‘No problem,’ Naina replied. ‘Tell me what you know? So that I can gauge where we should start from.’ He told her about how little he cooked and since his doctor had told him to start eating a more healthy diet, perhaps with a sprinkling of Mediterranean cuisine here and there, he had decided to start making his food himself. All his Indian cooks apparently put too much oil in their food and could cook only Indian food. He had tried ordering in from restaurants and hiring a foreign chef but eventually all the food that was made got wasted as he didn’t eat that much in a day. He could make rice and boil eggs, he said, almost too proudly. She laughed. He smiled at Naina. She was bewitching. Such natural beauty.
She got up and kept her bag on her shoulders. She wanted to get to work and not be distracted by this handsome gentleman whose smile alone was captivating.
‘If you’re not in a hurry, can I offer you a cup of coffee? I make great coffee. And only coffee. No food!’ He laughed as he moved towards the kitchen and showed her the way with his hand.
‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, Sir.’
‘Oh God now you are making me feel really old. You know I’m only 40-something. I know you’re 18 but please don’t call me Sir. Just Arjun.’
‘You’re a flatterer. I couldn’t be 18.’ She gave him a smile.
Arjun reached for the coffee pot that had been brewing for some time and poured two cups for them. He took out some milk from the fridge and put it in the microwave to warm. ‘I know I’m not supposed to ask a woman her age. So let me ask you how many years have you been cooking. And giving classes?’
Naina sat down on the bench opposite the kitchen island, placing her bag next to her. ‘I’ve been cooking since I was a little girl but taking classes only for the last few years. Before that I was a chef at the Four Seasons in London.’
‘Oh amazing. I can’t wait to learn all those dishes from you, Madam.’
‘Oh please! Call me Naina. I’m not 45!’ She felt at ease.
Arjun gave her a cup of coffee as he leaned in with his own. ‘Cheers to that!’
‘I love your kitchen. Did your wife design it?’ Naina asked, fishing for Arjun to tell him he was unmarried, just as Pinky had told her. She looked around at the quality of the wooden flooring, white cupboards and red tulips sitting on a glass vase at the counter. Dark black marble on counters gives an edgy, modern contrast and still a wonderful feel.
‘Oh God don’t I look happy to you?’ he said. ‘I’m not married. Was. Got out. Went into another relationship. Almost got married again. Ran away! She got married to someone she found on the internet. I chose to work instead. I’m marriage-phobic, I guess. That’s my life story.’ He spoke with an easy and charming demeanour.
‘Pinky told me you were into event management.’ Naina sipped on her single origin Brazilian coffee; it was exquisite.
‘Yes. I was in a TV channel as their head of Programming for a long time. Then I wanted to do something more dramatic with my life.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘Now I want to learn how to cook and maybe start a chain of restaurants.’
‘Really? I’ve always wanted to run a restaurant.’ Naina realized she had just revealed her biggest dream to a complete stranger. If she had the support of her husband she would have done more. But her kids had been too small and she couldn’t leave them alone. It had been a huge conflict. She didn’t want to relive the past anymore.
‘How amazing!’ Arjun was completely taken in by this woman. She was gorgeous, warm, obviously smart and motivated. Yet something was missing and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He felt he needed to protect her. A tiny voice inside him was exasperated with his presumptuousness. ‘Let it go, Arjun. Remember what happened with K? Just let her teach you how to cook, at least for now?’
‘Shall we get started?’ Arjun asked as he tidied up his cup in the sink.
Naina took out two aprons from her bag. ‘Put this on first. We don’t want our clothes getting dirty.’
She washed her hands and started asking him questions to familiarize herself with the kitchen setup, the pantry, and the utensils. ‘So you have someone who can prepare ingredients for you,’ she began. ‘But what I’m going to do is set a menu each day for us to learn. So you can cook a variety of dishes by the end of our six weeks. This will include a starter or a soup, a main course and a dessert. I’ll also teach you how to chop ingredients properly, and how to cook the vegetables so that the flavours and nutrients remain.’ She paused. ‘Does that sound fine?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Can you show me your fridge and what you’ve got in there?’
They started walking to the fridge.
‘I’ll make a list of things you will need to purchase for our next sessions as well. Ordinarily I have all this at home but since you wanted the lessons in your own kitchen, I’ll need all these condiments here.’
Arjun nodded in agreement. ‘I’m quite anti-social, you can say. And since I’ll be cooking in my own house, I wanted to get familiar with my own kitchen instead of leaving it like a beautiful museum piece that everyone admires but never uses. That’s why I wanted you to come here instead. I’ll pay you double your normal rate.’
They discussed money and settled on an amount that made Naina’s heart do a little jump. Maybe she could take a vacation on her own to London. She would have enough money saved from this gig alone to take a break and visit her old friends.
The first session was Italian, as Arjun claimed to be a huge fan. Naina decided she would begin with the simplest penne arrabiatta.
‘No, no don’t chop up the tomatoes just yet. First blanch them.’ She moved around the kitchen with flair. He watched her, admiring her confidence, her body moving gracefully as if she was dancing. Her fingers fluttering around chopping, stirring, pouring. He realized he was finding it all erotic. He watched, he learned, he made notes in a diary she gave him. She forced him to take notes. She laughed when he dropped an entire batch of prepped ingredients on the floor and they had to start all over again. It would take longer for this student to learn, she reckoned, but she wasn’t upset. She stopped once to call her mother to check if her kids were okay. He noticed her from the corner of his eye. She seemed like a concerned mother besides being a good chef.
Only when they finally sat down to eat the meal they had just prepared did he realize how astonishing it was that he could have made it. Above all else, Naina was a great teacher, he thought.
‘This is amazing!’ He took mouthfuls from his plate. ‘You are such an amazing cook.’
‘No, you are. You did the work.’
‘I don’t think I’m paying you enough!’
She laughed. ‘It’s more than enough. Let’s dig in? Bon appetit!’
‘Would you like some wine? This meal would be great with a bottle of fine red wine.’
Naina looked at her watch. ‘I have to go back to my kids so I don’t want to drink. I’m driving.’
Arjun nodded, acutely reminded that this wasn’t a date. It was a business transaction. He was so glad that Pinky had recommended these classes to him. Naina hadn’t asked how he knew Pinky yet and he hadn’t offered to tell. Some things were better left unsaid.
He asked Naina about her Masterchef experience and though he was pleased to hear her describe her life with ease, he also felt that there was something she wasn’t saying. There was meaning between her lines.
She spoke fondly of her husband, told him that Kaushik was a lawyer and even said, ‘You must go to him if you need any legal advice.’ She wanted to make Arjun believe that she was in a stable marriage.
She loved her children, the mixture of Bengali and Punjabi roots they had. Her eyes brightened as she spoke about food and her face fell when she told him about how she now had to keep a personal trainer to keep the kilos away. She was vibrant and beautiful. Arjun was smitten. He made her some more coffee and asked her some more questions.
That afternoon, Naina talked and talked some more. It was as
if a dam had burst and she had got a friendly, non-judgemental, male ear to listen to her stories. Sometimes a woman just needs to talk about her life, gloat about her accomplishments, have someone appreciate the mundaneness in her choices and regale in her beauty. She felt like Arjun did all that, making the appropriate gestures to make her feel comfortable, asking her apt questions to let her talk freely and yet not being creepy or too probing.
When Arjun saw her to the door, he said, ‘Can you wait for a minute?’ He ran to his room.
He came back with a cheque for the entire amount of the classes. She saw what it was and said, ‘But you need to give this to me at the end of the course. You only need to give me the signing amount right now.’
He shook his head. ‘What difference does it make? Now or later? I’ll forget later. Better now.’
Naina paused. ‘What if I run away with all this money?’
Arjun smiled impishly. ‘Then I would have learned how to make an amazing penne and clear soup and it would have been well worth all that money.’
Naina smiled. She liked him. There was something about him that was nice. He wasn’t lecherous like some men with lots of money and power. He was warm and comforting, like her ‘paasher baalish’, the pillow she held on to at night near her chest.
‘Our next class is on Saturday,’ Naina said as she left. Arjun showed her to the door and made sure that she was inside her car before he closed his door.
Naina looked at the cheque when she got home. This was far more than what she earned with four people in her class for six weeks. And it was easy. He was willing to learn and didn’t do such a bad job either. She was feeling excited again about cooking and teaching.
6
Women always give their husbands a warning before they engage in extramarital affairs.
It’s the small signs that they do or say to give the man one last chance at saving his marriage. Naina gave Kaushik not one, not two, but three chances to save their marriage.
First, she booked them on a solo vacation where they could spend time alone. She ended up getting ridiculed; he simply said he could not go.
Then she cooked him his favourite meal. After all, people say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. She put on her best negligee to remind him she still had her moves. But he ate so much that later when they were alone in the room he said, ‘Naina, you’re too heavy now for me. Maybe you should not be eating everything you’re cooking for your clients, huh?’
She felt so humiliated after that, that she didn’t care anymore if they slept together again. She started giving him space, letting him sleep in the other room so he wouldn’t be so tired. She was nicer to his mother, and she stopped complaining about him coming home so late. She didn’t mention that the foreplay wasn’t enough for her during their monthly sexual ritual. She tried to initiate sex but he was always tired and even when they made love, it was all over within minutes, leaving Naina very dissatisfied. Usually she would have told him what she wanted and how she liked it and he would have given in. But she stopped complaining and was ready whenever he was or not so as the matter demanded over the last one year.
Kaushik didn’t understand any of her hints. One night they were sleeping in the same room when Kaushik started kissing her. She responded and ran her fingers through his hair. Then suddenly he opened his eyes and saw her in the dim light of the room. He held her shoulders, pushed her back and turned to fall asleep again. She was so shaken up by that event that she confronted him the next morning. But he denied anything had happened saying she had imagined it and was going crazy.
Naina even went to Kaushik’s office to have lunch with him once. She wanted to see if there were other women in his office who were flirting with him. But he had been in his office, talking on the phone when she walked in. He scolded her for not calling to tell him she was coming.
The last thing that Naina did to try and save their marriage was to talk to him about it. Communication could save all relationships. That’s what Naina believed.
‘What’s going on, Kaushik? Why aren’t you in this marriage with me?’
‘You’re talking rubbish, Naina. I’m here every night.’
‘That’s not what I meant. I meant that you’re not interested in this marriage. You’re not interested in me anymore.’
‘Don’t talk stupidly, Naina. You’ve been busy with your classes and I’ve been busy at work.’
‘So busy that you don’t have time to ask me how I’m doing? How my classes are going? You know, it’s a very sexy man I’m tutoring nowadays. I can easily sleep with him.’
Kaushik looked surprised. ‘Well I wouldn’t like that.’
Naina thought that it was the most horrible answer a husband could ever give his wife. ‘What would you like then, Kaushik?’
Kaushik remained quiet. Oh how she hated his silence. She knew he was a damn good lawyer. Sometimes he remained silent just so that the other person would make a mistake and it wouldn’t be his fault. Then he wouldn’t have to take the blame for the failure of his choices and in this case their marriage. But that was the court and this was their life! Why was he using the same stunt!
‘Kaushik, we’re not having sex anymore! We barely go out. We’ve not taken a vacation for a year or two now.’
‘Naina, bakwaas band karo. Just because your friends go on vacations doesn’t mean we have to. And we do have sex. Just not that often. And you’re to blame equally, Naina. So many times in the middle of sex, you want to go check if the door is locked or you suddenly want to switch on the AC because you’re feeling hot. Or you want to close the curtains. It makes me lose my concentration.’
‘But I just don’t want the girls to walk in or the neighbours to see. What’s wrong with that? We live in a conservative society.’
‘I hate this society. I hate being in India. We were so free in London. And now you’re always doing what your friends are doing. Wanting to become like them. Talking like them. Wearing clothes like them. Look at you. In suits. You would never wear salwar kameezes! How terribly boring you’ve become. I’m not attracted to you anymore! It’s difficult to have sex.’
Naina was shocked. She couldn’t move a muscle. She wore suits because they were comfortable. Because the Delhi heat only allowed women to wear loose cotton clothing. And whenever she wore a dress to go out, people would stare at her. If she was running around to do chores, she couldn’t be in tight jeans and uncomfortable clothes. She didn’t have the body to carry it off anymore.
Kaushik closed his book and mumbled, ‘I’m tired.’
She snapped at him, ‘You’re always tired.’
Kaushik’s tone was acerbic, ‘Because I’m always working.’
Naina was now in tears. He had humiliated her. ‘No one asked you to.’
‘Oh God, Naina. This is what I like to do. I’m on the verge of something really big. Do we need to have this talk today? Let me sleep, please.’
‘I’m telling you I’m planning to have an affair and you don’t want to talk about it? You call me unattractive?’ Naina felt slighted.
Kaushik turned off his bedside lamp and lay in his bed. ‘That’s not what I meant. Please. Now let it be. You’re just throwing a tantrum for no reason. Are you having your period? No? Then let this go. I’m dropping the kids to school tomorrow morning. I need some rest.’ And he turned around and went to sleep, completely dismissing her feelings and her need to communicate.
What was Naina supposed to do when she wanted to talk but Kaushik was unwilling to listen? What could Naina do when she wanted to save the marriage but Kaushik thought there’s nothing to save? What could Naina do when she’s being horribly belittled?
Maybe Naina should show Kaushik she was right about her threat.
AYESHA
7
Ayesha: Slim. Petite and flower-like. Oval face. Almond eyes. Exquisitely dainty nose adorned with a diamond nose ring that sparkled like her dark eyes. Long, rich, glowing auburn hair. Sharp as a knif
e. Soft-spoken. Demure. Loving. Caring. Perfect housewife. Had had an arranged marriage. Never loved her husband, simply believed in the idea of marriage and giving something back to her parents.
‘Chaal!’ Sanjay said as he put in a chip in the teen patti game.
‘That’s a lakh, Sanjay,’ Ayesha squealed partly in horror and partly in admiration for her friend’s lawyer husband who could afford such a high-stake table. Everyone from the party slowly gathered around the table as only two players remained. Sanjay, the lawyer who made a few lakhs every month, and Ayesha’s husband Varun, the IAS officer who made only fifty grand a month.
‘You’re afraid your husband is going to lose, Ayesha?’ Sanjay said with a cocky smile.
Ayesha clutched her heart. ‘Honestly I don’t like such high-stakes games. But you boys do whatever gives you happiness.’ Ayesha only partly meant it. If Varun lost this hand, they would lose three months of savings. Savings that were hard to come by.
‘Show!’ Varun said as he put in another chip and Ayesha’s heart fluttered again. Someone held her hand and she looked around to see that it was her friend Tarini from her school days. Tarini had fallen in love and married Sanjay, the lawyer, while Ayesha had had an arranged marriage a year later to Varun, an IAS officer. They had been best friends since they were five years old but their destinies had made one rich and the other struggle to keep up with expenses all the time. That’s when they had moved apart. Until they rekindled their friendship and began calling each other over for parties.
That’s why it was so important that Ayesha’s husband win this game. Sanjay could just take on a new client and earn the money back in a month. Varun, well there was no alternative. All he had was power. Several industrialists came to him for consent on their ventures. His peers had tremendous respect for his skills. And his powers also extended to other departments where he could just make a phone call and ask a colleague to get something done for friends who weren’t in the government. But power didn’t pay for fancy vacations or food. That Ayesha had to manage on his salary.
Forbidden Desires Page 4
