Page Six of the New York Post is like the paan stall five buildings to the right of Ram Mahal.
There, Lakshman the paanwalla sits cross-legged atop a stained white cushion, passing on information about the neighborhood and its residents. If Mrs. Sharma from apartment 7 – D had complained to him of chest pains that morning, then by noon Mr. Bhatia of the Soldiers’ Colony down the road knew about it. If Ashok seth, the importer of towels who lived at Walia Apartments, was expecting a visit from the tax authorities next week, then Buntu, the young newspaper vendor across the street, would be happy to commiserate. Without having to leave his perch, Lakshman entertained and informed all those who stopped by his stall for a small green leaf stuffed with spiced betal nut.
The morning after the show, because of my photograph on Page Six of the New York Post, everyone knew me, even if what they thought they knew wasn’t actually true. In the first place, I wasn’t really an orphan. In the second, I had never been impoverished. Perhaps just the last word of the headline, FASHIONISTAS WOWED BY NEW MODEL-IMPOVERISHED MUSLIM ORPHAN OUTCAST, was correct.
Stavros swore to me that during his game of Chinese whispers, when he had told his seat neighbors to watch out for me, he hadn’t told them that both my parents were dead.
“I might have intimated that they weren’t around,” he said. “You know how these things spread. And the impoverished bit: well, I think everyone just assumes that if you’re from India, you’re poor.”
By the middle of that afternoon, Stavros had received six calls from other designers showing at Fashion Week, begging him to slot me into their shows, saying that they would create a spot for me even at this late stage.
“I could say yes, but I’m not going to,” he said, smiling. “You’re going to be the elusive one, the one everyone wants but nobody can have. That will be our power.”
The girl that everyone wants. It felt unnatural to even think it, that a bunch of strangers, a group of fashion designers who had, until now, no correlation at all with my life would “want” me. My own mother hadn’t wanted me. She had said as much to me a few days before I had left Mumbai, when my grandfather was asking me what I would be packing to wear to my “bride-viewing” meeting with Tariq.
“You must look nice and attractive,” my mother had said, barely lifting her eyes from the evening paper. “You must win him, and finally leave this house. Our burden will then become his.”
My four turns on Pasha’s catwalk led to lots of calls and offers, but there was only one that Stavros would accept: a four-page fashion spread in Elle-a feature showcasing fashion’s current fascination with hand-embroidered tunics and flared silk pants. They were the kind of things Bollywood stars would wear when being photographed by Stardust, although in New York they cost a hundred times the price. I heard him on the phone with Dimitri, accepting congratulations for what was happening.
“We’re aiming for the cover of Vogue and then a couple of big endorsement deals-I don’t know, maybe Revlon or L’Oréal. Something global,” Stavros said, his shirtsleeves rolled up, pacing around his office. “I know we’re shooting high, but she’s quite a commodity, this one. Best you’ve ever found. Don’t worry, I’ll reserve a few percentage points in my commission for you.”
The morning of my shoot at Elle, which was set to take place in a penthouse apartment facing Central Park West, Stavros brought a woman named Felicia to breakfast. She had an oddly rectangular face, framed by masses of curly black hair, and a mouth that seemed slightly askew to her nose, like something out of a Picasso painting. But she had a nice, warm handshake and, compared to all the skinniness around me, had some flesh on her bones, a fact I found comforting. At last, here was someone unafraid to eat.
“Felicia’s in PR,” said Stavros, biting into a bagel. “She comes highly recommended. I just thought, with everything going on, we could use her expertise.”
As she smeared jam onto a piece of whole-wheat toast, Felicia used words like “visibility” and “ubiquitous” and “mercurial.” She told me that the marketing people at Elle were using today’s shoot as part of a campaign, to expand past the “rich, white, and thin or brassy, bold, and black thing that fashion is all about.
“You represent a new demographic, a new era of multiculturalism,” she said, noticing the confusion on my face.
“I’ll break it down like this, honey. Being born Muslim was probably the best thing that ever happened to you.”