of power that Niharika with all her riches had never experienced and which fascinated Niharika and which she soon became envious of.

There was beauty and then there was Tara. It helped that she had such a fun personality that attracted the whole world to her.?

“Everyone collects baseball cards or Hermes bags or cars! I collect people!” she’d joke.

*

As inevitable and surprising as their meeting seemed, it surprised no one when the rift happened.

Even more unsurprising and extremely cliche was that it happened because of a dude.

Rizwan was a…normal guy. Not terribly smart and neither terribly handsome nor terribly talented. Nothing about him reeked ‘the man’ who would become a bone of contention for two of St. Francis’s most accomplished women.?

When Tara and Niharika went to a South Mumbai bar during their junior year to celebrate the end of their fifth semester in college, Rizwan was by himself shooting darts with a beer in his hand. Like everyone else before and after him — his head too did a complete 180 and zeroed in on the breathtaking beauty who entered the bar. Tara’s 5’7” lithe beauty with her waist-long riotous colored hair and a newly pierced left nose ring knocked him off his feet. Normal he may have been but Rizwan was no slouch in the charming department and quickly made a beeline to Tara and got her on the dance floor.

That was it.

That Rizwan belonged to Jogeshwar —wherever that was— did not matter. That Rizwan did not know his dessert spoon from his entrée fork did not matter. That he was a college dropout who now went around fixing people’s computers —he called himself a computer hardware specialist— did not matter. That her family wouldn’t allow him to enter the Bhosale residence even through the backdoor meant only for maids, cooks, chauffeurs, and delivery boys did not matter.

Niharika was finally done. She was done playing second fiddle to Tara. Done playing second fiddle. Done being invisible. She was done losing every man who didn’t even ‘see’ her to Tara.?

And it wasn’t as if Niharika fell in love with Rizwan. Rizwan was simply the straw that broke Niharika’s back that had already been weighed down by Tara’s popularity with the whole world. ?

If Rizwan wants Tara…he will not have her, Niharika decided.

It was all hush-hush and very overt. She was too posh, too sophisticated to do anything openly, aggressively and so middle-class. Everything was timed to perfection and was on the DL.?

She’d protest when they invited her to go out with them. Not so much that they took her on her word and let her be but enough that they realised she had nothing else planned and insist she tag along as the third wheel to their dart and pool dates. She chugged beers with them even though she hated it. She watched football which was an assault on her sensitive being because Rizwan and Tara were hardcore Chelsea fans. She went to Juhu Beach with them and shuddered when they both dug noisily into their vada paavs and sukha bhels.?

She was mentally exhausted, but it never showed. She just…waited. And waited.?

And a few months after being ‘the nicest gal next only to Tara!’ she started to drop a few truth bombs. One Saturday evening, at a seedy bar, when Tara excused herself to meet a ‘guy I know’ — Niharika gestured towards him and asked Rizwan mildly if he knew who ‘that guy’ was. When he shook his head Niharika said that dude was Tara’s ex. And then Niharika pointed to at least two more guys at the bar and said they were also Tara’s exes. Given how every dude’s eyes were on Tara, it did not feel untrue. When Tara came back, Rizwan was a little distant but Tara was too full of Saturday evening fun and beer to really notice.

Tara is never exclusive! Why should she be? She’s gorg! She can and does have whomever she wants! She breaks hearts because she can. And because she doesn’t even know she’s doing it! No. Unlike what you think, Rizwan, you ain’t special. You’re just one more in a long line of dudes in Tara’s life!
?
She conveniently left out the part where Tara was mostly all talk and no action. She flirted with everyone — man, woman, and child but seldom put out for anyone. While she was almost irresponsible with her many choices, she was finicky about men and felt icky about sex, and did not ‘go all the way’ with most of them.

But her innuendoes did the job.?

Initially, when Rizwan started pulling away from Tara, canceled their movie and mini-golf and dart dates…Tara was…bemused. She’d never experienced a guy pull away from her before and genuinely did not get it for a while. ?She simply shrugged it off and continued with her life and made other plans when Rizwan broke his. But when one canceled date became three and then ten, it finally occurred to her that Rizwan was breaking up with her. She wondered why that was and then shrugged again.

It was when Tara decided she was done with Rizwan and ready to move on with her life that she realized that Rizwan had, in fact, aggressively ‘moved on’ with Niharika.?

Tara was astounded. Not heartbroken but astounded. She wished Rizwan and Nihu well and wasn’t surprised that he moved on with Niharika —Why wouldn’t he? Nihu was amazing!— but how could Nihu make a move on Rizwan? How could Nihu date her ex? How could she break the unwritten laws of the girl code?

Turns out, Niharika could and did very easily.?

She moved on with Rizwan at jet speed. It was one thing to prove a point and ‘steal’ him away from Tara. But she needed to legitimise him in the eyes of her family if she were to take him home even as her boyfriend. For starters, she bought him a new car. Then his own ‘computer business’. Then got him a complete makeover from one of the upcoming superstars of Indian fashion.?

By the time Niharika and Tara graduated from St. Francis, their lives had moved in different directions. Despite how it started, Niharika bloomed in her relationship with Rizwan. It started as a point to prove and with a bunch of lies she told Rizwan but she had genuinely fallen in love with a gentle and decent man who was slowly, but surely, starting to find himself.?

Tara, as Tara was wont to do, shrugged at the chips that life had dealt her and moved on. The betrayal gave way to her just missing Nihu and barely remembering Rizwan. When they graduated, it had already been 18 months since the formerly close friends had even spoken to one another. By then Tara had given up hoping Nihu would ever ask for forgiveness. And Niharika was too ashamed to face what she’d done.

*
A few years went by.?

Tara started work in a local think tank and got her masters on the side. Niharika graduated with a law degree from Harvard and joined her family’s law firm in Mumbai. Rizwan’s ‘computer business’ evolved into a faux directorship with one of the Bhosale companies which was a good enough position for Niharika to marry him. And while he would never be the son-in-law the Bhosales hoped for, they still took to him.?

“To be fair, no one would’ve been good enough for my daughter!” joked Papa Bhosale.

*
When the knock finally came on the same raggedy one-bedroom apartment at Mira Road, both of them on either side of the door at once expected it and were stunned when it actually happened.?

“Come in,” Tara beckoned to Niharika.

Still the same knock-out beauty, Niharika thought.?

She’s back! Tara thought.

Never one to let the grass grow beneath her feet, Niharika jumped right in with her apology. “I did bad by you. I can’t apologise for genuinely loving Rizwan now but what I did to you was shitty…”

Tara shook her head and pulled Niharika to her and hugged her hard. “You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”

“But…” Niharika had hoped and prayed and yearned for a knock-out fight with Tara. She wanted Tara to cuss her out, and deliver a speech about what a sucky human Niharika was. She was ready for that. What she wasn’t ready for was Tara’s complete acceptance of her.

Over the next few hours, Niharika realized that Tara had moved up in the world and bought a three-bedroom apartment at Lokhandwala in Andheri (No mortgage Nihu! I bought it outright, she bragged) but continued to stay at Mira Road (because my mom won’t leave, she said simply). Tara was nowhere close to settling down (too many fish in the sea, Nihu! She joked) while Niharika and Rizwan were already hopeful for child number three. The girls gossiped and exchanged notes on the past few years and giggled and shed ugly tears and binged on the masala dosa Tara’s mother made them and chugged many cups of chai.

When it was finally time for Niharika to return home to Rizwan and her two babies, the two girls teared up, hugged each other tight, and clung to one another as if they would never let each other go. ?

“Don’t call me Nihu!” Niharika told Tara with a smile as the chauffeured Mercedes pulled away from the dilapidated Mira Road apartment building.

*

As Niharika made her way back through the back alleys of Mumbai’s far-off western suburbs and back to the comfort of her South Mumbai residence —a palatial home overlooking Marine Drive which was a wedding gift from the Bhosales to them— she was gratified at having made peace with her college friend who had meant so much to her even if a small part of her still felt a little betrayed at how pleasant Tara had been.?

She wasn’t even remotely mad with me and Rizwan! How could she so seamlessly accept me back in her life as if my betrayal of the past hadn’t happened? I guess I was never a competition to her!

*

Rizwan was my gift to her. If she had asked me, I would have willingly given him to her. By taking Rizwan, I finally paid off my debt to her.?

*

Tara and Niharika went on to have successful and happy lives.?

But they never met each other again.?