"Tum jesi aurato ke wajah se main humesha pyar se dur bhagta hu!" Daya snarled at me. I wept my eyes with the back of my left hand, my mascara smeared all over. I was paying attention to him, his rage making me choke.
"Chali jao mere nazron se, Get out!"
The next thing I knew I was standing outside his room, looking down at the carpeted hall as tears fell from my brown eyes. I was standing outside Daya's hotel room as an emotional wreck. How did I end up like this you ask? Ugh, for that I have to go back about… thirty-six hours. Bear with me.
"Jhanvi, meri Star reporter! Kaisi ho tum?"
Sanjay, my most slimy boss ever, was the chief editor of the GlamGoss magazine; a sleazy gossip magazine with bold and brassy headlines about things that never happened. It's the kind of magazine that you'd find in a hair dressers, in the fake nailed clutches of some thirty something, gum popping, late forties waiting for her peroxide bleach hair to dry. Nevertheless we made our money; we sold our magazines and went on snapping up the corniest of stories.
"Jese tumne mujhe 12 ghante pehle dekha tha! First class! "I muttered as I picked up some of the documents on his table that I have to work on.
"Dekho, I know that tumhe leave chahiye. Or tumhe leave milega!" He beamed at me. I heaved a sigh silently.
"But at the same time Jhanvi I cant get over the fact ke tumhe kitne ache tarike se Rakesh Mehra ko fasaya hai, yeh ho bhi kese gaya ki tum or woh ek hi party me the us din!"
Rakesh Mehra in case you don't know is a second Generation of super star and this pretty boy is tipped to be the successor of his father, who was the famous veteran star.
"Well done Jhanvi, kya project tha woh yar, Mehra ki kya dhajiya uri jab uski photo Goa ke ek joint strip club se bahar ate hue tumne kheechi. Jabki uski super model biwi uske bache ko samhal rahi thi Mumbai me. Yeh sab kitna perfect sound karta hai jab uski debut film release hone hi wali hai. Well done Jhanvi, you are amazing!"
I wanted to mash my face off the keyboard in embarrassment. It had been a set up. GlamGoss had sent out an anonymous party invitation to Rakesh. He hadn't known it was a strip joint until he'd walked in. And then, it was all downhill from there. Nakul, my best friend and photographer had snapped him walking in and walking out and Rakesh was as good as tarred and feathered from that moment. Who was to know that the time from him entering and leaving had only been ten minutes. This was routine at GlamGoss, we were in the right place at the right time because we orchestrated ninety nine percent of our stories.
"Good girl," chuckled Sanjay, patting me on the top of my head. I tried not to shudder. It had taken me an hour to get my curls all nice and swishy this morning and I didn't want his large sweaty hand greasing it up. He walked off into his dingy office where he eased his grossly overweight frame into the chair and promptly lit up an illegal cigarette. I turned my face away from the internal window and back to the computer screen which had finally flickered into life. Checking my emails was my first priority. I scanned the list as I downloaded my inbox.
There were thousands of stories from Celebrity and high profile politician hub; something about a politician using government money to fund his daughter's private education, something about a singer turning himself as homosexual. I rolled my eyes and was about dumped most of them to trash can when my eyes caught few words. CID inspector Daya breaks up with his Girlfriend. I felt a little giddy as thought how it actually would feel to be his girlfriend. I snorted as I pictured his large frame that I always was a fan of. Just then my train of thought was interrupted as hurricane Nakul came blowing in through the door.
"EVERYONE GOOD MORNING!" he cried, waving his hand about regally. A few of my colleagues looked up from their desks and rolled their eyes at him. Nakul wasn't one for subtlety. He was bossy, attention seeking, annoying as hell and said 'Oh my god' way too many times. His hair most of the time has a stripe of black zigzagging its way through the middle. He wore neon green thick framed glasses, bright blue skinny jeans with a white Being Human t-shirt and his ringtone was Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend'. He was as bent as a spoon, but I loved him to pieces.
I managed to move my vanilla latte out of the way in time as he came sliding across my desk on his butt, the Pentax K10 around his neck nearly whacking me in the face
"So…Star Girl," he grinned, "Who're you fucking these days?"
That's the thing about Nakul, other than the fact he swears like a trooper, he will greet you every time you see him like he hasn't seen you in a year.
"In the ten minutes since I've last seen you, mujhe nehi lagta tujhe yeh puchna bhi chahiye, meri luck itni bhi achi nei!"I replied, nonchalantly.
"Good point. Or bta aj ka headlines kya hai?" he asked, helping himself to my mouse and skimming through my inbox.
I leant back in my chair and let him work.
"Politician ne abhi beti ke private education ke liye funds churai, waah. Kash woh uski najaiz beti hoti, or bhi maza ata nei!" He spoke with ease. I can't believe he can be so cruel at times like this. But what we do is the selling cruelty for money. I can't complain much.
"You've already deleted some? Jhanvi, yaar mujhe dekhna tha yeh pehle!"
"They'll be in the trash can if you want to see them but they're just the ones that…"
I was interrupted as a high pitched squeal emitted from Nakul.
"Inspector Daya is single? Oh. My. God. I fucking hope so! I can never get bored of him kicking my booty in bed like he kicks the doors. Ha, ha."
"Ugh, Nakul you are so vulgar!" cried Riya as she swung around in her chair to glare menacingly at us both. What Riya was doing working for GlamGoss I'll never know. She walked around with her nose in the air and acted as though she had a rod permanently jammed up her ass. Her articles were mostly high class and should have been in something like the Hindu or something. Yet here she was, polluting the atmosphere at GlamGoss.
"Oh go suck on a diapers now Riya!" barked back Nakul. Riya went puce with rage and snapped her head back to her computer screen and began typing away furiously. God I loved that guy.
"Behave Nakul," came the voice of Sanjay from behind me, "Do you ever know when to stop?"
"Kya farak parta hai? don't you just love me for it," he winked, blowing Sanjay a kiss from his hand. Sanjay chuckled heartily, every roll of fat jiggling in time with each other. I tried not to shudder visibly.
"Tu wese bhi thik keh raha hai Nakul!" admitted Sanjay, "CID team ke kisse bhot chalte hai magazine me. That's the reason I came out here to talk to you Jhanvi, I want you to do a story on them."
I waved my hand in the direction of the computer screen and sighed.
"Daya's dating career is done to death Sanjay, besides; time after time he's denied it and there's just no more story left there."
"I wasn't thinking about that, mai to kuch or hi soch raha tha."
Oh dear. That's never a good thing. The last time Sanjay was 'Soching' I ended up following Rakesh Mehra into a strip joint, so his track record on "Soching" was not a good one.
"There are never any scandals about those men, especially that Inspector Daya. He seems to be some kind of poster Guy for chastity. Agar hum kisi bhi tarah uske image ko pop kare to it is definite we'll be famous and flying to banks."
"Sanjay bhai, tum keh kya rhe ho?" Nakul asked.
"Agar woh one nights stand kare to? Or yeh baat humare magazine me chape to? Socho? Imagine the explotion guys?"
"And how exactly are we supposed to catch him red handed?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.
"That's where you come in Jhanvi dear," he winked menacingly. I didn't like the look of that.
"I've arranged for you and Nakul to hang out with them tomorrow under the pretence that you're doing a story on what a day off with CID is like. I want you to latch onto that Daya, so that after the interview comes to a formal end, you follow him back to his place, and into his bed. I want you to sleep with Inspector Daya."
No. Definitely not good.