The Ferrari screeched to a halt at the next set of lights, only just avoiding a cow that was sitting in the middle of the road like a traffic bollard. Jamwal drew up by the side of his challenger, and couldn’t believe his eyes. The young woman seated behind the wheel didn’t give him so much as a glance, although he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
When the light turned green, she accelerated away and left him standing again. Jamwal threw the gear lever into first and chased after her, searching for even the hint of a gap in the traffic that might allow him to overtake her. For the next minute, he kept one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the horn as he swerved from lane to lane, narrowly missing bicycles, rickshaws, taxis, buses and trucks that had no intention of moving aside for him. She matched him yard for yard, and he only just managed to catch her up by the time she came to a reluctant halt at the next traffic lights.
Jamwal drew up by her side and took a closer look. She was wearing an elegant cream silk dress that, like her car, could only have been designed by an Italian, although his mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of the way the hemline rose high enough for him to admire her shapely legs. His eyes returned to her face as she once again accelerated away, leaving him in her slipstream. When he caught up with her at the next intersection, she turned and graced him with a smile that lit up her whole face.
When the lights changed this time, Jamwal was ready to pounce, and they took off together, matching each other cyclist for cyclist, cow for cow, rickshaw for rickshaw, until they both had to throw on their brakes and screech to a halt when a traffic cop held up an insistent arm.
When the policeman waved them on, Jamwal took off like a greyhound out of the slips and shot into the lead for the first time. But his smile of triumph turned to a frown when he glanced in his rear-view mirror to see her slowing down and driving into the entrance of the Taj Mahal Hotel. He cursed, threw on his brakes and executed a U-turn that resulted in a cacophony of horns, shaking fists and crude expletives as he tried not to lose sight of her.
He glided up to the front of the hotel, where he watched as she stepped out of her car and handed the keys to a valet. Jamwal leapt out of his Porsche without bothering to open the door, threw his keys to the valet, ran up the steps and followed her into the hotel. As he entered the lobby, she was disappearing into a lift. He waited to see which floor she would get out on. First stop was the mezzanine: fashionable shops, a hair salon and a French bistro. Would it be minutes or hours before she reappeared? Jamwal walked over to the reception desk. ‘Did you see that girl?’ he asked the clerk.
‘I think every man in the lobby saw her, sahib.’
Jamwal grinned. ‘Do you know who she is?’
‘Yes, sahib, she is Miss Chowdhury.’
‘The daughter of Shyam Chowdhury?’
‘I believe so.’
Jamwal smiled again. A few phone calls and he would know everything he needed to about Shyam Chowdhury’s daughter. By the time they next met, he would already be in first gear. The only thing that surprised him was that he hadn’t come across her before. He picked up the guest phone and dialled a local number.
‘Hi, Sunita. I’ve been held up at the office, someone needed to see me urgently. Let’s try and catch up this evening. Yes, of course I remembered,’ he said, keeping a watchful eye on the bank of lifts. ‘Yes, yes. We’re having dinner tonight. I’ll be with you around eight,’ he promised.
The lift door opened and she stepped out carrying a Ferragamo bag. ‘Got to rush,’ he said. ‘Can’t keep my next appointment waiting.’ He put the phone down, just as she walked past him, and quickly caught up with her.
‘I didn’t want to bother you...’ he began.
She turned and smiled sweetly, but did not stop walking. ‘It’s no bother, but I’m not looking for a chauffeur at the moment.’
‘How about a boyfriend?’ he said, not missing a beat.
‘Thank you but no. I don’t think you could handle the pace.’
‘Well, why don’t we try and find out over dinner tonight?’
‘How kind of you to ask,’ she said, still not slackening her pace, ‘but I already have a dinner date tonight.’
‘Then how about tomorrow?’
‘Not tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.’
‘Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,’ he quoted back at her.
‘Sorry,’ she said, as an attendant opened the door for her, ‘but I don’t have a day free before the last syllable of recorded time.’
‘How about a coffee?’ said Jamwal. ‘I’m free right now.’
‘I feel sure you are,’ she said, finally coming to a halt and looking at him more closely. ‘You’ve clearly forgotten, Jamwal, what happened the last time we met.’
‘The last time we met?’ said Jamwal, unusually lost for words.
‘Yes. You tied my pigtails together.’
‘That bad?’
‘Worse. You tied them round a lamp post.’
‘Is there no end to my infamy?’
‘No, there isn’t, because not satisfied with tying me up, you then left me.’
‘I don’t remember that. Are you sure it was me?’ he added, refusing to give up.
‘I can assure you, Jamwal, it’s not something I’d be likely to forget.’
‘I’m flattered that you still remember my name.’
‘And I’m equally touched,’ she said, giving him the same sweet smile, ‘that you clearly don’t remember mine.’
‘But how long ago was that?’ he protested as she stepped into her car.
‘Certainly long enough for you to have forgotten me.’
‘But perhaps I’ve changed since—’
‘You know, Jamwal,’ she said as she switched on the ignition, ‘I was beginning to wonder if you could possibly have grown up after all these years.’ Jamwal looked hopeful. ‘And had you bothered to open the car door for me, I might have been persuaded. But you are so clearly the same arrogant, self-satisfied child who imagines every girl is available, simply because you’re the son of a maharaja.’ She put the car into first gear and accelerated away.
Jamwal stood and watched as she eased her Ferrari into the afternoon traffic. What he couldn’t see was how often she checked in her rear-view mirror to make sure he didn’t move until she was out of sight.
Jamwal drove slowly back to his office on Bay Street. Within an hour he’d found out all he needed to know about Nisha Chowdhury. His secretary had carried out similar tasks for him on several occasions in the past. Nisha was the daughter of Shyam Chowdhury, one of the nation’s leading industrialists. She had been educated in Paris, before going on to Stanford University to study fashion design. She would graduate in the summer and was hoping to join one of the leading couture houses when she returned to Delhi.
Such gaps as Jamwal’s secretary hadn’t been able to fill in, the gossip columns supplied. Nisha was currently to be seen on the arm of a well-known racing driver, which answered two more of his questions. She had also been offered several modelling assignments in the past, and even a part in a Bollywood film, but had turned them all down as she was determined to complete her course at Stanford.
Jamwal had already accepted that Nisha Chowdhury was going to be more of a challenge than some of the girls he’d been dating recently. Sunita Desai, who he was meant to be having lunch with, was the latest in a long line of escorts who had already survived far longer than he’d expected, but that would rapidly change now that he’d identified her successor.
Jamwal wasn’t all that concerned who he slept with. He didn’t care what race, colour or creed his girlfriends were. Such matters were of little importance once the light was switched off. The only thing he would not consider was sleeping with a girl from his own Rajput caste, for fear that she might think there was a chance, however slim, of ending up as his wife. That decision would ultimately be made by his parents, and the one thing they would insist on was that Jamwal married a virgin.