by Chatura Rao
Zahyan stood for a moment, nonplussed, his thumb hovering over the power button. Then he put the phone still switched off carefully into his pocket. He went to the caretaker who was sitting on the chair under the tree in the outer courtyard.
‘I’ll take your leave, sir,’ he said.
‘Did you get a little rest?’ the old man teased gently. Zahyan had slept for nearly four hours.
‘I did. It’s quiet here.’
‘This dargah draws the lost ones to itself to spend a moment with their truth,’ the old man said.
‘I am . . . I feel healed.’ After a brief pause Zahyan asked, ‘Is it stupid to think this?’
‘The world is an illusion, son. If you feel you are healed, then you must be,’ the caretaker shrugged, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
‘Thank you,’ Zahyan said.
‘Khuda haafez,’ the old man echoed, raising his gnarled hands in blessing.
Zahyan took a few notes from his wallet. ‘Nazrana–?’ The old man indicated an iron donation box against the wall a few feet away. Zahyan went over and tucked the notes into the slit in its lid, pushed them securely in.
With a small wave to the old man, he went out through the green doorway. He walked quickly south along the road flanking Humayun’s Tomb. The iron gate was open. He turned right and retraced his way through the parking lot of the railway station, heading south where just a few hours ago he had gone northwards.
I’ll buy a ticket on the next train back, he planned, almost running now. Back to Baroda–to Mahnoor and to their baby.
To the south, where Mahnoor was, lay home.
38
S
uveer settled Mahnoor into her flat and took a late flight back to Delhi. He travelled back to his village the next day, staying another month with his parents where he worked hard on feature proposals to pitch to various news channels and portals.
He moved back to Delhi. He worked independently, based out of his apartment, creating sound and multimedia features using equipment he’d bought as well as hiring gear and technical support whenever required. The days were satisfyingly busy. The months passed quickly. Suveer paid another visit home in August when his father needed to get a cataract procedure done.
When Suveer had first returned to Delhi from Gandhinagar in March, he would look up Reva’s Facebook page regularly for news of her. But she posted nothing.
Then in June she posted pictures of her brother, father and herself from a visit she’d made to Indore. In September she went trekking in Nubra Valley, Ladakh. There was a picture among her posts of herself with a man on a hilltop. He had an arm around her. They were laughing, squinting into the silver sunshine. She looked beautiful, her long hair escaping from under the red-and-white woollen cap and flying across her face and neck. She seemed happy with her friend or husband, whoever he was.
Suveer did not like the drift of his thoughts that were fast descending into speculating about her life–jealously so. He did not want to replace his memories of her with these. He did not look up her Facebook page again.
In the last week of October there was an email.
Hi Suveer,
You haven’t written to me like you do each year. So I’m taking the liberty to ask: will you meet me to bring in Aboli’s birthday? I’m in Mumbai. Where, on Google Maps, is a place halfway between you and me? J
Reva
Suveer spent a couple of days asking himself if he wanted to meet her at all. It had been a long relationship, impossible to qualify. She’d passed from being a quasi-sister to a friend to a lover, with shades of rescuer in between. Now she was none of these. It would probably be best to let it go.
Hi,
How have you been?
I’m in the middle of a project. Doubt I can make it for Aboli’s birthday this year. Sorry.
He paused his curser over the Send button. He recalled the feel of her cheek against his when he lay half-conscious in the ward of the Government Civil Hospital. How relieved he’d been that she was at his side. He deleted the message he’d typed and began again.
Hi Reva,
Halfway between you and me is a city called Bina. It’s two hours ahead of Indore and connected to Mumbai by rail. Come on November 3rd. I’ll make sure to get there earlier so you are not alone when you arrive.
Suveer
39
R
eva stepped off the train on to a medium-sized station platform. There were quite a few people around, many waiting to board the next train but she spotted Suveer immediately. He stood by a magazine stall about fifty metres away, in a light blue shirt and jeans. His hair was cropped short. He seemed to have lost weight. He was looking directly at her, as if he’d known exactly which spot on the platform she’d descend at.
Suveer stood where he was, waiting for her to come over to him. She looked better than he remembered. Certainly the worry had gone out of her face. She wore a V-necked maroon kurta over jeans and carried a small blue knapsack. As he reached to take her bag off her shoulder, she put her arms around him in the embrace of old friends.
‘Hello,’ Suveer mumbled.
‘Hi,’ she said softly.
As they walked out to an auto stand, he asked formally about her journey over and she told him, laughing, about a fellow passenger who had snored fit to wake the whole train.
‘There’s a village called Eran about a hundred kilometres from here that has a group of ancient temples,’ he explained in the rickshaw on route to the hotel he’d checked them into. ‘It’s on the banks of the Bina river. Would you like to go there to cut the cake?’
‘Sure. But you’ve got to promise not to ask that I go for a swim in the river afterwards,’ she said lightly. He didn’t reply, watchful, almost wary of her. She looked out at the passing streets with a sinking feeling.
He’d probably thought about her over the months they’d been apart and resented her silence, she reflected, feeling weary suddenly of the baggage that weighed every relationship down, even one that had been free of labels.
‘Of course he wants to celebrate Aboli’s birthday at an archaeological site! We’re all about things from the past that we deliberately dig out each November.’ But she rued the thought even as she had it. Holding a friendship so fragile to the harsh light of cynicism would destroy all that Suveer and she had ever honoured together.
At the hotel she found she had a separate room. He had clearly not taken it for granted that they would resume where they’d left off.
When she’d checked in he would not let the hotel staff walk her to her room.
‘It’s right next to mine. I’ll walk you.’
As he led her down the corridor, Reva wanted to ask, was he angry with her for returning to Mumbai when she did? Was he upset about her eight-month-long silence? She didn’t know how to begin explaining what she’d gone through with Tarun. She wanted none of that bitterness to touch Suveer. He’d been part of the kinder chapters of her life, shared long days of playing, loving . . . grieving.
Suveer handed her her bag at the door.
‘Won’t you come in?’
‘You should rest. You’ve had a long trip over.’
She took his hand, their fingers automatically locking together, and drew him in. She told him that she and Tarun had parted ways after she returned to Mumbai.
‘Was it difficult?’ he asked, concerned. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Reva said.
‘I could have helped . . .’
‘Suveer, I did not want a shoulder to cry on, nor help coping with my loneliness, or fear of starting over.’
‘So proud, Reva?’
‘No, not pride. I want to only be happy with you.’
The tension left his frame as she stepped close. They kissed passionately till she pulled away.
‘I’ll be ten minutes.’
Taking a top and a skirt out of her rucksack, Reva went into the bathroom to shower.
Suvee
r sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. The room was on the first floor of the hotel. It had a wide window that overlooked a courtyard comprising two young trees and a few flowering bushes. There was no one out there in the mid-morning sunlight. It was all quite ordinary, but he knew he would remember this moment . . . the sheer relief of seeing her again.
She had her doubts; he’d noticed the shadow in her eyes that even the light banter she’d maintained from the station over hadn’t quite managed to hide.
Would Aboli have wanted us to be together? She’d ask the question she could no longer skirt.
I don’t know, Suveer would have answered, drawing her close to hold his cheek against her’s.
Do you still love her? Reva would ask then, her eyes searching his.
Don’t you, he’d have answered. Reva would have breathed, always.
He’d have run his fingers through her curls as she rested her head against his shoulder, her face warm in the curve of his neck. She’d have asked if he wanted a woman in his life.
Are you asking me? He’d have grinned.
I don’t know, she’d have admitted. I’ve been alone, my own master, for some time now.
You can be my master, he’d have teased, nuzzling her neck at the spot he knew was ticklish so she’d laugh . . . let go of her last misgiving.
But it was not to be this way. He couldn’t answer the questions she wasn’t asking. Her doubts, he thought, might remain with them like the shadow of a house long gone.
***
Reva emerged from the shower, not in the clothes she’d taken in with her. She’d draped a towel under her arms. It covered her till mid-thigh. Suveer’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of her soft scrubbed face, hair trussed up in a loose knot, her long neck and legs, and the shadowy cleft between her breasts.
She came over to where he sat and he drew her into his lap. He kissed her slowly, savouring the cool taste of water in her warm mouth. She kissed him back, moving her fingers over his face and ears and cropped hair.
When she couldn’t breathe anymore, she stood up and they moved to the centre of the room. She helped him take off his sweater. She unbuttoned his shirt and edged it off.
Her fingers went to his hips to touch the skin beneath the waistband of his jeans, and the crinkly hair just below his navel. He nuzzled the edge of her lips and bit her cheek gently. She nibbled at his ear and he moved in closer. She cradled him standing, between her thighs. He walked her slowly backwards to the bed. Her eyes would not leave his.
When she was lying on her back, he smiled to himself and unwrapped the towel like it was the wrapping of a gift, his gift. Running his palms down her body, over the swell of her breasts and their small dark aureoles, he parted her thighs and moved low.
They lay facing each other when he entered her. Tears spilt from her eyes. He kissed them and she tasted them on his lips. Gently, so gently, he moved in her.
In a strange room in this unknown town, Reva felt herself come to the threshold of a dream. She didn’t know if they would stay together. He was quite settled in his ways and she was just discovering hers.
But here, now, together, Suveer and she drafted a space for home, one she’d longed for so many years of her life. On pages of loneliness, empty sheets with frayed margins, they traced it out in clear lines: a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, the bedroom with large windows . . . to let in light and air and a sense of belonging.
Acknowledgements
This story was written over four years, the earliest draft dredged from the joy and sorrow of growing up in the home of my childhood.
My editors Himanjali Sankar and Diya Kar Hazra recognized the tree hidden in the seed and wrote emails nearly every month urging me to draw out the short story I’d submitted, into a novel.
Each friend who read the intervening drafts said, in his or her own way, that this story has truth and scale far greater than I imagine it has.
Draft after draft was watered and pruned by these folks, who took the time to step into the story’s shade, climb its branches . . . live here for a time. They pointed out the places where growth was stunted. They imagined greater depths for its roots to plumb, strong and shapely directions for the plot, and new skies it could reach for.
I’m ever grateful to Jerry Pinto, Faiza Khan, Anubhuti Kashyap, Firoz Ustad, Annie Zaidi, Shankar Mony, Ashutosh Pathak, Himanshu Mehra, Abhinav Kashyap, and Sudha Rao.
About the Author
Chatura Rao’s first book was The Case of Disappearing Colour, a children’s fantasy novel. Nabiya, a picture book, and Growing Up in Pandupur –short stories co-written with Adithi Rao– are her other books for children.
Her first novel for adults was Meanwhile Upriver.
Chatura is also a freelance journalist. She conducts creative writing workshops at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, and is the curator of the Chandigarh Children’s Literature Festival. She blogs at https://storybed.wordpress.com/