Virgin Territory

Number of words: 6870

I thought about the moment I realized I love her.

It might seem like the wrong thought at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Then

She was naked, on top and in the tight embrace of her lover. Her head rested against his hairless chest, face towards me, eyes closed and a lopsided smile on her lips. I did not look at the rest of her body. I noticed his narrow shoulders and skinny arms. I was walking past her room in those few seconds.

It is possible I cast a shadow on her life then. She opened her eyes and realized the door had not been latched properly and that it had swung open. "The door," I heard her scream. The door slammed, locked and bolted. I was in my room by then.

She and I had to ourselves one wing on the first floor of the PhD students' hostel. The hostel was a part of the staff quarters, two-storeyed semi-detached houses around a square grassy courtyard. Our rooms were at the end of a hallway, doors facing each other. These two rooms had attached bathroom and were on a lower level, unlike the two near the entrance. Just four steps lower but it had the effect of being in a basement, secluded, almost sound-proof and private (if the door is closed, of course). The other two rooms in our wing were vacant then, only unsuspecting new-joiners took those. Those were close to the noisy dining hall and the main stairway, enjoyed little privacy and shared a bathroom.

That day I had returned from the Institute rather early, around seven in the evening, after a few games of volleyball. I closed the main door to the wing after me and hurried to my room. I looked towards her room only because her door was open.

We had a tacit agreement to acknowledge each other's existence there only when we left our door open and that was very rare. We were not anti-social. We preferred not to socialize with people from the Institute in our private time and space. That could have been for variety or for the sake of sanity.

We were different otherwise. She liked classical music and Indian light music; I preferred Western pop/rock and anything the tone-deaf could enjoy without guilt. She was a willing convert to vegetarianism; penury forced me to be a reluctant vegetarian most of the week. She hated cigarettes; I had to drown my vegetative sorrow and subdue hunger pangs with such substances. She was in love, good-natured and a much-sought-after company with or without her social upwardly-mobile lover; I was lonely even when I did not enjoy solitude, on the blind-spot, not avoided.

Come to think of it, we had two other things in common—a dislike towards married PhD students who thought their kids should be a common responsibility. “What the heck! Are we supposed to suffer the worst part of matrimony without enjoying the best?” she surprised me once. That was just to me. But, in that too, we were different. She liked kids and they too liked her. The other thing was that we liked free and aloof animals. We hated safari, zoos and even pets within the house.

We were good neighbours initially. On a couple of occasions, we had all-night discussions on life and love (or was it books and movies?). One was a New Year's Eve when her lover had chosen to be with his parents (he was a PhD scholar in another Institute, a year senior to us, but he worked in ours too; and, stayed most nights in her room) and I had suffered the wedding invitation of a childhood sweetheart. That night, I felt like pounding her head with a pillow. She was in a lovey-dovey mood. She even made me copy one of my love 'pomes' on a stiff pink card. It is based on an old custom of sailors lost at sea.

The cold wind lashes my brittle heart,
My friend, I pray, don’t drift apart;
But it’s time for the rites of the high seas
When by lots we shall decide whom to cease;
You, me or the others, whose blood shall soak,
Whose flesh shall fill; let mind go senses broke.
If it’s me, feed on me
without a qualm,
If it’s you, shut your eyes
for they might break this lunatic calm.

She told me on Valentine’s Day that she had presented that pink slip with the ‘pome’ to her lover along with a card she made. That did not have any repercussions on her love affair. He is a strict vegetarian and must not have understood the intricacies of cannibalism.

Now

“Hello, Sree,” she said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Hi, Anu,” I replied.

She seemed surprised. She smiled. That was my name for her.

“It’s a lovely party, isn’t it?” she said.

“Not exactly balmy weather for an outdoor event,” I noted.

“Really…?”

“I am dripping sweat.”

“Nervous, aren’t we?” she said.

I nodded.

We were meeting after twenty years.

Twenty years back, we would have ridiculed anyone who suggested that we would be willing participants in any stage of an arranged marriage.

A family friend arranged it and there was a fair amount of serendipity involved to make it seem predestined. He visited us after a long time. He mentioned to us that he had recently met a person from my old Institute. Weirder, that person turned out to be his distant relative. Before long, both the families urged him to get us together.

The parents, mine and hers, briefly crossed paths once when we were colleagues in the Institute. They got along well. We were very distant then. She was in depression, and I was in the doghouse. I do not know if they talked to each other later. They knew us, of course, not our history, I think.

On their first stay with me at the Institute, my parents met my neighbours. “Cute couple,” my mother called them. To my surprise, my parents did not find anything wrong with her semi-live-in relationship. They must have hoped I would learn a thing or two and find some company of my own.

When my friend waved the green flag, I was surprised she had agreed to the arranged meeting.

I would have preferred the outdated meet-the-girl-serving-tea in her house with its plus points of being time-bound and formal. The matchmakers objected “that’s too old-fashioned even if the participants are oldies”. They were then presented with a fortuitous choice of a neutral territory. Her family and mine were guests at a ‘resort wedding’—a new fashion in town where the wedding takes place in a resort and insufferable guests and hosts have to cohabit for couple of days. The matchmaker-in-chief noted that “it is an all-gain-no-pain arrangement.”

“Others pay, you two get to meet and we get to party well. Everyone hopes for the best but no one really expects you two to click right,” that was my friend at his encouraging best. He added, “Especially given your age…”

There was a sangeet-n-dance ceremony the first evening. She and I moved away from the crowd and walked into the night, towards the cliff overlooking the dark frothing inviting sea beneath. The security personnel patrolling the grounds watched us warily. They must be more accustomed to the exuberance and shifty nature of frisky young lovers. Our type must have set off alarms, they expected trouble, at best broken bones or cardiac arrest after a walk or climb too arduous, at worst suicide for very understandable middle-age reasons.

Then

Life was as usual the day after the inadvertent peep-show. At the breakfast table, we nodded at each other and shared the newspaper, supplement with page 3 news for me, and the rest for her. Someone asked for our opinion about the Friday special dinner. She agreed with the popular choice of veg. pulao and raita, I growled my displeasure.

If anyone seemed different, it was her lover. He tried to be friendlier to me. He asked me if I could give a seminar on solitons at his Institute. I asked him why they would be interested in that. Oh, it sounds interesting, he said. How about turbulence, he tried again. Those talks never happened.

His friendly overtures turned into professional rivalry a few weeks later. I was keen on attending a Summer School at Trieste. Intra-departmental politics stood in my way. The department head was one of the organizers of that School. There was a long-standing feud between him and my PhD supervisor, the usual type waged by the mediocre for power and position. I was the loser. The students of the department head were given preference and received funding from the Institute in Italy. I was told to try for government funds. That was grabbed by her lover for a conference in Japan. His PhD supervisor was much higher in the pecking order than mine. I asked him to step aside, given that he had already used government funds that year for a meeting at Aspen. He shrugged and smirked. The best guy wins, he said silently.

In that period, when her lover must have been searching for vegetarian sushi in Kyoto and most of our batch-mates were enjoying the Mediterranean sun, she and I went out on a date that was not a date.

We were at the breakfast table a Saturday morning, sharing the newspaper as usual.

“Interested in a morning show?” I asked.

She looked around. I rolled my eyes.

“Movie?” she acted dumb.

“No, peep-show,” I replied without much thought.

She blushed, scowled, her eyes mere slits.

“Geez…!” I exclaimed.

“Which one?” she asked.

“Who cares?” I said. She screwed up her eyes again. “I just want to get out of this hostel,” I admitted.

“Ok.”

The movie must have been a disaster. I remember it was at that charming old Plaza theatre. We shared the movie-hall with a dozen others, mostly lovers in their corner seats and a few old ones who seemed lost. We took centre-seats, shared popcorn, munched samosa, slurped cola, loud and distracting. No one complained.

After the movie, we went to an Andhra restaurant on Church Street, the R.R. if I am not mistaken. We ordered the unlimited vegetarian thali. She said it’s ok with her if I had fish along with it. I told her my wallet’s not ok with it. Oh, come on, just cut down on your smoking and drinking, she said. If I cut down anymore, I might turn into an angel, I said. We don’t want that, she said.

We needed a good walk after the heavy meal. We walked to the Kids’ Kemp. I made her select a few outfits and watched models display the same. She played along for a while. From there, we wandered to the Shoppers’ Stop. There, I asked her to model for me. Yeah, yeah, dream on, sweetheart, she said. She bought a top I liked. I tried to make her take a skirt that went well with the top.

“I don’t wear skirts,” she said.

I had noticed that. “Why not…?” I asked.

“Fat legs, the lower half particularly,” she said.

“Really…?” I pretended to check that out.

“As if you don’t know…”

“Oh…ah…!” How could I correct her?

“Ah…oh…! Indeed!”

From there, it was to my usual haunts, the second-hand bookshops on Brigade Road and Church Street. At one, she caught me winking and shaking my head at the proprietor. No shady transactions today, she asked. Who me, I said along with round innocent puppy eyes. At another, she was surprised when we were offered glasses of tea. Big shot here, huh, she said. She bought one each of Erica Jong, Simone and Sartre. Heavy, I noted. I took the Sudden novels the shop-owner had found for me along with three of the Wallander series. So, your wallet is ok now, she said. I gave her one of the Mankell novels. Trying to convert me, she asked. I grinned. How about giving me a Sudden, she bargained. You will have to be my, I stopped.

We were not hungry but went to Koshy’s. We first went to the British Council Library on the first floor of the same building and exchanged books. We had not planned it, not even discussed it, but we were carrying the library books. Around five, we entered Koshy’s. I ordered a bottle of beer and a plate of French fries. She said she still felt stuffed and did not order anything. She finished off half my beer and fries. I complained a lot. She stuck her tongue out. You veggies get drunk easily, I said. I am not exactly that, am I, she sounded enigmatic.

We decided to return to the hostel after that.

“I had a lovely day,” I said before leaving her at her door. She nodded, looking a bit drunk.

I went to my room and waited for her to knock on my door.

I thought of her entering my room.

“Is that all you have to say to me?” she asked.

“If you want to hear what I really have to say, lock the door,” I said.

She locked the door.

I pushed her against the door and kissed her. Her lips, softly; her cheeks, chin,  nape of the neck, ears; back to the lips, roughly; licked and tongued; she reciprocated; how long; then with more urgency; back to the neck, the top of her breasts, her arms, hands; I unbuttoned her blouse; she my shirt; I pushed the bra up; something tore, she did not complain; I kissed, licked and sucked, I let her guide me; the pressure, the pain, the pleasure, it took time; I searched for her erogenous zones; mine were her eyes and lips; I made her turn to face the door; slipped off her blouse and bra, my shirt; kissed and licked her back; I reached to the front, unbuckled her jeans, unzipped it, let my hand roam within, rubbed, fondled; I knelt behind her, slipped the jeans down, off her legs, her panties too; I kissed her buttocks, sucked at the dimples and bit the soft flesh; her legs too, the thighs, inside outside, down to the knees, calves, back up; she turned; I took my time; lips replaced fingers, again I let her guide me, I kept looking at her face now and then; she stared at me with half-closed eyes; I sucked and licked; she was silent till then; yes, there, she said, more. At some point later, she said no, she couldn’t.

Now

We did not waste time on the unnecessary, not even to be formal or polite or to get over the awkwardness and the uncertainty. We did not ask how or what we were doing. We already had that information.

She is a MD in a bulge-bracket investment bank, on the quant side. It was pointless to ask how she got there.

I am a teacher, old-school, paper and white-board with no fancy software. She did not ask how I managed to be that, she knew I hated teaching.

That endeavour too had its share of serendipity. After my PhD, I travelled and worked as a research scientist wherever I could. Then, I left that. I slipped into sanyas mode for a year or two, a good-for-nothing living with my parents. One rainy day in June, my eldest sister, her friend and their daughters visited my parents. I stayed in my room avoiding them. My sister came to my room and said that the friend’s daughter wanted my suggestion for a good Physics textbook. I suggested the usual, Resnick and Halliday, Nelkon and Parker. Come and meet her for a minute, my sister insisted.

This girl, like my niece, had just entered Plus One. My niece had chosen the Humanities. Her friend was in the Science stream. The girl said that Physics was freaking her out. I told her that it was just starting trouble. She said she could not even understand what the first basic chapter on dimensional analysis was all about. She could solve the problems, she agreed, but what’s the point. Just a decent student with a lousy teacher, I thought. I should have kept my mouth shut.

For fifteen minutes, I lectured about basic dimensional analysis, Buckingham Pi theorem and how a great guy named Taylor used that and a few photos of a classified atomic bomb blast to figure out the strength of the bomb.

I dug my own grave with that.

That kid and her mother were terribly impressed. They requested for a few sessions like that. That became regular tuition classes. When she topped in Physics that term, far ahead of the others, three of her batch-mates joined her. I insisted on having the classes in one of their homes, never mine, and always with at least one parent present. The parents wanted to pay fees. I told them they can pay after the kids cleared the Entrance exams. I refused to take other students those two years. The four got into the IITs. I did not charge the parents anything. I also told them no gifts, no visits. I slipped back into my sanyas.

Not for long. I needed money. For future plans, I deceived myself.

I started my tuition business. I did not have to advertise. The students took care of that. The joke in the research circuit used to be: idiotic students maketh a professor’s brilliant reputation. Bengali students are the best for that, with their strong inclination to hero-worship. Malayali students are not bad either, even though their natural instinct is to bring another down.

I tell my students I am there only to help them with the entrance examinations. And, for that, the mantra is: only an idiotic student will not know all the questions that can be asked in an exam. More than ninety per cent are happy with that well-trodden path. Less than five per cent need love, for the subject, for anything and everything. For that minority, I had another mantra. Be stupid. Use your brains. Question your love and everything.

That career went into automated mode, my life too.

She must have known the little there was to know about that life and could guess much of the rest. Her life must have been more exciting. She must have met lots of interesting people in lots of interesting places. She had been at the epicentre of the sub-prime crisis, probably poured oil into those flames by cooking up quantitative models for CDO, CDO-squared, CDO-what-not. I do not know much about that or her field of expertise apart from what Google search revealed. If she had searched for me, she would have found my old scientific papers and nothing else. I was sure she would not have bothered to find the stories I wrote.

“I read some of your stories,” she said.

I smiled.

“Why don’t you publish instead of putting them in blogs no one can find?”

“I do not know of a magazine that publishes stories of unknown writers.”

“There must be a few. Do you know that there is an interesting Tamil publisher, now what’s the name, for pulp fiction? You could try them.”

“Pulp fiction…”

Did I chew my lips or scowl?

“Oops…did I tickle the wrong spot?” she asked.

“Wrong...?”

“Come on, Sree. Don’t enter your famous shell.”

“Shell…?”

She gave up. We remained silent.

The security guards must have found the silence unsettling. One came to us and basically shooed us away.

We took the long route back to the party.

“Why didn’t you get married?” she asked.

“Well, you can see how my attempts go,” I said with a hollow laugh.

“I need one honest answer from you,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“Was it because of me?”

“No.”

We agreed to meet again the next day.

Then

“I need to ask you something and you have to promise that you will tell me the truth,” she said twenty years back.

“Shoot.”

“I know what you have been up to.”

“Is that the question?” I grinned.

“Are you in love with me?” she asked.

“No,” I lied.

Truth is over-rated. It is necessary only when the truth of a matter will be obvious to others, then or eventually; quite unnecessary, otherwise.

As far as her earlier conclusion was concerned, I had actually not been “up to” much.

In those middle-years at the Institute, we spent more time with each other, that is, relative to the pre-peep era. We went out on more of those dates-that-are-not-dates, even when her lover was in town but was busy with work or schmoozing the higher-powers.

That was not uncommon in our small close research community. It was a conservative one with its share of open and closed secrets. The Director was in an affair with a lady professor of another Institute. She was smart, he was too even though he looked like a knob-head. At a lower level, the Head Librarian’s wife shifted camp and married a Professor. Consensual adults, mostly, abiding by Darwin’s findings on survival. No one objected if there was no fuss. Not even the Librarian. No one even gossiped. There were couples and there were couples. Some were friends, some not so platonic. Some ladies needed a chaperon when they ventured out with guys. Some preferred the company of other ladies. Some like Anu did what she liked.

Did we become soul-mates? When others were around, we spoke Malayalam, that too with the uncouth Trivandrum dialect. (Yedi Anoo, sugangal thanneydi? Yentheyru parayaan appi, appi etto? Never abusive but best if lost in translation.) We talked a lot, especially on those nights her lover was not there for the night. She told me she loved pillion-riding on her lover’s bike. When he goes fast…it excites me, she giggled. I guess she was rubbing it in, she knew I could not even ride a bicycle. We touched on sex, masturbation. I don’t know why he wants me to sleep in the nude, she said. Me too, I joked. Her elbow poked my ribs quite sharply. I pretended to faint. She laughed heartlessly. Once she was down with a bad case of UTI. I offered to talk to my doctor sister. I called my sister from a public phone booth. Anu stood next to me in the small space, held the door closed, her ear next to mine.

“My friend says she has a bad case of UTI,” I told my sister. “What should she do?”

My sister suggested a course of antibiotics.

“How did she get it?” I asked.

“Ladies are prone to that, especially given the state of public toilets.”

“She has her own bathroom in hostel.”

“Idiot, doesn’t she have to pee in your Institute?”

“Ah!”

“It could also be because of sex.”

“I can’t ask her about that, can I?” I said. My sister laughed and disconnected the call.

“Well…?” I asked her.

“How can you ask me about that?” Those bewitching eyes and lips of hers!

I got to know her folks too. On their first stay, her father mistook me for a cook. She was working late in the Institute. She had told her parents to have dinner in the hostel. The cooks had left for the day. There was the usual rice, roti, vegetable, sambhar and salad on the dining table. I had bought two eggs for an omelette.

When her parents came to the dining area, it was empty other than for me in the kitchen chopping onion and chilly. It must have been the towel on my head or my torn T-shirt.

“Boss, anda milega?” her father asked me after viewing the pathetic fare on the dining table.

Thankfully, his Hindi was as bad as mine.

“Omelette…?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Plain…masala…?”

“Masala,” he ordered.

My two eggs ended on their plates. I had dinner later, cursing Anu and the veg. grub.

Next morning, at breakfast, Anu introduced me to her parents.

“Sorry, boss,” her father said with a broad grin. Even her mother was not apologetic, “Nice omelette.”

The next time they came to stay with her, they brought her younger sister and brother. Those two kids were as militant as I am about veg. food. That month, I was the manager of the hostel kitchen. One night, I prepared chicken curry for the non-vegetarians. Anu asked me to keep four shares extra for her folks. I think they fell in love with me that night. Without my curry, they would not have slept well with that night’s special dinner of veg. pulao and raita.

“Chechikku sharikkum vattaanu (Elder sister is really crazy),” her siblings told me that night. I grinned but did not confirm their diagnosis.

I did not talk to her folks about her, not her gastronomic conversion, never her romantic life. They too supported her.

Her lover and I buried our knives and maintained a very cordial professional relationship. In his fourth year, his research got stuck in a theory involving coupled non-linear partial differential equations. I was the in-house expert on that and he came to me. I helped him with the numerical methods and the computational analysis. I spent some time on my own working on those equations, even found interesting analytical solutions. I shared that with him. He used that in a publication. In the acknowledgements section of that publication, he thanked me for ‘valuable feedback in editing the paper’. I did not talk to Anu about that. He was a closed chapter for me.

We used to play volleyball and badminton. The rivalry was feral at times, the reason no secret to anyone there. She concentrated on her own game and ignored our mating calls.

It was around that time she asked me for that honest answer.

No, that is not right. It was after her birthday. I had got her a present, a cuddly toy. Her eyes had filled.

Did I tell you why I fell in love with her? It has something to do with her eyes and those lips. It is nothing poetic, nothing sexy, nothing extraordinary in way of beauty or proportions. There is kindness and understanding in those eyes. And there’s playfulness and determination in those lips. When there’s that lopsided smile on her lips, it’s as if she is hiding lots and far away. But that’s not all of it. At times, I just can’t comprehend what’s going on there. When she lies carefully or demands the truth, there’s mystery in those eyes and lips. If I could explain it better, that wouldn’t be true, would it?

Anyway, that was not all that happened on that birthday.

We shook hands formally. I wished her the very best. Her eyes slipped into the unascertainable mode. The smile on her thin lips reminded me of the day I fell in love with her. I leaned forward and kissed her hand, between the third and fourth knuckle. It was a prolonged kiss, lips first, then a bit of tongue.

She moved back when I let go of her hand. For a moment, she stood with one hand over the other in front. Then, the hands slipped from view to the back. She stood erect, with an unblinking stare, lips moist, pert breasts still.

“Do you need a hand sanitizer?” I asked. Don’t ask me why that came out.

“A tetanus injection too or should it be the one for rabies?” she asked.

I gave a mock shiver.

We never talked about emotional infidelity. We kissed once. Or rather, I kissed her hand once. In my dreams, she grabbed my shirt then and kissed my lips.

We were so clueless. We were so certain.

Two days later, she confronted me with that question about loving her.

That’s not all that she said then. The exact chronology is hazy at present. And, it does not help that such life-changing events are usually full of cringe-worthy dialogue/monologue and rarely have the best screenplay, structure and substance.

At one point, probably before the question, she gave this lecture, “I know you think he is a good-for-nothing idiot who kisses ass to do well in life. He might be that. But he loves me. And he acts on it. He kisses ass for us to have a good life together. And no, he does not stay in the shadow, brood and try to be Mr Perfect. Do you think a girl loves less if her guy turns out to be less than perfect? Your Darwin does not apply to love.”

Why did she say my Darwin? I remember thinking then, and I could have told her, that she had repeated at least two things twice, a double fault in that less-than-a-minute speech. I should have also told her I am no Mr Perfect, not that she did not know that.

She let it stew within. I could sense the impending climax. It was quite brutal.

“You are not a villain in my story. Villains I could tolerate. Oh! How I hate you at times.”

I am not sure I heard all of her long tirade. Was she spurring me to action, or was she tripping me at the first hurdle? I am not even sure she said the next part.

“You and your principles…!” she spat. “Act…show some guts…why don’t you claim…”

“I need time.” Did I mumble?

“Yes, you need time to even think of a kiss. God! He kisses ass to do well in life, to take care of me, to love me. And you…?”

“Do you know how many times he and I have been on the verge of break-up?” she continued. “He says I might be better off without him. He has even said I might be better off with you. To be fair, he is honest. He admits he can’t forget his upbringing, his culture. How many times have I cursed him? I feel so rotten. I wish I had someone to blame.” I think I could understand her anger, disappointment and confusion.

She had one more question that day. “You don’t respect boundaries, do you?”

“What boundaries?” I asked.

“That I am his and he is mine,” she said.

“You are Anu to me. I do not want you to be mine. I do not want to be yours.”

“That will be the story of your life. Not mine,” she muttered and left.

Now

“So, aren’t you interested in hearing the story of my life?” she asked.

We were again near the cliff the next morning. The security guards did not seem bothered. Suicide in broad daylight, that too after a heavy breakfast, must be rare.

“Well, are you not interested?” she repeated.

“You have done well,” I said tentatively. “Are you a vegetarian?” I asked.

“Good to know your priorities are still intact,” she said. “Come on, man, ask what a prospective groom should ask?”

“And, what’s that?”

“Why haven’t you married till now?”

“Ah!”

“Let me guess. You have assumed you know the answer.”

“Not really,” I admitted. “Is it relevant?”

“Oh, you are such a bore!”

“Fair lady, what have you been up to? Do you have a lover at every port?” I asked.

“How did you guess?” she replied.

“It’s a very common tale,” I said.

“Ok, let’s not beat around the bush. Are you really ok with it?” she asked.

“I am not here to be a part of your past, am I?” I said.

“Disappointed,” she said, that lopsided smile on her lips once again, “you did not even ask if I have a current lover.”

“I am not here to get into an open marriage,” I said.

“Ah! Finally, we have something definite.”

“How about you…?” I asked.

“Well, I am not the one who does not believe in boundaries,” she said.

So, she remembers. That was not exactly a comforting thought. She must have noticed my discomfort.

“So, prospective groom, are you really ok with the fact your bride-to-be isn’t a virgin?” she said, her eyes not revealing if it was a tease or not.

“At your age…?” It was a cheap retort, I know. “So, fair lady, are you really ok if your prospective groom is a virgin?” I asked.

“At your age?” she hooted with laughter.

“Touché…”

“Really?” she asked.

“Might be…”

“What do you mean might be? Can’t remember if you were abducted by Amazonian females in a UFO and all that…?”

“What do you read these days?”

“You are the one who converted me to very light literature.”

We smiled and remained silent for a few minutes.

We briefly touched upon our self-destruction.

“When I gave up Physics, I didn’t realize all that I surrendered. How was it for you?” I asked.

“Those days?” she said, slipping into a long silence. “But I didn’t have that inner fire you had. You used to call it something.”

“The love I just couldn’t understand,” I laughed. Then, more seriously, “Some of the precious moments were actually terrifying…events without causal explanation.”

“Are you still talking about Physics?” she asked.

“Or what…?” I smiled.

“You should have been more aggressive,” she said.

“Are you still talking about Physics?”  I asked.

She shook her head with a smile.

I thought about what I had thought of doing with her and laughed.

“Now, what was that about?” she asked.

“Nothing, a daydream,” I said.

“Tell me…”

“No.”

“Come on…”

“You might push me off this cliff.”

“Now I insist.”

“Just a recurring dream of being aggressive with you,” I said.

“Ah! Did it end well?” she asked.

“You must have faked it.”

“I see.” She laughed.

Once again, we slipped into silence, a more comfortable one.

“Sree, I have really got to know if it had anything to do with me.”

“Hmmm…”

“I do not want to have anything to do with you if you have been moping around because of me. Understand?”

“Understood,” I said.

Then

“I do not want you anywhere near me ever again,” she said. “Do you understand?”

“Understood,” I lied.

That’s how we parted twenty years back.

After her birthday, we remained good friends. No more kisses on the hand, no more gifts. We were also busy with our research. The end, of PhD and everything, was near.

She became increasingly tense or troubled. She suffered migraine attacks frequently and blamed everything on that. I was no longer her confidante. But I could hear trouble on her love front? Some of their fights reached my room, even with doors closed. I should have thought the bells tolled for me.

Her family came to stay with her for a few days. From her siblings, I got to know that they were there to meet his parents. My spies informed me that it would happen on Friday. High tea, they whispered.

What could I do? That Friday evening, I went to Mathikere, bought two packs of beef curry and returned to the vicinity of the hostel. I bought a pack of cigarettes from Kaakka’s store; two loaves of bread from the adjoining Iyengar bakery; and, a half bottle of rum from the liquor store next in that row. The boy there told me, “Drown maadi, saar.” Drown maadi, indeed!

I went to my room and sat in the gathering darkness. I waited.

My spies knocked on my door around half past seven. I did not have to ask any questions.

“They served idli!” they reported.

They slipped back into her room. I saw her mother sitting on the bed, staring outside. I walked out to the staircase. Her father stood there. He had caught me smoking there once or twice. I offered him a smoke this time. He accepted. We did not speak. When I was through with my cigarette, I asked him if he would like to have rum. He nodded. He followed me to my room. We sat on a floor mat. I brought out paper plates, the beef curry and the loaves of bread. Before long, my spies joined us, her mother too eventually.  Anu was in the Institute, that’s all they said about her. They did not ask why or how I had the food ready for them.

I think they needed that break. We did not talk about Anu, my spies did not even blurt out a protest about idli at any time.

Anu turned up an hour later, her eyes dangerously blank, lips compressed. For a moment, I thought it was about what I had been feeding her folks. She looked around. There wasn’t much left, just a scoop of beef curry on my plate and a few slices of bread. She sat down next to me, took my plate and broke her vow of vegetarianism. The rest of us watched her in silence. Then, her father sang a Malayalam song, her siblings joined. The party was back on.

The bottle of rum got over too. Her father and I stepped out for another smoke.

There was a phone-call then. The hostel phone was in the dining room. At that hour, there was no one else and I picked up the call.  It was her lover. He asked for her. I went to her room and told her. She told me to tell him that she’s not there. I told him that.

He told me, “Tell her I am really sorry for everything that happened. Tell her I am sorry for all that I haven’t understood either. Please tell her to give me one more chance. I am leaving now. I should be there in a few minutes.”

I went and told her all that, verbatim. She cursed all men.

He did not turn up that day.

An hour or so later, a colleague came to our wing with the news that her lover had died in an accident near Mekhri Circle.

She did not break down that night. I handled some of the affairs, at the hospital and at the mortuary. She was also there with a colleague. I noticed her as I was leaving after giving the attendant there a tip with the request, treat him well. I tried to block her view of his body and blood on the metal stretcher.

The next day, she was scared to go to her now-not-to-be in-laws’ house. Her family and I took her for the last rites. His mother hugged her first; then, his father. They wailed and collapsed together. I stood outside after a brief nod at what remained of her lover.

“Man, you have defeated me hollow this time,” I told him.

Her siblings’ vacation got over and her father left with them after a week. Her mother stayed with her for a month. Before she left, she came to my room once. Be her friend, she needs you, she said.

But, there was nothing much the family or I could do. When one feels responsible for another’s death, the guilt that follows can be all-consuming. I did not know that then.

Who is that guy who said that there are deaths which cause a ripple in a calm lake that is someone’s life, a ripple which is just the precursor to a tsunami?

Some kind of self-destructive fire was raging. It consumed us. That’s something we shared.

Two days after his death, she told me to disappear from her life. Those eyes and those lips that had conquered me then destroyed me.

Now

The second night of the resort wedding, room service brought to me a self-made card with her long scrawl of a signature and a question carefully printed in block letters: will you marry me? I gave the boy a large tip.

There was also a sheet of paper with four lines (a photocopy of my writing):

If it’s me, feed on me
without a qualm,
If it’s you, shut your eyes
for they might break this lunatic calm.

We met an hour later, in her room. She extended her hand.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“Don’t you want to kiss it?” Those eyes and lips were definitely teasing me. I scowled at her.

I kissed her. Or, did she grab hold of my shirt and kiss me?

“Is the door closed?” she asked.

“Who cares?” I said.

It was a blur after that. There were corny lines.

“I am not going to love you.”

“Me too...”

I am back in her life.

And I do not really know why.

I am not sure why she has accepted me.

Why is she back in my life? I remember the venom in her words back then. I think she senses my uneasiness. She seems amused. I know she will not declare war or proclaim love. Given our past, it could end as a tale of revenge. I am not ready for any surprise but I will accept it. Love can be that, a twisted tale.

I have not thought about the future for twenty years.

I do not plan to start now.

The present will do.