by Nillu Nasser
“I love myself, Firoz.” She met his eyes bravely, though inside she shook.
His smooth baritone was infinitely gentle. “I’m glad. Without self-love, all else disintegrates.”
The opening of the new play at Tara Theatre had been scheduled for a week’s time. Jaya fought the temptation to call in sick to avoid Ravi. The costumes would not be ready in time if she did and Jaya couldn’t deny her sense of duty. The first day, she snuck into work, remained at her desk and felt eyes boring into her back even when she was alone. She wondered if her outburst had ruined the sanctuary she had created for herself at the theatre. Perhaps here, too, people would gossip about her. She realised that, for the most part, Ravi had been a victim of her heightened emotions; Soraya and her son were the cause of her upset. Her embarrassment peaked when she remembered Ravi had seen beneath the folds of her skirt. Still, this was work, after all, and the theatre was too small to harbour overt animosity.
The second day, she went into warrior mode: a vibrant, emerald green salwar kameez with a tulip skirt over silk trousers, a slash of orange lipstick, and thick kajal swooping upwards from defiant eyes.
She entered the theatre, bringing a sound wave of spluttering vehicles with her. She stood up straight and pushed back her shoulders, determined to lance the boil and get on with her day. In the practice room, Ravi, a sound and lighting technician, conversed with a group of actors.
“Hi everyone,” said Jaya.
He turned, a flash of mustard yellow on top teamed with green trousers. “Oh, hi.”
“Can I speak to you for a second?”
“Sure,” he said. To everyone else, “I’ll be right back.”
They moved to the side of the stage.
A cursory apology fell from Jaya’s lips. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
“That’s okay.” He nodded and made to move away, then changed his mind. “For what it’s worth, what happened the other night—when you fell—it didn’t change my mind about you. I didn’t want you to be embarrassed. I was trying to be a gentleman. That’s why I didn’t look. Don’t blame me for what happened.”
Jaya sucked in her breath.
“Are you going to tell me what it was really about?” His eyes were flecked with green. “Is it something to do with those boys, the ones who said those ugly things? They were kids.” He leant closer. The stench of coffee swirled up from his breath, making the air stale between them. “I’d like to know your story, Jaya, if you’d like to tell me.”
Jaya listened to the faint voice inside herself, the one almost drowned out by shame and dispassionateness for this man she had almost written off. The voice she paid little regard to, the one that made her weak instead of strong. Ravi had surprised her with his understanding, with his tenacity in the face of her hostility. For the first time since Akash left, Jaya found her body reacting to another man. She flushed, her reluctance to engage wavering.
She smiled at him. “Thank you for your graciousness,” she said.
He caught her eyes and smiled back, and a small part of Jaya healed.
For the second time, Jaya disobeyed the rules of female propriety and agreed to go for a lunchtime walk with Ravi. Strangers, had they known their circumstances—that she and Ravi weren’t bound by family ties—would look upon them with suspicion for spending time together alone. Jaya pushed the thought aside. Indians were a conservative group, their behaviour dictated by traditions, quick to police the morals of others. She knew she should be wary, but she felt an invisible tug towards Ravi. He had not rejected her although she had given him every reason to. When he asked for her story, a part of her had opened. She felt seen rather than pushed aside; she had even forgotten about Akash for a moment. Akash had been her silent partner for so long, she hadn’t known that was possible. She wanted to chase that freedom.
A walk suited her. The theatre quickly became airless. Pounding the streets would clear the cobwebs in her mind. Besides, she preferred it to sitting face to face from Ravi across a table. She didn’t want to feel exposed. Jaya had suddenly become more aware of how her appearance might come across to the opposite sex. For years, she had dressed for herself, and this sudden desire to impress Ravi reminded her strongly of her youth, when she and Ruhi had tittered together over the boys they saw but barely spoke to. The change to her emotional status quo flustered her. Her thoughts ping-ponged around her head. She didn’t even trust her instincts that this could be more than a friendship.
She was older, married, washed up.
He had youth to offer and was unburdened.
The road wound past bistros and street vendors, newsagents, electronic and entertainment shops plastered with posters of India’s stars. Ravi waited while she pressed a handful of rupees into a beggar’s hand. The woman beamed through a face slicked with sweat and grime. They continued, an unresolved cloud of questions hanging in the air as they meandered, a gap of two feet between them.
Jaya filled the pregnant pauses with chatter.
“Things change so fast. My parents still have a huge record and video collection. New-fangled technology is not for them.”
“I like the scratch of the needle against old records. It reminds me of my childhood. It’s what first interested me in sound. It’s why I do my job,” said Ravi.
His shoes clipped the pavement, his gelled hair static despite the breeze. Jaya wondered what he would look like if she styled him. A breeze whipped her curls up and over her face. She held them back, turning to him as he addressed her.
“Don’t we live in the best city in the world?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “I’ve only left India once. We went to Nepal by train and bus. I liked seeing my parents outside of their familiar surroundings but the journey was so long even my sister was ratty. My parents missed their home comforts.”
Her honeymoon with Akash had been in Goa. She shook her head to expel the memories of herself sitting primly on the beach in her sundress, burrowing her toes into the white sands, whilst Akash plunged into the surf. If she had known her future, she might have felt differently about showing off her body.
“You’ve never been on a plane?”
“No,” she said. She only had one stamp in her passport. “How about you?”
“I’ve travelled. London, Bangkok. Last year, America.”
“Did you like it?”
“Honestly? I liked the idea of New York. The Statue of Liberty was great, Central Park, these amazing stores.” His brows furrowed as he dug into his memories. “Macy’s, where a wave of perfume hits you. Ground Zero, this empty expanse of sorrow. Coney Island with its amusement parks. Manhattan, this hub of capitalism—the stock exchange is there. I went with my brother. We took a lot of pictures. But something was missing for me.”
“What was?” Jaya liked seeing the world through his eyes. Usually she travelled only through the plays and novels she read.
They stopped at a traffic light to cross a road back to the theatre. The ghost of a hand print hovered against the small of her back, barely touching her. She was tempted to mould herself into it, but in the end, she arched away, startled by her instinctive reaction, the beat of her heart irregular as her pulse sped up. She knew relief at her resistance. Had she submitted, Ravi might have taken her for a hussy.
“Oh, I don’t know. I missed India,” he said as they started across the street. “In America, there were world-class restaurants, but people didn’t even hold the doors open for each other. It was more than that, though. I missed the sense of being connected to my environment, of family values. We were anonymous there. Alien.”
“You want to belong,” said Jaya, struggling to make herself heard over the honking of cars.
“Doesn’t everyone want to find their place?” said Ravi.
“I’m not sure. I like being alone.”
They had reached the theatre. Their half an hour together had raced past. Ravi pushed his body against the heavy glass door to the theatre and held it
open for her. She brushed past him and they lingered in the empty lobby.
“You know, it took you a while coming out of your shell with me.”
Jaya glanced at her feet. The lobby had suddenly become a too intimate space. “You must have other friends. Why did you persevere?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She recognised this dance that suitors did. It echoed back at her from her past, from romance novels and films. She mulled over the words and a frisson of pleasure rippled up her spine. Even so, she didn’t trust herself. She had accepted, a long time ago, that romance didn’t lie in her cards. Not anymore. She needed to hear Ravi spell out what was happening, if this was more for him than a passing dalliance. She didn’t want scraps of love; she wanted the real thing.
“It’s not obvious to me,” said Jaya.
“I like puzzles,” he said.
His response insulted her. Jaya drew back, creating a stranger’s distance between his body and hers.
Ravi noticed. He held out his hands to her, but she left them there, hovering in the air.
“That came out wrong,” said Ravi. “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. You want to know my intentions, is that it?”
That word sounded like a gong in Jaya’s head, a warning symbol, a starting shot in the age-old contract of man and wife. Intention, betrothal, marriage. She see-sawed. She couldn’t go through all that again. Akash, where are you? Her stomach heaved. There was one thing that had been her protection all these years, the final defence if her heart started to open.
“There’s something you should know,” she blurted out. “I’m married.”
Chapter 13
“Arjun, take the men and go inside. You are finished here,” said Soraya. “We will speak of this later. Now leave us be.”
Her voice left him awash with memories, but still Akash did not glance up.
“I won’t leave you with him,” said the man called Arjun.
“Go.”
“We’ll wait outside. Call if there is anything. I’ll hear.” Leaden footfalls scuffed the floor as they moved away from him. A slamming door told him they were alone.
“It’s been twenty years since we have seen each other, Akash.”
A tremor marred her voice. Akash crouched with his head bowed, a swollen mess of jutting bones and thick, oozing blood. He flushed hot with humiliation as he opened his eyes and his vision adjusted to the gloomy light. She had disarmed him by using his name. This moment, on his knees, bloodied and trapped, caught between desire and fear—named by the woman who’d been the catalyst for his shame—became the pinnacle of his powerlessness.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” Soraya grasped his chin with clumsy fingers, forcing Akash to hold her gaze.
His pulse quickened, drowning out the sound of her voice.
Her breath warmed his face, transporting him back to another time and place when they were lovers.
“How is it that you suddenly reappear, like a common Peeping Tom at my window? You, who left that day from the rose garden, convinced of your love for me, and never came back.” Her sari brushed against his knees and she let go of his chin in disgust. “You look as if you have come back from death itself.”
“Soraya.” Her name tripped off Akash’s tongue more easily than his own.
Rusty lipstick stained her lips, and he watched, entranced, as her frown lines deepened. His fingers twitched with the need to trace the emotions playing out on her face. He almost tasted their reconciliation, but underneath, guilt churned in his gut. “I had to leave. There was no going back. Not after what happened.”
“You didn’t even say goodbye. You gave no thought to me when you left.”
Soraya’s vulnerability took him by surprise. Years had dissolved like salt as he came to terms with Jaya’s death. Eventually, fantasies of Soraya had threatened to seep through the wall of loneliness he had built around himself, but he could not have conceived of the messy humanness of their reunion. He remembered her as strong, ambitious and contrary. She embodied everything his wife did not. He took his courage in both hands and looked at her closely as he considered his answer, moved by the paper-thin translucency of her skin and the wrinkles threading their way around her face.
“You were strong. I didn’t worry about you, but I did yearn for you. You were never truly mine, Soraya. I did not deserve happiness, and when I decided I wanted more for myself, it was too late. I had made the streets my home. I couldn’t find you. I had begun to wonder if you were a figment of my imagination, made up of mists and magic rather than flesh.” The words slithered off his tongue, the truth diluted. He hid that even now, doubled over before his ex-lover, it was Jaya he remembered.
“What is it you want from me, Akash?” Soraya stood unmoved.
He no longer knew what he wanted. His thoughts turned like a piece of driftwood on the choppy ocean. What had he been chasing all these years? “I want to know that you are happy.”
“Liar,” she said, her voice a whisper.
His cheeks flushed with heat.
The door to the outbuilding swung open. Soraya pushed herself up and away from him, leaving him to shrink back into the corner of the room. Akash’s pursuer, the man she called Arjun, entered from the darkness outside. It occurred to him with a start how physically similar they were: willowy bodies, fine hair, pronounced cheekbones. This was Soraya’s son.
“Maa, enough of this foolishness. Go and rest. Let me deal with our intruder,” he said, looking at Akash with disgust.
“You will apologise, Arjun. I know this man,” Soraya said, her face colouring with displeasure. “Take Akash Saheb to the Red Room to get cleaned up.”
Akash glanced up in surprise, startled at the term of respect, the courtesy Soraya had chosen to show him in the face of her son’s anger.
She continued her scolding of Arjun. “Shame on you! You’re lucky he hasn’t asked for the police. How would we explain that you took it into your hands to play God tonight?” To Akash she said, distant and formal, “My son has hurt you and for that I am sorry. If it’s acceptable to you I will ask my neighbour—a doctor—to examine you, and tend to your abrasions myself.”
Akash nodded his agreement. He craved human touch. He searched her features to see if he could find any of the love she once felt for him there, but her face had hardened into a blank canvas.
Soraya turned and walked into the moonless night. He could see now how frail her shoulders had become beneath her sari blouse. The need to protect her overcame him, but he followed her son.
Arjun led Akash through the house. The young man’s suppressed anger radiated from beneath his skin. They passed a myriad of rooms and Akash lost his bearings as the central corridor of the house twisted this way and that. Heavy chandeliers and sumptuous sofas lurked behind half-closed doors. Eventually, the cool marble hallway ended at an oak door unlike the rest, with ornate markings on the wood and a thick-set lock. Arjun showed him into a room of the deepest red filled with the sickly scent of incense sticks, and took his leave without a word.
After living under the open sky, the opulence of his surroundings oppressed Akash. He had entered the underbelly of a serpent. He did not belong in this room with its draped silk curtains and mountainous bed. He caught sight of his bruised and bloodied appearance in a gilded mirror, touched a gash on his cheek and winced. Nausea rose like a wave through his stomach until he retched.
He took off his dirty shirt and mopped the blood from his face. Fragments of furious whispers reached him through the walls. Part of him wished to escape even now, back to Tariq and what he knew. After some time, Soraya entered the room. Akash sucked in his breath, dazzled by her, this phantom of his past. Have I really found my way back to love? An older man followed Soraya, their interaction easy with familiarity.
“This is my neighbour, Akash, Dr. Mittal,” she said. “Subash Saheb, this is Akash.”
Soraya left while the doctor checked him over, peeling back his bloodied, wor
n clothes, tutting at his crumbling teeth and emaciated frame. He checked Akash’s blood pressure, held a cool stethoscope to his hot chest, noting the protruding rib cage. He examined the bruises and cuts on Akash’s skin, shaking his head in silent censure. Eventually, he touched Akash’s leg, where the bone had healed badly from an old injury. Akash sat, embarrassed by and unused to the scrutiny.
“You have two broken ribs, but you will live. Take plenty of rest, eat well, try not to get into any more trouble.” He gave Akash a stern look, picked up his medical kit and left the room.
When the doctor had gone, Soraya returned with a saucepan of warm water, a rag and a small bottle of ointment. Akash sat on the bed while she cleaned him with hot, salty suds that stung.
“Thank you for asking the doctor to come,” said Akash.
“I remember when we first met. There was nothing you would not do for me,” said Soraya.
She swabbed his cheek with the cloth. The pain was bittersweet. He did not complain. Instead, he examined her as she worked, taking pleasure in the attention he received. Dirt and blood mingled in the saucepan at his feet. At last, she finished.
“Do you think of Jaya often?” said Soraya.
“She is always there.”
She. Even unspoken, her name hung around his neck like a millstone. He could hear the part of his consciousness that had become Jaya’s voice scolding him for being here with Soraya, but hadn’t he punished himself enough? The thought of another chance at love intoxicated him.
“I am sorry, Akash, about what happened to her. She lit the match, not you.”
He didn’t want Soraya’s sympathy for him to come at the expense of compassion for Jaya. He had not protected her in life. His displeasure reared up, scalding her. “I drove her to it! She lit that match because she blamed herself for my faults. She gave everything of herself to me. And I did nothing, nothing except give my love to you. I walked away while she still burned. What kind of man does that?”
