I was invited to a book launch recently. That is not to say I don’t generally get invited. I do. But whether or not I go depends on the convenience factor. As a rule I don’t venture beyond Bandra. Is there a game changer? Of course. There’s always a game changer. Booze.
So I go to this book launch where after the usual ceremony – the introduction, the reading, the q&a, – the wine was uncorked. I asked the waiter if they had any wine. And he said no, they just had beer and whether that would do. I usually like wine but in crisis situations, like this one was turning out to be, I’ll drink anything with an alcohol content upwards of 3 % (it was light beer).
And so the merriment began. I got to meet other like-minded authors and we formed a kind of community. You know it’s strange, but I’ve been a writer for, like, forever and I don’t have a circle of writer friends. So this was hugely exciting, like me, the plain jane, was being initiated into the exclusive club of prom queens. Already I could see me and my new BFFs spending lazy days in decadent pursuits like five hour Martini lunches. I would then stagger home and miraculously come up with literary gems.
After the event was over, my new BFFs decided to take my initiation to another pub / restobar / lounge whose name and location will come to me once the alcohol haze lifts. We began by ordering another bottle of wine and some eats. Again, I might remember what I ate if my brain cells revive. I have a feeling they’ve been totally vitiated, though.
We started exchanging notes about our lives and I was amazed at the varied and exciting lives these beautiful and talented people have led. One is openly gay, one experiments with her sexuality and has had multiple partners of both sexes, one has had a spouse and a lover simulataneously for ten years and also experiments with one night stands. They are all the ultimate in Bohemian chic. As I sat listening to the funny, entertaining and frankly risqué stories of their lives, it became clear to me that I might have been accepted into the prom queen club but I was just an ugly duckling pretending to be a swan. Sigh.
When tall, suave, handsome Kaustav Kapoor walks into her office, ditzy private investigator Kasthuri (aka Katie) Kumar has anything but detection on her mind. He is, after all, a scion of Bollywood’s first family—perhaps he has a role for her? Perhaps she will, at last, get to sashay down the red carpet in a designer gown, with flash bulbs following her every move?
But Kapoor’s intentions are much more prosaic: he wishes Katie to trace the heroine of his new blockbuster (and, if Katie’s read the glossies correctly, his life) who is mysteriously AWOL. Despite her misgivings, Katie finds herself unable to refuse the task entrusted to her, and thereon follows a bewildering hunt for the film star across a trail of corpses.
And if that isn’t excitement enough, she has to contend with the maddening and mysterious, but, oh-so-hot, Tejas Deshpande.
The first in a brand new detective series.
IN BOOKSTORES NOW.
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