Chapter 3 Reading Losing My Virginity Manufar Rashin Budurci by MADHURI BANERJEE

told that it was a terrible addiction and if I wanted to lose any weight and make progress, I would have to stick to green tea. After taking my measurements and other indicators establishing that I was very fat, the dietician gave me a strict exercise schedule and a near starvation diet that I had to adhere to before reporting back in two weeks time."

"I ve always had a love hate relationship with my body. I ve tried to love it enough to look like the model of a Cosmo cover, but ended up hating that it didn t adhere to any of my diets or workout regimes. But I hadn t given up yet. I still believed that if I needed to lose my virginity, I might need to lose my weight first."

"My mother s words came back to me. I had been to five dieticians so far. From eating every two hours to having soy milk when I was hungry to only drinking lime water through the day and, the worst, to having juice made from vegetables thrown in a blender that would make my skin glow, I had tried it all. And no matter how hard I tried to hold up a diet, at the end of a gruelling week of starvation and workout, I would fall back on my wayward eating habits by taking a trip down to Coffee De."

"Then, as I walked back home after my appointment, I realized that if I walked all over Bandra everyday, I would get forty-five minutes of exercise and would save money from travelling in an auto."

That little voice spoke again and I knew that wouldn t happen for too long since most of my resolves were broken in a few days. I recognized that the decisions I made myself were trashed as soon as I understood another viewpoint. I had lived life on the bench most of the time and I was happy about it.

"Suddenly, my phone rang. It was the Italian Embassy. I was told they wanted me to do some work for them and I had to go to their office immediately. I took an appointment to reach in about an hour s time so that I could go home, change and make it there before they closed for lunch."

"Back at home I scavenged for my grey business suit, the one I always wore for interviews and the one that I noticed had now faded at the back. I pulled it out, rejected it, and for the next twenty minutes I took out every piece of clothing from my wardrobe to find the appropriate outfit to make a good impression."

"I have always been indecisive about clothes. Most of the time I was trying to hide my ungainly hips, so everything was oversized in my closet except for a few nice things that"

Aditi had picked out for me.

"I somehow fitted myself into a full sleeved, white shirt and black trousers and added small pearl earrings to complete the no-nonsense look. Then I marched right out and caught an autorickshaw. Half way to the embassy, I realized that the buttons on my white shirt were popping open and there was no time to go back and change! I desperately needed this assignment since I had no other way to pay my rent. So I bought a bunch of safety pins from a lady at one of the traffic signals and tried to put a few on my blouse but it ended up looking all lopsided while the driver had a field day watching me in his rearview mirror. When I got to the embassy, it had closed for lunch but I was shown into a room where there were some people waiting for me. I was sure it would be another brochure translating assignment and wanted to take their work and leave quickly."

" Kaveri, please come in, said the man I generally interact with at the embassy. He was a typical, aged Italian wrinkled skin, blue eyes, and a smile that must have made hearts melt in the old days."

"I went and sat down and said yes to a cup of coffee. I loved the lavazza they served and, being the caffeine addict I was, I never missed an opportunity to have several cups while I was there."

" Kaveri, these are the new documents that have just come from the High Commissioner. It s a new brochure they plan on printing in Hindi to encourage more Hindi-speaking people to travel to Italy. Can you please translate them? "

" Sure, I said. But why didn t you just have it couriered to me? "

"He looked thoughtful for a moment and then gave the most genuine answer, I forgot! Then he smiled and my heart melted. Of course I would do it! The man still had enough charm in him to persuade women like me!"

"When I got home I quickly got to work on the project. I was one of those people who didn t wait till the last minute to finish things. I wanted to be ready well before. That s why I always met deadlines and I was always called back by the embassies. They knew that what a normal interpreter would take two weeks to deliver, I would finish in three days."

"But just when I got to understand the subject, random thoughts flooded my head."

"I realized that my resolve to lose my morals was coming from a feeling of deep dissatisfaction in my life. Maybe if I wasn t pursuing all those interests and making deadlines, I would have been with a man. Maybe my idea of love and arranged marriage was all wrong. I had presumed that there would be a sign somewhere telling me when I should fall in love and when to get married."

But there had been no sign.

"So maybe, there would never be a sign."

"And it was that thought, right there, that just scared me. I d waited my whole life for"

"something that was never going to show up. Maybe I wasn t one of those people who deserved love, or maybe Aditi had it right all along."

"But that couldn t be correct. Because I ve seen Aditi completely messed up after dumping men. No matter how much she says she has the power, a part of her has emotionally died. And one night when she became completely drunk, to the point of passing out, she blurted out that it was becoming harder to find good men."

"Work had always been worship. I couldn t stand being dependent on anyone. Maybe my strong sense of economic security scared men off, because I wasn t the type who would want a man to look after me. I would want a man as an intellectual partner. So I couldn t do the whole serve coffee thing in arranged situations and was a flop with my parents in the marriage department. But I still believed someone would find me. I didn t have to go look."

These thoughts were making my head hurt. They were making me confused.

I had never been the romantic type. But I wasn t completely against the idea. So was I repelling the men? Was I just being a prig when I met a new man and asked him about his favourite opera?

I didn t have the answers. And the questions kept coming.

"For the first time, I wondered, Who am I?"

Five

"Aditi and I didn t meet till two weeks later. Her job was such that if she got stuck in a shoot, she would have to finish the schedule before she could even breathe again. She had often told me that it was a thankless, harrowing job with little pay, but I knew she loved it because she was just that bit closer to the film stars, which was like a six- degree separation from fame itself. I had a feeling that Aditi wanted to be in front of the camera someday but she had never had the chance. So she wanted to be as close to it as possible."

"We were at the See Vu bakery shop for a quick snack when Aditi started making a list. Her list of men that she thought I could go out with. Aditi was a few years older than me and so she thought she knew all about men. She had been giving me advice for the past eight years. But I had seen her have many heartbreaks as well. They would crush her spirit for a long time and maybe that was the reason for her promiscuity. So I had decided that I wouldn t get involved with a man. I didn t need the heartbreak, or the advice. Thinking these lofty, but foolish, thoughts I had reached the ripe old age of thirty and finally I was ready for both."

" Darling, she started sincerely, I can t believe you ve never been on a real date. I mean, I ve been on hundreds and it s really very simple. She seemed so proud of being wanton. Instead of berating her for lack of better judgment, I felt morose. I envied her sense of gay abandon."

"Even though I had never been with a man, I realized that if I had, it would have been disastrous. With my confused, convent educated upbringing, I would feel Jesus Christ was glaring down at me every time I kissed a man. When my Hindu upbringing kicked in, I would be Sita who needed only to be with her Ram. And when I became an atheist, instead of the gods, I would feel the men were judging me."

" That s all very well for you. But honestly, going by my expectations, I think I ll remain a virgin till I get married, I proclaimed, stuffing a lemon tart down my throat."

" By the way, she said as an afterthought, completely ignoring my statement, what were you doing when you were in all those countries? Reading books? "

" I was too young & and I was with my parents! I swallowed and continued, Besides, I had Dad s escorts wherever I went, which kind of threatened the boys, and you could not blame them, they were only sixteen. But hello! You re not listening! I m saying this is not going to work so let s just go shopping instead, huh? "

" Shut up. Now tell me what are the things you want in a man, she asked."

" Oh, you know, the usual: good looks, extreme intelligence, well read, loves art,"

understands & I started on my list.

"Aditi cut me short, Boring! Boring! Boring! Are you looking for someone our age or your dad s friend who is a seventy-year-old professor? Let s do this again. I ll make the list this time. First of all, he has to be good in bed, handsome, rich & "

"I was about to protest when the bearer came over and smiled down at Aditi, asking what more could he bring her, and she flirted back for a bit. Despite her bad skin, she always had an effect on men. I guess that s why all forty-two of them looked beyond her face and down to her cleavage, which, I might also add, was fabulous."

"Plus Aditi always had plans. She never sat around wallowing in self-pity, like I did. I suppose, because of her cheerful attitude, her count was as high as it was and mine zero."

" First of all, she started, after the waiter had left, we need to get your hair straightened or coloured or something that makes it less blah. "

" Thanks, I added sarcastically. I was now stuffing my face with jam droplets that were in the flavours of raspberry and blueberry mini pastries. Pure heaven! She continued pointing her pen at me, Nobody likes to screw a frizzy-haired chick. A new hairstyle is what you need. Then we need to get a better wardrobe. Something more revealing. All these kurtas make you look too intellectual. Here, she looked me up and down and frowned disdainfully at my attire."

" But I am! I protested. I thought I had done okay with a long, pink kurta and jeans and some lovely accessories, but Aditi didn t seem to approve."

" Yes, honey, but men don t see intellectual. They see cleavage! Men need something for their imagination. And you becoming a borderline nun doesn t help. "

"The stress was making me reach for another chocolate tart and I silently nodded my head, going along with the idea until a thought struck me, How much is this going to cost? It seems like my bank balance is depleting already. Don t you remember I was broke a few weeks ago? I thought we could just buy a nice black dress and I could laid! "

" You can t get something if you don t sacrifice something in return, Aditi said authoritatively, as if she was a guru giving advice to a disciple."

" Why can t I just work on my personality? It s a lot cheaper and I have heard that men really dig women with a sense of humour. Can t I learn some new jokes or something? Here s one, I immediately started before she could butt in, What is the thinnest book in the world? I waited for the standard two seconds to reply, What Men Know About Women! And I grinned at my own stupid joke."

"Aditi looked at me as if I was an alien. Ya. That went very far, didn t it? Leave this to me. And don t be cheap. You won t regret it & And please stop eating these calorific things! Men don t like fat women. "

" You re no fun, I grumbled while picking up my bag and following Aditi out of the bakery."

So started my Mission. Mission De-virginization.

We left the patisserie and headed to the parlour to get a new look.

"At the parlour, we flipped through some magazines and argued on what would look good on me. Then we argued with the stylist on what he should do. Then we argued about how much it would cost, then we argued some more on whether we should order lunch since this was going to take the entire day. Mostly it was Aditi arguing with herself on what would look good on me while I kept shut and went along with whatever she said. By the end of it, her arguing had given me a headache."

"But being a determined woman, I was ready to go the whole hog with this project and soon enough, I was in the zone of washing, drying, ironing, colouring, washing, and it went on."

"Aditi got a phone call from her boyfriend, or whom she called the flavour of the month . She went off to chat with him while I sat and flipped through some more magazines in an awkward, don t move your head position. A woman came and sat next to me. Just then my cell phone fell on the floor and very sheepishly I requested her, Please can you pick up my cell phone. I don t think I m allowed to move with this cardboard stuck to my hair. "

She smiled and picked it up.

" Thanks, I said."

Is this your first time? I looked at her strangely.

" Getting your hair done, I mean? she said, clarifying."

" Oh yes! I beamed, ready to give her the dirty details. I ve had straight but frizzy hair all my life. I guess I ve never maintained it too well. All those split ends and what not, I smiled and continued, I just wanted a change. Actually my friend thought I needed a change since it was getting me nowhere in life! "

"The woman laughed, I know what you mean. I got my hair straightened some four times before I realized I was just happy with myself and didn t care about the men. "

"How did she know it was about a man? But then I thought she had entered into a personal space and my shyness took over. I wasn t too comfortable talking to or about men. So I nodded but kept quiet and went back to flipping through my magazine. I also wasn t one of those people who could chat up with anyone and everyone. If it was for work, my other, business , personality came out and I could go on, but on a personal level, I was a timid sheep."

"The lady caught on. I m sorry. I didn t mean to offend you. I think you ll look lovely. If a change is what you need, then by all means go for it. But remember, no man is ever worth it. "

"She dipped into her purse and took out her card and reached over to give it to me. Here s my card. Call me if you want to show me your new look! Then she left, joining her friend who had just finished a pedicure."

I looked at the card. It said:

Deepa M.

TV & Film Director.

I had been sitting next to a film director and I didn t even know it! What I also didn t know then was that this card was going to save my life when I least expected it.

"Before I had a chance to think over the whole thing, Aditi came back. Loser! she almost barked on her phone and then plonked herself on the seat next to mine."

" What happened? I asked, deciding not to tell her about my encounter and instead focusing on her. In any case, Aditi was so

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