by Pankaj Dubey
‘You’ll drown me the minute I come!’ she pouts and complains.
‘If you leave me, I will,’ he says.
‘I won’t,’ she promises him.
‘Your job in Dubai?’
‘I will rule you. That’s my job now.’
That settles it. Shivam breathes easy. ‘I won’t pay you though,’ he teases her.
‘You’ll pay in kind. I’ll make sure of that.’
One thing still nags him. ‘Aaina . . . your eyes . . . ?’
In Dubai, on the flight, in the bus, he had wondered about the blue eyes that were not blue any more. They were . . . jet black. Can blue eyes turn black?
She goes hot in the face and avoids looking at him.
‘Aaina?’ He repeats himself, unable to understand.
‘I used to wear blue contacts earlier . . . simple.’
‘What!’
His eyes crinkle with laughter. Such a con . . . no wonder he got killed.
‘For fun, first,’ she admits, twirling a tendril of her hair round and round one finger self-consciously, ‘And then, when I saw you buzzing around, I wore them for you.’
Shivam looks scandalized by her confession.
‘God! I fell in love with coloured plastic.’
She hits him then, leaning over to punch him good and proper. And the boat almost topples over. In the distance, the chanting of the aarti begins. They see the lights dancing. Lamps in prayer. As the chants fill the air, hands folded, the two thank God, each praying in their own way.
Much later, he remembers to ask her how she found him.
Pat comes her reply: ‘Like you found me.’
It takes much cajoling for her to spill the beans. Nawab and Ravi had gone to her when she sat weeping on that Dubai pavement after his arrest. She wept for him? He stares, bowled over by this admission. Two days later, his flatmates had informed her that he was getting deported.
‘So I took a flight the same day. Came here and waited. As always . . . I reached first.’
‘You’re faster . . . I know,’ he agrees, letting her have the last word. And then there is complete silence between them. All other things can come later. This is their moment to cherish, theirs’ alone.
THE BEGINNING
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Penguin Metro Reads is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
This collection published 2021
Copyright © Pankaj Dubey 2021
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Devangana Dash
This digital edition published in 2021.
e-ISBN: 978-9-390-91479-1
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.