Secrets & Saris. Shoma Narayanan

so perfect I was expecting plastic.’

      She glared at him. It was a week since he’d helped her out with painting her living room, and he’d come over twice after that, with Priti and a couple of other guys from his TV crew who’d drunk large quantities of nimbu paani and helped her get the rest of the flat painted. Today she was going with him to attend a class reunion at a nearby school—one of the ex-students in town for the reunion was a Bollywood actor who had made quite a name for himself playing character parts, and Neil was interviewing him for his show.

      ‘You’re the one who told me to dress up a little,’ she said indignantly.

      ‘But you’re perfect all the time,’ Neil protested. ‘Perfect swingy hair, perfect make-up, perfectly ironed, perfectly fashionable clothes, perfect shoes— Ow, perfect aim with a hairbrush...’

      ‘You deserved that,’ Shefali told him sternly as she took her hairbrush back, but she was smiling.

      The more she got to know Neil, the more she liked him. He continued to be brutally frank about everything, but he was helpful, funny and incredibly loyal to his friends. He also seemed to be incredibly unaffected by Shefali—it was as though that first kiss had never happened. The trouble was Shefali continued to find him as attractive as she had when they’d first met, and it was a little annoying and more than a little frustrating that he treated her like one of the guys. She still didn’t think that she was ready for a relationship, but it would have felt good to think that he was holding himself back too, battling his feelings because the time wasn’t right for either of them...

      She bit the thought back with a sigh as Neil got off the sofa and said briskly, ‘Come on—hurry up or we’ll be late.’

      The party was more fun than she’d expected. Most of the guests were in their early thirties, and they were a happy mix of people. And of course there was the actor—a dark-skinned man with an intelligent mobile face. He specialised in honest uneducated villager roles, and it came as a bit of shock to hear him speak perfect English. Neil and his crew were circulating among the guests, with Neil doing short interviews with each of them. Later he would cut and edit the segment to around three minutes, but he’d shot for well over an hour before he wrapped up and came to sit next to Shefali.

      ‘Very bored?’ he asked, sotto voce.

      Shefali shook her head. ‘Not at all. I spent a lot of time talking to a woman who’s a major in the Army—very interesting the stuff she had to say. Her husband’s in the Army too. And I met a chap who runs a consumer durables dealership. He said he’d give me a good bargain on a washing machine.’

      Neil raised his eyebrows. ‘You’re buying a washing machine now? What happened to the austerity drive?’

      ‘The washerwoman’s ruining my clothes,’ she said. ‘Last week she put a red kitchen towel into the wash with my under-things, and I now have seven pink bras.’