Yes, I did. The same thing all of them wanted: a woman who would make them feel chosen, superior, and slightly ashamed of themselves in the best possible way.
I leaned in, close enough to make him feel his own pulse. “Then don’t waste my time pretending you’re doing charity.”
His eyes moved over my face with the lazy confidence of a man who believed every woman eventually came around to the idea of him. He told me to wait. He would see what he could do.
The thing about men like Arjun was that they loved access more than talent. Talent was too honest. Access came with leverage, and leverage was where their real affection lived.
I waited. For three hours I waited among girls who had not slept, assistants who had not eaten, and stylists who had already decided who mattered. The studio smelled of burnt coffee, foundation, and the metallic heat of lights. Everyone there had a soft smile and a hard ambition. It was a lovely, rotten little ecosystem.
Then the model they had been holding back arrived with a senior manager and a face like a saint in a shampoo ad. She was one of those girls who looked as if she had never had to ask for anything in her life, which, in our industry, was often the most suspicious thing about a person. She had a small, expensive handbag and the kind of body that made women resent her and men speak in lowered voices.
Arjun saw her, changed expression, and drifted toward her like a loyal dog.
I watched it happen in real time. The reshuffle was not for me. It had never been for me. I had been used as a bargaining chip in a room where everyone spoke in favours.
By the time the assistant came to tell me my segment had been cut, I was already angry enough to be elegant about it.
I thanked him. I even smiled.
That was the part of me men misunderstood. I could be furious without becoming ugly. Ugly people lost control. I preferred timing.
I walked out with my chin up and my stomach hollowed by humiliation. Outside, the air was wet and stagnant. A fly sat on my wrist like it had paid rent. I lit a cigarette, though I had not planned to smoke, and watched the traffic choke itself on the road. Somewhere nearby, a vendor was frying something in oil old enough to vote. The smell made me think of home, which was irritating because home was the last place I wanted to think about when I was being professionally disrespected.
My phone buzzed.
Rahul.
My brother never called unless the world was either on fire or about to be. He had inherited our father’s appetite for drama and our mother’s ability to sound calm while threatening violence.
I answered. “What?”
“You are in Delhi,” he said, which was not a greeting so much as a charge sheet.
“I know where I am.”
“Then stop acting like you don’t know who else knows.”
I leaned against the studio wall and closed my eyes. “Say what you mean.”
He did not like being told to hurry, but he knew me well enough to know I would hang up if he performed too much. “Your name came up in the wrong conversation. There are people asking questions.”
“About what?”
“About you.”
I laughed, because what else was there to do? “That narrows it down beautifully.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No. I think you are dramatic.”
There was a pause. Then his voice dropped. “Father said you should be careful.”
That stopped me for half a second, which was the closest I ever came to reverence. My father did not ask. He issued weather warnings. He had spent his life in opposition, which meant he was always one mistake away from being either a martyr or a headline. In Mainpuri, men like him survived by understanding that reputation was not a decoration. It was the wall that kept the wolves out and the voters in.
“What did he hear?” I asked.
“Enough.”
“From whom?”
“From people who don’t like us.”
I exhaled smoke through my nose and looked at the studio gate, where a boy in cheap sneakers was arguing with security. “And what exactly am I supposed to do with this information?”
“Stop being careless.”
I almost told him that if he had spent one week in Delhi he would understand that carelessness was not my style. But then I remembered that the city had made me harder, not wiser, and I swallowed the remark.
Rahul continued, “You are not a child anymore, Nisha. Whatever you do there comes back here. Do you understand?”
Of course I understood. That was the curse of being a politically exposed girl from a small town. Even your freedom carried a family signature.
“I’ll handle it,” I said.
“You always say that.”
“And I always do.”
He made a sound that was half irritation, half worry, and cut the call.
I stood for a moment with the phone in my hand, feeling an odd irritation that had nothing to do with him. The city had a way of making every private choice public eventually. Delhi was like that aunt who never paid your bills but always knew your business.
When I got back to the PG, the building was already in one of its evening moods. Girls were cooking in the shared kitchen, the corridor smelled of turmeric, damp towels, and cheap room freshener, and someone had left a pair of wet sandals outside the bathroom like a warning. Bua Devi was sitting on a plastic chair by the entrance, counting rent envelopes with the concentration of a banker and the warmth of a tax officer.
She looked up as I passed. “You are late.”
“I had work.”
She sniffed. “Work or men?”
“Both. I am efficient.”
That got a reluctant smile out of her. She liked me in the way older women liked dangerous girls: with suspicion, admiration, and a faint hope that we would not end up on television for the wrong reason.
Upstairs, in our room, Sanjana was not yet home. She had spent the afternoon at an audition in Noida and then gone for an evening shift at a retail store in a mall near Dwarka. She had arrived in Delhi fifteen days after me, carrying one suitcase, two salwar suits, and the kind of patience that made me want to shake her and hug her in the same breath.
I had mocked her at the beginning, naturally. I had mocked her for her job, her slow pace, her refusal to accept money from men who offered it with sticky palms and fake smiles. I had called her weak, idealistic, provincial in the wrong direction. But Sanjana had the particular stubbornness of a woman who had been raised to believe that dignity was not a mood. It was an inheritance.