EAST OF KAILASH, NEW DELHI
JUNE 2015
‘I do not know, yaar. It has been three days already, and I have not made any friends,’ I told my chuddi buddy, Rohit Nagpal. We were also distant cousins. He was the first of the two best friends that I had mentioned earlier. He was preparing to get into the Merchant Navy then and had taken one year off after college to make it happen. He left his dreams of joining the Merchant Navy after meeting his then girlfriend, now wife—Sagarika—and ended up owning one of the most profitable start-ups in Delhi, which is a different story altogether.
When his dad advised him to take one year off from his formal studies and prepare for the entrance exams, he decided to give it a try. It was too good an offer to decline. I wondered why my dad did not give me such offers. Taking a break and studying for a few hours a day was so much better than trying to make friends at a new college who would help me pass my exams and put in proxy attendance on my behalf.
‘Why can’t I join the same MBA college as my other friends from school!’ I had dared to put up a brave fight before giving in to my parents’ pressure. My dad had looked at me through his glasses.
‘Because I do not want you to. No good will come from doing an MBA from a university in Noida. No one will give you a job. There are so many students who waste money in such colleges. Do you know what are the yearly fees of the third-rate college you want to attend? I cannot afford it, and why should I? Money does not grow on trees. I will see what college you send your kids to. Children nowadays do not value money . . .’ the dreaded lecture began, ending my dreams of studying with my old friends for a few more years before adult life stung all of us.
‘Your name is hilarious. Change it or else you will have no friends. These Hindu wallahs want cool friends. So be a cool dude,’ Rohit had suggested mockingly, and I snapped back into reality. I saw Rohit roll off the single bed to land on the floor laughing. Once he was done with his drama, I gave him a cold stare, and thankfully he did not bring up the delicate topic again. My parents had named me after my great-grandfather as I happened to share my birthday with him. I had studied all my life in the same school, with almost the same set of people who were used to calling me ‘Ronnie’.
The topic of changing my name was a delicate one, and I knew it quite well, so with my head hanging down, and my face buried in my book, I silently heard the entire class giggle every time my name was called out. It was to be my tenth day with a different set of people in my class at college. Thankfully, that day my nani (maternal grandmother) needed a hand with some cleaning at her house and I got a chance to skip college. I was glad that she asked me to help her with whatever it was and hoped that someone else got the chance to be the butt of all their jokes in my absence at college.
My nani lives in East of Kailash, a posh colony in South Delhi. After my nana’s death, Nani started sharing her house and loneliness with paying guests (PGs). She used to keep only one PG in her home at a time, usually girls who were in the city to study or work. With seven boys in the family, Nani knew how much trouble a college-going guy can bring and wanted to stay away from it. Her last PG had left a few months ago to get married, and a replacement was to arrive in a few hours’ time. A week ago, when Nani had told us that the new PG was a first-year student as well, both Rohit and I were delighted beyond words.
‘I hope she is pretty,’ Rohit chirped in while placing a sheet of newspaper in the wardrobe to line the shelves. Every time a new PG came, Nani told us to clean the closets and replace the newspaper linings in them.
‘Same here,’ I absent-mindedly told him, folding a colourful Sunday issue to line the topmost shelf. I am five feet eleven inches tall, and Rohit is five-four, so the top two shelves were mine while the rest of the wardrobe was his to tidy up.
‘Why do you care?’ he asked me wide-eyed. I wondered what he meant and looked at him for an explanation. ‘Come on! You also know that you will not even look at her properly, let alone talk to her or do anything beyond that. You are too shy,’ he was pulling my leg again. I wanted to give an appropriate response, but quick, witty replies are not my speciality. I avoided eye contact with Rohit and admired my handiwork instead. My part of the cleaning was done, and the top shelves of the wardrobe looked neat.
While Rohit was still busy with his part of the cleaning, I decided to laze on the bed in the cool room until Nani called us downstairs to help the new PG with her luggage. Judging from the past, they came with hardly anything more than a duffel bag and a suitcase.
Ten minutes later, exactly when Rohit closed the doors of the wooden wardrobe, we heard Nani’s shrill voice from the ground floor, ‘Come and help her with her bags, you two. She is here.’ My nani was gifted with two separate sets of voices; one was the harsh voice which we usually heard around us, and the second was a soft, melodious voice which could put a cuckoo to shame. She used her cuckoo voice to communicate with people of high authority or our NRI relatives and their kids, and also with her PGs but only for the first few days of their stay in her house. As we descended the stairs, we heard her talk to the new girl in her soothing voice, ‘You can leave your bags outside. The boys will get them and take them upstairs to your room. You follow me inside as I need to talk to you about some formalities,’ she told her PG. Rohit and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes at the extra sweetness in Nani’s tone.
We headed straight outside the main door where a green and yellow CNG auto was parked. I looked at the bags on the ground: two stroller bags and one duffel bag, along with one large backpack inside the auto. Rohit picked up the large backpack, and his expressions told me that he could not manage to even think of picking up anything else, so I passed him the smaller of the two stroller bags instead. I placed the duffel bag on the bigger stroller and turned around to follow Rohit upstairs.
‘Bhaiya, give me Rs 50 so that I can go,’ the auto wallah called after me.
‘What? Rs 50? The madam didn’t pay you?’ I asked him, surprised.
‘She was too busy on her phone, and then the Amma Ji took her in. She forgot to pay me. She did not even take her bags from the auto,’ he replied with a displeased look on his face and resumed smoking his beedi. I signalled him to wait, and instead of going to the first floor with the luggage, I walked into Nani’s drawing room.
Nani was nowhere to be seen. On the black leather sofa, I saw a slim figure sitting in a relaxed pose. She was dressed in a pair of denim shorts and a short-sleeved red T-shirt. Looking at her choice of dress, one could predict that Nani and she would not be friends for long. Nani had a conservative thought process when it came to the clothing her PGs should wear in the house. I looked at her again. She was sitting with her long, slim legs crossed, the left on top of the right, and she moved her left leg rhythmically while looking at the screen of her phone in her right hand. There was a delicate gold ring on her index finger with a green sapphire in it.
As I walked closer to her, she felt my presence and looked up at me. This was the first time I saw her face which became embossed on my heart forever. She had the sweetest face I had ever seen. Her skin was clear and shining, her cheeks were pink, probably due to the heat she had travelled in. Tiny sweat beads rested on her forehead; she had large almond-shaped eyes, deep and soulful. They looked through me, or that was how it felt. Her small nose and pink lips looked as if they were created by an artist in a painting. She got up from the sofa and stood to face me. Her face had a warm familiarity to it; her expressions were soft and delicate. I felt a sudden wave of nervousness rise through me, originating from my gut.
Despite remembering every minute detail of our first meeting, I hoped that she’d forget the moment when she first saw me—nothing but a creep dressed in shabby clothes and sweating like a pig. Sadly, she recalled it and bought it up in a conversation months later. I had no other option at that moment but to be honest and tell her why I behaved the way I did. It was because I felt as if I were under her spell. I distinctly remember that my eye
s didn’t even blink while we looked at each other. But I soon came out of that state as Nani mercilessly dragged me out of the golden haze. She walked in, making as much noise as she could with her rubber slippers slapping on her heels and gold bangles. ‘Adira!’ she called her.
Adira . . . her name echoed in my head. I loved the sound of it. Her name had a magical quality to it. Adira hurriedly took her eyes off me and turned them towards Nani. I tried to do the same, but my eyes wanted to stare at her more and refused to turn away. Look elsewhere, you stupid idiot, or she will think that you have some problem with your eyes or worse, with your brains! I told myself, but my eyes just did not cooperate. I stood there, dumbfounded, staring at Adira while Nani began chatting with her new PG. I probably even had my mouth open at the time—I do not remember as I was too engrossed in being as crazy as one could possibly be to notice such little details that made me look like an utter fool.
For the next few minutes, I heard them talk to each other, but their conversation did not register in my head. I was busy carefully noting the particulars of Adira’s face: the way her lips moved as she spoke, the way she played with her hair continuously and the frown which appeared on her forehead quite frequently. She smiled at Nani, and I looked in wonder at her beautiful lips and perfect teeth, which, mind you, were the whitest I had ever seen. Little did I know then that hers was a face that was going to keep me awake for many years to come.
Feeling my gaze, Adira turned towards me. She did not look pleased. Just ask her about the auto fare and leave, I heard the voice in my head trying to give me sensible advice again, but my body did not comply. Narrowing her big, brown eyes, with her hands on her tiny waist, Adira was now staring angrily at me.
NIRMAN VIHAR METRO STATION
2017
Her eyes were still the same, and so was her expression. Narrowing her big, brown eyes, Adira stared back at me. A small frown appeared on her forehead, and I came crashing back to reality from the world of memories.
Ask her to move away as your metro card is lying under her dupatta, the sensible part of my brain suggested, but as always, my eyes refused to budge, and my mouth would not open to utter even a single sound, let alone words.
She tilted her head a little towards the left and raised her hand to check her watch, indicating that she was running late for something too. Finally, I gathered some willpower and pointed towards her dupatta, trying to recover my voice and find some words. It had only been three months, but it felt as if it was ages ago when I last saw her exquisite face. Adira had left Nani’s place as soon as she finished college.
‘Her dad has bought her a flat somewhere in Mayur Vihar.’ This was the last piece of information Rohit gave me about her two months ago.
Finally, after much struggling, my vocal cords decided to work. Phew! my mind said, and then bit its tongue. ‘Hehehe,’ an awkward, funny giggle escaped from my mouth. Where had that come from? I wondered, and quickly tried to do some damage control by uttering the word ‘Card’ very meekly.
‘Card? What card?’ she asked, looking every bit the annoyed diva that she was.
I decided not to say anything more at that moment. Not your day, Ronnie. I pointed towards her dupatta again, and her eyes followed my finger. She looked down at her dupatta and then back at me again. Does she not remember me? It has just been three months!
‘Hold on, yaar, there is . . .’ she paused and looked at me from top to toe before addressing me, ‘What is it, Raunak?’ She remembers me! I lost my voice once more, this time in excitement. ‘Let me call you back once I get into the metro,’ she told the person on the other end of the phone. I was looking at her after precisely three months and knew nothing about her present circumstances, yet I hoped that she was talking to a girl and not a boy.
This is your chance, Ronnie, to make a new start with her. You just have to confidently ask her to let you pick up that metro card from under her dupatta. She will be so sorry when she realizes that she wasted your time, and then maybe you guys can start talking, be friends.
Status Check: air castle building, work in progress.
‘Just . . . Just my card,’ I said once again.
‘Oh, okay,’ she said, looking cluelessly in the direction of her dupatta again. Ask her out for a coffee. A date? No, that would be a little too desperate. Or maybe just take her number today—I was still contemplating.
Before I could think of how to ask her out, or maybe strike up a conversation, my happy plans came under a bus called reality, because she had already turned her back on me and was walking up the stairs. The blue plastic card lay at the bottom of the stairs silently witnessing my misery. I picked it up hastily and followed Adira inside the metro station.
Our accidental encounter set off a series of flashbacks in my head, running on a loop. I recalled each and every thing as if it happened just yesterday. I followed her inside and spotted her walking towards the booth for security checks. There was a long queue at the men’s security check booth, while only two other females stood in line ahead of Adira. She was done with the frisking within moments, while I stood sandwiched between other stinking men waiting for my turn; not taking my eyes off her. I saw her walk towards the entry door, swipe her metro card and then make a phone call as soon as she was inside. She did not appear to be in a hurry to board the train, and at that point relief ran over me.
Finally, it was my turn to be checked by a middle-aged policeman who looked bored of his job. I stood on the podium with my arms stretched out. He ran a metal detector all over my body and then let me pass. I picked up my laptop from the stack of bags on the X-ray machine and dashed towards the entry door. Please, God, please make this card have enough money to take me inside, I prayed hard, and to my surprise, my prayers were answered. Turns out that it was indeed my card!
Once inside the metro station, I took slow steps and crossed her without looking at her. As I went past her, I inhaled deeply a sweet fragrance enveloping her. She smelled like a cocktail of scents—a blend of her shampoo, a purple mist, and her favourite body wash from the Body Shop—British Rose. How do I know all this? Well, I had gone shopping with her many times during the last three years. Not precisely with her though; she used to go shopping with her friend—Tamanna—every other weekend, and I used to drag Rohit to the same places. Stalking? No, it was more like birdwatching for Rohit and a one-sided date for me.
I took the escalators for my metro towards Connaught Place, hoping that she would do the same. The opposite platform was where the train for Vaishali arrived. While I took my place on the icy-cold bench of the platform, I calculated that even if she boarded the train for Vaishali, I would be able to see her one more time. I secretly wished she would come to the same platform though.
One after the other, five metro trains halted and left for Connaught Place. I was no longer worried about being late for my job, because I was sure that by now my manager must have typed my termination letter and I had no job. I was only going to be late to collect my termination letter for skipping work without informing anyone. It is okay; it is just a job, I told my troubled mind, which was already thinking of the consequences my foolishness would bring my way. Nothing is more important than my love of two years—one-sided love of two years—I corrected my own statement, and that was when the worries started making sense.
I decided to get on the next train and go to the office. The clock on the platform showed it would be arriving in another two minutes. Two minutes—she can still come to the platform at any moment, I thought, and hoped she would board the same train as me. The train decided to surprise the clock and me and arrived one minute earlier than expected. I looked at my phone to distract myself from the disappointment. No missed call or messages from anyone, not even from work.
The doors opened, and I squeezed myself in along with many others. Miraculously, I managed to get a seat right next to the door since I happened to be there as a person was getting off. I parked myself like a rock there. The announc
ement for the closing of the doors played inside the train, and I turned my head to look out for her one last time.
I blinked my eyes in disbelief as I saw Adira running towards the train I was in. She was holding a girl’s hand whose face was hidden underneath a printed cotton dupatta. They rushed into the ladies’ compartment just before the doors closed, and we began our journey. The train moved slowly and then picked up speed, matching my heartbeats. I got up from my seat. Anyone who has travelled in the Delhi metro during peak hours knows the level of sacrifice that I made that day; it is the most significant thing a metro traveller can ever do for anyone. I found myself making my way to the compartment next to the one where Adira was.
It didn’t take me long to find her in the maddening crowd. Her back was towards me—the beautiful ‘Om’ tattoo at the nape of her neck peeped out from the translucent cloth of her kurta. She had secured a few loose strands of hair behind her ear and was talking to the other girl, moving her hands and head animatedly. Leaning against a pole, I smiled like an idiot—running back and forth in time. I resolved to get off at the same station as her and talk to her, finally!
The train crossed station after station and reached Rajiv Chowk. I was supposed to get down there, and I did because Adira and her friend got down at the same location. I hoped that her friend would leave her there so that I could talk to her, but I guess that was too much to expect. Another idea came crashing down when her friend took off that hideous, cloth from her face which she must have used as a shield against the pollution in Delhi. It was Tamanna!
TAMANNA
Ever since Adira had arrived at my nani’s house, my visits there had dramatically increased. Earlier, when Nani used to look for a volunteer to do her household chores or pay some bills or bathe Samba, her furry pug, Rohit, Piyush and I vanished from the scene, and if caught by Nani, we made as many lame excuses as we could think of to get her off our backs. But since her new PG had arrived, both Piyush and I were at Nani’s beck and call. In fact, I wondered if Piyush had stopped attending his classes altogether just to be in the house when Adira walked in and out for college. And the last thing I had heard from Rohit was that Piyush had even managed to take Adira’s mobile number. The rascal, who was also related to me, my maternal cousin was planning to take Adira out for shopping to Khan Market the coming Saturday.
Something I Never Told You Page 2
