Recap: Nectar CEO Arjun Bajaj goes to drop home Zaara, who had gone to sleep after a heavy dose of sleeping pills. That surprises Raahi and Seher no end.

Her eyes kept flitting to the door of the studio they were shooting in.

Lovely Zaara, Lovely. Yes, Soft gaze. A faraway look. Dreamy. Just like that. Dreamy.

Zaara blushed and tried to focus on the gold-lidded vial of Nectar’s jasmine oil she was holding. They were paying her to make eyes at the product, not at the CEO.

Zaara blushed again. Technically, she wasn’t making eyes at anyone. She had never even laid eyes on him.

Not properly. Not non-digitally.

Yes. Love the pout Zaara!! Sullen. Sexy!

Zaara nearly laughed mid-pose. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing to have a distracted mind and an expressive face. It certainly seemed to be working for Subodh Rai, her current photographer.

“Okay, okay I think we got it!” Rai yelled, putting down his camera and walking over to his monitor, to click through his memory. Everyone held their breath as he scrolled past the images. “Yep, that’s a wrap! Dismantle the jungle!”

The entire crew exhaled in relief and joy. Assistant directors back-slapped each other and the production designers drained their last cup of cutting chai in utter joy. It was the customary triumph felt at the end of any shoot. But Zaara, who should have been the most satisfied by the end of a week of good work, only seemed put out.

Nectar’s last shoot for the month was over and there was no chance of the CEO making an appearance now.

It had been a week since Zaara had knocked herself out with sleeping pills and she still hadn’t met her rescuer, the apparently dashing Arjun Bajaj.

But all she had was Raahi’s rave review and Seher’s confirmatory shrug to base this on. Zaara hadn’t had the chance herself to decide whether the charming description was a product of her mother’s sparkling imagination or the actual truth.

Arjun hadn’t shown up for the Nectar photoshoot the day after he deposited her at her mother’s house. And he hadn’t shown up at Neelu’s office the next day to approve the pictures they had selected. Instead his assistant — a leggy fake-blonde as Zaara’s stalking had revealed — had emailed them the photos of Zaara they liked and asked Raahi to sign off on it as well, as per Mr Bajaj’s request.

Mr Bajaj, Zaara thought to herself, with a snort. It seemed like he was doing the reverse Steve Jobs thing. Instead of making himself as accessible as possible, he was ageing himself up. What 27-year-old refers to himself as Mr Bajaj?

“One with a massive chip on his shoulder,” Neelu had said, when Zaara had given up on trying to find his personal Instagram account. The guy seemed to be invisible, except on LinkedIn, or in the PR bytes for Nectar that Neelu had arranged for him herself. Unlike all the other start-up founders on their way to becoming unicorns, Arjun hadn’t hired Neelu for personal publicity as much as he had for denying people access. Her job, she said, was to make sure that people saw as little about him as possible, just enough to promote Nectar and nothing more.

But luckily for Zaara, despite her professional mandate, Neelu had no qualms dishing about her discreet client with her. As Zaara wiped off her make-up in her vanity van that evening, Neelu told her all the dishy details about the Bajajs’ that Arjun had paid her to keep under wraps. Privately, Zaara made a little mental note never to confide in her manager.

“The surname was all he inherited from his father,” Neelu explained, with gossipy relish. “Dino Bajaj was as rubbish at business as he was delightful at a dinner party. Drove their toothpaste business right into the ground. Do you remember Urban Herbal?”

A faint memory rose in Zaara’s mind, of an animated monkey, with a toothbrush in hand, swinging from tree to tree to tinkling music.

“I think I remember their commercials... from back when we lived here. They must have sponsored Teletubbies at the time.”

“They had the money to buy ad space like that back then,” Neelu said with false empathy. “Dino’s dad, the original Mr Bajaj, was still alive and bailing him out of the bills UrbanHerbal ran up. But once he died, Dino’s elder brother, Arjun’s chachu, cut off funding to UrbanHerbal from the main Bajaj group. The company went bankrupt within the year.”

Zaara’s mouth dropped open. She knew what a reversal of fortune felt like.

“So Arjun’s family is bankrupt?”

“Pfft. Only their company shut down. They still have enough wealth from their investments to power a normal jetsetter lifestyle,” Neelu explained, as she picked up Zaara’s coconut oil and dabbed a little at her cheeks, giving her client a pretty sheen for the paps who were waiting outside Mehboob studio. “Which is exactly what Nandini Bajaj used to do. She would flit between Europe, Delhi and Breach Candy, mostly to get away from her husband’s family, who liked treating them like the poor cousins next door.”

“Nandini is a very proud woman and I expect it wasn’t very nice for her, living in the same building on the charity of the people who had put her husband out of business. She took Arjun and escaped at every chance she got. It didn’t help that Dino became a complete layabout. He gave up the factory completely — thought it was more trouble than it was worth, I expect — and moved permanently to their holiday home in Alibaugh where he gardens and does yoga every day. GQ does a profile on him now and again advocating “an organic life”. But mostly he’s become a bit of a joke around the business circles.”

Zaara’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “He left his wife to fend for herself?”

“And his son,” Neelu clicked her tongue in disapproval. “But then Dino always put his happiness above everyone else’s. When you’ve spent your whole life rich and good-looking, you never really learn to consider anyone else.”

Like dad.

Zaara looked up in the mirror, shocked at herself. She couldn’t believe such a treacherous thought had crossed her mind. Their father had been wonderful. He may have botched up his will, but he had done nothing but be there for her since the day she was born. And he had worked his butt off to ensure that she was never without. He was nothing like this inconsiderate, lazy man Arjun had the misfortune of being the son of.

Her heart went out to Arjun Bajaj.

A dangerous thing, considering she had yet to meet the guy.

“As far as chips on shoulders go, Arjun’s seems to be serving him well,” she said, feeling for some reason, the need to stand up for him.

“Magnificently,” Neelu said. “He’s in Bangalore turning away VC funding as we speak.”

“Why is he turning away money?”

“He wants to stay private for as long as possible,” Neelu explained. “He isn’t the kind of person to give up control easily. Some people think it’s arrogant...”

“...It isn’t. It’s audacious.”

Neelu raised one eyebrow at her client in the mirror of her vanity. Zaara, suddenly feeling hot under her gaze, switched off the lights that framed her reflection.

“You have to bet on yourself if you want to get somewhere,” Zaara explained, trying to logic her way out of the flush that rose high in her cheeks. “And the fact that Nectar is making enough to afford me, means that Arjun Bajaj is betting correctly. He’s definitely going places.”

Neelu smiled at her in the mirror, her face as cat-like as the grinning tiger on her T-shirt.

“And would you like to go with him?”

Zaara stood up, ready to leave.

“I’ll work with Nectar as long as they create a quality product.”

Neelu laughed and swung open the door of the van in dismissal of Zaara’s pathetic attempt at saving face. Zaara descended the steps, still blushing furiously, as they waited for Neelu’s car. She was thankful that the light-men had turned out the power and plunged them into darkness. The photographers hopefully wouldn’t be able to spot her now, or see what her expression was like, or try to guess the reason for it.

Careful, Zaara thought to herself, trying to slow a heart that had picked up pace and a mind that was leaping from thought to thought. Very, very careful.

Suddenly, she was glad that she hadn’t met Arjun Bajaj yet. Anyone who led her to lose command of herself so easily was best avoided. As long as they stayed apart, the charm he held for her would soon be dulled by the generous erasing of time.

This is the 26th episode of Riva Razdan’s serialised novel Nonsense and Respectability, published every Sunday

(To be continued)

Riva Razdan is a New York university graduate and currently working as a screenwriter and author based in Mumbai. Her debut novel Arzu was published by Hachette India in 2021