Recap: Zaara wraps up the Nectar shoot without setting her eyes on CEO Arjun Bajaj, but that doesn’t stop her from seeming to develop an affinity for him.

Only the fact that it was Friday night and there was nothing on Netflix she cared for, could have induced Raahi to pick up the letter that had laid unopened on her nighstand for the last two weeks.

She had insofar distracted herself from the envelope by busying herself with setting up a satisfactory life in Bombay. She had a neat little routine with the girls now. Seher, who had already taken on nine students, thanks to Aparna’s wheedling of her friends, would be up at dawn preparing her lesson for the day and breakfast for the three of them. No matter how many times Raahi told her to leave the meal-making to her, Seher would have dates, toast, eggs and three kinds of coffee on the table for them by 8.30am. Zaara would gulp her large almond milk latte in a state of quiet drowsiness while Raahi sipped her double espresso with a dash of milk and read Seher, who was on her second glass of cinnamon iced coffee, interesting bits of the news.

The three of them would discuss Zaara’s ‘look’ for the day, which was sure to be photographed by the paps now almost always stationed outside their building.

Neelu would arrive at some point before the clothes and the crew got there, to review Zaara’s ‘growth’ and numbers, which only one week after going ‘public’ on Instagram, was already at 655k followers. It was safe to say that Zaara, under Raahi’s sophisticated creative direction and with Neelu’s bullish strategising, was well on her way to becoming the most popular girl in India.

It wasn’t good enough yet, though. Now that they had opened her daughter’s profile for the world to consume, Raahi didn’t just want her to be an Indian influencer. After all, there were TV actresses with tacky bikini photos who had 600k to 800k followers. In comparison, Zaara’s photos were sophisticated but sexy. By eschewing Insta-filters altogether, Raahi made sure that her daughter’s photographs never appeared plastic. Instead, she enhanced them, in the old-school way, by using a colour corrector she knew from her own acting days. Ajoomal bhai may not be on Instagram himself, but he knew hues. He deepened the pinks in Zaara’s lips, accentuated the flush of her cheeks and saturated the blue of her irises ever so slightly, so that her eyes appeared like two pools of azure, gazing out from her face. Many comparisons had been made by bloggers to Aishwarya Rai, Madhubala and, of course, Raahi herself.

But Raahi wanted Zaara to be incomparable. She wanted to catapult her to the top of her profession, just as Raahi had been at the top of hers.

Things had changed since Raahi was an actress in the ’70s. Social media had made the world smaller. And the competition for star status had become worldwide. In Raahi’s head, they weren’t competing with the best of Bombay’s beauties anymore, they were competing with Gigi and Bella Hadid. And with their reach of 70+ million followers each, Zaara had a long way to go.

But as Neelu Guru had so correctly put it, “Good thing, India has a billion-plus people then.”

Raahi had laughed at this at their ‘strategy’ brunch at The Table. Somewhere along the last two weeks Neelu had become, if not a friend, then definitely an ally. Raahi appreciated her glittering ambition for Zaara and she admired her refusal to take no for an answer where she was concerned. It was a trail-blazing confidence Raahi had once had herself but which had dulled over the years. After all, when you’re being chauffeur-driven in a limousine there is no need to blaze trails any more.

Between her and Neelu they planned to put Zaara at the back of a limousine again, alighting at influencer studios in New York, London or West Hollywood in the next year and a half. It was an aggressive goal, but Raahi wasn’t going to be anything but aggressive anymore. Complacency had nearly ruined their lives.

But nothing is more destructive to a happy mind than the feeling that one is on the verge of complacency. That one is not doing enough for one’s children. And so Raahi found herself hopelessly restless that Friday night in her room. And with Zaara at the Guess shoot and Seher at the accountant’s getting their books balanced, Raahi had nobody to turn to talk herself out of the untenable feeling that she had ruined their lives. That she had been made a fool of by the man she’d loved.

Worse, that she had never been loved at all.

She wanted an answer, and an explanation, but the only man who could provide it, who could set her restless heart at ease, was dead.

The letter stared at her from the nightstand.

Why did Aparna have to find it amongst Maahir’s things? Why did she have to send it to Raahi for safekeeping? Why couldn’t she just behave like a normal wronged first wife and despise Raahi as anyone else would do?

Why did she have to be so goddamn decent?

It made hating her so goddamn hard.

And it made Raahi second-guess the man she’d spent her whole life loving. Because if Aparna was this kind, then surely Maahir was a shallow, unfeeling man for not being able to see the wonder of his wife.

Raahi stood up with a start. It was 7:32pm. And she might as well see what her husband had to say for himself.

She went to her nightstand and picked up the envelope with the header of Hinduja Healthcare. He must have scribbled it just before going into the heart surgery that he never emerged from. Raahi could just imagine his unwavering voice warding off a room full of expert doctors, telling them he didn’t care if he was having a stroke, he had to jot this down. She imagined his strong hand grabbing one of their pens and slashing away at hospital stationery.

She ripped open the envelope and tried not to cry.

Raahi,

My doll,

It’s not looking good for me. And I’ve not done this well. There might be difficulties ahead for you.

Don’t let the little people shame you. They’ll try their goddamn best because they’ve never been half as much. Or felt half as much. What we had was full. Don’t let them convince you otherwise.

Take care of my girls. Especially yourself.

And please... make sure they marry good men. No matter how wealthy you get, the world’s an unfriendly place for a girl on her own.

Forgive me for making it so unfriendly for you.

Yours, now and forever,

M.

Raahi crumpled the letter. For the first time since he had died, she felt a prick of irritation for her husband.

It was all well for him, to tell her that marrying her daughters well was paramount for their happiness. That they’ll be vulnerable forever if they don’t have husbands. But he’d left her alone and vulnerable, hadn’t he? And they’d been married, to all intents and purposes hadn’t they?

No they hadn’t.

She could play pretend for as long as she liked but life wasn’t one of their movies. They hadn’t been married, no matter how much time they had spent together. And he’d finally acknowledged it. Asked forgiveness for it, even. After decades of tip-toeing around Mr Khan versus Ms Pandit on flight tickets, hotel ledgers and even in their property deeds, the elephant in the room was finally dipping its proud, fat head, and admitting his faults.

Raahi let out a bitter sigh. This was why she hadn’t wanted to open the goddamn envelope. If it wasn’t a cheque from Maahir, restoring their fortunes, the truth was, it was doing them no good. She didn’t need wisdom from a man who had gone on to the afterlife. She needed practical help for her daughters now.

Thank god, she thought, that the both of them were turning into practical, independent creatures.

(To be continued)

This is the 27th episode of Riva Razdan’s serialised novel Nonsense and Respectability, published every Sunday

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