No Strings Attached

by Sheila Kumar

  Rohan pulled a doubtful face. ‘Okay, let me try to understand this. You want India! to run a pothole campaign? I get the interactive part of it but as sales booster? Naaah, I’m not sure.’

  Eager to make up lost ground, Dev said, ‘Boss, it will work. We are a resigned lot but we are also a simmering lot today. The water shortage, the frequent power outages, the rampant corruption and the abysmal state of our roads: these are our flashpoints. Focus on pushing any of those buttons and focus well, and sales are bound to be boosted.’ He flashed a cheeky grin at Rohan.

  Rohan ignored Dev and his grin and slowly turned to Nina. ‘Nina, I just realized something. Full and final credit for this campaign of yours, if it ever gets on-road, will go to editorial, you know that, right? I mean, who is going to believe sales and marketing came up with such a public-spirited campaign?’

  Nina wasn’t sure if Rohan was shooting the idea down so she kept a prudent silence. Leena spoke up in the silence. ‘Rohan, as long as sales are boosted, do we really care who takes credit?’

  Her fiancé slowly turned apoplectic under the interested eyes of everyone in the room. ‘How long have you been working in marketing, Leena?’ he asked the soft-spoken and shy Leena brusquely. ‘Big gains without credit? Really?’ Leena turned pink as Rohan clicked his tongue with derision.

  Nina quickly spoke up. ‘I think we could flesh this out here, then give a presentation to editorial. By then, all the kinks can be ironed out. Well?’ She looked around at the table, caught relieved looks all around and hid a smile. Sales and marketing had found a new bakri, a scapegoat; this one had walked into the trap all on her own. Now they could sit back and watch someone other than them take the flak, as and when it came. Nina, though, had no problems with being the bakri.

  Since no one came up with a better idea, the deeply skeptical Rohan Varma had to take the call. ‘Okay, let it cook for a bit,’ he said and ended the meeting. And the room watched with amusement, prudently hidden of course, as Rohan Varma, the boss, became Rohan Varma, Leena’s fiancé, and set himself to soothing her distinctly ruffled feathers. It was just another day at the office.

  Nina went upstairs to the main reception area. She had a couple of business visits to make right across town and now she looked at the pouring rain with some irritation. This was London weather, not what one would expect of balmy Bangalore. ‘Call a cab,’ advised Mini, who was standing at the elevator doors and had gauged Nina’s dilemma.

  ‘Going somewhere?’ asked Samar from behind Nina. She pirouetted gracefully and flashed him such a radiant smile, he blinked. She really must insure that amazing smile, he thought to himself.

  ‘Yes, all the way over to Electronic City. And my car isn’t working.’

  ‘Mine is,’ he told her equably. ‘I’ll give you a ride.’

  ‘You are heading that way, are you?’ Nina asked, a mischievous smile on her lips. Something told her he wasn’t.

  Samar stopped in his stride, turned around and inspected Nina’s coral pink mouth with undisguised interest. Her heart started hammering.

  Finally, he raised his eyes to hers. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’ll give you a ride.’ And then he threw her a smile that made her heart sing.

  In the car, he reached for the ignition, then stopped.

  ‘Hello there, Nina Sabharwal,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth, as he lowered his head to hers with an exquisite slowness.

  ‘Hello, Samar,’ Nina managed to say as his mouth captured hers in a thorough kiss that went on and on. It started off with Samar kissing her like a man starved of oxygen, then gentled into a series of small sweet kisses. His mouth was doing crazy things to her equilibrium; she was filled with the mad desire to tear his shirt off and make fast and furious love to him, right there, right then. Suddenly a wolf-whistle sounded outside and they broke apart, startled. Sid, the crime reporter, was peering in, his usual lugubrious expression replaced by what he imagined was a terrific leer.

  ‘Dude,’ he said, rolling his eyes at Samar, who laughed as he easily disengaged from Nina. Sid turned to look at Nina and told her, wagging a long finger reprovingly, ‘Go get a…?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she mouthed but Samar was already sliding the big car smoothly out of the place. Somewhat to her chagrin, he had his breathing pattern back to normal while she was still trying to calm down.

  ‘Bachcha behaviour,’ he told her in mock disgust, and she didn’t know if he was referring to Sid or himself. He then firmly took her right hand and placed it on his thigh. She could feel the muscles beneath her palm and, giving in to the moment, ran her hand in a light caress down to his knee.

  Samar gave her a look. ‘Don’t push it, woman,’ he said, a muscle clenching in his jaw. However, for the rest of the drive, he kept her hand firmly under his on his leg, his fingers occasionally tracing patterns on the back of her hand. All the while, he made light and easy conversation with Nina, who was striving hard to keep her tone equally light.

  This man is wooing me the old-fashioned way, she thought to herself on a note of exhilaration. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young played softly on his music system. ‘Helpless, helpless, helpless,’ crooned Neil Young plaintively. Yes, I know, Nina silently assented.

  ‘I want to take a break from photography,’ Samar suddenly told her.

  She turned in her seat. ‘To do what?’ she asked, interested. This was the first time Samar Singh was actually telling her something personal, something about himself.

  ‘I want to take up biodynamic farming. It’s always been something of a secret passion. Well, not so secret, actually. When I was done with studies, I told my parents about it, and they felt it was something I should keep for my advanced years; they just didn’t understand my passion for working the land. Rajasthan, my home state, is not the most green or fertile of areas but we own property just outside Delhi; something can easily be done there. Or somewhere else. The thing is, I drifted into photojournalism, started to enjoy it, and still enjoy it. But I haven’t given up the farm dream. One day soon, I’ll get there.’

  And Nina’s mind immediately flashed to a sunny place where a white stone cottage stood, surrounded by green fields, though she didn’t know what exactly was growing in the fields. Samar was on a horse at the edge of the land, and she, Nina, stood on the wooden veranda of the house. To one side, there was a little boy on a wooden rocking horse and near him stood his sister, not much older, a Raggedy Ann doll in her little hands.

  Nina Sabharwal started to laugh. She’d been reading too many hacienda romances. Samar gave her a curious look. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘You find my dream funny?’

  Nina abruptly stopped laughing. ‘No, Samar, not at all,’ she told him earnestly, and launched into a convoluted explanation which held no truth and which tended to go on and on. Till he put one long finger on her mouth and smiled into her eyes.

  At which, she told him, ‘I have a dream, too. Well, sort of.’ One saturnine eyebrow immediately went up in query. And she told him about the book in her head, the one that would lay bare the relationship and influences between the news content and the advertising in a newspaper. ‘It will have loads of grid maps and stats,’ she told him, like she was promising him the regulation amount of steamy scenes in a bodice ripper.

  But Samar Singh was interested. And he didn’t ask why someone in marketing wanted to write a book. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘Is it going to be reportorial in content?’ The finger moved away from the side of her lips and started to slide lightly over her jawline. Nina’s heart thudded, and she lost the thread of the conversation.

  The rush hour traffic intruded, forcing Samar to move both his hands back on to the steering wheel. She turned to thank him when he drew up at the patio of the building she had a meeting in, and Samar lazily said, ‘Hey, no problem.’

  EIGHT

  IT WAS ALMOST A week before she met him again. In the meantime, she shot some layout pics of potholes herself. Some were medium-sized, some positively the
shape and size of craters; she then did some PP work on them and took what she had to Rohan. This time around, Rohan had been in a very receptive mood and had fired up with enthusiasm the moment he watched the presentation. By the end of the working day, he had shown it to Alan Pereira and it was enthusiastically green-lighted.

  ‘Great work, Nina,’ Alan told her. She shot Rohan Varma a nervous look, but he was happy enough to let her take due credit for the idea. Alan was going to assign a brace of newbies to the campaign, newbies who he felt would bring all the necessary intensity and focus on a problem most Bangaloreans sidestepped or accepted with resignation.

  ‘I’ll ask Samar Singh to suggest a photographer,’ said Alan. ‘Only, Samar’s away for a bit, he’s gone on a shoot to Kanchanaburi; a drug mules story. But he should be back for your big day, Rohan.’

  Nina digested that bit of news in silence, keeping an impassive face. Samar had gone away again without a word to her. This was now a pattern. When he was with her, he was totally involved in the moment, in her, in the two of them. And then work would call, and he would leave with the most casual of byes. It hurt but Nina had decided she was going to take whatever she could from whatever it was between Samar and her. Too much introspection and she would have no peace of mind.

  Rohan Varma and Leena Nair were getting married on the weekend. It was going to be a Malayali wedding. Nina had been to a few Punjabi weddings both in England and here in India but this was going to be her first Malayali wedding.

  ‘Simple, elegant, classy,’ Rohan had told her. ‘None of the Punju brashness for us, thank you.’

  ‘Also over in five minutes flat. The ceremonies, that is. Barely time to register the import of such a meaningful day,’ Leena had added, with a derisive grin.

  Both Mini and Nina were going to be the thalam girls, bridesmaids carrying the ceremonial platters. Clad in the typical off-white with gold border Kerala saris, they would carry brass platters with flowers and a small diya inside a halved coconut, escorting first the bridegroom, then the bride onto the pandal. Nina was going to load both her forearms with thin, bright metal bangles in a deep blue colour to match her blouse while Mini was going to go with blood-red. They’d already attended two rehearsals which had quickly descended into a giggle fest, much to the visible irritation of Leena’s wedding planner, Sonia, a woman with a fetish for detail.

  ‘Really? We need to rehearse to carry a platter up a stage twice?’ Mini had muttered in an audible aside to Nina who, noticing Sonia was within earshot, kept a straight face and murmured something undistinguishable in reply. ‘Of course, if I spot a hot guy, there’s no saying what I’ll do with the platter or the lamp, or where my steps will take me,’ Mini concluded on a note of anticipatory satisfaction wholly unsuitable for a married woman.

  The wedding day dawned rainless but unseasonably, unreasonably cool, steadily getting colder as the day wore on. The pandal was done up in navy satin – and masses of white flowers were everywhere – draped on the columns, hanging in swags from the door lintels, placed artfully in carefully arranged vases. A huge vilakku, the Kerala lamp, stood in the centre, flanked by two slightly smaller lamps. The guests had been welcomed and seated; the bride was getting finishing touches put on her attire while fiercely arguing with her mother.

  ‘Amma, it’s my wedding, damn it! Why must I look like a tacky jewellery model?’

  Leena’s mother, slim and elegant in her own Kerala mundu sari, was having none of it. ‘It may be your wedding but it’s your father’s reputation at stake here. I won’t have anyone saying we can’t put a few jewels on our only daughter…’

  Leena let forth a wail. ‘A few? Amma, I’m wearing five chains of differing lengths. Go on, count!’

  The argument went on for some time while the onlookers watched with amusement, then Leena’s mother abruptly threw in the towel. Leena triumphantly took off a bunch of necklaces but given that the two she now wore were heirloom pieces in shimmering gold and Burmese rubies, she still looked every inch the dressed-up bride.

  Everything went off like a dream. Nina and Mini first escorted an uncharacteristically subdued Rohan up to the pandal, then went back to bring the bride. They decided it was the trauma of wearing the traditional gold-edged dhoti that had Rohan so quiet. ‘I’ve belted it. Hope the damned thing stays put,’ he muttered to Mini and Nina. Leena looked a vision but she also looked distinctly nervous. ‘Breathe,’ Mini told her. ‘Everything is going to be okay.’ As they escorted Leena up the aisle, Nina caught her breath at the look in Rohan’s eyes when he caught sight of his bride. God, what I’d give for a man to look at me like that, Nina mused wistfully, then clarified that thought. Not any man. Samar Pratap Singh.

  She scanned the crowd but there was no sign of Samar. It was while moving into the dining hall that she bumped into him, and Karishma. Karishma Jhala was wearing an ivory silk brocade sari, with kundan, uncut diamonds, at her ears, throat and wrists. She shot Nina a cold look from her expertly made-up eyes, taking in the intricately woven gold chain that sat at Nina’s creamy throat, a piece her father’s mother had given her years ago. Nina wondered what the other girl was doing here, then realized on a note of despondence that Samar must have brought her to the wedding.

  He was looking intently at her. ‘You look lovely, Nina,’ Samar told her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nina replied in a muted manner even as she wanted to say, ‘Oh yeah? Then why are you escorting her to the event?’

  Samar turned to his companion. ‘You know Nina Sabharwal, don’t you?’ he asked Karishma.

  Even as Nina was composing her lips into some semblance of a pleasant smile, Karishma flicked an icy look her way and said in a patently bored tone, ‘No, I don’t think we have met.’

  Liar, thought Nina. Samar’s eyes met Nina’s and there was amusement in them. And then, to Nina’s horror, Samar suggested they sit together for sadhya, the banana leaf lunch. Behind her, Mini stifled a comment but all of them walked single-file to the table and took their places. And Nina found she was seated next to Karishma, with Mini’s banker husband, Raj, on her other side.

  It was not the most memorable meal of Nina’s life and it didn’t help that she was having a tough time coping with the sambar that kept slithering to the edge of her leaf even as she strove to keep the pleats of her sari pallu in place. She tried her best to chat with the extremely taciturn Raj, then gave up. Also, she was being given the royal ignore by Karishma Jhala. Samar and Mini were in cheerful conversation, frequently punctuated by his deep laughs and her chortles. Nina ate her sadhya in moody silence.

  And then it happened. It happened so fast the casual onlooker would just not have caught it. The meal had come to its last course and dessert, rice payasam, was being served. Nina asked for her serving in a paper cup, not wanting another bout with the banana leaf. Karishma flicked a contemptuous smile in Nina’s direction and had the attendant ladle out her payasam in the middle of her own banana leaf. And then, with one quick and deft flick of her wrist, she emptied the sweet straight into Nina’s lap.

  There were exclamations all around, Karishma’s apologies ringing clear and sounding very sincere. Nina just sat there, looking at her ruined new sari. She wasn’t faking calmness. She was so angry she was beyond words.

  Somebody asked, ‘What will you do?’ and words came back to her.

  ‘Oh, I have an extra set of clothes upstairs in one of the hotel rooms,’ Nina informed those around her in as airy a fashion as she could. ‘You know, just in case some clumsy cow upended food on me.’

  And on that splendid exit line, Nina Sabharwal sailed out of the room as gracefully as she could while carefully holding her sticky pleats as far away from her body as possible. As she left the room, she could hear a gale of laughter break out at her table. It was kind, sympathetic laughter and Nina relaxed.

  Breathe, girl, breathe, she told herself and arriving at the elevator door, found she was not alone. Samar Singh stood beside her.

  Taking a
leaf from his girlfriend’s book of looks, she cast him a cold glance.

  Totally unmoved, Samar said, ‘I’m escorting you to your room.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ said Nina as icily as she could, stepping into the elevator.

  ‘I do,’ replied Samar calmly, and as the doors swished closed, without warning, he pulled her into his arms, sticky payasam and all. Nina gave a squawk of surprise, then gave herself up to the sheer magic of his mouth. Gripping his head, she kissed him back aggressively, the way she had wanted to for a long time now. Plus, he needed to be punished for the way his companion had behaved with Nina. This was Nina’s choice of punishment.

  Samar stilled for a second, taken by surprise. Then he proceeded to give back to Nina in good measure. This was unadulterated combustion, this was conflagration.

  They stumbled into her hotel room with more haste than grace.

  ‘Do you know how incredibly sexy you look in a sari?’ Samar growled as he divested her of the same garment with an impressive amount of expertise. All Nina could think of was that her choice of the lacy thong and strings-and-lace bra in a creamy mint colour, was perfect.

  And then she didn’t know how but she was sprawled on the bed in just the thong. Samar stood by the edge of the bed, looming over her as he pulled off his tie and started to unbutton his shirt, looking at her with undisguised hunger.

  ‘No,’ rasped Nina, scrambling to her knees. ‘Let me do that.’ And with remarkably steady fingers, she set to work on the pearl buttons down his shirt, slipping them free of their buttonholes with ease. Her fingers faltered for a moment over his belt and then she loosened that, too. A sense of fatalism had gripped Nina. Que sera, sera; what will be will be.