by Sheila Kumar
But getting serious was not being clingy and she realized that now. Just as she saw their affair for what it was: in bed, they were setting the sheets on fire. Out of bed, they were able to have some good times and some good laughs. They were able to carry on several threads of conversations, all on the most casual of lines. And that was all. For the rest of it, there was Nina Sabharwal’s reserved nature and there was Samar’s innate caution. And there was their no strings attached relationship.
But he told me he loved me, Nina’s heart spoke up.
They were good in bed, they were better than good, they were terrific. Was that what Samar considered love? He talked to her about his assignments, about his lenses and filters, usually when he was back from a shoot. When had he asked her anything about her future plans?
I never had any claim on Samar Singh, she thought dolefully. I don’t have the right to feel jealous, to feel this pain. She was hurt to the core but she wasn’t confused. Some part of Nina had anticipated that this would happen. That part was now keeping a tactful silence.
I’m better out of it, Nina told herself, taking deep breaths to calm down. It was good, it was better than good while it lasted. But it was over.
Well anyway, they hadn’t seen her, and that was a small mercy.
Last night, Nina had thought she’d surprise Samar by landing up at his place for a change. She had baked a strawberry tart, something he loved, and driven to the gated community where he lived, a smile on her lips and a song in her heart. She had news for him, too. She had sent the first three chapters of her book in progress to a publisher in London. That had been weeks ago, and she had almost forgotten about it. This morning, she’d heard back from them; they were interested in commissioning her book.
Samar occupied the penthouse apartment of his block. Stepping outside the lift, she’d been surprised to see that his front door was open, more than a few inches ajar. Noiselessly pushing the door further open, Nina had made to enter, then stopped.
Samar was inside his apartment, and he was with a woman. There was a charge swirling in the room which hit Nina in the face like a wet sock.
The picture of the woman and Samar was now etched deep into her mind. The skin-tight suede jeans the woman wore which moulded her pert and shapely rear so well. Her long hair cascading down her lissom back. The way she stood close to Samar, so close there was barely an inch between them. The way her face was raised to his. That smile on his mouth as he looked down at her. The smile that all this while Nina had foolishly thought was reserved for her, only her.
Who was this woman? On the heels of that agonized thought, instinct took over and Nina quickly stepped away from the door before Samar could look up and see her. She fled, taking the endless flights of stairs so fast, it seemed she would trip and fall down any moment.
Suddenly realizing it had grown dark, Nina tried the ignition again. It fired at the second attempt this time and she drove off. What had been a drizzle had now turned into a regular downpour. Given the bad stretches of road and the many potholes between Samar’s place and her own, she would do well to drive slowly and carefully, she told herself wryly.
And so she drove home slowly, on auto-pilot, feeling numb, bone-tired, dispirited. The traffic had bottlenecked at several places along the route, cars moving at a slow crawl, drivers sounding their loud horns angrily, as if the noise generated would somehow get things moving again. The wind was a gale now and lightning crackled sharply in the distance. She needed to get home before the storm broke. It was going to be a big storm.
Stuck at a traffic light that refused to turn green, Nina looked idly across and met the eye of the man driving the car alongside hers. Trapped in the misery of her tortured thoughts, Nina stared blankly at him. The bearded young man grinned at her. Suddenly coming to her senses, Nina looked away. Only to look at him again from the corner of her eye when she saw him moving. The man had taken out his cell phone and was clicking a photograph of her.
Do I react or do I ignore it, Nina asked herself. This kind of thing had never happened to her before though friends had said they’d had to face it a few times. Looking across, she found that the wretched man was still clicking away furiously. Wrenching her features into a scowl, she gestured for him to stop. To her disbelief, the man leaned across and slid the passenger-seat window down. He meant to speak to her!
A bit nonplussed about what to do next, Nina was relieved when the lights changed and she quickly slid her car forward. She’d gone some distance past the busy Indiranagar flyover and was on a particularly ill-lit stretch of road when she felt her front left tyre going straight into a pothole with a sickening noise.
Nina tried to reverse the Beat, get the wheel out of the rut but the car seemed firmly stuck. Giving in to a momentary surge of frustration, she hit the steering wheel angrily with the flat of her hand. Great! This was all she needed right now. Her car stuck in a furrow down a dark road and the heavens pouring its woes down on her.
Oh, snap out of it, woman, she told herself impatiently. The heavens were pouring down not only on her but on all of Bangalore, on all those unfortunate enough to be out on the roads in this weather. She was just one of many.
There was no help for it, she would have to get out and see if she could find someone to help get the wheel free. But there weren’t too many people on the road and those who were around were scrambling hastily to the nearest shelter. The vehicles that whizzed past did so purposefully, intending to be back in their parking bays before the weather turned squallier.
Thunder broke, virtually on top of her head, and Nina gave a startled jump. She reached in the back seat for her windcheater jacket and pulled it on, securing the hood. Going around to the affected wheel, she found to her relief that only one quarter of the wheel was in the seemingly shallow trough. However, she was a realist and it was clear she could not pull the car out by herself, she would need help.
On the heels of this thought, a car slid to a smooth halt next to her. Nina turned in relief, only to see the bearded man who had been harassing her a while earlier, flash very white teeth at her from the dry safety of his car.
Now he was openly leering at the bedraggled girl whose dress was sticking wetly to her hips and thighs. ‘Want my help?’ he enquired in an oily manner and Nina’s mouth went dry with fear.
‘No … no thanks,’ Nina croaked in reply, but the man wasn’t listening. Rain or no rain, he decided to get out and come up to her.
‘What happened?’ he asked her, eyes fixed on her chest. It was a well-covered chest under the sturdy windcheater, but the man’s gaze made Nina feel positively dirty.
Still, she attempted a response. ‘My car’s wheel is stuck in that pothole,’ she said, pointing to the rut but the man wasn’t looking. He came closer and now she could smell liquor on his breath.
‘Foreigner?’ he asked her, trying to shake her hand.
It was all so weird. The flashing lightning, thunder rolling relentlessly, the pouring rain and this man making a pass at her. Trying to get a grip on herself and the situation, Nina said again, ‘My car…’
The man took her hand. Nina shook his hand off.
‘You come with me. In my car. I take you to safe place,’ he said with that fixed manic grin.
Nina came to a quick decision. She would have to bolt for it, get back into her car, roll up the windows and stay put. Then she could call the cops. Even as she turned sharply, the man put an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. She froze even as her brain raced. Then she gave a stifled scream. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her. The man put a rough hand under her chin, trying to force her face up. He was going to kiss her!
Nina went limp, suddenly becoming a dead weight on him. Taken by surprise, the man staggered back and she lifted one knee purposefully, sinking it full-weight into his groin. This was something she had picked up in the Krav Maga classes she had signed up for last year, never once dreaming it would come to such good use.
; The bearded man fell back, scrabbling at the air in an effort to not fall onto the wet road. Nina didn’t stay to look, she ran swiftly to her car and got in, locking the doors in one swift motion. Her heart was thudding so hard she couldn’t breathe properly. After what seemed like an endless amount of time, she heard the car beside her own drive off into the night and gave a sigh of abject relief.
The rain hadn’t let up – this was more of a cloudburst than the typical north-easterly monsoon Bangalore was usually subjected to at this time of the year. There were other cars going by, their headlights made sharper, more luminous in the rain-soaked air. There were blank faces in the cars; some of them turned to look at her. But no one stopped.
Nina’s brain registered a gurgling noise. Wearily, she looked out and saw that the rainwater had made an impromptu channel running busily on the edge of the road.
She didn’t look up when a car halted alongside hers, not even when the driver started sounding his horn repeatedly, like some sort of a claxon. Then she distinctly heard someone calling out her name. ‘Nina! Nina! NINA!’ like a frantic litany.
Slowly raising her head, she looked across. There was a man behind the wheel of the other car and he was gesticulating frantically. When she didn’t react, he got out of his car and ran across to her side, tapping hard on her window.
Finally, she registered that it was Devaiah, her colleague in the marketing department.
After that, things became something of a blur. Devaiah had to tell her three times before she got into his car while they attended to hers. He had a friend travelling in the car with him and with the help of a crowbar, they got Nina’s car out of the rut, getting thoroughly soaked in the process of course.
Nina was still on auto-pilot. She got out of Devaiah’s car and made to go over to her vehicle. She knew he was looking worriedly at her pale face.
‘Will you be able to drive yourself home safely?’ Devaiah asked, a crease appearing between his brows. Nina looked at him but didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.
Her colleague exchanged a quick look with his friend. He put her back in his car, signalling that his friend should follow in Nina’s car. Devaiah kept flicking her worried glances all through the drive, but he didn’t attempt conversation, for which Nina was deeply thankful. She knew that if she didn’t attempt to talk, a surface image of normality could be maintained. And it was very important for Nina Sabharwal that she kept up that façade of normality. She didn’t know why it was important, only that it was.
Devaiah knew where she lived; she had hosted small impromptu meals there for her team often. When they drew up finally, after what seemed an interminable drive to Nina, he saw her inside the apartment while his friend parked her car and waited for Devaiah.
‘Will you be okay? Shall I call Mini?’ he asked quietly. Devaiah clearly thought that her car falling into that pothole on a night such as this was enough to totally unsettle Nina.
At last Nina found her voice, or a version of it. ‘I’m fine and thank you, Dev,’ she got out, even managing the semblance of a smile. ‘See you at work tomorrow.’ With which he had to be content.
It was possibly the roughest night of Nina Sabharwal’s life. She had a hot bath and pulling on a terry-cloth dressing gown, settled down in her roomy armchair with an outsized bowl of mushroom soup in her hand. The incident on the road had receded so completely from her mind, it was as if nothing had happened. Her mind kept flashing to Samar bending so tenderly over the unknown woman in his apartment.
Who was she? Why was she holding him in such a proprietorial manner?
But that wasn’t the real nub, was it? The problem Nina had refused to face till now had nothing to do with other women. She knew Karishma Jhala was no threat to any relationship she, Nina, might have with Samar. Even the matter of the unknown woman in his arms possibly had its own backstory. Except Nina didn’t want to know, didn’t want to ask him.
The real problem had everything to do with Samar Pratap Singh and herself. She had gotten into a situation quite out of her depth. It was just as Alan Pereira had warned. Nina was not someone who changed boyfriends frequently, who sampled relationships, as it were.
When she gave her heart, she gave it for good.
Obviously, her preternaturally calm and serene exterior had fooled Samar into thinking she was someone who could play the game and walk away without a backward glance should things not go her way.
There had been no real communication between Samar and her. Not the sort that really shaped, moulded, cemented a good relationship. Now Nina remembered that often Samar would start to tell her something about his family or schoolmates, something on a personal note. She’d listen interestedly but at some point, Samar would stop, then change the subject deftly. That too had become a pattern.
She started to tick the facts off in her mind, one by painful one. I wanted it all, more than he could give me. I grew to want definite commitment; Samar, on the other hand, had never shown any kind of emotional involvement. Maybe it was just sex for him. There too, he had been a caring man, always seeing to protection, ensuring that she felt good each and every time.
Well, to be fair to him, he had never promised her anything. It was she who had changed, who had wanted a change in the tenor of their relationship.
Yes, but he told me he loved me, her heart cried out. And she sat in the armchair, her lovely face stony, her heart an icy wasteland, musing on that thought while the air grew cooler and the night grew darker.
At around one a.m., Nina suddenly remembered that the strawberry tart she had baked for Samar was still in the back seat of the car where she had flung it on her unceremonious return to her car that evening. Setting her jaw, she went downstairs to the car parking lot, opened her car door and retrieved the squashed tart.
Upstairs in her own apartment, she had a bad moment as she stared down at the dessert, on the verge of tears, biting her lower lip hard to stem the flood of emotions that hovered just below the surface. He’s a rotter, Nina, she told herself. You can’t cry over rotters. You don’t cry over rotters.
Then, coming to a decision, she reached for her cell phone, and dialled her sister. It would be evening in London but Sue would take the call if she was free. And Sue’s calm, practical advice was what Nina wanted badly now.
•
Nina called in sick that day. Obviously, Devaiah had told sales and marketing what had transpired on that ill-lit road, or at least his version of what had transpired, so Rohan was most sympathetic.
‘Oh, take the day off, take rest,’ he said in a hearty manner which he obviously thought was a soothing one. Then he spoiled the effect by saying slightly anxiously, ‘You will be in for the project meeting tomorrow, right?’
Nina assured him she would be in, and she meant it, too. Thanks to Sue and the hour-long conversation she had had with her practical, pragmatic sister, she had recovered her composure. The end of an affair was not the end of the world. She was not going to allow Samar Singh within a mile of her. Nor was she going to allow him to break her in any manner. She was going to continue showing up at the India! offices, she was going to finish her Bangalore tenure and yes, she was going to be there to make sure Adam and Susan had a most memorable wedding. Both of Prem Sabharwal’s daughters were fighters. Nobody was going to chase Nina away.
She expected to fend off phone calls from Samar all day but not one call came from him. Inside her head, a voice whispered that maybe he would come around to find out why she hadn’t come to office. She knew how fast news of all kind travelled up and down the three storeys of the office; Samar was sure to have heard about last night.
But he didn’t call, and when midnight rolled around, Nina was forced to face up to the fact that the likelihood of his dropping by was near nil. Her jaw set but she remained calm.
She fell asleep on the thought that Samar didn’t care enough. He didn’t care at all, in fact. Yet, surprisingly, she slept well, but then Nina always slept well after she made a deci
sion.
At the office the next morning, she discovered that Samar had flown to Delhi on a ‘family emergency’. It was Mini who told her so, and the other girl clearly expected that Nina already knew.
Nina was spared from making any kind of comment by a call from the features editor upstairs on the second floor. He was calling to tell her that her piece on the fast-fading Chinese heritage of Bangalore was going to run in the weekend paper.
‘Good job,’ he told her patronizingly, though to be charitable to the man, he didn’t for a moment realize he was being patronizing. Continuing to put his large foot into his mouth, the man said, ‘It started to get too serious in the middle, then you put in that bit about the Chinese deejay, so the piece was balanced out.’
‘But you liked the bit about the young Chinese belly dancers, right?’ Nina asked, careful to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
The features ed wouldn’t have known sarcasm if it had come and bit him on his small nose. ‘Yes, yes,’ he told Nina excitedly. ‘That was great stuff. Pity they don’t hold belly dance shows. In any case, I’ll ask the photo ed to send someone down to the classes to see if he can get some sexy pics.’
Nina was pretty sure the girls weren’t going to allow anyone to take pictures of their belly dancing sessions, but she wasn’t going to rain on the man’s parade. It was clear that she was expected to sound excited and grateful, possibly overwhelmed too, that editorial was carrying a piece by someone from sales and marketing, never mind the fact that this was her third feature for the paper. She went about making all the right kind of noises till she remembered that she was due downstairs for a meeting.
They were waiting for her, to start the meeting. Rohan was his usual jittery self; clearly he’d forgotten why Nina had taken the day off yesterday. As she pulled out a chair next to Devaiah, she met his eye and he mouthed, ‘All okay?’ To which, she smiled a reply and Dev seemed satisfied by what he saw in her face.
