A Handful of Sunshine

by Vikram Bhatt

  I remember being unable to look away from the fork in front of me. This was not supposed to affect me. It was the past, done and dusted. I took a deep breath to steady myself.

  ‘So Mira tells me, you both dated for a bit in Mumbai, how was that?’ Akhil posed to Veer with an unassuming smile.

  There was a hush around the table. I couldn’t believe Akhil would bring that up. Kavita looked at Veer, stumped, and I understood the poor girl had no clue about this bit of Veer’s life.

  Veer on the other hand only smiled. ‘Well, it was only for a short while. We were young and stupid,’ he said.

  Akhil seemed genuinely interested. He was not doing this out of any nastiness, it was easy to see.

  ‘Yes, but what kind of a person was she? Please tell me, I am most eager to know a bit more about my wife from the X man!’

  ‘Akhil, please, you are embarrassing us!’ I protested, not enjoying the way the conversation was going.

  ‘Oh, come on! It’s sweet! What’s there to be embarrassed about?’ Akhil prodded.

  ‘Indeed, it is sweet. I had no idea about the dating thing, but this is a really enlightening conversation,’ Kavita had done a good job of taking the hit and getting off the mat.

  ‘Well, what I remember of Mira,’ Veer began in a softer tone, ‘is that she was affectionate, funny, erratic sometimes, but if there is one attribute that stands out after all these years, it is courage. Mira was a very courageous girl.’

  In that one moment Veer and my eyes met and we were back together in the coffee shop in Mumbai just after Akshay had died. Me wanting out of the relationship and Veer begging me to stay. I wonder if that was courageous.

  ‘That I do agree with. Mira is still a very brave girl,’ Akhil agreed with Veer’s opinion of me with a lot of fondness.

  ‘And Veer? Tell me about Veer, Mira?’ Kavita jumped into the fray.

  ‘Oh, it was a long time back, I don’t remember too well,’ I tried a feeble escape route that was bound to fail.

  ‘Come on, be a sport!’ Akhil joined in.

  Veer looked at me intensely. I could see he was interested to hear how I remembered him, perhaps more than the others.

  ‘Veer was this boy who could speak his mind at the strangest of places and then suddenly go quiet when it mattered. I remember Veer as a charming, self-assured and emotional chap.’

  ‘And you have to tell me that one attribute like he did,’ Kavita insisted.

  I looked at the fork on the table again for what seemed like a while. The others at the table were probably allowing me time to think but the silence was killing me.

  ‘Love,’ I said finally. ‘If I remember one attribute about Veer, it was his ability to love completely and unabashedly.’

  Akhil smiled and chose to say nothing. Kavita stretched her hand and wrapped her fingers around Veer’s arm. ‘That is true, I agree. Veer does have that ability. I can vouch for it.’

  ‘So all in all, Veer and Mira have remained the same. That is nice to know,’ Akhil said.

  Veer and I looked at each other like no one else existed in the entire restaurant. Hell, why just the restaurant, like no one else existed in the world. If he was the same and I was the same, then what had changed? I was suddenly frightened that the answer to that might be ‘nothing’.

  What if nothing had changed?

  VEER

  Saturday night

  ‘You never mentioned anything about dating Mira in all the time that we have been together?’ Kavita was sitting at the dresser with half a dozen creams and lotions she used every night to take off her make-up and allow her skin to breathe as she put it.

  ‘Well, it was just for a few months and it was so long back. I can’t even remember everything about it.’

  And so it began—the lies. Little white lies that we say to hide the stronger, more turbulent and often unsettled feelings. But looking at Kavita’s reflection in the mirror, I realized that people also lie to keep a sense of harmony going. You did not want to hurt the person in your bedroom by talking about the person who was not.

  ‘She does not seem that forgettable,’ Kavita pressed on.

  ‘She is not, but then when you are kids you are not looking for facets in people that you look for when you are grown up. At that age it’s about having a good time and getting laid as much as possible.’ I concentrated on taking my shoes off and making it sound as casual as I could.

  ‘It is also the time for first love, is it not?’ Kavita looked at me through the mirror, her eyes fixed on me.

  ‘It is.’ I did not venture any more information.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’ I countered.

  ‘So, was she your first love, Veer?’ Kavita turned around to face me. The mirror was not a good enough medium of interaction for that question.

  What was I supposed to say? Five minutes into the lies and I had already hit a roadblock.

  ‘Come on, darling, everything at that age seems like love but both you and I know that it is not love. The definition of love keeps changing as we change. Our wants define our love, is that not true?’

  Kavita said nothing in return. She walked up to her side of the bed and turned the night lamp on. In that silence I knew that she did not buy my explanation on love. I also knew that she was wondering if she really wanted to get deeper into this conversation.

  ‘Veer, I told you about Fred, he was my first love, and even now when I look back at those times they feel great, so I don’t really buy your puppy love means nothing theory.’ Kavita had decided to see the conversation through and I was walking amidst landmines now.

  ‘Kavita, if I was not in your life and if Fred wanted you back in his life, would you go back to him?’ I decided that attack was the best form of defence in this scenario.

  Kavita was squarely stumped by the question. She took a moment to think my question through. ‘No, I suppose not,’ she admitted finally.

  ‘If it was first love and all that great, then why not Kavita?’

  ‘Perhaps you are right. It is good while it lasts but then we grow to want other things.’

  She was finally coming around.

  ‘Exactly!’ I said heaving a sigh of relief.

  ‘You don’t have a first love then? Is that what you are saying?’

  ‘No, that is not what I am saying. What I am saying is everything begins with the feeling of love or it would not begin, but then somewhere it begins to fade. The only great love stories are the ones that were rudely interrupted and not allowed to reach their logical ends. I am sure if Romeo and Juliet had ended up together they would have killed each other instead of themselves.’

  Kavita laughed out loud, ‘Are you planning to murder me as a logical end to us?’ she teased.

  I circled around to her side of the bed and kissed her lips gently. ‘Killing you softly is the plan, my love,’ I whispered.

  ‘You are a man of many charms, and skirting the issue is one of them,’ she whispered back and kissed me more passionately. Then her hand found the switch to the lamp, and in that welcome darkness I found myself able to step out of the verbal minefield.

  I couldn’t sleep. Kavita with all her female instincts had caught on to something that was wrong in the narrative of my life as she knew it. The fact that I had never even mentioned Mira to her could mean only two things—it was either too important or really not important, and her instincts had told her that it was the former.

  I had managed to evade it with some crafty verbal manoeuvring and I was glad that it was done, at least till it came up again. Because I also knew it would come up again.

  The lies made it possible for Kavita to sleep peacefully, but the truth kept me up. Mira was my first love and I would never ever feel that way with any other.

  I needed some air, it was pointless tossing and turning in bed.

  The hotel had a twenty-four-hour coffee shop that allowed me to grab a cappuccino and step on to the cold terrace cloaked in the dark of the night.
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  The terrace must be a pretty sight in the day, I thought to myself. Artful wrought-iron furniture set amidst tall plants presented a great view of the old city and enough privacy for those who chose to sit there.

  I eased myself on to a bench under a soft garden light in the hope that the hot beverage and the cold night would ease my sense of restlessness.

  ‘So I am not the only one who suffers from the sleepless in Leeds syndrome?’ It was Mira’s voice behind me. I turned around to find her with what looked like a glass filled with brandy and hot water in her hand.

  ‘Mind if I sit down and stare at the stars with you?’ she asked with that Mira smile that I had not seen in years.

  ‘Please feel free, astronomy isn’t just my domain,’ I said as I smiled back.

  She giggled like a schoolgirl and sat down next to me. We did not look at each other for a bit and sat within the cages of our own silences.

  ‘I am sorry about Akhil. I had no idea he was going to embarrass you and Kavita at dinner,’ she murmured finally.

  ‘Oh yes! He could be hired to interrogate terrorists,’ I teased, grinning at her.

  She grinned back. ‘He is harmless really. Was genuinely curious, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh I am sure, he does not seem malicious at all.’

  She smiled and I responded. Then we slipped into our cages again.

  ‘Do you know the light from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth? So if someone puts a telescope on the Sun and watches us, they would not see us as we are right now but as we were eight minutes back.’ I had decided to allow her into my thoughts now that we were sitting together and stargazing.

  ‘And that is fascinating. I know about that though,’ she responded looking up at the night sky.

  ‘There is a star that is around eight and a half light years away from us, it’s called Sirius A. If one would put a telescope on that, one would see you and me under a night sky on Natasha’s terrace in Mumbai, just getting to know each other.’

  She looked at me, strangely unafraid to show me her vulnerability. ‘I would give a lot to be able to see through that telescope right now,’ she whispered. I nodded.

  We looked at each other bathed in parts by the soft light of the terrace and in other parts by the cold light of the stars. Time stood still for us, just for a moment, but it allowed us that moment.

  ‘I am sorry about the way I behaved at your office, Mira. Coming in drunk like that. I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘It’s all right, Veer. It takes a lot of courage to come and pour your heart out the way you did even in a state of intoxication.’ Her soft smile reached out to comfort me.

  ‘You said at dinner that I am courageous. I don’t know if that is true, Veer,’ Mira continued. ‘I wonder sometimes if I am courageous. But you are for certain. It takes a lot of courage to wear your heart on your sleeve. Most people are miserly about showing their affection. You are not and have never been. Stay that way, Veer. Stay Gold.’

  I thought I saw a hint of tears in her eyes. I am certain she saw a hint in mine.

  This time around the silence was very difficult to negotiate.

  ‘I’d better get going. Have to head back to London tomorrow.’ Mira stood up abruptly, avoiding my eyes all of a sudden.

  ‘Goodnight,’ I said.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she responded, walking away.

  I didn’t stop her. I didn’t say anything else.

  Incomplete—that is what we were supposed to be, even in our conversations.

  MIRA

  Sunday morning

  I had barely slept and did not think driving was a good idea; so I wisely handed over the keys to Akhil. The M1 motorway was not busy on a Sunday morning and we had the rare opportunity of putting the car into cruise and gliding along the asphalt, deep in our thoughts. I have no clue what the reason was behind Akhil’s silence, but there was a lot on my mind.

  The whole dinner affair and then the stargazing with Veer had made for a surreal weekend. It was like I was living between two timelines—the past where I was allowed to feel intensely for Veer and the present that forbade me from doing that.

  Veer had made his feelings clear, but I was still thinking about my feelings for him. Uppermost on my mind was, did I still love him? Watching him sitting alone on the bench looking into the dark sky, were the feelings that arose strong enough? Did I want to hold him, tell him how I felt?

  ‘You slipped out of the room last night?’ Akhil interrupted my thoughts with a question that seemed innocuous enough but made me wonder if it really was that harmless.

  ‘Yes, I couldn’t sleep and I think I’d managed to catch a bit of a cold earlier. So I stepped out to get myself some brandy and hot water from the coffee shop.’

  ‘Oh! You should have woken me up,’ Akhil seemed immediately concerned.

  ‘And what would you have done?’ I posed with a smile.

  ‘Kept you company,’ he said charmingly.

  I stretched my hand and touched him lightly on his cheek, but my mind was suddenly a raging storm. I realized it was my cue to tell him that I had met Veer, to tell him that we had a stargazing conversation together.

  Something also told me that it was not a good idea.

  It probably meant nothing and even more certainly it was nothing, but in my mind, meeting Veer had begun to take a meaning and that was a dangerous turn of events.

  ‘How does it feel, meeting your ex like that?’

  ‘Like what?’ I was startled. Had he seen us together?

  Akhil looked at me quizzically and I realized he was referring to our previous meeting.

  ‘Oh, that. Hmm . . . feels like nothing. I like his girlfriend though. Looks like Veer got lucky,’ I managed a sincere laugh with some difficulty.

  Akhil grinned in response.

  It was silence again for another few miles before Akhil broke it rather intensely, ‘Your mother has been calling me for the past month, Mira, and the conversation has been finding its way to the same end. You know what I mean?’

  ‘Kids?’ It did not take much guessing to fathom my mother’s sudden need to have a grandchild, though it did bother me that she should start talking to Akhil about it. I found myself getting angry with her.

  ‘Yes. Don’t be mad at her, Mira. She is wary of your need to protect your private space and doesn’t want to have a long-distance squabble with you.’

  ‘What is with the Indian mindset that necessitates having children? It’s like a marriage is null and void till you have them!’ I was tempted to pick up the phone and have that long-distance squabble with my mother right away.

  ‘Mira, she is only hoping, not insisting. You can’t take her hope away from her, right?’ Akhil had the knack of calming me down with his incisive emotional logic.

  ‘I suppose not,’ I accepted. Akhil looked away with half a smile, filling me with the certainty that the conversation was not over.

  ‘And what do you hope for, Akhil?’ If the conversation had to run its course, why not let it, I thought.

  ‘I hope for what you hope for,’ Akhil answered looking straight at the road.

  He’d managed to deflect the bullet.

  ‘That is not an answer, Akhil,’ I pressed on.

  ‘That might not be the answer you want, but it is the answer to your question, truly.’

  ‘So you don’t care either way? Kids or no kids, it doesn’t matter to you?’ I had no idea why this was making me edgy.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is this becoming a thing, Akhil?’ I was trying hard to keep the steel out of my voice.

  Akhil laughed out loud. ‘Mira, why is it difficult for you to believe that I could want what you want? Is it important for me to have an opposing opinion on every matter?’

  ‘We are married, Akhil, and you don’t have an opinion on whether you want a family or not? Are you kidding me?’

  ‘You are all the family I want or I would ever need, Mira.’

  I could see that it was n
ot Akhil’s intention to make a big statement. He genuinely believed that I was all that he needed. It was this kind of unsullied emotion that made it hard for me to feel anything but the deepest gratitude for the husband that was Akhil.

  I calmed down and began to enjoy the drive. Akhil fell silent too.

  ‘Mr Rai would like to come over and show you the film. It’s all finished and ready to showcase, he says,’ Mr Weston informed me in his clipped, businesslike manner. If he still had the unpleasant memory of an inebriated Veer in the office lobby, he did not let it show. ‘When may I pencil that in?’ he asked earnestly.

  I was in my office on a grey Wednesday morning. The sun lay hidden behind thick, low clouds and the old faithful English fog had rolled up the Thames.

  I looked at Mr Weston and strangely found myself tongue-tied. The prospect of meeting Veer had thrown me off my carefully cultivated corporate poise.

  It was true that I had begun to meet Veer in my mind all the time, more so since the trip to Leeds. I would be driving and he would be sitting next to me on the passenger seat and grimace at my choice of music, or he would be in the queue behind me at Starbucks asking me to imagine people in the nude in the coffee shop. He was everywhere. No matter how old you get, when it comes to your first love you are a teenager all over again. I suspect that there is a part of the human mind that stops developing after you experience first love, and stays that way till it’s time for ‘from dust to dust’.

  ‘He was wondering if he could come by this evening.’ Mr Weston said like it did not really matter.

  It mattered to me! How could he just swing by? I was not looking my best, I was not wearing my best and I was not even wearing Chance!

  ‘Sure, what time is good?’ I found myself asking, the tale of the two Miras, quite clearly.

  ‘4 p.m. might be a good idea, Mrs Varma,’ Mr Weston had obviously worked it all out. ‘Tea and biscuits to go with the show perhaps?’ he offered. I nodded.

  Mr Weston went away as calmly as he had come in; my mind, however, felt like Disneyland on Sunday. Chaos! I ran to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I could never see in me what Veer saw in me and that day was no different. There were still a few hours to go. I tried to occupy myself with work in the meantime.