Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (14 page)

Aditi came back after shooting the scene and said that since the lighting was being put up in another part of the set, she could sit with me for a while longer. She had brought back the sticky sweet ‘cutting’ chai, that you get on shoots, along with a packet of biscuits. We sat there in silence for a while, eating and slurping hot tea. It was a cloudy day. I could hear people say that it was going to rain. In my heart too, I felt that it was going to rain.

Aditi broke our silence finally by saying, ‘Are you
really
happy?’

‘Yes. I’ve never felt this way about any man. And you told me that love is about compromise. Well, today I’m the one compromising, but tomorrow I know he will.’ I had spoken a little too soon, probably because I had rehearsed it before she came back.

‘If that’s what you believe, then I’m happy for you,’ she said, and looked away. ‘This is a bad relationship that never ends.’ She proclaimed and sighed at me.

I was getting a little annoyed. Maybe it was her self-righteous attitude towards me or the fact that she had hated him from the moment I had told her about him. Or maybe I was frustrated about her sarcasm and Arjun’s involvement with me. But I snapped. What did she know anyway? Where was her perfect man and her ideal relationship? She was a grown woman who was still an Assistant Director. Shouldn’t she have moved on to do something better with her life, her career, her marriage even? I spat back at her. She replied that she was looking to make a movie but needed to go through the grind of filmmaking like everyone else.

I brushed her aside. I said sarcastically, ‘If that’s what you believe, then I’m happy for you!’

She got up to say she was leaving since she had work to do. Then Aditi said something that really shook me, ‘One day, you’ll get tired of the roles you play and long for the life you deserve. Unless you choose to break the shackles of comfort, you’ll never know what really makes you happy.’

Was that true? Was I living in a comfort zone? In a sadistic, masochistic cocoon that only I thought made me happy when everyone around me knew it was toxic to my life? What was the alternative? Another man? Another relationship? Was there a parallel relationship out there that was better than this? Would it not have the same hardships? Maybe I should stop looking for a 10 on 10 relationship and be happy with a 6 or a 7. Maybe we should accept the flaws of a person since they live with ours as well.

I took a cab back to my empty apartment and realized that Love indeed was a bitch.

The next few days, I thought harder about what Aditi had said. But a calamity at work shook me so hard that my viewpoint was completely reversed on the subject. I got fired or the equivalent of it. I was told by the Italian Embassy that I had bungled the brochure they had asked me to do and my work had become substandard. They never wanted to work with me again. I was shattered. I had thought I had done everything for them, but apparently, I had made a crucial mistake in their brochures, one that would cost them a lot of money to fix. They reprimanded me for my negligence. I was devastated. Even though there were plenty more offers I could have taken up, I had taken up this job and worked on it for four months. So I immediately called Arjun and told him I had been fired. He took off from work and came right over to meet me.

He postponed his meeting and was there at my doorstep within the next thirty minutes. Even pizza has not been delivered this fast! I started howling as soon as I saw him. And he held me till I cried the pain away. I kept trying to talk in between my sobs of, ‘I’m an awful interpreter.’ And, ‘I really screwed up.’

He nodded and said, ‘No, you’re not, darling. They are all assholes. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s all right.’ And I cried some more. And then he asked if he could make coffee for us. I nodded. He knew me and my desire for coffee when things became too stressful. So he got up and walked to my small, airy kitchen with white marble tops and dark wooden cupboards on top and bottom. Interspersing the white tiles, between the cupboards, there were little tiles with paintings of fruits and vegetables. It was a pretty kitchen and it overlooked the sea. Okay, if you craned your neck out of the window really hard to the right, you could see the sea, but most of the time I drew the bright yellow and green curtains to block out the harsh sun and the peeping neighbours from a building away. The kitchen had seen some fun times with Arjun and me. But today he just put the kettle on the stove and took out the colourful red mugs to make me some coffee.

‘Look,’ he said from the kitchen after some time, ‘I don’t even know why you’re working with these stupid people.’ He brought out the two red mugs—a steaming hot and frothy cappuccino for me and a black coffee for himself. ‘I mean translating is not even a real profession. It’s a hobby. And you’re getting paid for it so great, but is this what you want to do for the rest of your life?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, taking the cup from him. ‘Cookies?’

He went back into the kitchen to get the glucose biscuits I truly loved. He kept talking while walking back and forth, ‘I mean, how long do you want to be just a translator? Where will it take you anyway?’

I was going to say an international interpreter at the United Nations, living in Switzerland and travelling across Europe whenever I liked. It was a quiet existence, but it would give me two of my favourite things in the world, art and travel. I would have been an interpreter for art galleries, maybe working at the Louvre or discovering new forms of art and language. That was my dream. That was what I had wanted when I took up this profession. But I kept quiet. I was so under his spell and so morose from being fired that what he said had started making sense.

‘Here’s an opportunity for you to truly discover who you are. Don’t think of it as a setback. Think of it as a blessing in disguise.’

I started feeling slightly better. ‘Do you really think so?’ I asked, still unsure of myself.

‘Absolutely, baby. And I’m right here for you. I’ll always be here whenever you need me, like I told you.’

He was right. He had proved it today. Arjun stayed over, and stuck by my side. I was truly, deeply in love with him.

Aditi’s words had faded from my memory already.

A few days later though, a strange thing happened. I should have taken it as an omen right then, but I decided on an alternative course post it. Arjun and I had gone out for dinner to a beautiful new place. I had asked him to bring back romance into our relationship—one of the ‘needs’ I had. So we went on a Tuesday, a relatively light day for people to venture out. It had been raining that day and the air was damp and sultry. I had an ominous feeling about the whole thing. For starters that day, I had another confrontation with my maid early in the morning.

‘Baby,’ she had said very abruptly when I was in the kitchen trying to make myself a soy milkshake, ‘what should I do with these underclothes?’ she asked, as she held out Arjun’s underwear in my face. They were clean since I had already done the laundry. She had folded all my clothes and kept them on my bed to put away into the cupboard. I didn’t know why she was having a problem since she always folded his shirts and kept them on the bed for me to put away.

‘Just leave them on the bed, Martha,’ I said, drinking my shake and walking to the living room to watch TV. I don’t know at which point in my life I had become more of a TV addict and less of a reader. But I guess when you have another person making decisions about your time, you begin to accommodate your tastes to get into his good books. Martha followed me into the living room and threw the garment on the couch.

‘I am
your
maid. Not everyone else’s,’ she said with a pout.

‘Now where did that come from? I thought you liked Master D’Souza?’ I inquired.

She stayed quiet and I prodded her further, ‘What is going on? Is he not nice to you?’

‘No, no, he is very nice. It’s just that I get this feeling … that he is married,’ she said suddenly. And then for a moment I went pale. How had she guessed? But I kept cool and asked, ‘Why do you say that?’ She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘When you’re not here and he’s at home, I’ve seen him talking to someone very quietly, like someone would with a girl. And I know it’s not you. It’s a different tone. And it’s like he has known her for a long time, not a loving tone—not as if he’s cheating on you with someone new, but with someone else. So I can only assume it would be his old girlfriend or his wife. Either way, it’s not good for you to keep seeing him.’

I didn’t know why I had given my maid so much leeway to speak so many things. I suppose since she had been with me for eight years, she and I figured that she was the closest thing to a guardian I had in Mumbai and she felt she needed to look out for me. It was now becoming a disturbing equation since I would have to start hiding things from her along with giving her explanations about my love life!

‘Don’t worry too much, Martha. Just do your job,’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. I left it at that.

In the evening when Arjun picked me up for our romantic date, I felt I needed to hide this fact from him as well. And later that evening, we were exposed.

While we were having dinner, Arjun looked up and saw a familiar face entering the restaurant. He immediately panicked and asked me to go along with his story.

‘Hi, Arjun!’ greeted a tall, burly man with a thick moustache and a British accent. Arjun got up to shake his hand, and the woman with him, who had a saccharine-sweet smile on her face giving away the fact that she suspected something was fishy.

‘Hi, Nina,’ Arjun greeted her and then completely ignored me while he asked them how they were and when they came back from London. Nina took out her palm and stretched it to me saying, ‘I’m Nina. I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?’

Arjun immediately butted in saying, ‘Ayesha. I’m so sorry guys. I completely forgot to introduce you. This is Ayesha. She runs a production house and we’re trying to figure out what to say in our meeting tomorrow to get her project approved with the channel.’

I was stunned. He was lying through his teeth to people I had never heard about before. What was going on? He gave me a look that said I had better play along with his story and so all I did was shake hands and smile. I didn’t trust my voice. I was too shaky and uncertain about what was going to come out. After he politely told them that he would catch up with them later, they went to another table and Arjun immediately asked for the check.

‘What is going on?’ I asked for the second time that day.

‘They are my wife’s sister and brother-in-law,’ he said, gulping down his drink and putting his credit card in the bill folder.

‘So?’ I asked unsure. He just stayed quiet as he got up and expected me to follow. So I left my drink half way and walked out with him. As soon as we got out, the cool air from the sea hit my face along with a stench of dried fish. It seemed as if there was something fishy about this night. We got into his car and I asked him again, ‘Arjun,
so what
if that was your wife’s sister? I thought you said your marriage was on the rocks and you would tell her as soon as she got back?’

‘Ya but I don’t want her to figure out through the grapevine.’ He spoke while driving, his face stony hard.

‘How does it matter? You’ll have to tell her the truth anyway.’

‘The truth is overrated,’ he said this with complete calmness and I couldn’t believe it. The truth was the most important thing to me! For some people, the most important virtue was loyalty or fidelity, or even if you weren’t loyal, at least that you were supportive and loving. But for me, dishonesty qualified as a deal breaker. That’s why I had slept with Arjun in Goa for the first time. He had been honest with me. Completely up front. And I had taken that decision because I liked that quality about him.

If he was not planning to tell his wife about us, how would there be an ‘us’? She had to agree that he was in love with someone else and then give him a divorce. How else was he planning to separate? And then a most horrible thought entered my head that made me blink back the fear that came rushing into my heart … maybe he was not planning to divorce her at all. Maybe he was just using me! So I asked him, ‘Arjun, how do you plan to divorce your wife?’

That’s when I knew that something was wrong even though I did not admit it to myself. He took a long time to answer, ‘I’ll figure it out.’ He dropped me back home stating that he was very tired and his mind was reeling with this development and he needed to figure out lots of things. He was even slightly annoyed with me for making a suggestion to go to that place or for asking for a romantic night out. But I let it slide. I didn’t fight back and quietly went home.

Aditi’s words were coming back to me, ‘Married men do not get a divorce—it’s an urban myth.’

Instead of confronting Arjun about his plans and about us, I attributed that date as unfortunate and left it at that. I submerged myself in work. It had been approximately two weeks since that night when he dropped me off in stony silence and I wanted a proper date again and a proper explanation …

It was Saturday night. He said he would pick me up at seven. ‘Let’s make it a long night,’ he had said. ‘We’ll go out drinking, dancing and then come back to your place.’ I was excited. With work and my new boss at the Russian Embassy taking all the fun out of my life, I had been feeling like an old maid of late. And this was probably going to be our last night together for a long time since his wife was supposed to come back the following week. Arjun had planned to tell her about us. God knows where that would end! So here I was at 6.30 in the evening, trying to decide what to wear. I didn’t want to really dress up and make it look like I had overdone it. Nor did I want to feel I was underdressed in case he took me to a nice place. I felt like it was a first date even though we had been living together and he had seen me naked!

I pulled out a nice pair of jeans that didn’t make me look too fat. I had managed to find a really good pair at Fendi after searching all the top brands. I chose a dark purple sleeveless top with a little bling on the collar, a pair of silver hoops and some silver bangles to match. I slipped my feet through nice, long heels to lift my butt and make my legs look longer than the 5 feet 4 inches I was. Okay, I was 5 feet 3 and a half, but that really didn’t go well with my personality so I’ve stuck to saying five-four. A little kajal, some lip gloss like the magazines said, and I was ready. I switched on the TV and waited, flipping through the channels for a while. Same old reruns and I started getting a little impatient.