I haven’t slept a
wink all night. First it was his clothes, then his fears, and as
dawn broke, Zeba called. They cancelled the breakfast date and
decided to meet ASAP at her hotel coffee shop. So he’s rushed out
now, and I don’t know whether what they are doing is right. Heck, I
don’t think the two of them have the faintest idea of what they
want to do. For now, they just want to see each other.
And what do I
want?
Another cup of
coffee.
***~~~***
At 7am I stood
in the hotel reception. I had a very small, grey bag, the same that
I used to take to office with a book, some papers, a snack and a
water bottle in it every day. I had come on a very short visit to
Delhi, just a night’s stay, and it was summer, so all I needed was
a change of underclothes and a book to read at night. I could have
walked out of the hotel with that bag and nobody would have guessed
I was leaving with my bill unpaid.
I had checked in
the previous evening, and the man at the desk had sized me up
suspiciously not only because I was young and my luggage so
insubstantial, but also because there was a girl at my side.
“Double room, sir,” he had asked with eyes on her, and I had
replied “single” rather hotly, bringing him back to his large
register.
It was a
government hotel in the heart of Delhi, not swish but fairly clean
for the price. I would have recommended it to you but it was
privatized, torn down and rebuilt years ago. The new hotel’s tariff
is beyond my means.
After reserving a
room, we had gone out to eat. The hotel had well-advertised
restaurants but a meal for two in them cost too much. We both were
in our first jobs then and earned just enough to get by on. Also,
both of us had a healthy regard for money, so we went to the lane
behind the hotel that had several shacks, and ate stuffed parathas
with omelettes just like in our student days, finishing the meal
with hot gulab jamuns and sweet, milky coffee in heavy but chipped
mugs whose rims showed signs of being sprinkled with drinking
chocolate. There, we could afford to tip, and there was genuine
delight in the smile that lit up the waiter’s face.
We strolled after
that. I loved that girl and for two years we had kept our
relationship going over Yahoo Mail without once seeing each other.
It had started late in the last term of our diploma course and
hadn’t gone beyond the intentional brushing of hands at night on
the dimly lit street outside her hostel. Once, only once, the day
before I left Delhi for good, we had hurriedly hugged in my room
and then laughed in embarrassment because our friends were waiting
downstairs, pretending they knew nothing about us. We had come up
on the pretext of getting some books she wanted.
There was nothing
sensuous about that hug. Speaking for me, I wasn’t aroused when her
breasts squished into my ribs. She was a plump girl, not fat,
partial to Britannia Good Day biscuits and tea but not much of a
foodie, and a bookworm averse to exercise, which showed. I remember
she was wearing the same paisley-print teal shirt that she had worn
the day when I first noticed her at the start of our course. The
day our class went to the book fair in the afternoon. She was
buried in a book, but since there was nobody else in class at the
time, I had had to ask her about the bus.
That day in my
room, she had stood on her toes to wrap her arms around my neck,
and I would have held her there awhile but her eyes were locked on
mine, and after a moment she had laughed and drawn away patting my
head. Must have been something she saw in them. But I knew she was
dead serious about us. All that irony, the wit, was a front. She
was emotionally very fragile, and it was not easy to break through
her guard. I had foolishly wasted weeks, if not months, failing to
read her mind. The day she openly resented my spending time with
another girl should have lit a bulb. “Such bitches!” she had said
and stormed off when I showed up at a class event with the other
girl after telling her I wouldn’t make it. We could have been a
pair then, not just friends.
Maybe she had been
hurt before, but I respected her too much and was so much in awe of
her that I hadn’t been able to ask her in those last few weeks we
had a claim on each other. And later, it wasn’t a question I could
ask over email. Anyway, if she hadn’t felt the need to tell me
about it, it either hadn’t happened or didn’t matter.
At 9pm, we were
standing at a bus stop. The evening had flown by and the four hours
we had spent together seemed less than a flash. The road was still
noisy but few buses came along. I hailed an auto and got in with
her. She protested she could travel alone, take care of herself,
and that I had had a long day already, but I overruled her and
retraced the route I had taken to her place in the evening. She
stayed as a paying guest and our time together had to end at her
door. We talked busily after the awkward silence at the bus stop.
It’s strange that the same people who hush up among a few strangers
at a stop talk so much sitting a foot away from the driver inside
an auto.
We alighted and
walked to her gate holding hands. Some of the girls who stayed with
her were reading in chairs behind the gate, but she didn’t slacken
her grip, nor did she look embarrassed when they turned questioning
gazes at her. I lingered uncertainly and she laughed looking into
my eyes. “Go, son, go,” she teased me, “I’ll see you in the
morning”.
“Come early,” I
said and left.
I remember little
of the ride back to the hotel other than that the bus was
half-empty, lit with dim yellow ceiling lights set inside round,
many-cornered covers. The driver drove sedately, probably to
conserve gas, and played old Hindi songs on a radio set under a
pointed orange lamp that flickered below an image of Shiva sitting
placidly on a tiger skin in the middle of the windscreen.
The night had
turned quiet when the bus dropped me at the hotel gate and groaned
away. The street was well-lit and the night air felt dry and hot.
The large fixed-glass windows of the hotel rooms were lit up and a
subdued babel of TV sounds floated out of them. I reached the
reception and realized I didn’t remember my room number. I opened
my bag to get out my wallet and the reservation slip but the book I
was carrying, Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, fell out.
The receptionist smiled and I felt annoyed for no reason, but
pocketing my key hurriedly took the elevator to my floor.
***
I expected to
be hit by the noise of TV in the corridor but it was very quiet. I
padded quietly to my room on the carpeted floor, felt the wall on
my right for switches and shut the door with a soft click after
turning on all the lights. I turned on the TV and crashed on the
bed with the remote in one hand. The TV’s red power light waited
for a signal to turn green and I stared back absently. Silence was
settling down in the room like sand kicked up in a pool of water.
The ticking of the room clock and the whirring of a fan in the room
below grew louder. I dropped the remote, dragged my bag nearer with
a toe, drew Pirsig out and turned open the dog-eared page where I
had left off the night before at home.
But Zen... is a
book that demands concentration. There are simple ideas in it that
translate easily into images, like the difference between driving a
car and riding a bike. A car is just more TV while the bike puts
you in the picture, you can reach down with your foot and connect
with the scene even on the move. Even the bits about Phaedrus’
life—those third-person references make my hair stand on end—are
light reading. But all that ‘inquiry into values’ business cannot
be breezed through.
My mind kept
returning to her and I struggled with the book. I finished the page
but couldn’t recollect a thing from it. I started over again with
the same result. I held my breath to focus on the page, and then
gave up. It was silly of me to read a book on a night like this.
Sleep was out of the question too. Her voice rang in my ears
effortlessly, though, and I lay back and went over the evening
slowly.
I thought of her
soft, clean hands and toes peeking through Bata sandals. She
dressed the same way even after two years in a job and was just as
unsparing with her keen wit. She was a little heavier, perhaps, but
it was hard to say since she never wore fitted clothes. There were
dark circles under her eyes, the result of working night shifts and
staying up late glued to Messenger. But little else of note.
Months ago, I had
scanned and mailed her a photograph of me after working off the
weight I had gained eating samosas at the institute, but she had
never sent me any of hers, although she wrote all the time. Some
evenings, when our shifts coincided, she sent seven or eight emails
and scolded me if I didn’t reply to even one. Hers were all
effusive mails, at least a few paragraphs long. She wrote the way
she spoke, with pauses and exclamations and asides and
afterthoughts, while my mails were monosyllables stretched to a
sentence out of consideration for her feelings. But she didn’t mind
the brevity of my replies although she didn’t tire of needling me
about it.
Neither of us had
a cellular phone in those days, and we heard each other’s voices
once in months because she felt shy calling my folks’ number. Yet,
her sparkling voice and dimpled laugh were hardwired in my mind.
When I read her mails, I heard her speak, and when she pulled my
leg I saw and heard her laugh.
I got up to get a
glass of water. It was 1am and the night was deathly still. In a
few hours I would see her again. Maybe she was lying awake at that
moment and thinking about me. Perhaps she was phrasing the
inevitable question that I dreaded so much: whether and when we
were going to get married. How was I to evade it sitting beside her
this time? I wished she were younger than me and had time on her
side. I wished the institution of marriage had never been
created.
These two years, I
had been constant despite my youth and the distance in our
relationship. Not even a fling in all this time although my office
was full of temptation: smart girls my age who spoke the same
language and had grown up in the same city. I had been constant
despite knowing—realizing belatedly, after the first rush of
romance and noble feelings—that we couldn’t travel far together.
She wanted marriage and irrevocable commitment while I... look, I
am no ladies’ man, I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, but marriage
then or even five years on was out of the question. I had tried
explaining this to her many times before over email. Now, I had to
do it looking into her eyes. The morning was not going to be as
sweet as the last evening.
***
I pictured her
sitting on the bed with me, smelling of freshly shampooed hair and
moisturiser. She never wore perfume. How would I say no? Would I
break her heart, make her cry? Would she storm out of the room like
that night, muttering “such bitches!”? Would I run after her and
stop her? Not if there were other people in the corridor. I just
couldn’t handle a scene in public. So, would I say yes? I tried to
picture my life with her, but instead of imagining the future,
turned to the past, starting at that afternoon when I first become
aware of her quiet presence in our class of 40. That earnest,
studious face behind steel-rimmed glasses. The simply cut blouse,
the reserved, thoughtful manner and the polished accent in a sea of
fakes. I had found those qualities attractive because four years
after breaking up with my first love, a gorgeous, outgoing girl, I
was still hurting. I wanted someone calm, restrained, reserved,
inward-looking. And faithful. Someone I could love with an easy
mind, rather than fret all the time about her cheating on me.
It was several
weeks before she and I coalesced into a small group of five
friends, four of whom, including me, didn’t open up easily to
strangers. But all of us were wits, and she the sharpest of all. I
made no secret of my admiration for her but didn’t foresee losing
my heart. Had someone prophesied her loving me—the butt of most of
her jokes—I would have laughed out loud (LOL is a word I learned
from her when we became email lovers) but secretly I would have
been flattered.
It was a while
before she lowered her guard among us and I realized she was also a
fun-loving person. All five of us were from outside the city and in
our spare time we used to tramp about exploring Delhi’s markets and
heritage. One day in October, we were out pass-hunting for a
cultural festival in Mehrauli. After getting our passes we visited
Red Fort. I was uneasy about travelling with two girls in a lawless
Blueline bus, but those two were perfectly in their element and
even secured seats for all of us.
Although she
mostly wore western clothes, that day she was dressed in a red
kurta with tiny golden dots printed on it and a white salwar.
Outside the fort, she saw fake bushy beards for sale and bought
one. I was speechless when she put it on in public and insisted
that I click a picture. She looked crazy with that thing on and was
laughing so loudly that other tourists turned to look at her.
Seeing them she became very self-conscious and froze for a second.
Then she tore off the beard and started walking towards the road
red with embarrassment. Maybe that was the moment I fell in love
with her. I wanted to wrap my arm around her shoulder and tell her
it was all right.
But she brightened
up again on the bus and laughed at herself and apologized to all of
us for spoiling the visit. In Mehrauli, we had a merry time again,
putting on the beard by turns and clicking pictures in the
colonnade ringing Adham Khan’s Tomb.
I wanted to leave
early at night because of the girls but she insisted on staying on
till she had seen all the dances, and then walked to the main road
humming the different folk tunes she had heard. I stayed behind her
and watched her erratic, playful step. She was a merry person
inside that private fortress she dwelt in.