“Both Inder and Jamshi have left for Hyderabad to attend Shoiab and Sania’s wedding, which has been brought forward. Oops! No one was supposed to have known that bit! Inder and Jamshi will be back next week.”

The Soundtrack: Protect Ya Neck by Wu-Tang Clan

Lying next to the Nizamuddin Bridge that connects New Delhi to its subtler, more expansive outer regions of Mayur Vihar and beyond, there’s a patch of land growing potatoes. Read more

Soundtrack: My Sharona by The Knack

“Your face has melted away and all you’re worried about is losing your job?” Jamshi Narimanpointwalla said with her wholesome, fulsome face shaking in what in the television light could have been mistaken for anger. Read more

The soundtrack: You handsome devil by The Smiths

Scientific data show that the amount of colours daubed on your body during Holi is proportionate to the size of your body. Jamshi Narimanpointwalla, scrubbing away the purple patches on her face with soap and pumice in her bathroom mirror certainly seemed to attest that theory. She had been daubed with various hues, not all shampooable coloured gulal, first by her South Delhi neighbours and then by her friends from the workplace who went from one part of town to another spreading menace. Read more

Soundtrack: More Human Than Human by White Zombie

Inder went missing for a week. His fridge still packed with meat brought hidden in a large suitcase remained stacked away in his fridge. Jamshi Narimanpointwalla had developed a strong fever that made her less delirious and more quiet than she had ever been before. Till next week, the search is on: for the missing Inder and for Jamshi’s temperature to subside.

[Next week: A favourable diagnosis]

Soundtrack: Welcome to my nightmare by Alice Cooper

“Can you carry a few shirts and socks of mine in your suitcase?” Inder asked Jamshi who was chewing on her 80th pink-and-white crabstick in Bangkok as they were packing their bags for the next morning’s flight back to Delhi. Well, it was actually Jamshi who was doing the packing as Inder had already packed his suitcases — two of them — in the afternoon when Jamshi had gone for a Thai massage. Read more

Soundtrack: Girls by the Beastie Boys

The flight was smooth. With three miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Coke sloshing in Inderjeet’s belly, even the turbulence that the plane encountered somewhere above the Burma-Bangladesh border was taken care of. The furthest he had travelled to the east was Calcutta. This was for a job interview. Read more

Sountrack: Love for sale by Billie Holiday

Jamshi Narimanpointwalla usually got up late on Wednesday mornings. That’s because she usually got up late every morning. But because of a bad reaction to one of the three large drinks that she had consumed at Agni, the bar-cum-club at the Park, she had woken up very early today. Read more

Soundtrack: Voodoo People by Prodigy

“Rakhi’s decided,” Amar Singh, looking up from his second cup of KFC coleslaw told Inder without missing a chew.

Inder, who had followed the trajectory of Rakhi Sawant’s journey as India’s most unpretentious It-Girl knew what that meant. Read more