Free Those Pricey Thakur Girls by Anuja Chauhan Page B

She dived inside my body through my open mouth. My neck jerked back and my nose-trills became big, and bas, there she was inside me, with her vegetarian appetite and her gassy stomach and all. You and your husband are doomed , she said in my head. I will never let this house be sold. And y our whole family is going to fall apart – wait and see! ’
    This last certainly sounds prophetic. Things in the family have deteriorated recently. Not content with selling his own house, Ashok Narayan Thakur wanted the Judge to sell his house too, as together the property would command a much higher price per square foot. But the Judge categorically refused, insisting there had always been Thakurs on Hailey Road and there always would be, and where did AN think he was going to marry his girls off from? The newly built Maurya Sheraton hotel on S.P. Marg?
    Unfortunately, not all his girls see eye-to-eye with him on this. Binni, his strident second daughter, who is in dire need of funds to shore up her husband’s family business, heard the whispers of a house sale and arrived hotfoot from her home in Bijnor to urge her father to sell the house and hand over her one-sixth share instantly.
    ‘You must help me, Bauji,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘You put me in a Hindi medium school and left me in the village with Chachaji for six years – that spoilt my chances forever. My own sisters think I’m a behenji. I have to be compensated.’
    She had conveniently glossed over the fact that this had been done only because her asthma was so chronic that the doctors insisted she live, not in polluted Kanpur, which was where the Judge was posted in those days, but in the countryside.
    ‘Binni, it would be idiotic to sell this house now,’ her father said mildly. ‘Its value will escalate for years yet.’
    ‘But Vickyji’s business needs funds or it’ll go thupp! You have to give me my one-sixth hissa now .’
    The Judge, who abhors the word hissa – the many sibilants in it always make him think of a coiled snake, black hood raised and fangs ready to strike – tried to keep his patience.
    ‘Then maybe he should get a job . He had a decent enough job when you married him, why this obsession with business?’
    ‘Vickyji says only incomepoops do monthly income jobs,’ Binni declared. ‘Vickyji says you need balls to do business.’
    ‘As your twins made their appearance barely ten months into your marriage, I am well aware that Vickyji’s testicles are ISI-mark-approved,’ her father replied testily. ‘But he shouldn’t be frittering away their inheritance like this.’
    ‘But Ashok chacha is selling,’ Binni pursued. ‘Why can’t you do like he’s doing?’
    ‘AN has to sell,’ the Judge, goaded beyond endurance after a week of this whining, finally snapped. ‘I don’t. I’m not going to sell the last Thakur house on Hailey Road. Understood?’
    Tears immediately slid into her bold black eyes and the Judge took a hasty jab at lightening the mood. ‘And if you didn’t understand, I can explain it again in Hindi. Haha.’
    At which Binni gave a convulsive sob and stormed out of the house. She has since filed a case against her father, asking for the partition and sale of the house and the handing over of her one-sixth share. The Judge is livid. It’s been three months since they’ve spoken.
    ‘I’m sorry Binni turned out so bad, Mamta bhabhi,’ Chachiji mutters now. ‘I would speak to her, but she is too high class these days, acts like she never lived with me for all those years. AN acts like that too – though he isn’t too snooty to sleep with the cook.’ Her face brightens. ‘But the Pushkarni’s told me how to fix the Hot Dulari!’
    ‘How?’
    Chachiji beams, her puggish face ecstatic. ‘I just have to take one of her pubic hairs, stuff it into a halved nimbu, add a drop of AN’s blood, then tied a rakhi over it and burn it in the sink. He will lose all lust for her immediately. ’ She cackles