Nimita's Place

  All our professors were good, but everyone wanted to work with Dr Savarkar, the head of the programme. Her project on assaying ecological pollution had been written about twice in The Indian Express and it was receiving a few lakhs in grants from the Pune Municipal Corporation. Corporators do not give away money so easily; Dr Savarkar was smart and well-connected, enough to launch the careers of the students she took an interest in.

  By some miracle, she took an interest in Vicky and me. I asked to work on water hyacinths. I genetically engineered them so their leaves changed colour in the presence of heavy metals. Vicky worked on algae, testing a theory that they could act as filters sucking out pesticides and industrial chemicals from water. Mats of algae can be removed easily, leaving the water cleaner than before. Neither project was as easy as it sounds. With all the cream bums and late nights worrying, we both developed stress paunches.

  Around this time, Romy-Bhaiya phoned home to say he had met Divanka-Bhabhi in university and both of them were keen to marry soon. Divanka-Bhabhi is from Delhi and the daughter of a connection of Tony-Chacha’s. We knew all about her family within a day of Romy-Bhaiya’s phone call. Her father was a friend of the coroner who had helped in Urmila-Bua’s case, so they knew all about us too.

  The wedding was held in Delhi and paid for by Divanka-Bhabhi’s parents, but our side would also host a wedding reception there and make it a grand party.

  “You should come,” I told Vicky and he nodded, like, of course.

  It wasn’t that simple. We had known each other for two years, been together as more than friends for almost a full year, but I had never met his family. They were all in Hong Kong.

  He had also never met my family. I went home to Mumbai so often that Dad, Mummy and Dadi rarely came to Pune to meet me. Introducing your boyfriend to your parents at your brother’s wedding is a pretty big step and sets up expectations in everyone’s mind. Still, I had asked Vicky and he had said yes, even though we were both only twenty years old and had at least eight more years of studying to do before we could get our doctorates and a job either doing R&D or in a university.

  So the two headaches I had, apart from my final-year project were: what would I wear for the wedding and what would Vicky wear for the wedding? It was his first chance to make a good impression on my family and he definitely didn’t have the right clothes for a Punjabi wedding. Mr Hong-Kong-returned lived in three pairs of jeans, five shirts and two khadi kurtas he trotted out for Independence Day or Republic Day celebrations.

  We went to every big mall and major shopping area in Pune. The city is a lot smaller than Mumbai, but when you’re searching for something, it seems a lot larger. Finally we found shops that sold decent wedding clothes and would not break the bank. Vicky kept saying don’t bother and flashed this black credit card, but I had a budget.

  The most important clothes were the ones we would wear for the sangeet, when every young relative would be expected to perform a dance number. As the sister of the groom, I should be organising the evening’s events, not just performing. But everything was happening in Delhi, so my oldest cousin Rocky was taking the lead. The cousins were doing a mega-dance number with “simple steps” to “Dhoom Machale” (“Let’s Explode”) from the movie Dhoom and I would be expected to take part. Did I also want to do a solo?

  I told them I’d perform with my friend from college.

  “It’ll be nice to meet your friends,” Mummy said on the phone.

  “I’ve met them. That Vinita, yes, your roommate?” Dad said.

  I had asked Vinita and told her that she would come on the train with us, code for “we would buy your ticket”. But she wasn’t coming.

  Invite all your friends, my parents had said, and I had. After the last two years with Vicky, I was no longer as close as I had been to my roommate or any other batchmates.

  Three glam churidar kurtas for Vicky, check, with pointed mojri slippers. For the wedding, his one Hong Kong-tailored suit, very smart, dark pinstripes. I insisted he buy another tie to go with the navy blue shirt. Indian men do not wear pink unless they are sixes.

  “It’s mauve,” Vicky said.

  “No.”

  “Fuchsia?”

  “I don’t care if it’s Rani-pink, you’re not wearing it. Only black or blue allowed. What is this Hong Kong fashion sense?”

  “Come on, Nimmy,” he said in that tone he used whenever he wanted me to make an extra batch of nutrient broth so he could save time in his experiments.

  “No, you come on and buy a tie.”

  It was hot and we were tired but we still had to rehearse our dance.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked—okay, shouted—the third time Vicky missed his cue.

  “What’s your damn problem? Why are you so tense?”

  We shouted back and forth for a few minutes, me getting calmer as our voices grew louder. My blood pressure actually goes down the more I shout. Maybe it’s a Punjabi thing.

  Vicky is Punjabi too, but he didn’t seem to know how to argue. As we yelled, his face grew blacker. At one point he even shoved me, which made me very angry. Even Romy-Bhaiya doesn’t shove me.

  I shoved him back. He raised his hand.

  I raised mine. Why do we raise our hands if we’re not intending to use them?

  When Vicky pushed me back, so hard I nearly fell, I still didn’t think it would come to a physical fight.

  Not until he stepped forward. Then I raised my hands—this time to cover my face.

  He stopped. I don’t know how long he looked at me.

  Then he left the room.

  My legs felt weak so I sat down. I sat there for I don’t know how long on the cold, cold floor. Then I got really angry.

  He wouldn’t answer his cellphone.

  I was still angry in the lab next day. Who was this Vicky Malhotra? Who did he think he was, walking in like nothing had happened and ignoring me?

  We ignored each other for five hours, working through lunch. I got so hungry that I spilled hot gel.

  I stripped off my gloves. Vicky did the same. We headed to the canteen together in absolute silence, ordered cream bum in silence and finished two helpings before I said: “What the hell was that yesterday?”

  I was so angry. Vicky just mopped up the last of the cream with his second bun.

  “Hello? What the hell, Vicky?” I was hot and cold at the same time, the back of my neck prickling like just before a thunderstorm.

  Vicky looked at me. Something about his face made me feel like I was still sitting on the cold floor.

  “Don’t,” he said and drank his tea.

  I got up and left. My legs were weak because I was still hungry.

  The next day, Vicky asked me for lunch very nicely, and I went, but only because everyone was looking. At the canteen, he ordered bum vada and cream bum and then folded his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Nimmy,” he said. “I know I have this bad temper but I can’t handle us fighting.”

  He was crying as he said it. He looked so sad that I reached out first. I reached out to cover his hand with mine. I didn’t even check first to see that no one was watching. “Okay. I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know why I said that but I said it. Sorry.

  He gripped my fingers. “Don’t leave me,” he said.

  I was so relieved that I laughed. I must have misunderstood everything. People get carried away when they fight. Once I was pestering Romy-Bhaiya to play Snakes and Ladders and pushed him because he wouldn’t look up from his book. I pushed him and pushed him and finally Bhaiya was so irritated, he pushed me, forgetting how much smaller I was. Dadi scolded him and he never did it again.

  “Who will leave you?” I said to Vicky, feeling his fingers gripping mine. “Who will I dance with if you don’t come to Delhi, haan?”

  I’m washing my face when I hear the grille door open. I rush out but it’s Hafeezah. She’s come for her cups.

  “Sorry,” Chia Ying says. “We were just going to ret
urn them.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She sees me. “Good morning. Sorry I disturb you.”

  I swallow. “Thank you for the cups. I’ll go get them.”

  I’m packing the cups back in the box when I realise I didn’t offer her anything to drink.

  “So you don’t know?” Hafeezah is saying when I bring the box outside.

  “I’m not in that department,” Chia Ying says.

  Hafeezah is still standing. I should ask her if she will have something but then she might sit down. I put the box on the dining table.

  Hafeezah says: “I heard the news. Just wondered if maybe you both will know more because you are in SGH.”

  “Know what?”

  “You know. The Old Man. Been in hospital so long already.” She looks at me. Pupils wide. She is worried about something.

  I look at Chia Ying.

  Chia Ying says: “We’re in the cancer centre. He’s in the respiratory ward and you need clearance to get in there.”

  “Oh.” Hafeezah’s mouth becomes small. Then she smiles. “No lah, Old Man cannot die one. This is SG50. He has to celebrate it.”

  I don’t know what to say.

  “He dies also, he will come back from the grave if Singapore needs him. He said.”

  After she leaves with her cups, I look at Chia Ying. “What was that about?”

  She says: “Are you going to tell me what last night was about?”

  Her lips are pressed together but she’s not angry. I know her. She’s sad.

  I want to take her hand and press it but if I do, then I don’t know what will happen. Maybe I will tell her everything.

  Instead I pick up my phone from the charger in the living room and go back into my bedroom.

  The family WhatsApp chat groups are always busy on weekends. Perfect distraction.

  Oh, funny forward from Itty-Bua. I respond: “”

  Romy-Bhaiya has sent more photos and a video of Kishmish. Dad responds: “Last time I laughed so hard was watching this. She’s ditto of you!”

  It’s a video of Romy-Bhaiya doing the Michael Jackson “Thriller” song at his sangeet as Rocky forced him to do. The video, remastered from a handycam, shows us all laughing on the side of the stage. Me too, in the green lehenga I had bought to match Vicky’s clothes.

  The one I thought would match Vicky’s clothes.

  I happily got onto the train for Romy-Bhaiya’s wedding. Vicky would come a week later, after finishing some project work.

  Everything was perfect. My project was going well. In two weeks, my best friend was going to meet my family and wow all my cousins with his jokes and snazzy dance steps.

  I wished we could have travelled together. I wanted to see his face as the landscape changed, green fields to red earth and silver sand that looks like the NASA photos of the moon. I wanted to watch him react to the change in language as we moved north, and the change in the food sold at stations—from vada pav to hot samosas. I wanted to drink tea with him in earthen cups that were worth ten rupees and risked stomach infection. When you care for someone, you want to watch them all the time.

  How would Mr Hong-Kong-returned Vicky react to the wandering beggars and “holy men” who came onto the trains at stations? How would he cope with the train toilets? When you care for someone, you also feel like protecting them. At that time, I felt able to protect him.

  “I’ll be fine, Nimmy,” Vicky said, laughing. “We’ll do the trip together sometime.”

  Once I reached Delhi, there was no time to think about anything but my wedding duties: getting people water, tea, cold drinks; insisting visitors eat snacks; giving instructions to Shanti-Tayee’s servants; practising dance steps with Pinky and Rocky; meeting hundreds of relatives and friends; smiling and answering the same questions again and again: “Yes, molecular biology. Research. I’m twenty. No, not married yet.”

  Two days before the first major ceremony—the engagement, which would launch the four-day wedding—I realised that Vicky had not confirmed his train arrival time. He wasn’t picking up his phone so I texted him. “Which train are you taking? Jhelum Express? Goa Express? Let me know ETA for pick-up.”

  He didn’t respond so a few hours later I tried calling him again, texting him again. Still no response.

  “Your friends are not coming today, Nimmy?” Dadi asked while sending Tony-Chacha’s driver to pick up Roopa-Aunty’s family. “Tomorrow morning maybe? Hope they’ll be fresh to enjoy the party.”

  “I’ve been calling and texting but no reply. I’ll try again.”

  The day before the engagement, I still hadn’t heard from Vicky. I was frightened. I checked the newspapers but there was no news of a train derailment. The younger cousins hogged the TVs so I sat in Shanti-Tayee’s room where an old Bakelite radio was always on. I listened and listened, but there was no news about a strike or some other catastrophe in Pune that might have prevented Vicky from coming.

  “My friend is not coming,” I told the family that afternoon. “Family emergency.”

  Later that night, I left the room I was sharing with Pinky and went to the room Dadi and Shanti-Tayee shared. Shanti-Tayee was snoring but Dadi was on the balcony looking at the moon. I put my arm around her waist, my head on her shoulder and cried a little. She was crying too, probably remembering Urmila-Bua. She stroked my hair.

  I was so glad for the warmth of her fingers, her kisses on my hair and also so unhappy that it was Dadi here and not my best friend.

  The next morning, I decided to check my email. Back in 2005 I didn’t check email more than once a day. Internet bandwidth was expensive and even with a posh broadband modem like Tony-Chacha’s, it still took time to load the Yahoo webpage.

  There was an email from Vicky. “Sorry can’t make it. In Hong Kong. Emergency.”

  I read it three times, each time happier and happier. He hadn’t ditched me. He was in Hong Kong. Of course an India mobile number wouldn’t work there.

  I wrote back immediately: “Very sorry to hear that. Miss you. Tell me more when you can.” I sent the message, logged off and went down to eat breakfast properly for the first time in days.

  The engagement went off very well. Divanka-Bhabhi was radiant. Romy-Bhaiya looked very smart, though I thought the kurta I had chosen for Vicky was more elegant.

  I didn’t have a partner to dance with at the sangeet so I made up a routine to some random song. It got lots of claps. Every dance got lots of claps after Romy-Bhaiya did “Thriller”.

  My good mood lasted all through the wedding and our return to Mumbai. I was busy settling the newlyweds in their room and taking Divanka-Bhabhi on a whirlwind tour of the city before she and Romy-Bhaiya flew back to the US.

  After seeing them off at the airport, I checked my email. I had checked it almost once a day since our return, but Vicky had not been in touch. I re-read the email he had sent and looked at the date and time stamp. He had sent it one day before the engagement, the day he was supposed to be halfway to Delhi on a train. Why had he not taken my earlier calls or replied to my text messages?

  Logic told me that he might have heard of the crisis earlier and had to deal with getting his ticket to Hong Kong and so on. Logic was probably right, but I still felt a little cold chill whenever I thought of the timing of the email. But if Vicky thought meeting my family at my brother’s wedding was too much, too soon, he would have told me, right? I hadn’t pushed him, had I?

  Had I?

  I was half-angry with myself and fully irritated with Vicky when I returned to Pune University. All through the train ride up from Mumbai, I rehearsed what I would say and would not say when I saw him.

  Except when I walked into the lab, Dr Savarkar came out of her office and the first thing she said after asking me about the wedding was: “Have you heard from Vikram? He sent me a message ten days ago about some emergency in Hong Kong and I have no idea when he’s coming back.”

  2.

  There’s a grey choking feel to the air t
his morning. The haze is back, and early. Good news for my project submission for the dead man’s millions.

  Good cover for my red eyes. Everyone in the lab this morning has red eyes.

  Santha is wearing a black dress. Bala and Siddiqui are in white shirts, white pants and black blazers. They look like lawyers.

  Dr Alagasamy comes in at 8.45am. He looks so much older than he did two days ago at the party.

  “He…” He stops. “The body will leave at noon.” He swallows. “We can go say goodbye.”

  Santha covers her face with her hands. Siddiqui shakes his head. Bala makes a sound that is either a whine or a howl. Siddiqui pats his back.

  “It’s like my own father has gone,” Bala says, tears rolling into his moustache. “How can this happen?”

  The prime minister’s father died early in the morning. Lee Kuan Yew has been for Singaporeans what Gandhi was to Indians.

  In the train to work, Chia Ying said: “I’m waiting to see what Mahathir will say.”

  I googled Mahathir rather than asking her. He is to Singaporeans what Jinnah is to Indians, I think. Jinnah wanted Pakistan to break free of Hindu-majority India, while Gandhi wanted the country to stay undivided. Lee Kuan Yew wanted Singapore to be part of Malay-Muslim-majority Malaysia and cried when Singapore was told to leave Malaysia.

  Bala says: “It is not right he died like this. Not before SG50. How to celebrate?”

  I lay out my Eppendorf tubes for the day’s reactions.

  Siddiqui says: “He was a truly great man.”

  “Who is in charge now?” Santha wants to know. She puts her pipette down, takes off her gloves and leaves the lab. Siddiqui buries his nose in some tissue.

  I look up at the ceiling. There is no reason at all for me to cry.

  Three weeks after Romy-Bhaiya’s wedding, a week after I returned to the lab, I came out of Dr Savarkar’s office and saw Vicky standing at the door of the lab with a slightly older woman. She looked a lot like him. Their features were the same and also the way they dressed, or rather, how Vicky had dressed when he first came from Hong Kong. Shoes when chappals would do, that sort of thing.