After All This Time (9 page)

Shourya observed Lavanya as she watched Toughy play. Her face was free of worry lines, and for once her lips did not have the downward curve he had noticed on several occasions the last few days.

Lavanya picked Toughy up and gently pulled the balled sock out of his teeth. ‘If you tear this too much, you are going to choke on it,’ she whispered to him.

They brought the puppy inside with them. Mrs Suryavanshi was sitting near the living room window, reading the newspaper and sipping what looked like herbal tea. Mr Suryavanshi was watching the news.

‘Suryavanshi family catching up on world affairs this evening?’ Shourya remarked. Lavanya’s parents looked up.

‘Hello, Uncle!’

‘Shourya,’ Mr Suryavanshi took his outstretched hand. ‘Come, sit. How have you been? Lavanya’s mom told me you’re in town. Your sister’s wedding, huh?’

‘Yes, Uncle. This weekend. All of you have to come. It’ll be great to have you there.’ Shourya always had trouble relaxing with Lavanya’s father. He tended to become formal and polite. He had always only heard Lavanya’s side of the story, and so whenever he met her father, he would try to act casual, as if he did not know Mr Suryavanshi’s secret, but ended up coming off as stiff and proper.

‘Of course we will be there, beta,’ Mrs Suryavanshi chipped in. ‘I bumped into your mother at the jeweller’s the other day. She is so happy about the wedding.’

‘Yes, she is. I think she started planning the day Shreela was born,’ Shourya laughed. ‘Although, in all probability, Shreela started planning from the womb itself.’

‘Oh, I can imagine. I would be lying if I said I have not planned for Lavi’s wedding myself!’

‘Mom!’ Lavanya, who had been hanging back with Toughy, shushed.

‘It
is
true. Which mother does not plan her daughter’s wedding? And it is not as if you are not a marriageable age now. We should start thinking about your future . . .’

‘I cannot believe you are bringing up the marriage discussion again. Does it seem like the time and place?’ Lavanya’s nostrils flared in anger.

‘Don’t listen to your mom, Lavi. You are free to do what you want,’ her father interjected.

There was silence. Shourya looked at Lavanya, who muttered through clenched teeth, ‘I know.’

Mrs Suryavanshi got up just then and took Toughy off Lavanya’s hands. ‘I will put him down to sleep, but first, he needs to eat. This puppy needs to be fed so many times!’

Lavanya turned to Shourya and said, ‘When you are done here, come up, okay?’ She stomped away without waiting for a response.

Shourya stood rooted to the spot.
What just happened?
He chuckled nervously, trying to dissipate some of the tension in the room. ‘Sensitive topic, wedding?’

‘Oh, you know, girls these days,’ Mrs Suryavanshi said quickly. ‘You go on ahead. Lavi is very excited about learning to play the guitar.’

‘I can’t wait to see how this goes,’ Shourya laughed.

When he went upstairs, Lavanya was sitting at the foot of her bed like she had the previous night.

‘That was, umm . . . something?’ Shourya said, standing at the door of Lavanya’s room.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You do.’ He shut the door behind him and stood directly in front of her. ‘What was that . . .
thing
with your father downstairs? Are you still punishing him?’

Lavanya did not speak. She did not even look at him.

‘God!’ Shourya exclaimed, the answer evident. His threw up his hands as he attempted to comprehend the meaning of this. The hours they had spent, sitting outside her house, preparing her to go in and face her life. The nights they had spent awake, talking on the phone, trying to get her mind off what was going on in her home. He had thought it was all in the past. But it was still just as real as it had been years ago.

‘How . . .? How can you still be punishing him? Has it not been over a decade? True, there were cracks in your relationship, but what I saw downstairs was not mere cracks. Your relationship is still fucking broken.’

‘Time is not as powerful as they tell you it is.’ Lavanya looked up.

‘Lavanya, we talked about this, didn’t we? We said it was going to be easier once you were away for some time. You needed space and time, and we agreed that would help you.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘I have trouble believing this. How can something that happened such a long time ago still affect you this way? You can’t even look at him, or say more than two words to him? Do you talk to him at all?’

‘No.’ Lavanya’s voice was flat.

‘But why?’

‘You
know
why! You know better than anyone!’

Shourya was silent. Lavanya’s eyes were troubled. She looked much older than she had ten minutes ago. Shourya noticed the physical changes that had taken place in her over the course of years. Her eyes were the same, but looked different; her eyebrows were arched more neatly, prominently. Her cheeks had lost the slight roundness they had in her teenage years, making her cheekbones more pronounced. Her lips were curved downwards again. It seemed to be their natural resting state these days.

He kept looking at her, but Lavanya never looked back. She continued glaring at her fingernails.

After a while, Shourya decided to let it go. He had no other choice. He had known something was bothering her, and he had waited for her to bring it up, but if she did not want to, he was not going to force her. He saw no point in pursuing the topic if all she would do was ignore him and pick at her nails.

He hefted the guitar from his right to his left hand. ‘Let’s do this thing.’

Lavanya was reading her twelfth
Phantom
comic of the day when her phone buzzed. It was an email from Paxton-Stark-Meester reminding her that she had not shown up for work in weeks, and asking her to check in with them as soon as possible.
Another one of those
. She put her phone away and went back to reading
Phantom

As a teenager, she had been obsessed with the Phantom. She used to find old comic books, dating back to the 1940s online and through other comic book enthusiasts and would read anything and everything that had the Phantom in it and was written by Lee Falk. Sometimes, the older comics, being classics, were priced beyond her buying power. She had promised herself she would hunt down and buy every last Lee Falk
Phantom
ever published once she started earning.

However, she had since forgotten about it. But after the guitar lesson with Shourya turned out to be such a disaster, she was intent on getting the second thing on her list ticked off as soon as possible. When her list told her she was supposed to find all these comics and read them, it turned out to be easier to achieve than she had expected. They were all available for purchase online at insanely low prices. She found fifteen books in the series she was looking for, and decided to devote an entire day to reading them.

She generally preferred reading books on digital platforms, but reading comic books on an iPad just felt wrong. She missed the delicate, worn-out pages infested by silverfish that threatened to turn to dust at her touch. She was not used to seeing the Phantom in vivid colours and HD. She remembered the images on the physical books being grainy.

It took her all afternoon to read twelve of them, and after that she simply could not bring herself to pick up comic number thirteen. She yawned and stretched her limbs. She was committed to her Lame Girl Dying Wish-List, and she kept telling herself she was having fun, but in truth the
Phantom
marathon had been nothing short of self-inflicted torture.

At least she had Toughy to keep her company. The poor puppy kept wiggling his tail in front of her, urging her to take him out to the lawn and play with him, but she had a wish list to complete. After a while, when he realized she was not going to play with him, he settled for lying down with his head on her lap.

Lavanya pulled out her list and put a tick against
Read all Lee Falk’s Phantom comics
. On impulse, she also checked off
Learn to play the guitar
, scribbling ‘tried’ next to it. Her fingers were aching. Shourya had not gone easy on her. He had been angry about her refusal to discuss her situation with her father, and no matter how hard they tried to move past it, their mood was too sour to enjoy what they were doing.

He had asked her to cut her fingernails before they began, but she had stubbornly declined. Her nails, uneven and chipped from being gnawed on, had not performed well on the guitar strings. Her fingers would slip and she got minor cuts and bruises all evening. The terribly tuneless sound that came out of the guitar only made things worse. Nor did the fact that Shourya turned out to be a terrible teacher. He had picked ‘Hotel California’ for her first lesson, a song she had never heard before. He said it was a classic, the best acoustic guitar song of all time, but he never played more than the first few strings for her, before handing the guitar to her and asking her to play. And then he became frustrated when she could not. He had a problem with her nails, her posture, the way she held the guitar—everything.

In the end, they stopped speaking to each other, conversing exclusively through glares and sighs. She was relieved when, after an hour of torment, Shourya suggested they call it a day.

They had made a pact to help each other, but after the way the first item on the list had gone, Lavanya did not expect or even want any help from him. She had completed her second thing too. It did not matter that it had been no fun, as long as it was done.

Lavanya looked for something else in her list that she could do. There were a bunch of things she would not need any help with and could be done in a few hours.
Colour hair red. Get a tattoo. Belly-button piercing.

She decided to start with hair colour.

Lavanya looked up the nearest salon and found one that was ten minutes’ walk from the house. She made her way towards it, following the map closely. She remembered all the streets, but not what was on them any more. All the shops had changed, the buildings were not the same colour, even the smell was unfamiliar.

It was late afternoon, and stepping out of the house felt good. Artificial heating inside homes could not hold a candle to natural sunlight. It seemed a strange thought for her to have, one that would not even have occurred to her a month ago. After all, all her time was spent in artificially heated places and the only part of her body that ever came in direct contact with sunlight was the area below her sunglasses and above the collar of her suit.

She wondered if it was a side effect of
the news
.

It could be. Or maybe if she had cared to take a walk in the sunlight with nothing more urgent than getting her hair coloured, she might have experienced the wonders of sunlight before. Her mind as a corporate lawyer at PSM had constantly been cluttered with things she had to do and things Mr Cather told her she had done wrong.

When she reached the salon, she was surprised to find it was one of the big posh ones that charged twice the market rate and had hair dressers who looked down on you even though you’re paying them to serve you. She pushed open the door tentatively and walked in.

A middle-aged female receptionist looked up, stretched her lips a mere three millimetres in what Lavanya assumed was a smile. ‘HowmayIhelpyou?’ All five words tripped over each other.

‘Hey,’ Lavanya hoped her smile was wider than three millimetres. ‘I want to get my hair coloured.’

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘No.’

The receptionist looked up at her in surprise. She asked, ‘Have you met with one of our hair colour specialists for a consultation?’

‘No. Is that a problem?’ Two minutes in and Lavanya was already sick of being judged.

‘Unless you consult with a specialist, we cannot be certain what shade is going to suit your skin colour and hairstyle. Also, we must determine the duration of leaving the bleach in and the strength of the developer to apply. We can show you a palette and decide the shade, and then advise you about highlights, lowlights, streaks, dip dyes and several ways we can go about colouring your hair. You will also be advised about after-colour care and precautions—’

‘Is there someone here who can colour my hair?’ Lavanya interrupted the receptionist.

‘Ma’am, we do not recommend colouring your hair without a consultation first. We can offer you a package deal—hair colouring with one post-colour care treatment and two spa sessions. Consultation comes free of charge with the package.’

‘Thanks, but I am not interested. For today, can I please just get my hair coloured?’

‘I will have to insist. We are professionals, trained to cater to our clients’ every need. We have a whole series of packages you can opt for. Hair colouring is just
one
step in the process of hair beautification, not the entire process.’

‘But it’s hardly invasive surgery, is it?’ Lavanya’s chuckle was met with a cold stare. ‘Just hair colour, please?’

The receptionist did not attempt to hide her displeasure as she guided Lavanya inside.

‘Thank you.’

And that was only the beginning. Her hair dresser, a girl in her early twenties named Ishi, was vehemently against colouring Lavanya’s hair red. No matter how hard Lavanya tried to convince her that it was not about how she was going to look, that she did not care, it was just a tick mark on a list for her, Ishi did not give in.

‘I can give you highlights in a lovely shade of burgundy. It’s gonna look awesome in sunlight and it won’t stand out too much under the yellow kinda light they have in restaurants and stuff, y’know?’

Lavanya told her she wanted red. Red, red, only red.

‘I’m gonna have to bleach your hair for that. And then colour it red. And trust me, it’s not classy at all. You don’t wanna go around looking like you have a . . . What is that huge red bird called? Ostrich, I think . . . On your head, do ya?

In the end, Lavanya had to give up and let Ishi do as she pleased. It was strange how she had no control over the way the tasks on her lists were being completed.

Shourya did not sleep well that night. Lavanya had not called or texted him even once that day, and he had relapsed and visited Deepti’s Facebook profile to check what she was doing. Always a mistake.

He saw a recent status update, where she had put up Johnny Depp’s famous relationship quote about how if you love two people at the same time, you should go with the second because if you actually loved the first, you would not have fallen for the second.

Bullshit!

Was she trying to tell him that what they had had was not real? That
she
was the innocent one in the equation, because she could not stay faithful to one person? It was very easy to use general statements to justify one’s actions, but nothing justified cheating. Even so, if quoting Johnny Depp was what she needed to do to be able to sleep at night, he was not going to take that away from her.

In fact, he did not want to have anything to do with her at all. It was habit that took him to her page, and boredom. Sometimes, when he tried to remember what being in a relationship with her had been like, he couldn’t. There were so many images from after their break-up, so many incidents that crowded his head. He did not miss her. He only missed the thought of her.

When he woke up from his troubled sleep the next morning, he dialled Lavanya’s number before he could convince himself not to give in.

‘Hey,’ she greeted.

‘Okay, so, you know you need to apologize, right?’ Shourya asked.

‘
I
need to apologize? For what? Being a horrible teacher? And a mean and terrible friend and human being?’

‘
Hey, hey, hey!
Only about fifty per cent of that is true about me. And it wasn’t my fault, Suryavanshi. You were being an impossible pain in the ass. You know I cannot handle secrecy.’

‘That’s your problem, Kapoor,’ Lavanya replied coldly.

‘And that’s not rude at all.’

‘Argh, fine! But I am not going to apologize, and since I am not even mad at you any more I do not need you to apologize to me either.’

‘Cool. So meet me at my place in half an hour?’ Shourya suggested, only too happy to let the matter drop. One day without her had affected him more than he was willing to acknowledge.

‘No. I am busy.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Getting a tattoo.’ He could picture her smiling as she said it, but was not sure whether or not she was serious.

‘
Really?
’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘You’re joking, Suryavanshi. You don’t have the balls,’ Shourya sat up on his bed. He had always planned to get inked some day too, but had never got around to it.

‘Come and see. And then tell me if this looks like a joke to you.’

‘Shit! Seriously? Where are you? It’s ten in the morning!’

‘I am leaving for the tattoo parlour. They also do piercings there. I’m gonna get myself one of those too,’ Lavanya said. ‘By the way, I also got my hair coloured yesterday. Since you weren’t delivering on your end of the deal, I decided to take care of my list myself.’

Shourya sighed. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I ruined my day without your supervision too.’

‘What do you mean?’ Lavanya sounded concerned.

‘I went back to her Facebook—’

‘NO! No. No, okay? Never do that. That is like the first rule, man. What on earth convinced you that stalking her would be a good idea? Are you stupid?’

‘I guess I deserve that,’ Shourya relented. Only Lavanya could insult him in a way that could make him smile. ‘We clearly do need each other—’

‘
I
don’t need you,’ Lavanya cut him off. ‘I ticked two tasks off my list yesterday, without any help.’

‘Okay, so that means the deal is off then, right?’

‘Ye—
No!
I mean . . . well, you clearly need me. And I suppose I could use a hand now and then, even though I’m perfectly capable of handling this on my own, trust me. So, you know, whatever. We made a pact—let’s keep it.’

‘If putting it like that makes you happy, then so be it.’ Shourya rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t stop smiling. ‘I’ll pick you up.’