by Reet Singh
He moved away, carrying the bed sheet with him. When he shook it out before starting to fold it, something fell out of the pleats. His irritation evaporated. Picking up a pair of cream-colored, lacy panties, he dangled them on a finger. 'Yours, I believe?'
It was wicked of him, but he enjoyed her struggle to remain impassive in the face of such grave provocation. Red-faced with embarrassment or anger - or both - she snatched the offending item out of his grasp and tossed it into a wicker basket. It hadn't broken the ice as he'd hoped it would, but at least he'd gotten a reaction out of her.
'Why is Mama angry?' Ria interrupted their charged byplay.
Her brow furrowed as she looked from one adult to the other waiting for an explanation. When nobody responded to her query, she pouted and ran to her mother, holding her arms out to be held. As Mohini picked her up, the little girl shot Aalok a look that was full of displeasure.
They'd both ganged up against him, had they? Aalok shook his head. The Kapoor women were like quicksilver - it would have been intriguing if he weren't at the receiving end of it.
He thought they’d sorted it out yesterday. It had seemed as though Mohini had finally made peace with the facts surrounding her late husband. And then, they’d made love, and as always, it had been by mutual consent, and she hadn’t held back.
He wasn’t asking for much, just a civil hullo on the morning after, but it wasn’t to be. She was prickly again. It was a recurring thing and bloody annoying.
His annoyance rose as Mohini continued to address herself exclusively to her daughter.
'It's all right, baby, I'm not angry. I'm just tired because ... er ... I ... here, let me get you cleaned up too.'
'Mama, is Uncle tired? Is he angry? I woke him up.'
‘You’ll have to ask him, beta,’ Mohini said, her tone formal and stiff.
Aalok snorted again, but he responded gently to the child. 'I'm not tired or angry. I'm ... um ... hungry. Are you hungry?'
When Ria nodded with great gusto, he held out his hand to her. 'Let's go get ourselves some breakfast. Maybe your Nani will want some too?'
Ria slid down, out of her mother’s arms, and giggled. 'Nani doesn't want beffast.' She smote her forehead for dramatic emphasis. 'Nani's gone.'
'Already?' Relief flooded through him. A third Kapoor woman would have been one more than he could handle in a day.
'Papa developed Shingles,' Mohini clarified, her face expressionless and her tone flat. 'Ria hasn't had chickenpox yet, so it was best to keep them apart. Mummy had to return to Delhi at once because Papa needed her.’
‘That’s a long way to drive to and from on the same day.’
‘It is. But there was nothing else to be done. In any case, my mum is a tough one. Also, the drive was considerably shorter because there wasn’t as much traffic at night.'
'I see,' Aalok nodded. 'I'm sorry to hear about your father. I hope he gets well soon.'
'Thanks.'
'On the brighter side,' Aalok winked, 'it’s just as well your mother was in such a rush. I wouldn’t have wanted her to discover me in flagrante delicto.'
‘Stop it,’ Mohini growled. ‘There’s a child present. And you don’t have to worry about her breakfast. I’ll take care of it.’
The child, however, had other plans. ‘I want Uncle beffast,’ she declared in a militant tone, tugging away at his hand.
Mohini sighed. ‘All right, then. Go have Uncle beffast.’ She sounded defeated and Aalok’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t want to leave right then, but the youngest Ms Kapoor didn’t give him an option, compelling him to follow her out of the room.
§§§
Mohini was in no mood to join them. She dragged Ria’s suitcase up on a low table and began to unpack.
Yesterday had been frantic thanks to Ritvik and Tina, and then she’d spent practically the whole night fraternizing in one way or the other with Aalok. It was no wonder that she’d never noticed the missed calls, or read the messages that her mother had sent her from Delhi.
Mohini carried Ria’s soiled clothes to the wicker basket and stopped short. The sight of her panties in the pile of dirty washing caused her heart to wrench violently. Tears pooled in her eyes and she dropped the bundle she carried.
She had forgotten her daughter yesterday – had forgotten to video-call Ria for their daily evening chat. When Mummy told her that Ria had been distraught – had been tearful and confused - it had killed Mohini. She had happily allowed a man to seduce her into forgetting everything but her own pleasure.
The information Mummy shared had broken Mohini to pieces. She’d mumbled some excuse at the time, but had succumbed to a crying jag right after her mother left. She couldn’t forgive herself - she was the worst mother in the world for putting her interests before Ria’s.
It was a lesson to her - a timely warning. No man was worth the anguish she felt at letting her little daughter down. She would not allow Aalok, or any other man for that matter, to distract her again.
After Mummy left, it had taken Mohini a while to bring her emotions under control. She shouldn’t blame Aalok – it wasn’t fair to do that – but she didn’t feel charitable. So, when she’d walked into the room and found Aalok humoring her daughter with his affable charm, she had snapped.
She didn’t want Aalok charming Ria. The best thing he could do for them was to leave, and to take his sultry eyes and his flirting ways with him. Only then would she be able to pick up from where she’d been before he arrived.
She was done with him. Done.
The incident with Ria had cleared the confusion - had put everything into perspective for her. Ria came first.
Picking up the clothes that she had dropped, Mohini added them to the pile in the basket and began to look for the wicker lid. She never usually covered the basket, but today she would.
Then she sank to her knees near Govind’s box of letters and let the tears run unchecked. ‘Govind,’ she sobbed. ‘Forgive me.’
§§§
Aalok was telling Ria funny stories when Mohini joined them in the kitchen. The child was chortling and bouncing up and down in her high chair.
'Ria,' Mohini said with more force than her daughter was used to. 'You'll spill your milk.'
At a sharp look from Aalok, and a surprised one from her daughter, she amended her tone. 'Darling, finish your breakfast and then we'll go take a nap, okay? Nani said you barely slept in the car.'
'But I don't want to sleep, Mama. I want to play.'
'Uncle?' The child turned to Aalok. 'Want to play? I have a big truck.'
Mohini rushed to answer in Aalok's stead. 'Uncle has work to do, Ria. We don't want to trouble him.'
Because she wasn’t looking at him, she didn’t notice the shadow that passed over his face and swept his smile away. He pushed his chair back and rose at once, and the sudden scrape of wood on concrete jarred through her. Her eyes flew to his face – his lips were drawn into a thin line.
'I do have work.' He didn't look at Mohini, but smiled at Ria, a stiff smile that didn't reach his eyes. 'I'll see you later, Moppet.'
'I'm off to see the Sarpanch,' he growled.
'Aalok, you don’t have to.’
‘I do,’ Aalok all but snapped. ‘I’m going to finish what I started.’
‘No, I mean, Shamsher Singh came to drop off his wife, Raji, to work this morning. She made sure he apologized. He did so profusely, and even fell at my feet. It's only when he's drunk that he gets a little unmanageable. You needn’t go to the Sarpanch, after all,' she repeated.
'All right,' Aalok conceded. 'If that's what you want. But I'm going out anyway.'
He turned and strode off, leaving Mohini to chew on her lip and stare after his rigid back.
She felt a little ashamed. Aalok and Ria had been having fun and she’d broken their camaraderie with her rude intervention.
But wasn’t it better this way? It was pointless for Ria to form an attachment with Aalok. It was also high time she let the man k
now that he had no place in their lives.
She'd done the right thing.
Seventeen
Aalok did not go out as he’d originally planned. After he'd cleaned up so that he didn't reek quite so much of the night he’d spent with Mohini, he'd grabbed his camera equipment, and was storming out, still in the grip of a foul mood, when he heard women chattering away in the distance.
Intrigued, he'd followed the sounds and discovered a teeming hive of activity in the other annexe. It was Monday, he recalled belatedly, and a bunch of women had turned up to sew and weave and do whatever else they did.
Some of them remembered him from the day he had arrived - they giggled and eyed him from behind hurriedly veiled faces. The others gawked before they too hid behind their veils. Two of the older women didn't bother with convention. They made appropriate noises of welcome and he responded in kind.
Aalok suddenly felt energized. Sunlight streamed in and the golden rays magically augmented the verdant hues of the fabrics strewn about the room. It was unrecognizable - bursting with colorful humanity today, when yesterday there had been only Mohini and him.
Frowning, Aalok shook his head - he wasn't going there - no more thinking of Mohini. She was the most irascible woman he had ever had the misfortune to meet and the less space she occupied in his mind the better. He stoically refused to look in the direction of the rug they had made out on and, instead, allowed the sounds and colors to wash over him.
His fingers itched to pull out his camera. The women, their fabrics and threads, the looms, the sunlight - everything added up and made for captivating imagery. Not wanting to lose any time, he appealed to the older women, happy that they had no difficulty understanding his Punjabi dialect.
They conferred with the others, and after some more giggling and lots of heated discussion, they nodded at him to go ahead. They had only one precondition - those who didn't want their faces photographed would keep their veils on.
He agreed at once. It was fine. He wasn't photographing faces, in any case. He wanted to capture passion - and he did - it was there in the bent heads, in the quick fingers, in the incredible designs, and in the colors. He was beyond inspired.
The women soon got used to his presence and lost any residual self-consciousness. That's when he had the most fun - when they began to pose for him. They generously allowed his camera access to kohl rimmed eyes, coquettish smiles, henna-ed hands, and tinkling anklets and bangles.
The kindness of the women warmed his heart and the time just flew. He was careful, while he clicked, to keep their identities artfully concealed, having no intention of causing them any embarrassment, now or later. He had no idea, as yet, if he'd ever use these photographs, but if he did, he didn't want there to be any consequences for the women.
Before he knew it, it was noon and Bindro appeared with fortifying jaggery tea and salty biscuits for the women. She offered to run and get him a cup, but his muse was lit and he had no time to waste. Regretfully declining tea, he grabbed a handful of the biscuits before thanking the ladies profusely for their hospitality.
With the sounds of their excited chatter ringing in his ears, Aalok set off for the village. He wasn’t furious any more. His camera had worked its usual magic on his mood.
There was no sign of Mohini or Ria as he made his way to the gate. Just as well since he had no wish to bump into the former. The woman was so confused that she made everything more complicated than it had to be, and that ended up getting his goat. Something like gloom clutched at him, but it didn't last. He had his camera and he had his muse - that left no room for melancholy.
He let himself out of the compound, and was soon clicking away at anything that took his fancy. A charpoy propped against a brick wall, an abandoned, broken-down bicycle, a buffalo with birds hitching a ride on its back, a dog eying the last biscuit left over from the ones he had purloined from the ladies, a wooden ladder - just everything.
He couldn't believe he had been so distracted that he hadn't touched his camera since coming to the village. That was an asinine thing to do, especially when there was nothing more cathartic than looking at the world through a lens. It made everything that much more beautiful. No wonder he'd been so off kilter - making idiotic decisions that had later come to bite him in the ass.
No thinking of Mohini, he reminded himself, before pointing the camera at a gaggle of geese that were heckling a little piglet and forcing it to run for its life.
Focus and shoot. Focus and shoot. Cathartic.
Ironically, it was his father who had made it possible for him to acquire his first camera. He had flung one at Aalok in a rage one day, when nothing more substantial was handy, and it had broken on contact. That had enraged the old man further and the boy had paid the price for it.
Seldom aware what he was being punished for, he had taken the blows until his father had tired. The old man had finally gone to bed and Aalok, as he always did, had furiously refused his mother's fearful and ineffectual offers of sympathy and ice packs.
He'd blamed her a lot in those days. Blamed her for putting up with the violence on herself, and for letting her husband get to her children. He knew now that it hadn't been as simple as all that, but at that time he'd been horribly judgmental. And rebellious. And always in trouble.
When he'd discovered that the camera had only chipped, and not broken, it had changed his life. He'd hidden away behind the cracked lens, disappearing for hours on end to examine things even when he couldn't afford to buy negatives and take any real pictures. His father, mercifully, had forgotten all about the camera, presuming it to be beyond repair.
Focus and shoot. Focus and shoot.
Aalok stopped at a snack stall and set down his equipment. Accepting a hot tumbler-full of overly sweet tea, he sat back on a scruffy plastic chair and put his feet up on a block of wood. When the tea-seller cum chef offered him a stuffed parontha or two, he was only too glad to accept.
He needed to get back. Not just back to the East annexe, but all the way back to Delhi. His life beckoned. He'd managed to click a zillion pictures that he wanted to examine at leisure. There were some spectacular ones, while others were not so great, and he was dying to knuckle down and sort and edit them. It was high time he busied himself in the work that he loved.
His time here, in Tejopur, hadn't been a complete waste after all. He'd learned something about himself. Two things - one, that he really didn't like doing portraiture even though it was lucrative, and two, that he needed to steer clear of women for a while.
The first was easy - he'd already found a fascinating new area to work in and he couldn't wait to develop further his new-found love for abstract photography. As for the second issue? That was easy too. Easy-peasy, to use the lingo favored by his youngest sister, Mini.
Enthused again, partly thanks to a sugar rush, Aalok paid for the tea and the paronthas, grabbed his things and decided to head back. He stopped, of course - many times - to take pictures of compelling subjects, all inanimate, but that spoke to him of simplicity and clarity, of natural charm. These qualities were very rare in the world that he lived in.
Glad that he had plenty of storage space on his DSLR, he went a little crazy, even sharing one of his cameras with a couple of village boys who had begun, eyes bright with curiosity and mischief, to tail him.
It was when the shadows started to lengthen that he finally packed everything up, said a reluctant goodbye to two very disappointed boys, and took off again.
A few hundred meters short of the house, he espied a very familiar feline figure. Lolling on the side of the paved path that ran from the main street of the village to the gates of Mohini's home, was a plump black and brown cat. It was cleaning itself rather vigorously and disdainfully, but otherwise looked pleased as punch.
The reason for the smugness was not difficult to guess - a scruffy, orange tomcat strutted about nearby, pacing to and fro as though reluctant to leave in case it got lucky again.
'You wicked
girl!' Aalok chuckled. 'So that's where you've been all this time!'
Tiger paused the beauty treatment long enough to blink at him, then went back to cleaning.
'Well, get up then ... aren't you coming home? Your mistress has been missing you.'
Tiger appeared to cogitate, then stretched into a lazy arc, yawned delicately, and deigned to saunter over to him. For once in its life, the cat waited to be invited up.
'Sure. Come on up,' Aalok offered, and the heavy cat leaped into his arms, nearly dislodging his camera bag in the process.
§§§
The sound of a car's engine springing to life broke the cool stillness of the evening and caused Mohini to put down the book she had been reading.
She hadn't seen Aalok for most of the day although the women had talked at considerable length and with great excitement about him so she knew he'd spent the morning with them while they worked.