That was the cheapest way to describe it, but accurate. My clothes had improved. My skin had that particular glow women got when they were sleeping in better rooms, eating better food, and not worrying every hour whether next month’s rent would exist. Khanna’s money had done its work. Rohit had given me my first usable portfolio because I had made him believe I was flirtation mixed with ambition, the most irresistible combination in Delhi. Vikram, the ad-film producer, had promised a campaign casting after I had laughed at his very bad joke and let my fingers brush his wrist in the dark of a bar where everyone was performing sophistication for each other. Arjun Verma, the choreographer, had been all charm and timing until I had learned that timing was also a weapon.
None of them gave me anything for free. That was the great lie women told themselves in this city: that they were being “helped” by men. No. They were being purchased in installments, and the receipt was always written in invisible ink.
Still, I was winning. Which mattered.
Fashion week access had come through one of Arjun’s assistant coordinators, a tall woman who smoked too many cigarettes and had the expression of someone who had seen enough backstage hysteria to stop believing in human dignity. She had liked me because I could stand in heels without looking like a baby deer and because I did not fawn over her. I knew when to say thank you and when to shut up. That is a useful talent in Delhi. People mistake silence for respect and then hand you opportunities as if they invented you.
The first time I walked into a proper backstage area, with racks of clothes lined like disciplined soldiers and makeup artists moving fast with sponges and powders, I felt a tiny electric thrill run through me. Not joy. Joy is too clean a word. It was more like possession. I belonged there. Or rather, I could belong there if I kept lying with confidence.
The air was thick with hairspray, perfume, sweat, fabric steam, and ambition. Girls stood in half-finished dresses, nipples taped, faces half-made, all of us pretending not to see each other as competition while measuring each other like livestock. Men with lanyards spoke in clipped tones, saying names too quickly, as if time itself had become expensive.
I caught my reflection in a mirror between two hanging gowns and almost liked what I saw.
Almost.
Kabir was there too, because he had somehow found a reason to be near the venue, carrying a bag for one of the assistant producers. He looked absurdly pleased to see me, which should have annoyed me more than it did.
“You made it,” he said.
“Obviously.”
He laughed. “You always speak like you’ve just won an argument with the world.”
“Because I usually have.”
“You look beautiful.”
I rolled my eyes. “That is not useful information.”
“It is if I mean it.”
There it was again, that open, unguarded thing. Men like Khanna and Vikram and Rohit used flattery as a tool. Kabir used it as an instinct. I was not sure which was more dangerous.
Sanjana found me backstage later, wearing a simple cream kurta and jeans, her hair tied back, a press card hanging from a string around her neck because she had started freelancing for small online pieces and event coverage. She had been taking pictures for a local fashion blog, writing captions, interviewing stylists, doing whatever could be done without selling the soul in one clean transaction.
She looked tired. She always looked tired when she had worked hard, which somehow made her more beautiful to me than all the polished girls swanning around the venue. There was something almost insulting in how little she cared about appearing expensive.
“You look like a peacock that has eaten a diamond,” she said when she saw me.
I smiled. “And you look like somebody’s ideal of a struggling saint.”
“Better than looking like somebody’s bill.”
I laughed. “You are still miserable.”
“No,” she said, adjusting the strap of her bag. “I am employed.”
That was Sanjana’s arrogance: she never sounded impressed by the fact that she survived. She treated survival like a task, not a miracle. I found it irritating because it made my own victories look theatrical.
We stood at the edge of the backstage corridor while the show runners shouted at people and the first models were being lined up. I could feel the city pressing in beyond the venue walls: traffic at a standstill, the smell of rain on dust, the metro rumbling somewhere underground like a mechanical beast, the endless churn of Delhi moving itself from one class to another and pretending the movement was democratic.
“You still think my way is weak?” I asked Sanjana.
She glanced at me. “I think your way is fast.”
“Same thing.”
“No,” she said. “Fast and strong are not the same thing. You keep confusing velocity with power.”
That annoyed me enough to laugh. “You sound like a motivational poster for suffering.”
“And you sound like somebody who thinks every door should open because she is pretty.”
“It usually does.”
“Yes,” she said, with an infuriating softness, “and then what?”
I had no answer I liked.
Kabir appeared a moment later with two paper cups of coffee and handed one to me without being asked. He nodded politely to Sanjana, who accepted her cup with a little smile.
“This one is yours?” he asked her.
She snorted. “I am not his anything.”
Kabir looked briefly embarrassed, then recovered. “I meant the coffee.”
“Still no,” Sanjana said.
I nearly laughed out loud. He turned to me, slightly wounded but trying to hide it, and I had the absurd impulse to touch his arm and reassure him. Not because I owed him reassurance, but because his desire was so obvious that it made me feel powerful in a way money never quite did. Money could buy clothes and rooms and access. Being wanted for no immediate return was a different currency.
It also, I would learn later, had a cost.
At the time I was not interested in costs. I was interested in momentum.
That night, after the show, I sat in the back of a cab with my makeup still half on and my hair smelling of lacquer, while Delhi slid past the windows in wet reflections. The driver had his radio on low, some call-in program where people complained about roads, politicians, and rising prices with the weary intimacy of citizens who knew nobody was listening. We crawled past a tea stall where men stood shoulder to shoulder under a plastic sheet, smoking, arguing, and watching the rain hit the road in silver needles. A child splashed barefoot through a puddle. Somewhere a pressure cooker hissed from an open window. The city was never one thing. It was always a thousand half-finished lives happening at once.
Kabir called.
I let it ring twice before answering. That was the correct amount of delay. Enough to suggest I had other options. Too much delay and a man started imagining betrayal.