‘Eto chumu khaash na! [Don’t kiss so much],’ Raisa suddenly screamed at the couple and darted out through the gates. Afsana followed her out, giggling away. Nirmaan couldn’t understand what was going on. He saw a red-faced man emerge from behind a tree with a menacing look, searching for someone or something in the crowd. Sensing that neither Raisa nor Afsana was anywhere in sight, Nirmaan turned his back to the man and exited the fairground.
Outside, he found the girls in splits.
‘What’s with all this silly childish behaviour?’ Nirmaan growled.
The girls laughed harder.
‘Oh God, you should’ve seen their faces!’ Raisa’s stomach hurt with her mirth.
‘Come on, it was terribly rude of you. What if it were us over there, smooching? Would you have liked someone to do that to you?’
Raisa stopped laughing. So did Afsana.
‘Have you two smooched?’ Raisa was wide-eyed. ‘That too in my absence?’
‘Shut up, Rice!’ snapped Afsana and started walking away.
‘Have you?’ she asked Nirmaan.
‘Shut up, Raisa!’ an embarrassed Nirmaan followed Afsana.
For a moment, Raisa wondered if she had inadvertently touched a nerve and then shouted, ‘Wait!’ She hurried after them.
VOICE NOTE 29
A week later, it was Saraswati Puja. Every boy in school wore the traditional kurta with either pyjamas or jeans, while the girls swanned around in gorgeous sarees.
The previous night, Afsana had telephoned Nirmaan to tell him that she was going to wear a black saree with a red border. This kept him up for the best half of the night with his imagination busy. And yet when she alighted from the car in front of the school gate, he couldn’t believe his eyes. She waved at him but he was too frozen to wave back. When she came right up to him and asked, ‘Do I look all right?’
There was no response.
‘Nirmaan?’ she shook his arm.
‘Huh? Yes, oh yes, you look amazing!’ he replied. Only he knew what had induced that temporary frozen state and he found it disturbing. He felt restless and glanced around.
‘Are you waiting for someone else?’ Afsana asked.
‘Me? No.’
‘Should we go inside?’
‘Sure.’
Nirmaan’s steps faltered, so Afsana took the lead. She turned around, ‘Are you all right?’
Nirmaan nodded unconvincingly.
Right through the morning assembly, the Saraswati Puja celebration and later, when the classes were dismissed for the day, Afsana couldn’t help feeling that Nirmaan was avoiding her. When she sought him out in his class, he seemed busy with his classmates. Such deliberate evasion was completely unlike him. Dejected, she left. It was only then that Nirmaan, looking at the empty space where she had been standing a moment ago, wondered how he could tell her that the first thing he had noticed when she had got out of her car in the morning was her navel. His eyes had been roving over the exposed areas of her body. He hadn’t done so a few months ago when he had seen her in a saree for the first time during Durga Puja. Then why now? What was the layer in their relationship that he had peeled off that had made him do so? The stifling sensation that this feeling produced told him that this could be a critical turning point in their love story. He was certain that it wasn’t love that made his eyes wander that morning. Love could never be this specific or objective. Or could it? Nirmaan had never been more confused.
When he excused himself from his classmates and made his way to the washroom, he passed by Afsana who was chatting in the corridor with her classmates. They noticed each other but this time his aloofness cut her to the quick. If he was upset with her about something, he ought to come clean and say it to her face, Afsana thought, without playing weird games. If they couldn’t be honest and upfront with each other, they had no business being in a romantic relationship.
An hour later, when school was over for the day, Afsana waited for Nirmaan outside his classroom. He was one of the last ones to emerge with a couple of other boys.
‘I want to talk,’ she said bluntly. Her eyes told him she meant it. He bade his friends goodbye and seemed nervous as he turned to her.
‘Let’s go inside,’ she marched into his classroom and Nirmaan followed her. She shut the door.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘That’s what I want to know. What is it with you today? You were fine last night on the phone,’ Afsana said aggressively.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Nirmaan said without making eye contact.
‘Why have you been avoiding me today?’ Emboldened by his silence she stepped towards him. ‘Do I need to rephrase my question?’
Nirmaan gazed at her uneasily for a few moments and then said, ‘I must apologize to you.’
‘For what?’
‘I had bad thoughts about you.’
Afsana frowned trying to understand his meaning.
‘I always thought my feelings for you were pure, but this morning, when I laid eyes on you, bad thoughts came to me. I even imagined you naked. I’m deeply sorry. I don’t want to see you that way. I mean I want to, but not by objectifying you . . . ’ he trailed off and hung his head in shame. Afsana drew close to him and placed his arms around her waist and then put her arms around his neck. This was the first time his skin was touching hers in a kind of intimate way. His hand, almost involuntarily, moved to her navel and his thumb began to gently circle her belly button. She could feel goosebumps forming all over.
‘Why were you ashamed of imagining me naked?’ she asked softly.
‘I don’t know,’ he whispered, continuing to caress her navel.
She rose on her toes and rubbed the tip of her nose on his. Warming up the rhythm, he tilted his face so their lips brushed against the other’s.
‘I don’t mind if you imagine me naked,’ she breathed, ‘because I know that your imagination could only enhance my beauty.’
Nirmaan’s grip on her waist tightened and he moved in closer, her nubile breasts just about pressing into his chest. He slowly raised his lips and kissed her forehead and said, ‘I hope this won’t destroy our relationship.’
Afsana, with her eyes closed, murmured a no at first, and then feeling his lips gliding on to her cheeks, whispered, ‘After this, no distance can ever kill our closeness.’
His hand travelled to the fine hairs on her nape. The tips of his fingers feathered her skin, tickling her senses. Her body that was gently caged in his arms, squirmed slightly in his embrace.
‘Don’t you dare leave me, ever,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t you dare think that I will,’ she retorted.
He sucked on her luscious lower lip as she enclosed his upper lip. They felt that the rapture of their intimacy was potent enough to gift a poet somewhere with the final stanza of his long awaited poem; or inspire an infant to pronounce his first word; or convert an atheist into a believer; or make the old lament the loss of their youth.
The kiss broke and they gazed at each other with a sense of relief and an ache to indulge further.
‘Now we know love in its totality,’ she said with a twinkle in her eyes.
VOICE NOTE 30
The shuffle between coaching classes for the engineering college entrance examination and schoolwork lowered Nirmaan’s rank in the Class XI final exams and he stood third in his class, missing the second rank by two marks. His father, who understood the gravity of the situation, didn’t say much and only asked him to focus on getting into the coveted Indian Institute of Technology as soon as he completed his senior secondary exams. It seemed his father was hungrier for the IIT admission than Nirmaan was.
Afsana scored better than her preceding years in the final exams. But she wasn’t happy. Whenever she overheard Tarun and her father talk, she had a feeling that they were inclined to getting her married off the moment she turned eighteen instead of waiting until her graduation. The stronger her conviction grew that her marria
ge to Tarun was inevitable, the more she ignored his overtures to date her. The worst part of this was that she couldn’t share her apprehensions with Nirmaan fearing his reaction. Although Raisa was always there, confiding in her would only relieve her momentarily. She wanted a solution that only Nirmaan could give her and yet she knew that they had gone past that stage now. She had become too close to him to reveal anything disturbing about herself. This was a strange lesson in relationships to her—the existence of a seed of distance within the womb of intimacy. That cherished closeness becomes the reason to protect the loved one from learning some hard truths.
Meanwhile, Tarun’s desire for Afsana grew stronger with time although her repudiation of his advances only increased the depth of his humiliation. During a booze session with friends who constantly mocked him because he was the only virgin in the group, he finally zeroed in on a plan to get Afsana’s attention.
The following week Tarun lay in wait outside Afsana’s school. His plan was simple. He would tell Afsana that his father wanted to meet her and induce her to get into his car. He would then drive to a secluded place and ask for a kiss. If she refused to comply . . . Tarun was confident of his plan.
He wiped the sweat off his brow as the last bell for the day reverberated in the school. Soon students poured out in hordes. He was extra alert on the lookout for Afsana. Minutes later he noticed her walking out with two other girls. They parted ways at the gate and Afsana strolled over to the banyan tree where he had parked his car. She sat on the low brick wall around the tree. When Tarun reached her side, she frowned in surprise and irritation.
‘What are you doing here?’ Afsana stood up.
‘Dad wants to meet you so I came to pick you up.’
‘I don’t want to meet him now.’
‘This is important,’ Tarun insisted.
‘Okay, you go on ahead. I’ll come along shortly.’
‘I have my car here,’ Tarun said.
‘I don’t want to go with you.’
‘Why do you always make me feel like a stalker?’ Tarun snapped as Afsana rose to move away from him.
‘What is it with you?’ he grabbed her arm. She tried to jerk herself free, but couldn’t.
‘Let go of me,’ she said furiously. ‘Let go, now!’ she screamed.
‘I won’t. You have to come with me, now!’ Tarun managed to drag the resisting girl away from the tree and almost to his car when someone called out.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ It was Nirmaan. He parked his bicycle and came up to Tarun. Although the latter towered over him, Nirmaan held his ground with confidence.
‘Get lost! This is none of your business,’ Tarun snarled and continued to drag Afsana.
Nirmaan didn’t know whether it was Tarun’s supercilious contempt of him or the fact that he was manhandling Afsana that made him kick Tarun in the stomach. The latter released Afsana and knelt clutching his stomach in agony. Afsana ran to Nirmaan.
‘She’s my fiancée,’ mumbled Tarun trying to stand up. Nirmaan kicked him again, this time on his knee joint, which made him sit down on the road.
‘If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the school authorities,’ Nirmaan said.
Eventually, Tarun managed to heave himself up. He wanted to beat up Nirmaan, but Afsana threatened to scream the place down. Tarun drove off in a dudgeon.
‘Thank you, Nirmaan,’ Afsana was clutching his arm with both hands. She was shaking.
‘Isn’t he the same guy with the rose?’
Afsana was silent.
‘Was he speaking the truth?’ Nirmaan had never looked so tough before.
‘Let’s sit down,’ Afsana pulled him towards the banyan tree. Nirmaan broke free of her clasp and stalked off to sit on the bricks.
‘Now tell me,’ he said.
Afsana dithered for almost fifteen minutes before she relayed the whole sorry tale to Nirmaan, that she was indeed informally betrothed to Tarun. She explained that she had run away from home in protest and swore upon their relationship that come hell or high water she would never marry him. Nirmaan heard her out patiently and then simply said, ‘If you truly love me, Afsana, you’ll tell your father right away that you’re not into this boy. You’ll do this today.’
It’s the existence of options, however unpleasant they may be, that cause dilemma. Without options, there can be no dilemma. With a simple conditional clause, ‘if you love me, Afsana . . . ’ Nirmaan had invalidated all her options. The smog of confusion lifted and filled her with the determination to prove to both Nirmaan and herself that what they shared wasn’t an illusion.
That night, Afsana told her father about the incident outside her school and explained why she never wanted to see Tarun again. Although her father blamed her obstinance for Tarun’s misbehaviour, her mother surprisingly rose to her defence and made it clear to her husband that business deals were all right but they shouldn’t coerce their only child into an alliance with a loutish lunatic. Her father wasn’t convinced until Tarun’s father called that night and demanded an apology from Afsana for injuring his son. Following a long and harsh verbal duel on the telephone, it was decided that Afsana and Tarun would no longer be forced to marry. That night Afsana, for the first time in ages, hugged her parents. She wanted to tell them about Nirmaan, but decided that the opportune moment to introduce him to her parents would be when he cracked his IIT admission exams.
VOICE NOTE 31
Barely two months were left for the senior secondary board exams. Nirmaan remained immersed in the laws of physics, chemistry formulas and mathematical theorems all through the day. Talking to Afsana on the telephone before going to bed rejuvenated him for the next day. He would listen to the high-on-hormone love stories of his batch mates and noted the way they swore fealty forever to their beloved only for it to blow over the very next day. Nirmaan thanked the gods that the connection between him and Afsana ran so much deeper than mere hormones.
One Saturday, Nirmaan’s parents had to attend a relative’s wedding in north Bengal. Nirmaan would have accompanied them if he didn’t have to prepare for his pre-board exams that were due to begin in a few weeks. Although his mother was worried, he allayed her anxiety and convinced her that he would manage just fine. They left on Friday night.
Eight hours later, in the wee hours of the night, Nirmaan cycled over to Afsana’s place and smuggled her into his flat. Her parents believed that she had gone off on a school outing.
They watched television late into the morning and then cooked up a scrumptious brunch together. They sat down to study together, snacking in between. Neither of them knew when they fell asleep. Afsana was the first to wake up with a start when she heard the doorbell ring. She was disoriented for a while until she caught sight of Nirmaan asleep beside her. She shook him vigorously.
‘There’s someone at the door,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ he leapt up. ‘Let me check. Just stay here and don’t make a sound.’
Nirmaan opened the front door.
‘Were you sleeping, dumbo?’ Raisa was holding a covered steel bowl. ‘My hands are aching,’ she said, marching into the kitchen. ‘I made some chicken for you,’ she said.
‘You did?’
‘Yes, I like to cook.’
‘But how did you know I was alone?’ Nirmaan asked standing by the kitchen door.
Raisa turned around, her arms akimbo, ‘My mother is part Sherlock Holmes.’
‘But I told my mom not to tell anyone,’ Nirmaan protested.
‘That’s okay,’ she sauntered into the drawing room, Nirmaan at her heels. ‘Now eat it on time and let me know how it is. Why are the curtains still drawn?’ Raisa grumbled and threw open the shades to let the morning sunlight flood the room.
‘Actually I slept late so . . . ’ Nirmaan said weakly, finding it difficult to lie to Raisa with a straight face.
The telephone in his bedroom shrilled at that moment. Nirmaan stayed rooted to the spot. Raisa shrugged impatiently and quickly
went into his bedroom and picked up the receiver.
‘Hello, Aunty, it’s Raisa. I brought lunch for Nirmaan. No, don’t thank me. He was sleeping. Yes, he’s here,’ she extended the receiver to Nirmaan.
‘Hello, Ma. Yes, yes, I’m fine. I was studying in the morning. Okay. Bye.’
As he hung up, he heard Raisa say, ‘Who was here?’ She was staring at his table that had two plates with the remains of food. Nirmaan looked abashed and started mumbling something, when the door to the en-suite bathroom opened.
‘Hey, Rice!’ Afsana emerged.
‘Affu?’ Raisa looked at Nirmaan, her mouth agape. ‘Why did you lie to me, Nirmaan?’
Afsana and Nirmaan exchanged glances. For a moment they thought Raisa would throw a hissy fit, but she smiled, surprising them.
‘It’s okay, guys. I too have a boyfriend now and I do understand you need time together. Now enjoy, okay? I’m gone. See you later, Affu. Bye, Nirmaan.’ She left. It was only when Nirmaan heard the main door lock itself with a thud that he flung himself on the bed. Afsana sat by the study table and stretched her legs on to the bed.
‘Do you think she felt bad?’ Nirmaan asked sitting up.
‘What did you tell her?’
‘I didn’t tell her you were here.’
‘Why? You could have.’
‘I know. I don’t know why I didn’t. I’ve never hidden anything from her. Should I apologize?’
‘Well, she said she too has a boyfriend. She should understand. Moreover we’re no longer kids, if you know what I mean.’
Nirmaan lay back on the bed again. He sat up again within seconds.
‘Don’t you think she has changed a bit?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ Afsana said, thoughtfully, ‘honestly we aren’t that close any more.’ She looked up at the ceiling and continued, ‘There was a time when we shared every little detail of our lives.’
Half Torn Hearts Page 11
