His voice was all amplified and tinny, and his words seemed to echo in the ensuing silence.
Vijay attempted to keep his voice level. ‘What did you say, Dilip?’
‘Sir, all-white deal for fifty-two lakh is not at all easy …’
‘Fifty-two lakh rupees?’ Vijay’s expression as he looked at me was a mask of horror that I was sure mine mirrored.
Dilip went on to say something else, but I had stopped listening. It all fell into place now. He had always said five point two lakh – of course he had meant five point two lakh per acre. I decided this was Vijay’s fault, as usual. He was the one who had started the entire discussion with Dilip. He should have been more careful. He should have been more aware. He should have …
Vijay was saying, ‘Er, Dilip, you know what? We may need to get back to you on this.’
Dilip was taken aback, ‘But sir … the meeting tomorrow?’
Vijay said, ‘Okay bye’ and hung up.
We stared at each other wordlessly, and then the expressions of horror faded as helpless laughter took over instead. Vijay pointed at me and laughed. ‘And you thought five point two lakh rupees was too high … ha ha ha!’
I retaliated by mocking him. ‘What about you? Drinking the water from the borewell, sitting there like some sort of thakur … Haan, yeh paani toh bahut meetha hain … Wah!’
‘Poor Dilip,’ he said once the fit of laughter had passed. We maintained a respectful silence for him for a minute. Then Vijay asked me, ‘So exactly how do you plan to explain this to him?’ He deftly ducked out of the way to avoid the pillow I threw.
Poor Dilip was quite disappointed when Vijay finally called him to explain why we were backing out of the deal. Vijay said that we had consulted with some legal experts and there were apparently quite a few issues with the registration for ownership of agricultural land, especially in Karnataka, and it was not a hassle that we were willing to take on at the current moment. He also added that we had decided we needed to be a bit more practical and purchase a flat before thinking about any other large investments. He thanked him for his efforts and apologized for the wasted time.
Dilip, who seemed to epitomize the expression Nice Guys Finish Last, said that he understood and respected our decision. He also agreed that the registration issue was a real problem in Karnataka if you didn’t happen to be originally from the state, and said it was wise of Vijay to have found out about it. Of course, said Vijay smugly, it was our investment, so we had to look at it from all angles.
After all, it wasn’t like we were stupid.
11
Driving Miss Crazy
It was a pleasantly dull Sunday morning when Vijay turned to me and remarked, ‘I think it’s time you learnt to drive.’
‘Or,’ I suggested, ‘we could get a driver?’
‘Ya, sure! Or maybe,’ said Vijay, ‘you could just learn to drive?’
Vijay had been dutifully transporting me from place to place during the last few months, but he was getting tired of it now. I noticed a lot of the things that he had been willing to do when we were not yet married, he was trying to sidle out of now. I decided to confront him with this.
‘How come you were happy to drive me around earlier, but now have a problem with it?’
He stretched lazily and yawned. He then told me, ‘Ab toh ladki phassa di, na? Ab kyon mehnat karoon?’
‘Aha!’ I cried. ‘This is just like the smoking. You promised you would quit before we got married and then …’
‘Hai rabba, not that again,’ Vijay said in a panicked voice. ‘Didn’t you promise you would use that only once a week, the last time we fought?’
I was silent.
Thus began my driving lessons.
I remembered with some trepidation the driving lessons I had taken while in college, back in Delhi. I had been a mere eighteen-year-old, hopeful and sunny. There was a bored looking instructor who would come by every day with a beat-up old Maruti 800, to give me a half-hour lesson in negotiating the deathtraps otherwise known as the roads of Delhi. The most important feature of these driving-school vehicles was the extra set of brakes on the passenger side, which the instructor, when startled out of his boredom by a bad move on my part, would stomp on, bringing the car to a grinding halt.
Driving was complicated. There were multiple gears, switches, and nothing was labelled properly. When asked to ‘give the right indicator’, I would turn on the windshield wipers. While attempting to turn them off, I would switch the lights on to high beam. I would start to panic and it would all be downhill from there. I could rarely get anything right, and my instructor’s boredom had a tinge of disgust added to it by the end of each lesson.
There was one day that stood out very clearly in my memory – the day of my near-death experience. Okay, it was not really my near-death experience, but that of a silly cow that had plonked itself right in my way. I was speeding along a straight road, no traffic in sight for a change, and this dumb bovine sat in thoughtful repose right in my path. Irritated, I honked and honked but it just did not move. We were almost on top of the thoughtless animal when my bored instructor suddenly snapped out of his reverie and yelled ‘BRAKE!’ In the panic, I promptly pressed the accelerator, but the action was thankfully overridden by my instructor stepping on the brakes on his side with all his weight. The car screeched to a halt inches from the cow who, apparently affronted by this intrusion into her personal space, got up and sauntered away after one condescending look at me.
My instructor was looking at me in disbelief and I preempted him with ‘I kept blowing the horn, but that cow just didn’t move … what could I do?’
I thought I heard his teeth grinding as he said, ‘Why didn’t you just slow down?’
There was absolutely no logical answer to this. I decided to go on the offensive and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me to slow down? You’re the instructor.’
Faced with this regrettable but undeniable truth, the instructor leaned back in his seat and growled, ‘Start the car.’
We drove in silence. I was tempted to remind him that I had definitely improved since the previous week, when instead of slowing down while approaching a speed bump, I had honked repeatedly at it, as if I expected it to flatten out or move elsewhere by the time I reached it. The instructor had been disgusted with me that day too. Safer not to bring it up.
There was an intersection coming up where we had to take a right turn, and this time I was determined to impress the man by doing it just right. I carefully re-adjusted my mirror to the precise angle in order to gauge the traffic behind me. Well in time, I switched on the indicator to show the other drivers behind me that I was planning to turn to the right. As I approached the intersection, I released the accelerator gently and pressed the brake, slowing to just the right speed. I smoothly changed the gear from third to second. And I didn’t even stall the car!
I had carried out the whole operation within a matter of seconds without a single mistake and without even breaking into a sweat. I grinned triumphantly at my instructor, expecting to hear the praise I rightfully deserved.
‘Very nice,’ he remarked sardonically. ‘But you forgot to take the right turn!’
I was sullen for the rest of the drive home, feeling discouraged. I discontinued my classes soon after that day. Possibly, the driving instructor discontinued his career soon after, too. I would have if I were him. Thankless job, really.
So I really could not be blamed for the trepidation I felt now, as I took my place behind the wheel after so many years of having successfully avoided it. Vijay tried to calm me down, saying it would be just fine, and it was just a matter of my developing a little confidence.
He guided me through the basics. ‘Okay, just adjust the seat to a comfortable position … your legs are very short … I mean compared to mine, of course … Is the mirror okay? … No, stop checking your own face in it, you look fine … Now, remember … this is …’
‘I know, I remember,’ I
said with a touch of excitement as I pointed them out. ‘A-B-C … Accelerator … Brake … Clutch.’
‘Very good,’ said Vijay, but uncertainty was creeping into his voice. ‘Except that it’s right-to-left and not left-to-right. That’s kind of important.’
‘Oh yeah, you’re right. I remember now,’ I said and gulped.
‘What’s wrong?’
I took a deep breath and tried to fight the panic rising in my throat. ‘It’s just that … I just noticed this car doesn’t have a brake on the passenger side …’
‘It will be fine,’ he said soothingly. ‘Let’s go.’
That was my cue to show him my stuff, and I instinctively fiddled with a few things to start the car. To my surprise, I remembered how to do it – apparently it was like riding a bicycle, you never forgot it.
So I revved up the engine and off we went – for about two seconds before I stalled the car. I kept trying, but somehow I just could not ease my foot off the clutch smoothly enough and the car kept stalling.
‘Ha ha,’ I said, my voice catching. ‘Little rusty.’
I tried once more and failed. In frustration, I remarked, ‘This is difficult. Not just anyone can do it. They should have a test.’
‘They do,’ he reminded me. Something occurred to him. ‘Hey, just how did you pass your test? You have a valid driver’s license, right?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I passed my test because in the written part, they asked a series of questions on road signs and traffic rules and I had mugged it all up very nicely. Then they just made me drive forwards and backwards … yes, I know it’s called reverse … and I somehow managed it that day.’ My voice became defensive, ‘I can drive a little, you know, it’s just that I’m out of practice now.’
‘And practice is what you’re going to get,’ he said with determination. ‘Try again.’
Eventually, I managed to get the car going again and powered by a series of small jerks, we moved towards the main road.
‘I’m driving!’ I said with glee.
Vijay was all business. ‘Look at the road.’
I snapped back to attention.
When we reached the main road, I stopped.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘The road is all clear.’
‘I’m not going out there,’ I cried. ‘There’s traffic on this road.’
‘Honey, the only way you’ll get comfortable driving is by getting used to traffic. Come on, take a right turn here, let’s go to Indira Nagar.’
Muttering that he would regret this, I did what he said. We somehow managed to make it to the intersection just before Indira Nagar when suddenly the memory of failing to take the turn at the intersection during my driving lessons hit me, just like a flashback from a Hindi movie. I broke into a cold sweat and prayed fervently that I would not stall the car. Anything but stalling the car.
I stalled the car.
Within five seconds, what felt like all the vehicles in Bangalore were bearing down on us, honking angrily. I was glued to my seat, looking around dumbly, unable to move. Vijay was saying something in an urgent tone to me, but I couldn’t hear him. The icing on my panic attack was the fact that an angry traffic cop was now approaching. Before he could start shouting at me, Vijay opened his door and stood up with one foot still inside the car, explaining to him that I was just learning. The traffic cop said that I should go and learn somewhere else and Vijay said we were just going.
I regained my senses and started the car and eased it forward smoothly. The little detail that I did not take into account was that my husband was still in conversation with the angry cop, and half of him – head, shoulders and one leg – were still outside the car. He was hanging on to the car door for dear life as he found himself suddenly being dragged along the road in this awkward position. I only braked when I became aware of his panicked screams. I looked at his face as he bent down to glare at me, his expression shocked and disbelieving. I gathered he would live and tried to make up for my little boo-boo by giving him a winning smile. It didn’t work.
‘Move over,’ he barked at me. ‘I’m going to drive.’ He detached himself from the car door. Something seemed to occur to him and he hissed at me, ‘Do not drive over me. Touch nothing.’
Just to be safe, he circled over to my side from the rear of the car. I dully moved over to the passenger side. The cacophony of honks and angry shouts outside had reached near-deafening levels, but I was now only aware of the fact that I had nearly killed my husband. Completely unintentionally. And so soon after marriage, too.
‘So … are we getting a driver?’ I ventured later that evening at home, after a nice cup of tea had calmed us both down.
‘No,’ said Vijay decidedly. ‘I’m going to teach you, even if it kills me.’
I wisely kept to myself the thought that that was no longer just a figure of speech, but assented to further driving lessons, figuring that nothing could be worse than today.
To my surprise, over the next few weeks of sustained practice under his watchful guidance and terse instructions, I actually became comfortable with driving.
After a couple of months, I personally began to consider myself a bit of a pro although Vijay did not seem to concur, often snapping at me, ‘Did you see that car coming up in the rear view mirror?’ or ‘Did you notice that pothole you barely avoided?’
I always snapped back, ‘Of course, what do you think?’ But I was usually lying.
I even began to drive myself to office and back whenever Vijay was out of town. In fact, were it not for the fact that I had absolutely no sense of direction, I would have driven myself everywhere I wanted to go.
12
The Ladies Man
‘Did I ever tell you about my school and college girlfriends?’ Vijay asked, a faraway, wistful look in his eyes.
‘Yes, Vijay,’ I rolled my eyes. ‘Several times. There were only like, three, you know.’
Vijay hadn’t had too much success with romance in his early years. He related these tragic stories to me in the clear hope of arousing some sympathy, but it was the comic side that shone through for me.
Enemy no. 1 of his attempts at romance was his older sister Shyama didi, who nipped the first of these cruelly in the bud.
At the tender age of fifteen, Vijay was delighted one day to note that they had new neighbours and one of the daughters of the new-family-on-the-block was his age. She was fifteen, she was a girl and she was next door – three things that qualified her immediately for the perfect and natural choice for his first romance.
Vijay spent unusual amounts of time each day hanging around in his garden, hoping to start a conversation over the fence. He was eventually successful and the young girl Bindu was quite taken with the gangly youth that Vijay was, and they struck up a firm friendship over the fence.
Of course, Vijay had to be careful that no one from his conservative family got wind of this relationship. He thus enlisted his friend Dhruv to play the part of Lookout. While Vijay whispered sweet nothings over the fence to blushing Bindu, Dhruv lurked in the background keeping an eye on the house so that if someone came out, Vijay could be adequately warned.
It would have been better perhaps if they had established beforehand what they would actually do in case such a situation arose. One day, as Vijay was romancing his lady love, Dhruv spotted Vijay’s mother, ubiquitiously called Mummy by everyone who knew her, coming out of the house. Dhruv panicked and started jumping up and down, shouting, ‘Mummyy … Mummyyy …’ in a nervous, high-pitched voice. Vijay and Bindu stopped talking and stared at Dhruv as he pranced around the garden, giving the distinct impression that he was suddenly pining for his mother. It was lucky that Mummyji herself stopped in her tracks at the doorway, sufficiently distracted by this spectacle, giving Vijay enough time to put some distance between himself and his young love and pretend to be studiously examining the leaves on some plants instead. Mummy remarked later at dinner that perhaps Dhruv was not quite all right in the h
ead and suggested Vijay make some new friends.
The romance, alas, was doomed in any case. One day, Vijay made the mistake of putting his feelings on paper in the form of a love letter for Bindu. When Shyama didi entered his room, she was curious to see what he was writing, since Vijay was never spotted at his books outside of school. She asked him what he was doing and he refused to answer her. When she made a grab for the letter, an indignant Vijay ran out of the room with it. Realizing that she was determinedly giving chase, he ducked out the front door, tore up the letter into tiny pieces and threw them beyond the garden fence. He then gave his sister a triumphant look before walking off – he would have to recompose his letter but he had at least shown Shyama didi that it didn’t pay to interfere with his life.
Shyama didi showed a great deal of patience and dedication in this matter. She went about assiduously gathering as many of the pieces of the torn paper as she could find and then painstakingly put them together like a jigsaw puzzle, using cellotape as an aid. Once she had read enough of the letter to confirm her suspicions, she lay in wait for him. Since she was eight years older than Vijay and protective of him, she felt it was only right for her to give him what was coming.
And what was coming to poor hapless Vijay was one of the most resounding slaps on his face that he had ever received in his life.
As he stood in numb silence in their living room, holding his reddening cheek with the echo of the slap still bouncing off the walls, Mummyji came in and asked them what on earth was going on. Shyama didi was too loyal to rat on Vijay and didn’t want to scandalize their pious Mummyji with the nefarious deeds of her son, so the two of them just stood there mumbling and looking at their feet, and the matter was eventually let go of. As was poor, innocent, heartbroken young Bindu.
It was in college that Vijay met his second girlfriend – a girl called Vidya.
Vijay studied, if the term be used in the loosest possible sense, at the illustrious IIT-Delhi. Most of the students at this institute were males, whose sole means of interacting with members of the opposite gender was through the ‘Social’ – an eagerly awaited occasional event where girls from other colleges would be invited for a dance party. Vidya from Jesus and Mary College made her appearance at one such event.
JUST MARRIED, PLEASE EXCUSE Page 7