Chilli Heat Read online

  My next plan is a spot of retail therapy – a budget version as befits a student, of course, at the Bombay Store emporium or the indoor Crawford Market. But I suddenly realise how tired I am, and thirsty, so I dig out my notebook and find an address within walking distance, back towards the hotel, where I can chill out for a while. The Mocha Bar sounds very European, but when I get there I find it all decked out in an Arabian style. I settle gratefully on one of the big floor cushions and order a panini and a Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee to revive me, then look round at the trendy clientele smoking hookah pipes and listening to the world music soundtrack. I could, I think, be anywhere in the world, but it doesn’t matter. I know already that it will be hard to get up and leave.

  It’s not long afterwards, as I’m supping my coffee and flipping through my notebook for further inspiration, that I become aware of eyes on me. And sure enough, when I glance up, there’s a good-looking guy watching me from across the room. As our eyes meet, he looks down at his magazine, but then he looks right back up and, as if having come to a decision, closes it, stands up and starts walking over to me.

  I watch him as he moves: he’s tall and athletic and, like me, doesn’t look ‘properly’ Indian, such is the milky-coffee hue of his complexion. I imagine he’s half and half, like me, and wonder if he too finds it disorientating sometimes – not so much due to how I feel about it myself, but to how other people often react. However, in his Diesel jeans and crisp white shirt, worn unbuttoned at the neck, he looks perfectly at ease with himself and at home in his skin.

  ‘Manju,’ he says as he comes to a halt by my table, holding out one hand. As I shake it he asks, ‘Mind if I sit down?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I say.

  ‘You’re not waiting for anybody, then?’ His accent is Indian but his English impeccable.

  I shake my head.

  He smiles, holds up a hand to gesture to the waiter. ‘Another coffee?’ he says to me as the latter arrives.

  ‘Sure, thanks.’

  ‘You here on holiday?’

  ‘Yes, I arrived last night. I’m just getting my bearings.’

  He laughs. ‘It’ll take you a while. Mumbai is one big mind-fuck.’

  ‘I’ve heard. Probably not the best place to start, huh?’

  ‘Well, there’s certainly nowhere else like it. Futuristic five-star restaurants owned by millionaire cricketers, squalid slums … it’s a confusing place. You from London?’

  ‘Sheffield.’

  ‘Ah yes, I know it. Not first hand, but I have friends with relatives there.’

  ‘It has contradictions, like anywhere.’

  ‘Of course. But somehow, in Mumbai, they’ve become more extreme and mindblowing than anywhere else.’ He steals a glance at his watch. ‘Listen, what are you doing now? Fancy a spin?’

  I look at my own watch. I really should be getting back to the hotel, to find out if Mum’s resurfaced, but I know even as I think it that I won’t. Why sabotage my chance at a personalised tour of the city with this handsome, eloquent stranger after what she did last night? Mum can wait.

  Outside, I’m surprised when Manju walks over to a powerful-looking motorbike and swings a leg over. From astride it he smiles back at me, patting the space behind him. ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he says.

  ‘A helmet?’ I suggest.

  He laughs and shakes his head. ‘Sorry.’

  For a moment I consider declining the offer: the roads here are mad. But then I imagine myself walking back to my hotel, having a row with Mum, sulking for a bit and then making up in time to go out and find somewhere to eat, and I think to hell with it and place myself in the hands of the gods, whichever gods they may be.

  We take off into the road, weaving our way through what would be lines of traffic in most other places but are a higgledy-piggledy mass of honking, fume-belching vehicles here. I’m grimacing as I cling to Manju’s back, knowing that my life really is at stake here. Yet at the same time I feel a strange thrill inside, which I quickly realise is the thrill of being alive. Let him take me where he will. If I didn’t come to India for adventure, then why am I here?

  After a whirlwind, nerve-jangling tour of the city, dodging the ubiquitous 1950s-style black-and-yellow taxis, he takes me down to Colaba and then back up to Chowpatty Beach via the Eros Cinema near Churchgate, a beautiful art deco picture house with a rocket-shaped facade. Over nachos at the Cream Centre at Chowpatty, followed by a stroll on the sand, he tells me he is a film agent and asks me if I have seen many Bollywood films. I have to confess to him that I haven’t, explaining that my father isn’t really into movies so never took us to see Indian cinema or had any Indian videos in the house – he was always too busy working.

  ‘You’re missing out,’ says Manju. He looks at me. ‘Perhaps I should take you to see one or two. How long are you here for?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m not sure,’ I say, ‘but only a day or two, I think.’

  ‘Shame. You can’t be persuaded otherwise?’

  I gaze at him. I’ve realised, by now, that he’s not my type, in spite of his looks. There’s definitely no frisson between us. But it’s nice to have a friend already, and it would be wonderful to stay on for a while and get to know this fascinating city through a native’s eyes.

  Taking my silence for a ‘no’, he shrugs in turn, looks out over the water. ‘Never mind,’ he says. ‘You have your plans. Let’s just make the best of your short time here. Come.’ He stands up and gestures back towards where his bike is parked. ‘There are some people I’d like you to meet.’

  * * *

  We’re in Seijo and the Soul Dish, a space-age bar in an office block in a place called Bandra West. After admiring the manga artwork on the walls, I’m talking – or rather shouting over the ambient house music – to Manju’s friend Ajit, who has been introduced to me as a ‘foreigners co-ordinator’. Without too much preamble, Ajit asks me if I’ve ever done any acting or modelling work, but when I say ‘no,’ he tells me it doesn’t matter, that girls with looks like mine don’t need any experience. I explain to him that I’m only staying in Mumbai another day or two, that I have plans, but he says that’s unimportant too, that the extra money will come in handy for my travels. And of course, if I ever did return to Mumbai, having already done some work as an extra will stand me in good stead for more.

  After my initial misgivings, my suspicions that he is spinning me a line, I warm to the idea. It might not be stardom – which is not something that has ever attracted me in any case – but perhaps a little of the Bollywood glamour will rub off on me for a while. And even if it doesn’t, it’ll be something interesting to tell my new friends about when I start uni next year, something a little out of the ordinary.

  Just as we’re discussing the finer details – there’s a shoot tomorrow, not for a movie but for a soap opera, requiring extras for an airport scene – there’s a sort of vibration in the air, as if something has materialised from another planet or sphere, and as Manju says, ‘Nadia, meet my friend Asha,’ I turn and am confronted by the loveliest of visions: a stunning Indian girl wearing the skinniest of skinny jeans and a fabulous halterneck top made of bejewelled sari material. The top leaves little to the imagination, and I realise what I haven’t yet thought in any conscious way: that most women in Mumbai seem to be incredibly conservative in the way they dress, tending to choose blouses and trousers over skirts or dresses. On the contrary, Asha’s shoulders are bare and, in the neon light of the bar, so peachy in texture that they almost beg to be bitten into. In fact, Asha as a whole seems to glow from within, her skin is so luminous, of a softness that seems unreal, otherworldly. My breath catches in my throat as our eyes meet and she bestows a smile on me.

  ‘Wonderful to meet you, Nadia,’ she says, her voice husky and surprisingly deep. She touches my arm as she speaks, very lightly and briefly, and it’s as if a rare butterfly has flown past and grazed my skin. Or as if I’ve been kissed by something from another dimension, so
mething that I can’t see. A shiver runs through me; one so violent that I think Asha must feel it. But if she does, she doesn’t let on, turning instead to Manju and Ajit.

  ‘Karishma and I,’ she says, gesturing back to a darkened corner of the room, ‘were just going to make a move to Juhu Beach. There’s a private party at the J49 bar to celebrate the end of shooting of that new movie. How about it?’

  Manju looks at me, and I nod. This is better than I could have hoped for on only my second night in India, and I’m buzzing with excitement, all thoughts of Mum cast from my mind.

  ‘Great,’ says Asha. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ She flashes me another smile, one not entirely sincere, I suspect, and I notice that her teeth are unnaturally white. Still, real or fake, genuine girl or Bollywood confection, Asha is an amazing creature.

  On the way to the loos, I wonder why it is always like this, why, even at home, at A-level college, I never really hit it off with boys. For a while I thought it was to do with race, thought that the kinds of boys who were attracted to the strange hybrid that I am, with my skin paler than a true Asian’s but darker than an Anglo-Saxon’s, with the blue eyes I got from my mother, were just not the right kind of boys for me. Not that I never had my pick of the good-looking ones. Far from it – it only ever seemed to be the good-looking ones who were attracted to me, to the point of boredom. After a while, I started to crave something more interesting, more edgy, than physical perfection. Yet the boys I really wanted, the long-haired rebels more into bands than studying or sports prowess, never seemed to even throw me a second glance, to the extent that I started to suspect they were afraid of me in some way, or at least intimidated or confused.

  In the meantime, bored of my suave charmers, my football pitch heroes, always ditching them after a couple of weeks, I discovered a confusing taste for women, one that I’d never admitted to anyone. It hasn’t led anywhere, is based on nothing more than fantasy, but it has thrown me into disarray. It all started in the hockey changing rooms one Friday just before lunch, when I glimpsed the head prefect, Carla, giving herself a firmer-than-average scrub-down in the shower. I stood, mesmerised, snatch growing ever wetter, as she rubbed at her muff, eyes closed, lips parted, oblivious to my presence – we’d both stood talking to the coach after the game, and were late off the pitch, hence there being no one else in the changing rooms. After a moment or two, she’d spread her lips with the thumb and index finger of one hand and, with the fingers of the other, began to massage her clit vigorously. I’d felt an intense burning sensation start up between my own legs – something way more powerful and instinctive than the slight itch I felt whenever my short-lived boyfriends tried to put their hands up my skirt.

  And then she came, with a barely suppressed cry, and as she did so she opened her beautiful catlike green eyes and smiled at me as if she’d always known I was there. As if, even, she’d done it for my benefit almost as much as hers. Looking back, in the light of what happened afterwards, her behaviour towards me, I often found myself wondering whether there wasn’t an invitation in those shining, post-orgasmic eyes, a beckoning. What would have happened if I’d cast off my own clothes and joined her in the shower? It’s a question that will haunt me for the rest of my life, or perhaps until the day – if such a day ever comes – that I experience a woman sexually. But I didn’t join her. Instead I fled, abandoned my own plans to take a shower and rushed from the changing rooms and back to the school bus without even changing out of my hockey kit, telling the sports mistress I felt faint. When Carla caught up and boarded the bus, I looked steadfastly out of the window, too embarrassed to meet her eye.

  That night, alone in my room, I’d logged on to the internet in the privacy of my room and looked at girls. Girls of all shapes and sizes, girls of hues, girls in all kinds of positions. Some I liked, others I didn’t. In that sense, my feelings didn’t differ from those I had towards boys. Only with girls, I found I had curiously opposite tastes – whereas I liked my men a little rough, a little grungy, the girls who invoked an ache in my groin were all scrubbed and fresh, with shaven pussies and a clean look to them. I thought again of Carla, of the ‘O’ of her mouth as her orgasm had taken hold, of the way she penetrated me with her green gaze. If she hadn’t been inviting me to actually partake of her, she’d enjoyed sharing her triumphant moment of climax with an onlooker, I was certain of that.

  I lay back, pushed my pyjama bottoms down, noticing that the fabric was soaked right through, and fingered my snatch. Suddenly, after months of being able to resist all sexual advances on the part of boyfriends, I had to be satisfied. I had to know what it was like. And so, Carla’s bewitching eyes in my mind, I slipped one hand deep inside myself and let the other hand mimic her actions with her clit. Within seconds the pleasure had mounted and I was writhing on the bed, palpating the swollen bead of my own clit, hearing moans escape from me and praying that the TV in my parents’ room was turned up loud enough for them not to hear as I initiated myself in sexual pleasure.

  My head thrown back against the pillow, my mouth frozen in some kind of fixed grin, I felt my sex widening as if opening itself up to something. And then suddenly there was a giving way inside myself, as the walls of my sex began to contract and relax and then contract again around my hand, and my clit … it’s hard to describe. Afterwards I was so shaken and overcome that I could barely register how it had been, but if I had to put it into words, I’d say that my clit had exploded and behind my closed eyelids sparked a thousand different colours.

  Remembering all this on the way to the loos in Seijo and the Soul Dish, I have to stop for a moment, steady myself against a wall with my hand. It’s a few minutes before I’ve recovered myself sufficiently to carry on.

  6

  I WAKE MID-AFTERNOON and jump up in alarm: Nadia will be worried about me. In fact, the poor girl will be frantic by now. Mouth dry, a sharp pain beating at my temple, cursing the first hangover I’ve had in years, I gather my clothes from all around the floor of the suite, dress hurriedly and leave the room. Charles isn’t there, but I don’t have time to wonder where he might be.

  As I run through the hotel corridor to the lift, I’m aware that I look like a scarecrow, but I don’t really care. All I can think about, at this moment, is how anxious and confused Nadia will be. I imagine she’s probably even called down to reception to report me missing by now, and there’ll be all kinds of explanations to go through when I do show my face, perhaps even bureaucratic procedures. Heavens! What if my disappearance has been reported to the police and I’m officially a missing person? How mortifying that will be. I’ll have to fabricate some story about jetlag and one drink too many and falling asleep over a nightcap in a friend’s room. No one will buy it, let alone Nadia, who knows I don’t have any friends here, but there’s no way I can tell the truth.

  The truth … hmmm, I hardly know where to start. In fact, it all grows a little hazy after the bath, the warm bath that enfolded me, continued caressing my skin after Charles’s onslaught. I’d stayed there for about half an hour, letting it soothe me, calm me back down, and then when I’d finished my drink I’d climbed out and swaddled myself in a thick fluffy bathrobe. At that point I’d assumed I’d be dressing and returning to mine and Nadia’s room and that the night was effectively over. I had no idea what time it was, but I guessed it to be the very early hours of the morning.

  Charles, though, had other ideas. And all credit to him. He has incredible stamina for a man his age. As I’d walked back into the living room, he’d risen from the desk, having apparently been working on his laptop, and came towards me.

  ‘Feeling nice and relaxed?’ he’d said with a smile. As I smiled and nodded and thanked him for the bath and the drink, he slipped my bathrobe from my shoulders and pushed me gently down onto the armchair. Parting my legs with his hands, he brought his face to my pussy again, and treated me to half an hour of mind-blowing cunnilingus, exploring every tiny crease and fold with his mouth and tongue, kissing m
e, licking me, alternately softly and wildly, before putting his tongue inside me again, swirling it round and round until I was bucking on the chair, on the point of orgasm, then teasing me, pulling it out and encircling my hole over and over.

  It got to the point where I wanted him inside me so much, I could have cried with frustration. And he knew it, bringing me to the brink time and time again, relishing my cries as he backed off just as I felt myself on the cusp of orgasm. When I just couldn’t handle it any more, I took control, forcing him up from me and then turning him around and pushing him down onto the chair. Slowing the pace down a little, despite my frenzy, I climbed onto the chair above him, one knee on each arm of it, and untied the belt of his towelling robe. As I peeled back each side of it, his cock sprang up, almost comically eager for me. For a moment he stared down at it; we were both, I think, surprised and awed by the juices that were splashing down on his belly and groin from my pussy suspended above him. With two fingers he gathered some of the sweet liquid and brought it to his mouth, and as he tasted it he let out a moan of satisfaction. In response I grasped his cock, felt its warmth and smoothness against my palm, its steely readiness. It was time. I couldn’t hold off any longer.

  Sensing what I wanted, he rose on his taut buttocks as I brought myself down towards him, and he entered me, as sure and confident as a missile seeking its target. I leant forwards slightly, kissed him and, while our tongues and teeth clashed, I felt my clitoris mash against his belly. For a while I enjoyed the soft, slightly yielding pressure of him against me, but as his pace inside me quickened, I sat up and then inclined backwards slightly. My clitoris, my whole pussy, felt gloriously exposed to Charles’s scrutiny, and indeed, after letting me rub at myself for a minute, Charles removed my fingers and replaced them with his own, not taking his eyes from my wide open parts.

  His scrutiny both unnerved and thrilled me. Ravi and I, when we did do it, which was once in a blue moon over the past ten years or so, always made love under the covers, in the dark. If there’d ever been some kind of ID line-up of pussies, I doubt he’d have been able to pick mine out. Ditto with his cock. Any sense of discovery there’d ever been had dissipated over the years, as the demands of domesticity, child-rearing and Ravi’s career had superseded all thoughts of a half-decent sex life. But as I said, even in the early days, we were hardly great goers.