The First Time (Love in No Time #1)

by Bitsi Shar

  I don’t hear the phone anymore. Maybe I imagined it? Maybe. I struggle to get up. I need to splash some water on my face and get some work done. I was so behind. And his phone call had only added to my backlog. I needed to write that lesson on the tree-hugging movement. I am a native speaker of Hindi but that doesn’t make me competent enough to translate an English text into Hindi. There is an etiquette to translation that in order to be followed requires a knowledge of the compatibility/ incompatibility of grammars and in this case between Hindi and English. I know the grammars but never before had the issue of their incompatibility or compatibility become important. And until now I had not understood the hierarchies of language that directly fed into class, caste, and gender hierarchies in this former colony.

  Like a true colonial progeny, my personal universe conspired to divide English from Hindi and make English rule as a language par excellence. I was made to rule English and I did as if I knew where I was going with this, expression-wise, though being and of English in a North Delhi university setting made you culturally classy (of class) and oh-so-English in a “white” way and therefore less of a native in a “brown” kind of way. I was training myself to reject a brown colony for a white one elsewhere. But in the meantime I was stuck in this brown colony and engaging in this complicated project of colonizing others by pretending to decolonize my brown memsahibness.

  I was attempting to apologize for my “whiteness” by nativizing brownness of others—translating English texts into Hindi lessons for women who spoke neither but could understand their hierarchy and its power; whose language of everyday speech was also not Hindi and who desired to learn English not Hindi. For you see, the desire for whiteness had been embedded deep into the native skin, irrespective of class, like a tattoo marked in indelible ink.

  There was the phone again. The shrill sound cut into my academic thoughts. I opened my door and reached for the olive green receiver. I say hello but no sound emerges from my larynx. I try again. It's a croak but at least I made a sound.

  “Ms. Sharma, are you ok?” Hmmmmm . . . yummmmm. Ah, the man of the hour. I mumble a “yes.”

  “Why did you run from your phone today?” (He continues to ask as if my yes was actually a moment of silence).

  “I don’t know,” I manage.

  “I am sorry if I upset you again. That was not my intention at all. I was just playing . . .,” He sounds unsure but really apologetic.

  I cut him off like the bitch that I can be, “You were playing or toying with me, Sir? There is a difference.” My voice is braver and my tone is crispier. Good, good. Control is good, I tell myself.

  I can hear the smile in his voice. “Oh, you are the expert Ms. Sharma. Have you been playing or toying with me?”

  I gasp—“What, when?” Words are tumbling out now.

  “When, what?” he repeats the question in a different sequence and then answers, “every time you sit besides or behind me, in the bus, on the scooter . . .” and he actually trails off, prompting my “what?” that brings him back on the trail.

  “Ms. Sharma, I know you watch me, your hands want to know things about me that right now only I know, and you breathe into my body like your next inhale should take all of me into you—so, you tell me what all this is about? Is this playing or toying?”

  “It is just semantics, Sir,” I snap back.

  “Semantics? Big word Ms. Sharma. I would ask you to explain but right now I care a fuck. I am only interested in your wicked intentions with me.” He pauses for some affect. I show him nothing.

  So he powers on, “Oh, Ms. Sharma, I like you. I always liked you. But I didn’t know if you felt the same. And all your playing or toying or whatever has me so intrigued that I have actually stopped seeing straight. I like your playing or toying or whatever but I am not sure if you are ready for me to play with you. Believe me, I would like to—play with you and at the cost of appearing crude and crass which I am not but then you bring out the worst in me, my playing may not be subtle or gentle or confused even. You will know how I play, mind you, play and not toy. I don’t do toying, semantics or no.”

  He stops—to catch his breath, perhaps? Mine is arrested—halfway in my throat and my nose. He wants to play and play hard—like a no holds barred kind of play? What am I, a small town, well-bred, conservative miss do-right supposed to say to that? I could only wonder what his kind of playing entailed. And where would his playing take place, I wonder. Scooters and public buses are not ideal places for what I think he has in mind.

  He still lives with his widow mother and his younger brother in the house that is two doors down from my parents’ home. What about the apartment in Vasant Kunj? My friends won’t mind, would they? But mind what? What am I thinking here? Damn, he has me thinking everything wrong, all wrong. I need some clarity here; some focus on whatever will change the direction of my bad, bad thoughts.

  “Ms. Sharma, you are very quiet. I will assume that you are feeling a little lost right now. Sorry if I am the reason you are feeling lost. But I would really like to talk about all this in person, not over the phone. How about I take you out for dinner or lunch even if you can get away from work for an hour or so? Sometime this week?”

  I am still very quiet. I feel if I move or even make a sound I might give myself away—my reluctant desires are creeping to the surface and I am afraid, kind of ready to explode. Before I resort to my usual practice of dropping receivers into their cradles before a formal bye, my mouth says, “Yes, I can do lunch. Let me know where and when.”

  I say in my most nonchalant voice. I am anything but nonchalant at this point. He has certainly accelerated the pace on my unarticulated but clumsily projected desire in unexciting locomotives. He is now setting the terms for negotiating how to requite this desire, his and mine, in a mutually satisfactory way. Okay! Bring it on. I am excited now. I am bubbling. I am recognizing the concept called hormones-in-overdrive. I like control but hormonal disarray is feeling really fine today.

  “Ms. Sharma, I look forward to it. Pleasure talking with you today and hope your evening is a pleasant one.”

  “I wish you a good evening too, kind Sir.”

  “I mean it Ms. Sharma—pleasure—think about it and may I say, think about me . . .?” I draw in a short, sharp breath and I hear a click on the other end. He has hung up on me!

  The words are hanging in virtual space between the two landlines and in my ear. I lean against my bedroom door. I know I am on a road where there is no U-turn. And if there is a cliff at the end, I am going over.

  I know I am hurtling and that generally involves hurting in the end. But when you are hurtling you are hurtling—there is no thought, no feeling, nothing—there is of course no consequence either. Even when you know there is a severe kind of hurting that is coming soon, you still hurtle, full speed ahead.

  I am my worst enemy.

  I know this too.

  Knowing me, I was going to keep him in my head, keep repeating his words in my head to the point that these make no sense.

  And when these words make no sense, my emotions will change from happy to angry. I will rant and rave in my head about strange boys with seductive powers they had no business acquiring and then using on unsuspecting little girls in small places.

  Yes, I can go from simple to bizarre in a matter of hours. I am a saboteur of me.

  I think I need tea with lots and lots of ginger in it. I need a toast too with lots and lots of Amul cheese spread on it. So I make tea and lather my toast. I decide I need time away from work. I decide I need to watch TV mindlessly and maybe read a harlequin romance. Yes, I am in that kind of mood. He has rendered me physically and emotionally listless. I think I will need my energy for our meeting that I know will change everything.

  Chapter Eight

  I wake up to the sound of “Piya Bawari.” Shubha Mudgal is love-mad and she is telling you she is, rather forcefully. All her angst poured into her massive voice that even at low decibel ricochets off c
oncrete walls and seeps deep into your being. Too bad if you don’t want to know that she is love-mad. There is only her want and damn if she couldn’t be wanton about it.

  “Sing it, Shubha. Mean it, girl” I say to her as I lay in my very dark room under my white sheets smelling of new lime scented Surf detergent. I really should just lie here. What time is it anyway? I cock my head to the side table beside my Dunlop mattress. The clock shows 8:23 a.m.—oh, no! 8:23 a.m. I am late already for my 9.00 a.m. meeting.

  Shit, shit, shit! Goodbye, lazy day, hello, craziness! I don’t have time for a shower. I brush my teeth; scrub my face in less than five minutes. Now for the clothes—thank god, I set them aside on the chair before I went into my funk. Its my favorite ensemble—sunflower shaded short cotton kurta and white churidaar. No duppatta today—too warm for that. I quickly brush my tangled and crazy hair. I need oil to manage these tangles. The dry heat was destroying them. Maybe I could cut them. I have had short hair before.

  Well, it was a long time ago when I was in high school. My mother got fed up of my lice-infested tresses, of treating this infestation without success. So she took me instead to Julie’s hair-cutting salon and asked her to chop it off like a boy’s head. I resisted. Actually, I might have thrown a big tantrum before and after the deed was done. So my mother took my case to the big dragon, my father, who blazed his eyes at me, told me to behave like a grown up and not like the girl that I was and that was that. I had a badly chopped head and a burning heart. I think the burn has refused to go away even though now I can do whatever I want with my hair. And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. I was meeting him for lunch or was it dinner? Damn! Why can’t I remember? I wasn’t drunk. I should remember. But I couldn’t. Now I am reconsidering my sartorial choices. Should I wear a dress instead? I know he likes “western” clothes. I have never seen him wear anything “Indian” or “ethnic” if you will, even at Indian festivals. His favorite in casual is jeans and t-shirt, soccer shorts and a wife-beater when visiting a friend in the evening for some backyard cricket or a game of soccer. But for work its always shirt, slacks, and tie with loafers. He never complimented me on Indian attires, only western ones even when I wore it with disdain and no style-sense at all. I have a feeling that his compliments on my dress style, or rather lack of it, had little to do with the style than his growing interest in me. Well, too late to change now. I couldn’t be late for the meeting anymore than I already was. So he’ll just have to bear with my sunflower mood.

  I ran out the apartment towards the main gate of the apartment complex. I look for a three-wheeler and there is one standing next to the paanwaala’s (betel-leaf seller) shop. I peek in. The driver is fast asleep in his seat.

  I call out, “bhaiya” and he jerks up, wiping his mouth of the tricking saliva.

  “Yes, madam.” He, almost as a reflex action, powers up the scooter. Smoke billows from the exhaust and before it envelopes me, I dive into the back seat, give him quick instructions about my destination and we are off. He crawls even without traffic. So I offer him fifty rupees over the metered fare if we get to my office by 9.00. It is 8:50 right now. He pumps it. And we are finally moving faster than the slowest bicycle on the side street. He is practically careening down the main road that links Vasant Kunj to the Ring road, the main artery connecting South Delhi to North Delhi. Now, I wish I hadn’t thrown in the impetus. I am hanging on to dear life as the driver now officially a madman is burning rubber on the asphalt for an extra fifty.

  I pray.

  Every Hindu/Muslim/Christian psalm I know, I now repeat in my head as if that alone could ward off a destined human mistake. I want to go to my dinner tonight, I pray.

  I want every limb safe in order to make it there. I have things to say to him and he has things to say to me. I would like very much to hear what he has to say to me face to face. I pray and plead to no one in particular. I just hope someone was listening. And with one final careen that is almost like a free wheelie one street corner before my office, we arrive.

  He brakes hard and I almost fly through the railing and onto his seat in the front. I jam my foot against the divider to prevent any flailing or flying and as everything stops and the dust settles, I decide I can breathe. I pay him (yes that extra fifty) and with a shake of my head enter the office building one minute past 9.00 a.m. And then I lose track of the day.

  I am in three meetings, back to back. And each is super efficient and super productive. I have three new lesson plans to write, edit, and finalize before I travel to Banda at the end of the week.

  I know it will keep me busy. I like busy. I like engaging my head and my hands in order to produce something tangible. I need evidence to attest to such mind/body coordination in cultural productions of a specific kind. What I detest absolutely is brooding—when my mind wanders into inane spaces and slivers of time, trying to search beyond literal meanings of random articulations. “What did she mean by that?” is my favorite trigger point that has often led me into darkness, sometimes in a sad way and sometimes in a tunnel like way where nothing still makes sense. Mystery created remains a mystery. So being busy, I know, could prevent me from creating a mystery of him.

  Holy crap! I am having dinner with him! It hits me again. This is enough to paralyze me now. Just when I was congratulating myself for my busyness, I sabotaged myself for the entire day. Shit! I really am my worst enemy. Now I need to distract myself for the next three hours to save this day that had started so well. Then, Shalini walks in to ask me if I could help her prepare for her workshop in Banda, starting in the next two days.

  Bam! My best distraction is here. Thank frigging god! I surprise Shalini with my eagerness to help. She, I knew, expected me to say no after all the work that had come my way after our meetings. She of course didn’t know about the dinner or him and me reminding myself of it almost involuntarily had gotten out a voluntary “yes” to her offer. Any moment earlier and she would be asking someone else for help.

  Our planning for Shalini’s workshop took the rest of the day. We had closeted ourselves in the computer room writing out a plan for her that would work the best in the short while she was there. I knew she was impressed with our efficiency. And I knew she was going to ask me what she asked next. It was in her eyes.

  “Can I request something else of you? You could always say no. I know you have to craft your lessons and all the other stuff around editing etc. But could you help me with this workshop while there? I could really, really do with your help. I will run the workshop while you could be my expert commentator whenever needed. Please, pretty please?”

  Oh, no! She was pleading now and making those round, distressed eyes at me. Me? I am a sucker for need—someone needing me so badly like I was his or her lifeline. So a “yes” popped out my mouth before my mind could analyze the source of my need to be needed. She smiles, gives me a hug and we are done. And by the time we are done, it is actually 5:30 p.m.

  As I walk out of the computer room, I bump into Jaya who was coming in to give me his message! He had called about ten minutes ago wanting me to call him right away. My heart sank a little. I was sure he had changed his mind and was calling me to cancel. Damn! That would suck, big time. Just when I was looking forward to it all, trepidation or not. So I call him. And he picks up almost immediately as if he was sitting by the phone willing it to ring.

  My “hello” comes out like a breathy whisper.

  And his “Ms. Sharma” is coated in sexiness. He confirms, “I was waiting for your call.” “Yes, sorry. I was in a meeting and couldn’t call earlier.”

  “No worries. I had called to confirm our dinner date. How is 6:30 at Berccos in Connaught circle?” He doesn’t let me respond. “Do you know where Berccos is in CP?”

  I mumble a “yes.” “Good” he finishes.

  “I’ll see you there. And Ms. Sharma please don’t be late. I don’t do late at all. If you have to take an auto to get here on time, do so. No buses please. I can pay the fare for you
, ok?” Again, I mumble a yes. I am seriously lacking in words at this point.

  “Okay then, I’ll see you there. Looking forward to it so much, honey. In fact I have been thinking about this evening all morning and now afternoon.”

  There is a smile in his voice. I am silent. Yes, seriously lacking in words. I hear a click and he is gone. I rub my arms. There are goose bumps everywhere. I have it bad and nothing has actually happened yet.

  Is it he or is it me? Is he good at seducing women or am I good at being seduced by the right words? I don’t know of any “boys” his age who are good at anything like this. They don’t know how. They have no training. Where is he getting his training? Practice makes perfect.

  Has he been practicing? Good god, with whom? Someone I know? God, that would suck like big time. Of course, no pun intended.

  Or is he practicing his skills first on me so he could hone them before going to that other one who he loves madly?

  Is he really a wannabe playboy who has found in my innocent flirting aboard a scooter his playground for some serious playing practice?

  Is he really cutting his playboy teeth on my tremulous, goose bumpy skin because he can and he dares? (Teeth on my skin, hmmm! The thought is delicious and scary at the same time).

  I know what his intentions are—to seduce me—but what after? Is he taking the playing to another level? I really need to know from him what is that level and what that entails for me. I am determined and brave.

  Now I am looking forward to dinner in a different way—not in a breathless-I-don’t-know-what’s-happening-to-me-way-but-I-am-breathless-and-I-want-to-know-what-the-deal-is-friend-kind-of-way. And with that thought I walk to my desk, pick up my bag and head out the door. The date now promised to be so much more, I knew.