14 March

The bank manager, a nice suited gentleman, welcomed me with noticeably less warmth than on earlier occasions. I asked him to withdraw fifty lakhs in cash from my account. He smiled frostily and said the bank wouldn't be able to give me such a large overdraft.

'Overdraft? Why do I need an overdraft when I have so much money in the bank?'

'You are forgetting, Shabnamji, that on 16 February you came here and withdrew every penny from your account, even cashing in your fixed deposits. You said you were transferring to another bank.'

'But… but I couldn't have done that. I haven't visited the bank in months.'

'You came personally with your secretary, Mr Bhola Srivastava. Don't you remember we sat in this very room and I explained to you how you would lose interest on the fixed deposits? You signed all the forms and collected the cash. Then you went to the vault and withdrew all your belongings.'

Every word the bank manager said was like a hammer blow on my brain. Six crore rupees, gone. All my heavy gold jewellery, gone. My 24-carat Dubai gold coins, gone. My platinum pendant, gone. My voice, gone.

'I… I… I don't know how… how this… h-happened.'

The manager gave me the compassionate look which people give those who are in imminent danger of being sent to a mental institution.

I returned to the flat in a daze, told Rakeshji to cancel all my engagements for the day, and slumped down on the bed.

I wondered how many other producers Bhola has given dates to and taken money from. I looked around at the furniture that I have managed to put back in place. How soon before I get an eviction notice and everything is auctioned to pay off my creditors?

Life, at its core, is war. I cannot be a silent spectator to my own financial ruin, to the systematic destruction of my career. I will go to the police and tell them everything about Bhola. How he had defrauded me, robbed me, forced Ram Dulari to impersonate me and then probably killed her.

I will deal with the tape when it becomes public. It will embarrass me, certainly, but it won't destroy me. And whatever doesn't destroy me only makes me stronger.

I have decided to pay a visit to DCP Godbole, but only on 18 March. I will not allow Bhola's perfidy to spoil my birthday.

17 March

I turn twenty-three today. All day producers and directors have been calling me up to wish me well. Bouquets have been arriving by the dozen; the whole house reeks of roses and lilies.

Rosie Mascarenhas tells me she has been flooded with cards from my fans. At the last count nearly thirty thousand had arrived, breaking all previous postal records.

Deepak Sir is hosting a birthday bash for me at the Sheraton this evening.

Even in the midst of all this festivity, my mind is tinged with sadness. Because no one will call to wish me Happy Birthday from Azamgarh. In my first year in Mumbai, I waited by the phone from morning till night on 17 March, hoping against hope for a call from Babuji and Ma, but it never came. My family has cut me off so completely that they probably don't even remember it's my birthday.

18 March

This evening a delivery arrived from DHL. I opened it up to discover a small packet, all neatly wrapped and ribboned.

I tore open the gold paper and received a shock. Because nestling in my hand was another videotape, black, without a cover or label. There was a small Post-it note attached to the bottom of the tape. 'Belated Happy Birthday. If you are still thinking of going to the police, see this,' it said in Bhola's slanting handwriting.

I inserted the tape into the video player, expecting to see the next instalment of 'Adventures of a Lonely Girl', but what appeared on the screen sent a jolt of electricity down my spine.

The tape showed me performing various sex acts on a man. The man's face was never shown, but from his wheatish skin tone and the paunch of his hairy belly I knew without doubt that it was Bhola. The footage was graphic. Its explicitness numbed me. My bath tape looked like a Disney film by comparison.

The tape made a few things clear to me. One, that Ram Dulari was very much alive. And two, that she was a willing accomplice in all of Bhola's crimes. How a coy virgin had metamorphosed into a raging nymphomaniac was still a mystery to me, but her betrayal stung me more than Bhola's.

Bhola and Ram Dulari, what a team they made. They were a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, a real-life Bunty and Babli, running riot, painting the town red, swindling, fucking, faking their way through to sixty million bucks. And leaving me to pay their bills.

For a long time I simply sat on the bed, paralysed. If you gaze for long enough into an abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. Then I began considering my options. The bath tape had nailed me, but this one had Ram Dulari in the lead role. I couldn't be held accountable for the actions of my doppelgäger. If I went to the police and Bhola released this tape, what was the worst that could happen? Going by recent examples, the tape would travel around the world as an internet video clip and rest eventually in cyberspace heaven, a permanent archive to refresh and relieve porn addicts.

I began thinking of Pamela Anderson and Paris Hilton. I thought of all the acres of free publicity, record box-office receipts. I would become the most famous Indian actress in the world, grab the number-one spot with just this one sleazy hit. And then, of course, I would conveniently blame it all on Ram Dulari!

No, no, no. It was all wrong. What was I thinking? This is India. Here exposing your belly button is seen as indecent exposure. Here a woman in a bikini leads to street protests. And how would I ever prove that it was the 'fake' me on tape? Especially after the release of the 'original' bath tape.

I should think police case. Think magistrate. Think jail. Think riots by the Society for Moral Regeneration. Think my effigies being burnt, my movie posters being shredded. Think being shunned by the film industry. Think the end of my career.

Shit!

Think, dammit. Just Think. THINK.

20 March

The call I have been waiting four years for came today.

At precisely nine twenty p.m. the telephone rang and a jaded operator asked me if I was Shabnam Saxena. 'Yes, this is Shabnam Saxena,' I said.

'Please speak, your caller is on line,' she droned, completely oblivious to the fact that she had just spoken to one of India 's biggest celebrities.

'Beti, this is Ma speaking. I am calling from a PCO.' I heard my mother's thin voice and my heart leapt into my mouth.

The line was very bad, but I sensed instantly that this was not a call to wish me Happy Birthday. It was a cry for help.

Ma was imploring me to return immediately to Azamgarh. 'There has been a big tragedy,' she said. 'Your father is in hospital, fighting for his life. I cannot say anything on the phone. Just come, my daughter. Just come.'

'Yes, Ma,' I said, fighting back the tears. 'I am coming.'

21 March

I have returned to Azamgarh, the town of my birth. I flew from Mumbai to Varanasi and then hired a taxi to take me the final ninety kilometres. Lest I be recognized and mobbed, I put on a burqa over my jeans.

Lucknow changed a lot in three years, but Azamgarh has remained unchanged even after seven. It is the same congested cesspool dotted with dilapidated houses and decaying slums. The roads are full of potholes. Rubbish lies piled up at every street corner. Roadside drains overflow with sewer water. Cows roam the roads freely. Posters of politicians with plastic smiles and folded hands decorate every empty space.

Kurmitola, where our ancestral house stands, has become a claustrophobic monstrosity. Its narrow streets used to teem with rickshaws and cycles, but now they buzz with the sounds of car horns, three-wheeler klaxons and screeching tyres. Pigeons flutter from the balconies of spectacularly ruined houses. Battered hoardings display garish film posters and advertisements for sex clinics. Dexterous craftsmen in tatty clothes work in decrepit shops. Wrinkled men smoke ancient hookahs on filthy pavements, looking like derelict reminders of a forgotten past.