Tewari & Sons, 23, Chandni Chowk

Chapter 16: Life in a Metro

Payal

She checked her reflection in the rearview mirror of her car. She looked presentable enough. Considering that it was six in the morning, she had to admit that she looked more than just presentable. She looked damn fine. She had tried the oldest trick in the book and got herself a drastically different haircut yesterday. While everyone liked their local politician to be attractive and young, considering both of it was so rare, but one also had to be a little dowdy when it came to fashion: shapeless and ill-fitted clothes, nothing that draws the attention too much to your clothes, use of earthy colours and generally give the good Indian girl vibe. Of course there was no such rule for men, because everyone automatically took them seriously. But now that the battle had been lost and until the next elections she had a breather, she could go back to looking chic. So here she was at Lodhi Garden for her morning run, looking like what every self-respecting South Delhi fashionista looked, not a hair out of place, carefully plastered nude make-up to give the impression to the world, yeah that is what I look like when I wake up'. She checked to see if her car was locked properly and took a deep breath as she stepped in.

This was her first back-to-normal routine after her engagement was called off by her fiance. The reminder of it made her pause next to a tree and sit on a bench. She was glad that Arnav called off the wedding, it was only the right thing to do. But ever since it she had been feeling several conflicting emotions. At first she was angry with Arnav. How dare he, she had thought. And why on that day, when she was so beaten already. Payal Singh was not used to failing. Yes, she was born into privilege and was unashamed and unapologetic about the benefits she reaped as a result. But she never took this privilege for granted. She worked for it, unlike all her fellow privileged peers from school and college. She did not have the genius of Aakash or the almost casual-brilliance of Arnav, who were both from the same world as hers. She worked harder than them and fought harder than they to achieve the same kind of success that they did. In fact, if at all she was like anyone from her world of New-Ons it was probably Khushi, the halwai's daughter from Chandni Chowk. Which was altogether too strange. Thought of Khushi made her let out a sigh. Khushi, she was somehow always in the middle of her world and that of Arnav's. She was an irritant in her life, she had gauged this early on. Perhaps that explained some of the unkindness that she subjected the girl to.

"Payal!"

She was startled when a voice called her. This is why she had avoided coming here for a while, to avoid people.. people she knew. She looked in the direction of the voice and saw that it was Anita Chawla, Arnav's neighbour, one of Poonam Raizada's groupies and generally annoying person with whom she would normally avoid any hint of a conversation. But today there was no escape and she offered her practised election-rally smile to the lady. Mornings at Lodhi Garden was a melting-pot of all that the city represented - retired old men being all jolly and sometimes discussing politics and urban-life woes, young corporate types with their Fitbit watches that tell them exactly how much they should run, people like her perennially running to get a body that will conform to patriarchal beauty standards, people who ran for the joy of running, whom she personally considered a crazy demographic and the most formidable demographic there ever was - aunties. Anita Aunty was catching her breath and bent down to untie and retie her sneakers lace. While some aunties wore a salwar-kameez with sneakers, Anita Aunty, younger, more fashionable and aided by a petite body wore fashionable work-out clothes.

"Aunty, how are you?"

"Bas, first class! You tell me, what is new?"

She had to suppress a giggle at this. Of course, she knew what this meant. Anita Chawla was basically giving her a wild field. She could talk about INP and the wedge between her and father that more than one newspaper had already begun reporting on.Or she could talk about her wedding that had been called off. Yesterday the Times of Delhi carried a blind item that mentioned how a young politician and a business heir's wedding had been called off because the former's poor performance in the election made them unattractive as a mate-prospect. She had to admit it was mildly thrilling to be featured as a blind item an honour normally bestowed upon only Bollywood starlets and cricketers. It was also amusing to read that the cause of the wedding being called off was stated as some kind of politics-business nexus. Of course it was a better reason than something as unexciting as incompatibility.