Blueprint for Love

by Chatura Rao

  Was it fair on Tarun? She didn’t know. But Tarun now felt that he barely knew her, her nature so much at odds with his, and this angered him.

  He began showing up at her workplace and at the apartment she rented in Khar, demanding she give the marriage another try, but his refusal to give her time to think only strengthened her resolve to break it off.

  When she retreated further into silence, he raged at her on messaging and email, the words so ugly it took her days to get over them. She’d finally had to ask Shiv to come down from Indore to speak with Tarun.

  At the restaurant where the three met, Tarun launched on a tirade against her. Shiv could see that Tarun had had a few drinks, still he lost his temper and the two almost came to blows. Nothing was resolved. Instead Shiv worried that Tarun would physically harm his sister once he’d gone back. He registered a complaint at the local police station.

  The cops visited Tarun’s apartment and warned him to keep away from Reva. He phoned Reva after they left.

  ‘You can have a divorce any time you like,’ he said in a tight cold voice. ‘I tried to get you to move back home because my parents were worried about the gossip and speculation that would follow your absence from their anniversary celebrations. For my part, I’ll be glad to see the last of you. It’s been supremely a . . . boring.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she said, stung.

  ‘Whatever,’ he said dismissively. ‘My lawyer will be in touch.’

  33

  Z

  ahyan bought tickets on the Dee Garibrath that left late, an evening in April. The following day they boarded the Uttar Sampark Kranti from Delhi. They got down at Haldwani station in the Kumaon and boarded a shared tempo that dropped them to Suveer’s village.

  He met them at the head of the lane. His face was different from how they remembered it. He had shaved his beard and although the lines of strain still showed, his eyes had lost some of the sorrow that had lurked there. He smiled widely, embraced Zahyan and took Mahnoor’s hands in welcome. She laughed in delight to actually be here.

  ‘Where’s Bhabhijaan?’ she asked.

  ‘In Mumbai, probably,’ Suveer replied after a pause. ‘Reva is not my wife.’ He glanced at Zahyan for help. Zahyan motioned to a surprised Mahnoor to let it go.

  The air was crisp and clear. Birds swooped and swung between the bushes, trees and lamp posts. They perched on fences and pierced the air with their calls.

  As the men carried the suitcases the short distance to Suveer’s parents’ house, Zahyan could see why he had invited them here. The hills undulated in the distance like slumbering purple guardians silhouetted against a vast open sky; emerald fields that the villagers cultivated stretched for as far as the eye could see; livestock shared the sheds and pens with families of wild mongoose. He felt joy nudge aside some of the exhaustion of the past months.

  They met a couple of neighbours who Suveer greeted and introduced them to. The neighbours said they had heard already about the visitors to their village from Suveer’s mother.

  ‘Did you quit your job?’ Zahyan asked Suveer. He’d seen a post to that effect on Suveer’s Facebook page.

  ‘A day after the feature played on cable TV,’ Suveer confirmed. ‘Did you watch it?’

  Zahyan nodded uncomfortably.

  ‘My intention was to get Mahnoor redressal,’ Suveer began, ‘but the story was re-edited and then circulated. It went all wrong. I don’t know how to make amends . . .’

  ‘You did so much for us,’ Mahnoor broke in. ‘I ask for duas for you and your family every day.’

  They walked along, each wrapped in his own thoughts.

  When Zahyan’s number had flashed on his cellphone two days ago, Suveer had answered to find it was Mahnoor calling.

  ‘Salaam aleikum,’ she’d said as sweetly as ever. His heart had lifted.

  ‘Can Zahyan and I take up your invitation to visit your parents’ home?’

  ‘Of course,’ he’d replied. ‘But come before the summer properly sets in.’

  ‘Can we come in two days?’ she’d asked. That had taken him by surprise but he’d said simply that he would be waiting.

  On a quieter lane off the main road, the three came to the gate of an old two-bedroom cottage with flowering hedges and a mango tree in the front yard. The front door, set a couple of steps up, was open. A woman in her early sixties came out. She was lean. Her skin was ruddy and lined, like the complexion of most women of this region. Her hair was grey. Soft wisps escaped from the neat bun at her nape. From her earlobes hung traditional silver hoops. She wore a lightly printed cotton saree and a smile that reached her eyes.

  Uma stepped off the stairs and took Mahnoor’s shoulders. She looked into her face with affection and humour.

  ‘Welcome home, Mahnoor.’

  ‘Salaam aleikum, Aunty.’

  ‘I’ve heard so much about you from Veeru.’

  ‘I’ve heard some of your stories from him . . . I’ve come to listen to the rest!’

  Uma laughed, exchanging a glance with her son as she did. He’d played his sound feature for his parents. Uma had been horrified by what Mahnoor had been through and was relieved that Suveer hadn’t been worse injured than he was.

  Suveer’s father, as a retired cop, was no stranger to incidents of mob violence. Raghav was secretly proud of Suveer’s courage in coming between Mahnoor and her attackers. In his experience this kind of act was sometimes all it took to turn a bad situation around.

  Mahnoor followed Uma into the house, murmuring a modest salaam when Raghav appeared at the door in his kurta-pyjama.

  He came down the steps to Zahyan and shook his hand, asking him about the journey. He picked up one of the suitcases and carried it rather stiffly into the house, listening politely to Zahyan’s reply.

  Suveer stood with the last remaining bag, alone beneath the thick foliage of the tree. He sensed that something was wrong. Mahnoor looked strained and like she was sleeping too little. Zahyan had grown an unwieldy beard. He had left his loose shirt untucked, his appearence careless where once he’d worn fitting clothes that showed off his lean, muscular build. A strange resolve coiled in eyes darker and more watchful than ever. He did not seem like he was here to rest. Instead he seemed edgy, almost desperate for some inexplicable reason.

  ‘I’ll seat Mahnoor in the train back to Baroda at New Delhi,’ he’d said when Suveer asked about their return plans.

  ‘You won’t be going with her?’ Suveer had asked. Zahyan was usually very protective about Mahnoor. Her family too expected him to accompany her everywhere.

  ‘No, I have some work in Delhi.’

  Zahyan’s secrecy made Suveer uneasy. He wished that Reva, so perceptive, was here to help him read the change in their friends’ mood. He imagined her in her yellow kurta and jeans, the shadows of love and doubt warring in her eyes, and felt a pang of longing, something he hadn’t allowed himself to feel in a long while.

  His mother called his name. He picked up the bag and climbed the steps of the house.

  34

  T

  hey set out at 7 am. April counts among the months of spring hereabouts, Suveer had told Zahyan, but it can get pretty hot in the middle of the day. Uma handed them a packed lunch of puri-sabji on their way out.

  ‘Go on, treat me like I’m still a boy going on a picnic,’ Suveer teased as he tucked it into his knapsack, secretly pleased that some things didn’t change.

  They left the old cottage with its flowering hedges and walked up the road to the bus stop, boarding a local bus ten minutes later, that was heading to Pawalgarh. Zahyan and he got off the bus and walked two kilometers through a section of the tiger reserve to the base of the hill.

  ‘Sal,’ Suveer pointed out. ‘And that’s a silk cotton tree.’

  ‘This water is diverted from the Dabka river,’ he remarked about the clear, fast-flowing stream that ran alongside the road. It carried leaves, twigs and tiny insects doing the back float.

&nb
sp; Zahyan listened but didn’t ask any questions. He seemed quite content to observe the forest: the many birds and few small animals they saw or heard scurrying in the undergrowth along the way. He had never been this far north, nor ever walked in a forest before.

  They reached the top of the hill by 3 pm, a little winded and hungry. Suveer’s knee ached but he didn’t mention it. The golden afternoon light that he’d loved since he was a child was upon everything. On the flat hilltop, yellow and grey grass reached up to their knees and a few short trees cast pools of shadow eastward. The sky was an unending stretch of azure.

  Suveer led Zahyan to a rocky outcrop at the far end to show him the view they had come for. The earth dipped into a deep bowl. Grass began determinedly where the incline got less steep. The fresh red leaves of the kusum tree were as if painted on the surrounding hillsides. Sal trunks were bewigged with small clumps of delicate green foliage, their leanness a contrast to the sturdy trunks, the strong, spreading branches of the silk cotton whose rust-coloured flowers were in full bloom. Spring was evident everywhere in startling viridian green, yet the auburn and yellow-ochre of winter persisted in some places.

  The high whistle of the black kite and the rattle of cicadas punctuated the stillness of the nearly cloudless sky.

  ‘The trees you see on the slopes around us are part of the Pawalgarh reserve forest,’ Suveer pointed out to Zahyan, before he headed back to the shade of a tree.

  Zahyan continued to stand, filling his lungs deeply. The afternoon breeze brought the smell of old wood, dew and grass, smells he distantly recalled as if from another life.

  In another life from among the lives he’d led, came the sound of open palms and fists beating against flesh. And his own harsh breathing as he’d stood and watched an innocent man being abused and thrashed: an act removed from the protector he’d been since he was ten years old, exiled even to himself, and alien to Mahnoor and Suveer who saw him as an honourable man. He closed his eyes in confession and prayer. Allah, mujhe maaf karna . . .

  He exhaled and as he did, was acutely aware of Suveer’s gift to Mahnoor and him–the chance to be here. In the forest, even trunks gnarled and torn grew new shoots and were a home to god’s creatures. Although they’d had to dig into their meagre savings to make it here, he was glad to taste a little peace before he plunged into the mire ahead.

  He turned and went back to Suveer who was sitting against the trunk of the tree, his eyes closed.

  ‘Where will you go from Delhi?’ Suveer asked.

  ‘I will be instructed,’ Zahyan said, sitting down next to him.

  ‘I see. Will you follow every instruction?’

  Zahyan nodded, his mouth set. He had never seemed so vulnerable to Suveer.

  ‘Would you kill . . . my family, if they told you to?’

  Zahyan did not reply but only looked at him, hurt reddening his eyes.

  Suveer was unbearably moved. He touched Zahyan’s shoulder. ‘I’ll accompany Mahnoor back to Baroda . . . you take care, be safe . . .’

  35

  A

  fter breakfast when Zahyan and Suveer had set off for the hill in Pawalgarh and Raghav had gone to the local bank, Uma sat Mahnoor down with a cup of tea on the cot at the back of the house.

  The chai she’d prepared was brewed with jaggery, ginger and lemon grass. Though it contained much less milk than Mahnoor was used to, cradling the steel cup in her hands she enjoyed the earthy flavours. Her hair was tied into a loose braid and locks escaped down to her shoulders. Her dupatta was awry, her salwar loose about her ankles as she sat cross legged on the cot, quite at home.

  A pair of sunbirds was making a grey, cone-shaped nest that looked like an old sock that had been left out to the elements. It hung from a low roof beam in a corner of the porch.

  ‘It’s made from plant fibres and cobweb, pieces of tree bark and flying seeds,’ Uma explained. Mahnoor watched how the dark glossy male hovered protectively as the small yellow female darted in and out of the half-woven nest, assembling twigs and other material he’d fetched into a home.

  Uma had seated Mahnoor as far from the nest as possible, so the birds would not be disturbed, but close enough so she could watch them. She herself took a tray of vegetables to prepare for their lunch and sat on a low stool close to Mahnoor.

  ‘When his father was posted at Ramnagar, Suveer used to ride his cycle all the way to a hill near Pawalgarh,’ Uma reminisced, swiftly peeling potatoes. ‘About seventeen kilometres, I think it was. It is perhaps the same hill he has taken Zahyan to today. He could go long distances on that cycle of his and on his own legs too.’

  ‘He would climb to the top just as the sun turned everything to gold, so he could be part of the moment when the light made everything–even the grey weeds and dark green leaves that were dusty from dryness–shine. We didn’t own a camera, so he’d come home and tell me what he had seen,’ she sighed with pleasure.

  Mahnoor smiled to hear this.

  ‘On one such day he watched the clouds for a long time alone at the top. When he came home, I heard in his description and in his voice, a restlessness, a wish to go away.’

  ‘You must have felt sad,’ Mahnoor said, a knot forming in her throat.

  ‘I did. But I didn’t know then that when someone dear goes away, he ever seeks a path to return by: a better way home. And that friends help him find this path. I told Suveer then, about a similar time in my life. I was a child nearly his age. I’d gone to live with my aunt, Rani Maami in a village called Raikholi.’

  ‘I think Suveer bhaijaan told me a part of that story . . .’ Mahnoor said, ‘about an old doctor of animals who was your friend.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Uma replied, pleased. ‘Dr Meghraj Rawat, who I remember so well even today. Did Veeru tell you what made him so special, so magical?’

  Mahnoor shook her head.

  ‘I fell sick soon after I reached Raikholi and Doctor Rawat made me well. When I was better, my aunt stopped telling me not to go far, so I wandered. I explored the farther reaches of the village, going around the houses, rather than in plain view of them. On the eastern edge I found a thicket of sal and cone trees placed close together but tall and slim against the blue sky. The soil was brownish-purple. This was called the purple hill, Doctor Rawat told me later.

  ‘I came out of the forest into a clearing, to a cottage. It had a tiled roof and a mauve flowering creeper growing around the front door. Beyond the house and its yard, the high hillside dipped into a valley.

  ‘It was breezy and cold, although it was 10 o’clock in the morning and should have been warm. But a cloud seemed to have drifted up and draped itself about me . . . I was nearing the cloud run, although I didn’t know it.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you by and by,’ said Uma. ‘I shivered in my thin sweater. On the top of the hill on the other side I could see a temple. From this hill, it looked about as large as a dollhouse. It was shining white, with red and blue flags running along ropes from the temple’s pointy peak to the ground.’

  ‘A temple?’

  ‘I don’t know if it was a Hindu temple or a Buddhist one …’

  ‘It sounds beautiful.’ Seeing her wistfulness, Uma made a promise, although she knew there was every chance they may never meet again; Mahnoor was from so far away, quite another world. ‘We’ll go there together someday.’

  ‘Inshallah,’ Mahnoor echoed. She took the tray of vegetables from Uma’s unresisting hands to cut the rest.

  ‘When you’ve settled down in a good, safe place,’ Uma placed her hand on Mahnoor’s head in blessing.

  Mahnoor would not meet her eyes.

  ‘You will find a home,’ Uma said softly, with conviction. Mahnoor could not find the words to tell her that that home may never have the steady presence of a husband. They fell silent, both thinking of the unexpected circumstances that had uprooted Zahyan and her.

  A little later as they stood in the kitchen Mahnoor washed the ut
ensils from breakfast while Uma cooked their lunch in her old iron wok. The pressure cooker she’d loaded with daal whistled on the neighbouring burner.

  Through the kitchen window Mahnoor could see the lush green rice fields and fruit orchards that belonged to the neighbours. Uma and Raghav owned no land, except the plot their house was built on. They lived carefully on Raghav’s retirement pension and savings.

  Mahnoor had never met anyone like Uma, so deeply connected to the time of day and to the seasons, who made no sudden moves and never even raised her voice. She could sit still for long stretches, doing needlework, reading a magazine or a novel. Uma was older than Mahnoor’s mother, but was easy to befriend.

  ‘What’s a cloud run?’ Mahnoor prompted. ‘You said you were near the cloud run when you reached the top of the hill.’

  ‘Come with me to my favourite place,’ Uma said, turning off the flame on the gas stove and covering the wok of cooked vegetables. ‘I’ll tell you on the way.’

  As they left the house and walked through the lanes of the village, Uma resumed her story from where she had left off.

  ‘A voice called out to me where I stood at the hill’s edge gazing at the temple. It broke through the bird-pierced silence of mid-morning. “Hello, thrush,” my doctor called from the arched doorway of the house.

  ‘We carried stools from the house and sat in the shade to share some tea he had made. Doctor Rawat, unlike most of the grown-ups I knew, did not ask me questions. He told me, instead, about the villages we could see in the valley below. He was their veterinary doctor, and he told me they thought he had the power to heal and save lives. Many a time he’d brought a goat or a buffalo back from death’s door or seen a cow or a mare through a difficult delivery. They would send him gifts of crop or food, placing them on a wide step in the hillside halfway up to his house at a tiny shrine to the Buddha. This Buddha was called the cloud king.’