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philtstone · 1 year

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Kundavai Nandini bitch

whos ready for another round of perfectly stupid barely plot-coherent modern road trip fix it au. please dont take this seriously, as i didnt. this verse probably would have worked more smoothly if i wrote it in chronological order but instead. i didn't do that. thanks 2 maya for helping me decide the funniest option at every juncture. a sequel to this fic, if you're interested enjoy

“It’s just, legally speaking, this looks quite a lot like a kidnapping.”

“Oh, please. Legally. This is a family matter.”

“Which, I feel obliged to point out, has resulted in kidnapping.”

“Hm,” says Aditha, rubbing at his chin and looking down.

“I guess I could see your point of view, Nambi,” allows Vandiyadevan, tilting his head such that his floppy brimmed disguise hat sits at a jaunty angle. He takes another bite from the open aluminum package of Magic Masala Lays. “We’ve got him in a van and everything.”

“Thank you,” says the older man proudly. “It is not often you concede my point.”

“My van is a very nice van,” says Poonguzhali at the same time, sounding somewhat aggrieved.

The young fellow in the trunk of Poonghuzai’s van continues to sit slumped, and unconscious. They observe his slicked back hair, thick with pomade, and his rather inadvisable moustache.

“How hard did we hit him on the head, anyway? Poor guy looks like he won’t wake up for a while.”

Nambi makes a faintly regretful face, eyeing his thick walking stick and rubbing his ample belly.

“It is not my fault God has made me so strong,” he says.

“Be real,” says Vandiyadevan, who must begrudgingly acknowledge that it wasn’t a terrible decision to call up Nambi, after all. “You’re not even the one who knocked him.”

They turn to the willowy figure who stands proudly to the side with her hands clasped tight around Nambi’s co-opted walking stick. Her long silver hair flutters, unbraided and somewhat naiadic, around her face. Her feet are bare, despite the fact that they are standing on paved sidewalk behind a very large and shiny building. She is wearing four bead bracelets on one wrist – there had not been time to distribute them before enacting The Intervention. Mandakini smiles sweetly at them. The lines around her overlarge eyes crease and dance. The head of their kidnapped man lolls downwards a bit.

Aditha returns her smile, awkward but encouraging; Vandiyadevan rubs with consternation at the back of his own neck.

“Madhurantakan will be fine,” Arunmozhi, who has been deep in contemplation (or maybe just a little stunned) til now, decides firmly. “The pomade will have eased the blow. You know what I’ll do? I’ll fetch one of Vanathi’s juice boxes so he’s got something to wake up to.”

He speaks with such authority that the others cannot help but feel comforted. Vandiyadevan says,

“It’s a good thing Arunmozhi lugs all those juice boxes around for her, isn’t it,” as his friend indeed goes to fetch the refreshment in question, “Madhurantakan doesn’t even have diabetes.”

“Only that terrible moustache,” Poonguzhali agrees.

“And to think,” sighs Nambi, “when we set out this morning, it was to pimp out our friend Vandiyadevan for the greater good. Truly, Lord Vishnu works great mysteries.”

“I wonder how the girls are doing,” Poonguzhali says pointedly, as, while Aditha groans, Vandiyadevan pours the remainder of the chip bag upon Nambi’s head.

It was, in matter of fact, quite early in the morning when the collective began arguing over Vandiyadevan’s virtue. At this point in the day, they had not yet kidnapped anyone.

“It won’t be difficult,” Nandini is saying, with a serene, if perhaps calculated, shrug. “I do it all the time. I have about twelve on rotation just now.”

She is sitting perched, even lounging, against the cramped fabric upholstery of the van’s leftmost window seat, as if it was the chaise of an ancient royal mistress. Vandiyadevan is a clever enough man; he can see where Nandini is going with this. After two weeks on the road, and the transformative power of meeting one’s mother, even the most vindictive of lonely people – Vandiyadevan opines, with great and compassionate wisdom – can thaw out a good deal. He was there (well, trapped in the toilet and unable to emerge lest he ruin the moment) to overhear the quiet tears of relief which Nandini shed against Aditha’s shoulder four nights ago, after everyone else was asleep. Neither of them seem inclined to even remotely acknowledge it in the light of day, but that’s none of Vandiyadevan’s business. What is his business is that Nandini has just declared she will save Chola Incorporated by seducing the siblings’ idiot cousin, and by God, Vandiyadevan can’t say it’s not sort of a good idea.

At the moment, though, he’s quite hungry, and so his nimble intellect is more focused on the possibility of a packet of Blue Lays, which he thinks might be in the glove compartment of the P Investigator, Lady Detective van – just in front of him. It could be his, if only he could get past Poonguzhali’s sharp looks. She is giving quite a few of them today – when she isn’t looking fondly at Arunmozhi, that is. Vandiyadevan sighs. Yes yes, it is her van of course, and therefore her chips, but seeing as they are a reconciled team now, very deep into their quest …

“And they really don’t mind that you never follow up on your promises?”

Vanathi, Kundavai’s sweetly bespectacled personal assistant, asks this in a tremulous voice. She, too, has been looking fondly at Arunmozhi all afternoon, though perhaps more secretively. If you could call her enormous doe-eyes secretive. Vandiyadevan would think it all very silly, but then, Arunmozhi does inspire the fondest of looks on a day to day basis, even when he’s wearing that bucket hat his older sister dislikes so. He’s just that kind of fellow. In answer to Vanathi, Nandini holds out her phone, with the contacts page open, to illustrate her long roster of – rather happily, it seems – strung-along men. They all lean in as one, jostling one another in the cramped confines of the van’s interior, to peruse properly.

“CEO … tech billionaire … Rajinikant?”

“The superstar?”

“Thalaiva?”

Nandini wrinkles her nose, shrugging, and wags one delicate hand back and forth so-so; someone squawks loudly and happily (it must be Poonguzhali), which is a sound loud enough to cover the small pathetic choking noise that seems to come from Aditha’s general direction.

“He’s the one who looks like our treacherous uncle, isn’t he.”

“You just think that because they are both old.”

“God, he is so bald. Uncle has his hair, at least.”

“Tatta thinks that it is a toupee. He told me so two months ago, at the poetry reading.”

“Hey, be quiet a moment – someone give Aditha a juice box, he looks ill. Is that a sandwich shop owner in there?”

Vanathi had been the helpful soul who wired the crores necessary to Arunmozhi in Thanjai when they needed to bail their previously missing person — Nandini’s long lost mother and Arunmozhi’s enigmatic friend — out of jail. She reads aloud the contact name: “Arjina’s Super Sandwich Speedy Fast N Go”

“I get hungry sometimes,” Nandini says, twirling one lock of glossy raven hair around her finger. Vanathi rubs at her forehead, adjusts her spectacles twice, and shakes her head a little, allowing,

“It must be very nice to have easy access to a good sandwich whenever you like.”

Poonguzhali is by this point wheezing with glee; Vandiyadevan wonders if she is still thinking of Thalaiva’s terribly bald head. Does Nandini’s effortless ruse involve assuring him that it is not, in fact, so hairless?

“Oooh,” snaps Kundavai. Nandini’s chin lifts upward immediately, “Vanathi, we must aspire to be strong and resourceful women. You can make your own sandwiches, can’t you?”

Kundavai began this conference looking as if she may finally be willing to admit she and Nandini’s forced cohabitation of dumpish motel room had not been the end of the world. She looks now as if she has sucked upon a particularly bitter lemon. Vandiyadevan takes a moment to appreciate, absently, the particular radiance with which the corners of her mouth pinch and pucker in judgmental annoyance. Then he remembers between whom he’s sitting, and pulls himself together. Arunmozhi is nodding with philosophical curiosity and pausing every few minutes to sign the newest developments in their consultation to Mandakini, who is sitting in the backseat, making bead bracelets with the craft materials she discovered in Aditha’s messenger bag. Aditha (who, it might be noted, possesses quite an impressive head of hair) does indeed look like he is going to be sick. He does not seem to want to give this fact away, and so persistently looks at the ceiling of the van, and when asked about it, claims in a strained voice that he has spotted a small lizard, which they must immediately expel from the vehicle. No one quite buys this, but no one feels the need to expose him either.

Vanathi must crane her slender neck somewhat painfully so as to properly peruse the details of Nandini’s phone messages. They really are diverting; the girl’s rose coloured lips part in a soft and open oh of morbid curiosity, her luminous brown eyes the size of saucers. One of the text strings promises a Benz sometime in the next week. The other is paying for Nandini’s apartment.

“Isn’t that something,” hums Arunmozhi, with pleasant fascination. Vandiyadevan would be inclined agree if Poonguzhali were not looking so impressed.

“Isn’t it though,” says Poonguzhali, before the gratified Nandini can reply. “Twelve! I can only scam three men at a time. That’s brilliant, that is.”

“That is not brilliant,” Kundavai disagrees. If Vandiyadevan were not so hungry he’d be able to hear her blood pressure rising, just by listening hard enough. Ah, to bask in the lovely tones of her irritated voice … “It’s not anything. We are not going to stop a few buffoons from usurping our family business via seduction.”

Arunmozhi has been very good at keeping them all working together so far, but he makes a slight error in judgment here (Vandiyadevan privately thinks), by taking a quiet breath and starting, gently to his credit, “Akka, just because you are not skilled at a particular art …”

Kundavai shrills with immediacy.

“Ayyo! How could you say that? It is not a matter of skill, it is a matter of principle! We are not seducing our cousin!”

Ah, yes. At this point in the day, they had not yet put their considerable minds together and determined to distract an Uncle or two; the first idea on the table, given that it was Madhurantakan they needed to waylay on his way to the Very Important Board Meeting, was cousin-seduction.

Aditha, who had been focused on the imaginary lizard’s affairs until this interval, seizes his opportunity.

“We are not seducing our cousin,” he clarifies in gritted, authoritative tones. Which is impressive, given that the contents of Nandini’s contacts app seemed to any rational observer to have had temporarily rendered him mute a moment before.

“No,” says Kundavai, in a manner so uniquely bitchy that only Nandini could have inspired it (Vandiyadevan thinks this with affection and no small amount of dreamy internal sighing), “clearly we are not.”

“Mmm,” is all Nandini offers, tilting her head just so.

“Surely there is an alternative, indeed clever solution –”

“Yes,” Aditha barrels forward, rather bravely Vandiyadevan thinks, as if neither girl has spoken, “Nandini may do what she wants, of course —“ (there is a tremendous strain to his voice; Kundavai, who had eagerly looked over at the sound of her brother agreeing with her, rolls her eyes with relish) “But how do we know — really — that Madhurantakan is into women? I think Vandiyadevan should go.”

There’s a prolonged moment of silence. Vandiyadevan hears a small crunch beside him, and realizes to his horror that Poonguzhali has snuck out the Magic Masala Lays.

“Eh!” he whispers. It seems for some reason appropriate to whisper. “You sneaky little imp! Share those, why don’t you?”

This unexpected turn of events was clearly not the solidarity Kundavai had in mind.

“You want to pimp out Vandiyadevan?” she hisses, horrified.

Even Nandini is displeased by this. “I am more than capable of doing this myself!” she says, irritably. “Just because you are jealous –”

“I am not jealous!” Aditha yells, in the voice of a man very clearly jealous. Nandini has turned pink to match her sari. It really is sort of funny, how swiftly her own efforts turn against her.

“Well – let’s lay out all the possibilities, here,” inserts Arunmozhi, helpfully. With his free hand, he takes the bead bracelet Mandakini hands him – she must reach over Kundavai’s shoulder to do so – before starting on the next one. “If Nandini shouldn’t do it, and Vandiyadevan shouldn’t do it –”

Vandiyadevan, who is in the middle of wrestling with Poonguzhali for the chip bag, says, “Sure, I’m game,” without thinking. Kundavai turns a shade of pink to rival Nandini’s; he course corrects, with swiftness, “Or, I mean, well, it really depends – how do we know I’m his type?”

“Don’t be silly,” Aditha says, “you’re everyone’s type.”

“Absolutely not,” says Poonguzhali.

“Perhaps our clever Madame Detective –” starts Arunmozhi.

“Absolutely not!” says Poonguzhali.

Mandakini has started humming a girlish tune to herself. It sounds a little bit like the theme song to Robo.

“And as for alternate man –”

“It really is too bad he’s your cousin. Say, we could call Nambi …”

It’s here that Vandiyadevan decides they are in terribly dire straits.

“Who’s Nambi going to seduce?” he yells. “Forget him. Isn’t it Pazhuvettaryer who’s running the meeting, anyway? Someone go and seduce him!”

With a final flourish, he acquires the chips, squashing half of the bag to his chest with tragic finality. Nandini, Kundavai, Aditha, and Arunmozhi blink at each other, then him. Poonguzhali socks him in the shoulder (he just barely stops himself from exclaiming in pain). Mandakini holds out a second completed bead bracelet; this one has little sparkly charms hanging from it.

Nandini, whose face had grown to be just as pinched as Kundavai’s, softens immediately, and says, “Oh – thank you, Amma.”

She looks so tender taking the stupid thing from her mother that the collective ire deflates, little by little, until they are sitting in their cramped seats and back to square one: despairing about how to stop a bloody board meeting from happening. Vandiyadevan quietly crunches on a chip; Poonguzhali socks his arm again.

“If I may,” says Vanathi’s unassuming voice, piping into the chaotic silence before an ow can be uttered. “That is – I was only thinking. What if I went?”

Everyone gaps at her.

She refuses to meet Arunmozhi’s eye, staring instead – determinedly – at the little tiger charm Poonguzhali keeps hanging from her rearview mirror. There’s a quiet frown creasing Arunmozhi’s brow.

“Wh – what?” asks Nandini. For perhaps the first time since Vandiyadevan has met her, she looks truly speechless. Even when reuniting with her mother, she embodied a tragic sort of blubbering grace. Right now there is not a single sound coming forth, despite the fact that her mouth is open like a fish.

It matches Kundavai’s perfectly.

“Vanathi,” ventures Aditha, before his sister can say anything; this complete change of pace seems to have quelled some of his lizard-adjacent turmoil, and he speaks with a gruff gentleness that doesn’t quite match his unraveling ponytail. “... Where exactly do you mean to go?”

“Oh!” Vanathi shakes her head frantically. “No! I meant – what if I pretended to swoon in front of Pazhuvetteryar?”

Another round of blinking. “What?” says Nandini again.

Vanathi adjusts her spectacles a second time; her head-shaking has jostled them. “Chola Inc legal policy says that any medical emergency must be attended to by the person most immediately at hand. A-and … well, I’ve gotten a lot of practice in. At … you know.”

“Because of the diabetes,” says Vandiyadevan aloud, before he can stop himself.

Poonguzhali socks his arm a third time.

“Ow!”

Thankfully, no one really notices this exclamation, as everyone continues to stare at Vanathi in shock. Until,

“Vanathi,” says Arunmozhi finally, into the silence. He is sitting up straight, a look of complete wonder upon his handsome face; very different from the philosophical fascination of before. “That’s perfect. I think you might just be a genius.”

Of course, it is here that – flushing so pink as to rival both Nandini and Kundavai combined – the beaming Vanathi looks very close to fainting dead away.

Good thing they’ve got those juiceboxes on hand.

Until Madhurantakan needs them, anyway.

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