Under the Tamarind Tree

Chapter Four

The hesitant and polished voice seemed to be coming from a distance.

"Hello there, aren't you Madhushree Gupta? Oh, I used to watch you on television so often. What do you do these days? it must be so nice to have all this free time to do all those things you never had time for earlier?," it said.

The woman with the elaborately coiffed hair did not look up but continued to concentrate on her food. She wondered how long it took for old ladies these days to realise they were being slighted.

"Ahem, I don't think you heard me..."

Madhushree finally looked up. The old lady had a face that had elegance and privilege stamped on it. She wore a simple white sari and had small pearl studs at her ears, unlike most of the other guests who were dripping diamonds. In her experience, women like that approached women like her very rarely, and were more often than not easily mortified. The old lady must be very bored or was actually a genuine fan, albeit a closeted one by the looks of her.

Madhushree could just picture the scene, this elegant old lady smiling to herself and daintily biting into a cream biscuit while the latest vulgarity by Madhushree Dutta played out on the late night masala news. She would giggle to herself and shock her other old lady friends the next day with her knowledge of cheap scandals.

Madhushree cleared her throat loudly and looked at the other woman's curious eyes.

"Yes, I heard you. I eat and drink and sleep. That is something l never got to do earlier," she said, still maintaining eye-contact while she stuck her index finger into her mouth and took out an irritant piece of chicken from her front tooth. She then paused and burped loudly enough to disgust anyone within hearing distance.

Madhushree then thrust another piece of chicken into her mouth and began to chew again. There was a brief silence during which Madhushree's loud chewing and occasional burps was more magnified.

The old lady finally looked away and muttered a quick 'excuse me' and turned away. "Good riddance," said Madhushree in a stage whisper and the old lady pretended not to hear as she began to walk away as quickly as she could.

Almost immediately, Madhushree began to get that scary rumble in her stomach that had nothing to do with hunger. Shit. Why did it have to come now?

She quickly thrust her plate aside and began to take deep breathes, inhaling and exhaling slowly like she had been taught. The nausea disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.

Madhushree looked around, slightly panicked, but nobody seemed to have noticed her. She knew she had to tell her family sooner or later, but once she told them, there would be no turning back, and the long, terrible nightmare with no scary twists and turns but just consistent stark reality, the sort that crushed your soul and revealed the world's ugliness in board mid-morning sun – would begin.

She began to imagine newspaper headlines the next day if she had a vomiting incident right there in the middle of the wedding buffet. It would be the icing on her cake, the scandal to top all scandals until the dreadful thing began and people's scorn and ridicule began to turn to pity as it surely would if things went on the way they were headed.

An image of her old friend Vani, ensconced in her red chair at the news studio sprang to her mind. She could almost see the bright white light reflecting off her bright red waistcoat and varnished red nails, her painted red lips breaking into a giggle as she began to read the latest mishap from the fallen celebrity Madhushree.

Perhaps she would tell her colleagues how she used to be friends with this once rising star, regaling them with exaggerated episodes from school where it was quite obvious that Madhushree would end up like this, throwing up in the middle of a wedding hall.

Madhushree shook her head. Why the hell should she care what that self-righteous bitch said about her? she had stopped watching her stupid news show long ago. Right about that time when that "friend," of hers had run that false news reel about her alleged relationship with that creepy old Politician Minister of something important with the stinking teeth. It had been the last nail in the coffin for her already failing career and she had never forgiven Vani for that.

Even thinking about that set Madhushree's pulse racing, and she felt that old, familiar heat in her chest that she always got whenever she was humiliated or felt betrayed.

Suddenly, she couldn't bear to be here, in this room surrounded by the scent of good food and the laughter and happy voices that drifted in from the wedding hall. What the hell was she doing in a wedding anyway? The hosts were related to her very remotely and they certainly weren't so eager for her to attend. There was no reason for her to put up with this nonsense, where people pretended they didn't know who she was.

She got up as soon as she thought this, and went in search of fresh air outside the claustrophobic confines of the dining hall.

Once upon a time, Madhushree would walk into a room and a hush would descend. People's eyes would light up as they looked at her, one of the perfect examples of womanly beauty. However, today she was simply a heavy mass of flesh swaying dangerously as she stumbled out of the door, and no one, not even her own family noticed her leaving the room.

She decided to take a walk down the road outside the wedding hall.

Apart from the old lady, no one had recognised her and everyone seemed to be having the time of their lives. This depressed her more than the other bad news she was yet to break to her family.

So be it, she thought, fumbling in her bag where her trusted cigarettes could always calm her down. "Shit," she screamed as she realised that her lights were missing. However, her disappointment was short-lived as a hand came out of the darkness and offered her a light. "Thank you," she murmured and looked up at the owner of the lighter soon after she had blown out the first smoke.

Irritated by the elegant form that greeted her, she looked away.

"You really do not recognise me do you," said a soft, pleasant voice that seemed irritatingly familiar.