‘Yes, I have. Film songs are easy. It is ... my confidence.’
‘You’ll be fine. I am sending the ad to the newspaper today. Your name is in it,
without surname as you insisted. It will come on Sunday, the day of the concert.’
‘Don’t, don’t put my name. What if I decide not to come?’ she asked with a
touch of panic.
‘It’s fine. There are plenty of Radhas in Chennai. Nobody will know which one
did not show up,’ I said.
‘I’ll let you down,’ she said.
‘You won’t.’ I said.
‘Until when can you remove my name from the ad?’
‘Saturday. Don’t think like that, please,’ I said.
‘OK, still wanted to check,’ she said.
‘Fine, and practice the Ek Pal Ka Jeena song. It is number one on the charts,’ I
said.
‘I said take my name out,’ Ananya’s mother called me on Sunday morning at 6
a.m.
‘You saw the ad already?’ I rubbed my eyes. I picked up The Hindu from under
the chummery entrance door. I opened Metroplus, the Sunday supplement.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘What is this?’
She had called when uncle had gone for a bath. Ananya hadn’t woken up and
Manju huddled in his room with his best friends – Physics, Chemistry and Maths.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ I said, and made up a story. ‘The newspaper told me
Metroplus goes to press two days before. Only the main paper can be changed
until the night before.’
‘So, what are we going to do now?’
She had called me the previous morning to get her name removed. However, I
never called the newspaper to change the ad wordings.
‘Nothing, we’ll just say Radha fell ill,’ I said.
She kept silent. ‘Won’t it make you look bad?’ she enquired after a pause.
nora
(Nora)
#1