by Diksha Basu
“He’s not innocent in this, Tina. He was leading you on.”
“He was asking for it?” Tina said.
Marianne couldn’t help but laugh. She got up and poured a tea for herself and a coffee for Tina and took them both over to Tina’s bed.
“Would you feel this guilty if he wasn’t poor?” Marianne asked.
“What?” Tina rolled back to Marianne, sat up, and took the cup of coffee. “You can’t say that.”
“No, seriously. If he were some rich banker guy in New York, you’d be pissed and maybe a little embarrassed but you wouldn’t feel guilty.”
“I’d be furious,” Tina said.
“Exactly,” Marianne said. “So the best thing you can do is afford Sid the same thing. He doesn’t want your pity now on top of you sexually harassing him.”
“I didn’t sexually harass him!” Tina said.
Marianne laughed and said, “Anyway, now you may actually be able to get him a role on a show and he didn’t even need to have sex with you for it.”
“I’m not even attracted to Sid,” Tina said. “The one I really want to be kissing is Rocco.”
“Really? Even though he didn’t call you after London?” Marianne said.
“God, I’m pathetic,” Tina said. “At least I’ll have my career while I watch my personal life go up in embarrassing flames.”
Marianne returned with the plate of milk rusks Rajesh had brought and set them on the quilt on Tina’s bed. She sat down next to Tina and looked at her phone.
“Tom’s phone has been off since yesterday,” Marianne said. “I can’t reach him. I’m worried. This is really unlike him.”
“What about Karan?” Tina asked.
“I was behaving like an idiot, wasn’t I? Can you imagine me moving to Dubai or Hong Kong or Delhi? I wouldn’t survive a week.”
“International playboys are exhausting,” Tina said. “We’re too old for them.”
“But I think I’ve pissed Tom off,” Marianne said. “I’ve barely had any contact with him the last few days and now I can’t reach him. Right when I’m having my revelation of him maybe being the one.”
Tina stretched her arms overhead and kicked the sheets off and rolled to the side.
“I guess I have to face the world,” she said.
“Come on, let’s go. I can’t wait to see the Taj Mahal,” Marianne said. “Maybe it’ll get my mind off things. There’s nothing I can do about Tom until I get back anyway.”
A loud knock on the door interrupted them.
“Can you get that? I have to use the bathroom,” Marianne said.
Tina opened the door to Rajesh standing there holding two small Colebrookes tote bags personalized with Tina’s and Marianne’s initials on them.
“Agra lovers bag deliveries for you, ma’am. Please hurry and get out to the bus so you are all back in time for tonight’s reception. Have a wonderful day today,” Rajesh said.
He peered over her shoulder into the room wondering if that same handsome fellow as yesterday might be hiding in there. He wasn’t.
“The bus is already here. And remember to drink lots of water with the champagne so you don’t get a chin wobble when you’re older,” Rajesh said to Tina as he exited.
Each bag had a small marble Taj Mahal replica, a pressed rose encased in glass, a champagne flute with their names on it, a bejeweled hair clip, and a small bottle of Dom Pérignon. A note said To love. Don’t worry—there’s an ice box with actual cold champagne in the bus. To the Taj Mahal we go.
Everyone gathered around the driveway at 6 A.M. and started climbing onto the bus. Bollywood songs played as the driver sat with his feet on the steering wheel, watching something on his phone. He laughed as Tina walked on and said, “This cat dances.”
He held the phone out to Tina and added, “And it’s wearing a black hat. This is too much.”
Tina looked at the phone and nodded and walked on. Mr. Das, who was sitting in the front passenger seat along with Mrs. Sethi so as to not get carsick, looked up and said to the driver, “Is that the one where the cat ends up in the kitchen sink and then the camera gets blurry?”
“Sir,” the driver took his foot off the steering wheel and turned to face Mr. Das. “Why would you give away the ending?”
The driver muttered to himself while all the other passengers boarded. His wife hated the stray cats he fed every morning and he was certain she would “accidentally” forget to put milk out for them today. She was forever harping on about him loving the cats more than he loved her.
And indeed, his wife, Bharti, was at that moment sitting on her haunches outside their front door with her tea and biscuits and a spray bottle filled with water in her hand. Every time one of her husband’s little pet stray cats approached searching for milk, she sprayed it with water and shooed it away. If he took enough early morning shifts, she would be able to get rid of the cats within a week.
Pavan and Shefali, in matching yellow outfits, climbed onto the bus at 6:15 A.M. and everyone cheered.
“We aren’t coming,” Shefali said. “I have no interest in battling the crowds. I’m going to get a mani-pedi.”
“Didn’t you just do that?” Pavan asked.
“And I should just have the same nail polish for all days of my wedding?” Shefali said. “Do you not care about me at all?”
“I’m sorry,” Pavan said. “Listen, why don’t we get some more sleep and then eat something.”
“I am not going to eat today and look bloated for tonight, Pavan. What is wrong with you?”
Shefali walked off the bus.
“I’m going back to bed. Hopefully, someone will let me know once she’s eaten something,” Pavan said. “Anyway, we just came to tell you all to have a fun day. Akshay is the photographer who will be with you, and he will take pictures that we’ll have printed and ready for you by the time you leave tomorrow. Susanna, Kritika, and Pallavi”—he pointed to three women sitting in the back row in matching cotton saris—“have snacks, tea, coffee, and drinks packed and ready for you. Kritika makes terrific cocktails as well. If you need anything, just ask them but we’ve also booked all of you lunch at the Taj Hotel in Agra.”
“Hold on,” Nono announced. “If you two aren’t going, no way in hell I’m going.”
“No, Nono, please go with everyone. You’ll be a good guide,” Pavan said.
“What? With the dementia? Not possible,” Nono said. She stood and looked at everyone else on the bus. “You don’t need a guide. If there’s anything you need to know, you’ve all got phones in your pockets—just google it. And yes, it’s true, they cut off the hands of all the workers.”
Nono also got off the bus and her driver quickly followed.
“This is optional?” Karan said. “Pavan, you said you were coming. Fuck it, I’m getting off too. You hear about all those accidents where a busload of people attending a wedding plummet into a ravine and everyone dies.”
“There are a lot of accidents?” Marianne asked.
“No, it’ll be fine,” Pavan said. “Karan, you promised. Sit back down.”
The bus driver looked into the rearview mirror and said, “Anyone else getting off? Speak now or complain later.”
“I’m going to go sit up front behind the driver,” Marianne said to Tina. “That’s the safest spot in case of an accident because drivers subconsciously protect themselves.”
“Not subconsciously,” the driver muttered.
And then, in a large sputtering of Colebrookes dust, the bus took off for Agra.
“A mausoleum,” David said loudly to Radha. “Can you believe it? Built in 1632 by Shah Jahan. My friend Marshall had a dog named that when we were in high school.”
“Please stop reading Wikipedia pages to us,” Tina said.
“Actually, do continue,” Mr.
Das said from across the aisle. “I knew it was sometime in the sixteen hundreds but I didn’t know it was 1632.”
“How does the actual year affect what you think of it?” Radha said. “It’s early, David, darling, why don’t we keep the facts for later?”
Mr. Das got up and stood in the aisle and said to Radha, “Here, I’ll sit here for some time. I just took an anti-nausea medicine. You go sleep at the back. Anyone else need an Ondem?”
Mr. Das stood up, waving a strip of medicine around.
“Anti-nausea pills always make me a little loopy,” he said.
“I’ll take one,” Karan said. “I don’t mind feeling a little loopy.”
“I’ll take one too,” Rocco said.
Radha pushed her sunglasses up on top of her head and said, “Neel, stop handing out anti-nausea medication for recreational use. And go sit with your date—what an absurd word.”
“Radha, you really could use some more sleep,” David said. “And I’m wide awake. Let me have a chat with Neel here while you get some rest.”
As the bus rumbled down the highway toward Agra, there was a silence as most people slept. Even Mr. Das had fallen asleep against David’s shoulder and David had fallen asleep against the window. The silence was suddenly, briefly, broken by a large bang and the bus careening this way and that before coming to a jerky stop with one wheel off the road in a ditch. The only sound was a mechanical hiss coming from the front of the bus.
The driver stood up, disoriented, and came rushing through the aisle asking if everyone was okay. Tina stood up, shaking, her right elbow hurting. It had hit against the hard armrest on the side of her chair. And then she saw her father sitting near the window across the aisle with blood pouring down his forehead. Tina didn’t say anything but fell back into her chair. Rocco shouted to the women at the back to bring a glass of water for Tina.
Radha pushed to where Mr. Das was and grabbed his face in her hands. Behind her, David pulled off her dupatta, shouted for more water, soaked the cloth, and used it to gently wipe Mr. Das’s face clean and hold the cloth against his forehead. Radha sat cradling Mr. Das while David shouted instructions at everyone.
“He’ll be fine,” he said, looking straight at Tina. “He’s fine. There’s always more blood than we expect. Hey, rich kid, brother of the groom—you need to get an ambulance or a car or whatever you use in India to get Neel to a hospital. It’s not an emergency but it’s urgent. There’s a difference—process that and make decisions wisely. Bus driver—I am so sorry, I learned nobody’s name; I swear it isn’t racism—get out and make sure the bus isn’t suddenly going to explode.”
“He used to be a volunteer EMT,” Radha announced to the whole bus, smiling.
“Tina, are you hurt?” David said. “Why do you look like you’ve had a concussion? From what I can tell, that side of the bus had no impact.”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just tell me if my father’s fine.”
“I’m fine,” Mr. Das said weakly. “Just a little shocked, but David Smith here seems to know what he’s doing. Is Mrs. Sethi okay?”
Mrs. Sethi, in her ongoing search to find more meaning in her life, had also taken classes at Sunder Nagar’s Emergency Preparation Centre, and she was busy using Karan’s phone to call for a replacement bus. She was standing on the side of the road with the driver directing traffic away from the stalled bus so that no other vehicle would ram them. At least they would return to Delhi and have a more peaceful day. She couldn’t believe they were trying to fit in a Taj Mahal visit on the same day as the main reception and she had agreed to go only because she wanted to spend every possible minute with Neel Das before he left for America. Things were going well between them but they hadn’t discussed his impending departure. Mrs. Sethi wanted to but she was too scared of ruining the time they had. She was too old to chase a man across the world. A blue Maruti van pulled up next to her and an elderly couple put the window down and looked out.
“Need any help, ma’am?”
“No, I think we’re all okay,” Mrs. Sethi said. “We were on our way to Agra.”
“Is everyone okay?” the man asked. “Your family is on the bus?”
“My husband,” Mrs. Sethi said just to hear the word again. Just to feel how it would sound. She had always liked the word. “But everyone is fine, thank you.”
“You’re really okay, Neel?” Radha said to him, kneeling in the aisle of the bus, cradling her ex-husband’s head in her arms while her boyfriend applied pressure to the bleeding wound on his forehead above his right eye.
“It’s like that night—” Mr. Das started.
“—with Tanvi’s cut,” Radha finished. “When you shouted at the taxi driver and told him he would work for us someday.”
“I felt terrible about saying that,” Mr. Das said. “But I could tell you were impressed so it was okay.”
Radha stroked his hair and smiled down at him. Mr. Das reached up and held her wrist and kissed her hand.
“David Smith is a good man.”
Over Mr. Das’s bleeding head, Radha looked at David and smiled.
“You’re a good fellow yourself,” David said to Mr. Das. Mr. Das nodded. “What a fitting start to a day exploring history’s most magnificent monument to love.”
“Start and end,” Radha said. “We’re going back to Delhi. It was absurd to try and fit this in today.”
“Stranded in a broken-down bus half in a ditch on the side of the road outside Delhi is more of a monument to long-term love than the Taj Mahal,” Mr. Das said. “I hope all the youngsters are taking notes. For the early part of love, think like a youngster but then to make it last, think like an old person.”
“It’s true,” Radha said. “I tell all my clients that love is never about flowers and diamonds and endless romance. Love is about running a really boring business together. Love is about being in a broken-down bus in a ditch.”
She looked up at David and met his eye and smiled. Mr. Das saw them looking at each other and smiled.
“David Smith, she doesn’t like flowers and she always tips thirty percent, even when the service is mediocre,” Mr. Das said. “And she enjoys a good dirty martini, and even though she’ll tell you she’s watching the BBC, she’ll change channels on the ad breaks to watch some nonsense reality show and not return to the BBC. She’s always wanted to own a telescope but never bought herself one and I foolishly never did either so maybe you can get that for her next birthday.”
Mrs. Sethi climbed back on the bus and said, “Another bus is coming to pick us up. We’re going back to Delhi and, Neel, you will be met at Colebrookes by the club doctor. Does anyone else need any medical attention?”
“Marianne’s nose,” Tina said.
“It’s fine,” Marianne said. “Healing well.”
She touched her finger to it and pulled it back. It still really burned.
“Jyoti,” Mr. Das said. “Will you, would you…”
He sat up in the aisle of the bus.
“Do you…” he said.
Everyone stood around looking at him, waiting to see what he would say. Tina looked at Mrs. Sethi looking at her father and smiling, waiting.
“Would you bring me a glass of water?” Mr. Das said. What had he meant to say? He wasn’t too sure himself; it was meant to be something more meaningful than that but he didn’t quite know what.
“Papa, you’re sure you’re okay?” Tina said.
Mr. Das nodded.
“Just thirsty,” he said.
SATURDAY, 11 A.M.
Colebrookes: Mr. Das Hopes He Gets a Permanent Scar; He’s Always Liked Scars but Never Had One except from Where He Hurt His Hand on His Mother’s Knitting Needle
AN HOUR LATER MR. DAS and Mrs. Sethi stepped off the replacement bus at Colebrookes first and a skinny man was standing in front of them holding a sm
all wheeling suitcase and looking confused.
“What is this?” Mr. Das said. He squinted at the man. “Do I have a concussion? You look familiar. Thomas?”
“Mr. Das,” Tom said. “Nice to see you. Would you happen to know which one Marianne’s cottage is? I’m here to surprise her when she gets back from Agra.”
“You’re already here?” Tina stepped off next, followed by Rocco.
“Who is this?” Rocco said. “How many men are you planning to have visit you?”
Tina turned around and said, “Don’t let Marianne get off yet. Stop her. Rocco, go stop her.”
Marianne was behind Radha when Rocco shouted, “Hey, Marianne. Tina left her phone behind—could you go look for it at the back?”
“What?” Marianne asked. Karan was right behind her and Marianne wanted to get off the bus. “No. Tell her to get it herself. I need to get off this stupid bus.”
Rocco shrugged and let Marianne push past him as he asked, “Is that Tina’s boyfriend?”
“Tom?” Marianne said.
Tom and Tina both turned to face Marianne getting off the bus. Tom looked over at Tina and said, “It’s now or never, I guess.”
He got down on one knee as everyone got off the bus and gathered around and said, “Marianne Laing, will you marry me?”
“Marry you?” Karan said, stepping up near Marianne.
Tina walked over and pushed him back and whispered “Do not get involved” through her teeth.
Tom reached into his backpack and took out the box from Bergdorf’s with a thin platinum ring.
He looked up at Marianne and said, “Is your nose bleeding?”
Marianne kneeled down near him in the dusty driveway and whispered, “What are you doing? Are you sure?”
“Yes, of course I’m sure. Look, you know I’m not the kind to make some huge romantic gesture but I flew across the world to ask you to please marry me. I’ve missed you this week. Is that a piercing?”
“You can barely even see a diamond on that ring,” Karan said.
