Anthony had to go to Germany to handle a field installation of our product. He called me in the morning to update me on this unplanned trip and, more importantly, to inform me that his Volkswagen would be in my custody for another day till he returned.
‘Love you, Anthony. And you better work hard!’ I teased him over the phone.
‘Bastard!’ he yelled at me and then laughingly said, ‘Take care of it more than you take care of your girl.’
I utilized this opportunity to the fullest. Instead of catching my bus I drove the car to the office. I consciously matched my timing with that of the bus so that I could overtake it and show off to the others travelling in the bus to their respective offices.
His car had the inbuilt function of linking my cellphone, through Bluetooth, with the car’s speakers and the overhead installed microphone. I had heard Anthony taking calls by using the controls on his steering wheel. With that system one doesn’t even need to wear a hands-free. On one occasion Anthony had taken his wife’s call who wasn’t aware that I was sitting next to Anthony. She kissed into the phone so noisily that it echoed in the car’s woofers. Anthony had been embarrassed.
I synchronized my mobile with the car’s system and then I dialled Sanchit’s number.
‘Hey, are you guys in the 9.10 a.m. bus?’
‘Yes. Why didn’t you show up today?’
‘Look to your right.’
Sanchit, who was at the third window seat from the front, turned to look out. He smiled first and then waved at me. Others followed. I waved at them back. For a short while I was a hero.
‘
Kiski churai hai?
’ Rishab grabbed Sanchit’s phone to talk to me.
‘Anthony ki.’
‘Vo jiske saath tu pool khelta hai?’
‘Haan.’
‘Raat ko ghumne ka plan banaatey hai phir. Bol, chalega?’
‘Chalunga, but Simar ke saath
… Hahahaha …’
Rishab cursed me before putting the phone down.
I waved goodbye, pushed the accelerator and overtook the bus.
In the evening I left the office early to pick Simar up. I had already spoken to her about our plans in the evening.
I met her at the gate of her hostel. She was wearing a purple dress. It had a thin lacy strap running across her shoulders. The shades of purple got a little darker just above her knee where that dress ended. Her legs were smooth, long and attractive. She was wearing a pair of silver stilettos to match her dress.
We drove out of the city towards the east. It took us fifteen minutes to get on to the highway. Simar connected her little light blue iPod Nano to the music system of the car and some peppy numbers came on. The ride had just turned amazing. The weather that day was awesome. We drove by the countryside. On our way we passed various big and small hamlets. Every other house had a lush green courtyard. Some among them had their domestic animals harnessed under bamboo shelters. Simar got very excited when she saw a few white horses with styled hair at their hooves. They appeared like a royal species.
The highway lanes were wide and there was almost no traffic. After every five to eight miles we would find a gas station. From a distance, we noticed one which also had a coffee shop symbol on its billboard. We stopped there.
We loaded the vehicle with gas and got ourselves some coffee. Then we came out and stood near our car. The miles and miles that stretched before us were all green. Just about two or three trucks in the far distance made up our vision of the road ahead. The limited number of people we could see were at the gas station itself.
Simar and I walked to the front of the car and perched on the bonnet with steaming cappuccinos in our hands. It was quite pleasant to be in the countryside. The sun hung low in the western skies. The birds chirping high above our heads were probably returning to their nests. It was a beautiful evening. The countryside air smelled nice and refreshing. There was greenery all around us. The tall trees stood firm on both sides of the highway. They looked old, probably more than hundred or even two hundred years. It was different and amusing for us to not talk but simply enjoy being in that moment.
A cool breeze kept entertaining us. Time and again strands of Simar’s hair would fall over her face and she would keep moving them back. One moment, while she was sipping coffee, I moved the strands of her hair behind her ear, and the touch of my finger behind her ear seemed to arouse her. She kept looking at me with expectation. I too looked deep into her eyes, which seemed to suddenly pull me towards them. I looked at her for a few seconds. Then, when I couldn’t resist myself, I brought my face closer to hers and tasted her cappuccino-coated lips. That tasted far better than my own cappuccino. Simar held my face in her palms and kissed me harder. We didn’t have to worry about kissing each other in the open. It is quite common to express your love this way not only in Belgium but in other parts of the West too. I love Belgium for its openness. We were still on the bonnet of Anthony’s Volkswagen and it made a creaky sound under our weight as we got busy in shuffling our positions while kissing each other. Suddenly I recalled Anthony’s last instructions on the phone—
Take care of it more than you take care of your girl
—and I withdrew.
Soon the weather got windy and black clouds hovered on the Belgian sky. Simar locked both her arms across my left arm and paddled her legs in the air. She said something. When I looked at her, she laughed. She had remembered a few words from the song I recited to her the night before. ‘
Jaana suno
… La la laaaa la laa … Hahaha,’ she laughed then and said, ‘
Ravz, kitne funny ho tum, yaar
.’ And then she laughed again. It was lovely to see her so carefree and joyful.
Then it started drizzling and we rushed inside the car. All of a sudden we inhaled the fresh revitalizing scent of the wet soil. I ignited the engine and we drove back to the city. Everything around us was breathtaking—the rain, the wind and the greenery outside the car and the melodious music, the hot cappuccino and my beautiful Simar inside the car. Each time the car’s wiper would mop the windscreen, sending splashes of rainwater off the side, everything in front of us would appear clean and clear for a split second and then it would all get blurred yet again. It was going to be one of the most memorable evenings.
After a drive of fifty-odd kilometres we were back at my place. It was still raining and Simar opted to stay back. We were hungry. We stretched out for some time on the living-room couch before getting up to prepare dinner for ourselves.
We cooked jeera rice and some egg curry. Simar cut some salad and arranged the table. To celebrate the evening further we had picked up a bottle of champagne on our way back. For Simar, who had never boozed, we had bought the champagne which barely had any alcohol content. I got the bottle while Simar brought out the cutlery and the food to the table. We switched off all the lights, apart from the one which hung over the dining table, illuminating only the table area. I popped open the champagne and the frothy drink gushed out of the bottle. I served it in two glasses and handed one to Simar. We raised a toast to the beautiful evening. Under the warm light it was just the two of us. We kept talking to each other as we ate dinner. The hot steam rising from the rice gently fogged our vision, adding to the romance of the night. It also made us feel pleasantly warm. Outside, the rain had turned everything cold. As Simar and I drank and ate we recalled how we’d met for the first time at the gym, what we then thought of each other and where finally our destinies had brought us.
It was the first night that Simar was going to spend with me. An hour later, I was holding her, and my hand was firmly clasping her back. We were in the balcony; the same place where Simar and I sat for long when she had first come on my birthday. It was still dimly lit and we enjoyed the sound of the rain and the gusts of chilly air. She leaned her back against my chest; I wrapped my arms around her from behind, placing my hands on her stomach and resting my chin over her right shoulder. We stood in that warm cuddle, staring into the distance. She felt warm, she said. I naughtily moved my finger over her dress on her stomach and discovered her belly button. She giggled when I circled the tip of my finger in the depth of her naval. It tickled her.
She whispered, ‘Stop doing that. I feel butterflies in my stomach.’
Late in the night the two of us made love in my bedroom. Outside it continued to rain. That was the first time we fully discovered each other. I kissed her everywhere as I explored each beautiful part of her. I knew she enjoyed my doing so, and so did I.
It was certainly the most romantic day of our lives.
‘I will never forget this evening,’ she said as we lay together, saturated by our love.
‘I am glad we are together,’ I said.
By the time we slept it was quite late at night. The rain had finally stopped.
It was mid-July. Summer was at its peak.
During this time of the year the days in western Europe are long enough and have sunlight beyond 9 or at times even 9.30 in the night. Belgian evenings therefore tend to be longer. On those evenings, Simar and I used to spend more time at the gym.
Once, when we met late after sundown, Simar shared a secret wish of hers. She wanted to booze. I was pleasantly surprised. She had mentioned that she had never had a drink before, apart from the champagne the other night—which contained very little alcohol content—nor did she have any plans to do so.
‘How come you have this urge all of a sudden?’ I questioned her.
‘Just like that,’ she answered candidly. I kept looking at her thinking that she would say something more as an explanation. But she didn’t. That was it.
‘Big deal!’ she said, showing off and then giggling.
I rechecked, ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded and then anxiously awaited my response. It was strange but I was enjoying this sudden urge of hers to do something crazy.
‘Do you think it is a bad idea?’ she asked innocently. Her eyes seemed to want me to say it wasn’t.
I simply followed her eyes.
In a short while we were at a nearby Chinese restaurant. Both of us loved Chinese food and we had identified a few good Chinese eating joints in the city. We took the corner table with a sofa which Simar chose for us. We sat right beside the bar. This would not only be extremely convenient but would also give us some much-needed privacy.
The waiter handed the menu to Simar and I kept watching her take a decision on what she would drink. Her choice of booze was dependent on how nice the bottle at the bar looked and not on its contents. So she spent her time going through the deck of bottles at the bar. I enjoyed seeing her immature decision-making capabilities on the subject of alcohol. She spent some ten minutes surveying the bottles, only to come back confused to me.
‘Ravz, every bottle looks amazing. Which one should we have?’
In certain moments when Simar would talk in this ultra-cute manner, I would refrain from answering immediately. I rather wanted to keep observing the little kid in my grown-up girl. I wanted to cherish the cuteness with which she talked. I wanted to share a part of her innocence and read those little things running in her sharp mind. I wanted to observe her eyes, the way they restlessly shifted between me and the bottles. I wanted to observe her lips, how they curved when she smiled, how she bit the lower one. I wanted to focus on how she wrinkled her nose when she was disappointed in one of the bottles. How her eyelashes would flutter and kiss each other for a split second after every few seconds. I wanted to just absorb each and every tiny movement on her face and in her body language. And whenever I got to live such moments, I simply wanted to keep looking at her and fulfil my lust of seeing her for an infinite duration. I wanted to become a silent observer. I never wanted to talk.
But whenever I did that, she would become shy and insist that I take my gaze off her which I would do reluctantly.
It was going to be Simar’s first encounter with alcohol and, on my suggestion, she opted for a beer. I gave her two reasons: one, that among all the drinks this contained the least amount of alcohol; two, that Belgium was known for its beer. She brushed aside my first suggestion. Her plan was to get drunk with something that tasted good too, so she wasn’t really worried about the level of alcohol. Luckily for me, my second suggestion appealed to her.
Since the time we had ordered the drinks, she had this anxiety and excitement to have the first sip. I could see that excitement in the mischievous glint in her eyes and also sense it in her questions, all of which were on the bar and the bottles beside us.
The waiter served the drinks along with the snacks we had ordered. Simar was moments away from taking the first sip of Belgium’s renowned alcoholic drink. That’s how she wanted to remember it. I gave her a little tip on how to say cheers and to keep the glass back on the table after the first sip. She went ahead and followed my instructions completely, barely containing her excitement.
But as soon as she tasted it, her euphoria drooped. Acting brave, she didn’t say much—but the way her eyes shut tightly the moment she sipped the beer revealed the reality. It hadn’t tasted as per her expectations. On her lips was a white moustache of froth.
‘So, how is it?’ I asked, smiling, and wondered what she would say.
‘I knew it was going to taste bad. But I had been told by friends that this is how alcohol is supposed to be,’ she answered.
I liked her spirit.
‘Go slow and complement every sip with some snacks. It will help you,’ I answered protectively.
In the initial few sips, Simar did struggle with the taste. It seemed it was an effort for her to swallow the spirit down her throat. But as the evening moved on, Simar did give her best shot to understand, accept and adapt to the taste of booze.
We kept talking about ourselves and the people in the restaurant. We talked about the taste of the snacks and beer. Most of the time, I kept giving her my share of gyaan on alcohol. Even though I wasn’t much of a drinker, I still had the experience of drinking.