Anuja Chauhan - The Zoya Factor

westland ltd

the zoya factor

Anuja Chauhan was born in Meerut and went to school in Meerut, Delhi and Melbourne. She has worked in advertising for over seventeen years and has created many popular ad campaigns for PepsiCo, including Nothing Official About it, Yeh Dil Maange More, Oye Bubbly, Darr ke aage jeet hai, and Live it Abhi. She lives outside Bangalore with her husband Niret Alva, their three teenagers, two dogs, two cats and numerous girgits.

the zoya factor

Anuja Chauhan

westland ltd

61, IInd floor, Siverline Building, Alapakkam Main Road, Maduravoyal, Chennai 600095

93, Ist floor, Sham Lal Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110002

First published by HarperCollins Publishers India 2008

Published by westland ltd 2016

This ebook edition: 2016

Copyright Anuja Chauhan 2008

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-93-86036-25-4

Typeset in Electra LT Regular by SRYA, New Delhi

The prequel Heres what was happening in Zoyas life exactly two years ago was first published in HT Brunch and was commissioned exclusively by and for HT Brunch

The author asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Due care and diligence has been taken while editing and printing the book. Neither the author, publisher nor the printer of the book hold any responsibility for any mistake that may have crept in inadvertently. Westland Ltd, the Publisher and the printers will be free from any liability for damages and losses of any nature arising from or related to the content. All disputes are subject to the jurisdiction of competent courts in Chennai.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, circulated, and no reproduction in any form, in whole or in part (except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written permission of the publishers.

For Niret, Niharika, Nayantara and Daivik John.

You are my world.

Z oya, chal, its time to go. Monitas husky voice had an edge to it. She sounded both totally wired and hugely relieved. I told her Id be down in twenty minutes and jumped to my feet, smiling excitedly at my reflection in the mirrored wardrobe.

The two of us had been chafing in the luxurious embrace of the Taj Mumbai for the last three days. Wed demolished tinfuls of salted cashews and trayfuls of fancy chocolate, sweated in the sauna, primped in the parlour, and watched television mindlessly. All with one eye on the massive bay windows, down which smooth sheets of snot-coloured water had been pouring for thirty-six hours straight.

It could be an award-winning ad for Coldarin or something, Mon had said, gloomily surveying the rain that morning, lying on her tummy with her chin propped up in her hands. One of those intense, Cannes-Lion-winning type of ads, made on a million-dollar budget. God has a thunderous phlegmy cough and a rainy runny nose. The mortals, drowning in celestial snot, spray the skies with Coldarin mist. The satanic streptococci flee, the Almighty recovers and a huge double rainbow forms in the sky and morphs into the Coldarin logo. Slow fade out.

Id shot her a concerned look it wouldnt do for my creative director to have a nervous breakdown bang at the beginning of the biggest cola ad-shoot of the year and quickly handed her the Room Service menu for some light eating. Itll stop today, Mon, I said soothingly, after shed ordered two Prawns-Pepper-Salt platters and a Triple Hot-Choc-Fudge in a tearful voice. Well shoot tonight. Youll see.

Sure enough, by seven in the evening the rain had reduced to a slow snivel and an apologetic-looking sun had put in a cameo appearance before drowning itself in the Arabian Sea, leaving behind a clear, star-studded sky.

And now Monita had called.

The Zing! Cola shoot was finally on!

Humming happily to myself, I dived into the shower cubicle at seven forty-five, and emerged in a cloud of steam at five past eight. Then I wiped the steamed-up mirror and examined my face critically.

People are always saying so cute! when they see me and grabbing my cheeks and squeezing them with gusto, which is okay when youre a moppet in red corduroy dungarees but not so good when you are a working woman armed with a degree from a lesser business school, frantic to project a mature image in your job as a mid-level client-servicing executive in Indias largest ad agency and twenty-seven years old to boot. By that age, people should be more interested in squeezing your butt, right?

Wrong.

I dont know what it is, Zoya, Sanks, my boss, (a forty-three-year-old, hardened adman, not some cheeky, empty-nester auntieji, okay) once told me, but just looking at your cheeks makes my thumb and index finger sort of spasm I want to squeeze em and squeeze em and squeeze em till they pop. He got a manic gleam in his protuberent eyes when he said this and I backed away from him hurriedly, thinking, Okay, heres conclusive proof that the CAT and IIT JEE exam formats totally suck.

Oh well, at least Im not hideously deformed in any other way. I mean, my skins okay, and my hairs actually quite nice its dark and shiny and cascades halfway down my back in a mass of bouncy ringlets. I never tie it up.

Now I shook it out and yanked open my duffel bag. It wouldnt do to be late.

The call time for the shoot was nine p.m. and it was only a short drive from where I was to the location, Ballard Estate. Wed cordoned off the whole ilaka and got police permission and protection for the entire week. We needed both because we were blocking busy roads and because we were shooting with one of the biggest stars in the country. Which brought me back to the all-important question of what cool outfit I was going to wear.

I obsess a little about being cool, because, hello, when people ask me where I stay I have to look them in the eye, smile brightly and say Karol Bagh with casual unconcern. Which is agony in advertising because when all the snooty ad-people think Karol-Bagh-type, they imagine a pushy wannnabe in a chamkeela salwar-kameez with everything matching-matching. Someone who says anyways instead of anyway, grands instead of grand and butts instead of butt. (As in: She has no butts, earns twenty grands a month and lives in Karol Bagh. Who does she think she is, anyways?)

Of course they dont know anything. They have no clue that the fancy south Delhi movie halls where they all throng to see the latest Hollywood films are owned by an enterprising Karol Bagh boy who lives down my road, still, even though he now owns houses all over Delhi, including one in Golf Links, the poshest quarter in the capital.

Because Karol Bagh has Soul.

It may be a loud, expansive, dhik-chik dhik-chik music-loving soul that died and became a soul because its arteries were clogged with too much high-cholestrol, ghee-laden Punjabi food, but its a soul nonetheless.

Think lousy old Golf Links has Soul? Naah.

I finally settled on loose khaki cargos and a skinny black ganji. Then I fluffed out my hair, yanked on my red sneakers, grabbed my matching-matching red rucksack (fully uncool I know, but what to do control nahi hota) and slammed out of the room, hugely excited.

Monita was waiting for me in the lobby, grinning happily, tall, helmet-haired, strong-featured (her cheekbones are fully out there) and strong-minded too. Shes nursed me through not one but two major heartbreaks that I dont like to talk about. She wears fusionish clothes and writes some pretty zany scripts. Shes very cranky nowadays though, being fully nicotine-deprived. Her younger son (twenty-six months old) is refusing to relinquish his rights to her Goddess-like breasts. I swear, Zoya, shed said on the flight in from Delhi, seven whole days away from him, this time Im going to pull the plug for good.