Buffering Love

  On his walk, he encountered a bubbling energy that was exaggerated by the thousands of office-goers who were restless to return home. This buzz in the air of people walking busily with mobile phones, the resultant cacophony and the bright lights radiating from skyscrapers was a mélange unlike anything he had experienced.

  While Pune and Gurgaon had people around busy areas, they also had large arid tracts that went on for miles without a person in sight. During his walk, he didn’t encounter anything of the sort. It was a city bursting at the seams with people.

  He reached the venue in under an hour-and-a-half. The set-up inside the massive oval auditorium was nothing impressive at first glance. While the ceiling extended really high, at the centre was a small circular elevated stage. An enormous wavy silk curtain hid everything else behind it. On it, a set of numbers that counted down to 9 p.m. ran in sync with a heavy ominous sound that thudded from the speakers.

  Pervez took a sip of water from his bottle and hoped that the show would live up to its billing. He observed the people in the massive auditorium. Mostly, they consisted of tourist groups huddled together in different sections. There were a lot of couples and families too. The children especially had a sense of awe writ large on their faces.

  Pervez was sitting on an aisle seat close to one of the exits, which he had specifically chosen bearing in mind that in case the show didn’t impress him he could quietly make a retreat. There was a middle-aged family of three seated next to him.

  The music had just started to build up when the man seated next to Pervez waved out to someone entering the auditorium. The other gentleman, an old man with teeth glossier than milk, waved at Pervez’s neighbour fervently. He sauntered up to Pervez and spoke in a flurry of Mandarin. Pervez, a little perplexed at the situation, wasn’t sure what this man wanted as he furiously kept pointing to his ticket.

  After a few seconds of tussle between Mandarin and English, Pervez understood that he was expected to volunteer his seat for another one a couple of rows ahead. Seeing that he didn’t have much of a choice since the family of three also started speaking a little loudly, Pervez gave in. He exchanged his ticket with the old man and took his seat two rows ahead.

  While watching the World Circus sandwiched between people wasn’t Pervez’s idea of spending time in a foreign city, he did notice that he had a very dignified neighbour on his left.

  She must’ve been in her fifties and her salt-and-pepper hair was her most striking feature. Her thin nose and perfectly arranged hair were a dead giveaway that she was a native. Even in the cramped room that the seat gave her, she sat elegantly with her long legs crossed like a designer gracing the front row of a fashion show. In the few seconds in which he sized her up, he imagined her as a gazelle of a runner. Though dressed in a casual blue shirt and black trousers, she exuded beauty from her very being. Even without exchanging any words, Pervez felt overawed.

  A loud trumpet-like sound indicated the show was all set to begin. To relax himself, Pervez leaned back in his seat. The moment he did that, he caught a waft of the most intoxicating fragrance in the world as the tall lady turned her head towards Pervez and smiled. He smiled back.

  The circus for the next one hour featured some of the most nail-biting stunts that Pervez had ever seen. Large rounds of applause rang in after every ten minutes as the performers—some of the best-looking oriental men and women—put their lives on the line to perform gravity-defying acrobatics to the audience’s delight.

  As the show neared its end, a large barrel-shaped wooden circle that hung from the ceiling was lowered further on to the main stage. It looked like the Wall of Death motorcycling stunts that Pervez had seen as a child in some of the carnivals back in New Delhi. This specific cylinder, however, was imposing.

  The first set of three bikers arrived and started riding along the perimeter of the circle to a pulsating music set. It wasn’t anything special yet and Pervez wondered why a famous circle troupe would close a terrific show with such an old, commonplace stunt. The audience, however, perhaps knew better as they started cheering for the three bikers.

  The music picked up beat, as out of the blue three new bikers entered the circle from the top of the ceiling. The audience cheered wildly. To have six bikers in that space was a little maddening to watch, and they didn’t just follow a straight route. They swerved in different directions in the blink of an eye. Clearly, this was way better than what Pervez thought would be the finale and he began enjoying this a lot more. He joined in instinctively, clapping his hands in tandem with the rest of the audience.

  And right then another set of three bikers entered without notice. There was a collective gasp from the audience. This was unthinkable. Pervez involuntarily threw his head back in a burst of surprise. It was all happening so fast and that constant whirring sound only made it the most thrilling experience in the world. He immediately felt someone grabbing at his wrist. It was his neighbour.

  She couldn’t bear to watch this bit. She had turned her face away from the scene of the action and buried it in Pervez’s left shoulder. While this motorcycle stunt was the most jaw-dropping thing Pervez had ever seen, it was her proximity to Pervez and her touch that made him feel like an ounce of butter melting away. He didn’t quite know what to do but instinctively placed his hand over hers. Her hands felt so soft, but all he could hear now were her heavy sighs.

  She sat like that for the next few seconds until the sound of the bikes were overpowered by the thunderous applause of the crowd. By then, her breath had settled into a normal rhythm but Pervez wanted time to stand still. As she lifted her head, their eyes met. Pervez felt a rush of blood in his head. Their pulses now beat in perfect rhythm. She looked at him for what seemed like an eternity until she realized that the two of them were the only ones sitting in an auditorium of thousands of people, all of whom had risen to give the World Circus team a standing ovation.

  The elegant lady and Pervez eventually joined in, albeit a couple of moments later.

  All the performers came on to the stage and acknowledged the cheers that were reserved for them. As the people exited, they couldn’t stop talking to each other in admiration. One didn’t need to understand the language to appreciate the sense of wonderment that pervaded the air. Pervez and his neighbour walked out, matching their steps, yet not a single word was spoken.

  Near the exit, Pervez and the lady found themselves being squished among the others who were trying to make a quick getaway. Pervez summed up all the courage he had to hold her hand and keep her by his side as they found their way out to the main road. To Pervez, her palm belied her age. It felt as soft as a toddler’s. All this while, she kept her head bowed.

  The street by now had completely transformed. A milieu of vendors, in anticipation of the crowd, had lined up with stalls of all kinds of merchandise and street food. Bright and shiny fridge magnets, T-shirts and mugs coexisted alongside freshly roasted shrimp and beef baos. Every inch of space outside the auditorium was invaded by vendors.

  Pervez and his lady companion turned the other way and walked through a couple of busy alleys for the next ten minutes. There was still mayhem on these roads with taxis wheeling in and out in the hope of some late-night surge business.

  In this noise, with both of them holding each other’s hand, Pervez wondered what might be a good topic for starting a conversation. Should he ask her if she knew English? But would that be a better start than him trying to initiate conversation in Chinese? That should crack her up. Never a bad start. His head was going berserk with these questions as they continued to walk through the lanes. He was only here for a week and there was so much to go over with her.

  They reached a slightly quieter lane and Pervez playfully pressed her index finger. She looked at him and responded with a more pronounced grasp on his hand.

  The script of Pervez’s first night in Shanghai couldn’t have been written better. Just then his eye caught the signage of a restaurant called Blue Frog. This was
one of the restaurants that Ravin had recommended. Being the only one on the list with an English name, it was neatly painted in Pervez’s memory. Pervez looked at the lady on his right for her approval, which he got in an instant.

  They occupied a table near the kitchen. Pervez let out a smile and said slowly, ‘I a . . . m . . . P . . . e . . . r . . . v . . . e . . . z.’ . He finally took out his mobile phone and showed her the Google Translate app. ‘ I h . . . a . . .v . . . e Mandarin language o . . . n . . . this . . . Y . . . o . . . u have Goo . . . gle or . . . Or B . . . ai . . . du . . . ?’

  She broke into a laugh that was full of life. These were peals of delight that filled the little private space Pervez shared with this elegant lady in this jam-packed restaurant.

  ‘I don’t know Mandarin. But I can learn. I am a quick learner,’ he said, excited.

  She took both her hands to her lips as if she were making a sign of a kiss. And then held them a little away. She then made a gesture to mean that she didn’t know how to speak. It took a second for Pervez to gather that it was not because she didn’t want to. It was because she couldn’t.

  As Pervez kept the phone aside, he felt that searing pain that Prof. Apte had referred to. It resulted from a woman he had barely shared a laugh with, but one he could’ve waged a war for.

  This story is inspired by the travels of a journalist friend who, for a week, roamed around Hangzhou and Guangzhou in the company of a native female Chinese companion with a fully charged mobile phone and the Google Translate offline pack.

  An Offer to Remember

  After graduating from the National School of Drama, Debbie Malhotra was torn between acting and writing as a career. It would be a while before either of those professions started paying the bills.

  But there was another form of writing emerging furiously in the Indian content creation scene and that was to create lists such as, ‘Top ten reasons why this summer is bad for your pimples,’ or ‘Watch out for these eight things to find out if your boyfriend is eating too much mayo.’ This form of writing, while unintelligent and facetious, could be a good way to rake in the moolah, she figured.

  Debbie knew little about the various players in this industry that relied solely on talent to write click-baity headlines and generate regaling memes day after day. But a friend told her that on top of this pile of companies that competed daily to generate between themselves anywhere between 100 videos and 200 articles a day, there reigned a company called Yours Virally.

  And that’s how on a Monday morning, Debbie found herself in the office of Yours Virally in Andheri West. The editor, Subhashish, had called her in for a meeting after seeing some of her writing samples. Now she was told that he was delayed by an hour.

  Debbie, who had recently been on a series of misfired dates through Tinder, thought nothing of opening the app during daylight hours at an office reception to kill time.

  The first few profiles were easy choices to be swiped to the left. The sixth one that emerged had a crowning description to go with a handsome picture. The name was Riz Khan and the description went:

  I am a man of many seasons. Some that withered away, some that are yet to bloom. Presently, I teach, formerly an assassin in the Army.

  When she snooped around a little for pictures on Riz’s Tinder profile, apart from his bearded face that would’ve found a place in the pantheon of Greek Gods, she saw a Calvin quote, a picture of Riz in an Arsenal jersey and another picture where he stood next to Margaret Atwood.

  She peered into the last picture with special interest and ascertained that this wasn’t a photoshopped picture. Next, she pinched herself and went to her own profile description:

  I am a writer in conflict living as an actress in distress. I get through each day because of all things Calvin, Arsenal and Margaret Atwood.

  This was too good to be true and it knocked the wind out of her. So much so that she was convinced that Riz was an apparition. Being around him or hoping to hear back from him would be nothing short of a disaster.

  No sooner had she swiped right on Riz, than she regretted it. Tinder had an option to go back and unselect your previous option. A thing this perfect could only land her in misery, her depressed writing mind rationalized. As she was about to unselect Riz, she received a pop-up. It read ‘Perfect match’. A message from Riz followed.

  Riz: My flight’s about to take off. I only have an hour before I leave Mumbai for good, but is this really happening?

  Debbie: I knew it. Something had to be wrong about this.

  Riz: Let me call you. Ping me your number here.

  Debbie: No, not right now. What if I am too disappointing for you to have a last unhappy memory of Mumbai.

  Riz: I see we have a drama queen here.

  Debbie: Since everyone would ask you how you met Margaret Atwood, I am going to be a little different . . .

  Riz: You recognized Margaret Atwood in a picture? You’re a keeper!

  Debbie: Who wouldn’t! You don’t tend to attract blind people, do you?

  Riz: I don’t know. No one’s ever caught that. I had a picture with Al Pacino and everyone was raving about it.

  Debbie: Now you are showing off . . .

  Riz: No, I was only bartending back then. Nothing to show off. It’s not as if I acted with him.

  Debbie: So, teacher, assassin and a bartender. How come?

  Riz: I was undercover when I was bartending. And teacher because nothing happens when you are undercover, so I had to do something.

  Debbie: Tell me the Margaret Atwood story.

  Riz: Met her at a dinner. Was a launch event for a book a colleague had written.

  Debbie: What was she like?

  Riz: In one word. Sassy. In two words. Very sassy.

  Debbie: I want to kill you and then go back in time undercover as you.

  Riz: What’s your story?

  Debbie: Lifelong theatre addict. Master’s in contemporary theatre from NSD, Delhi, landed in Mumbai this morning for an interview. And now thinking should’ve done something else.

  Riz: Favourite playwright?

  Debbie: Oscar Wilde and David Mamet. Between them, they’ve all genres covered. Yours?

  Riz: I don’t have any. I only asked the question so I would sound sophisticated and artistic.

  Debbie: Are you always this honest?

  Riz: No, I never mention that I am married on Tinder.

  For the next ten seconds, Debbie wasn’t sure what to type.

  Riz was used to this. Most women were stumped to find a married man on Tinder.

  Riz: I know you want to ask what I am doing on this app if I am married.

  Debbie: No, I couldn’t care less. You are leaving anyway. What good will come of this?

  Riz: That’s a good note to begin a conversation with a stranger. By writing it off from the get go.

  Debbie: Don’t put it on me. But pray tell why you are on the app if you are married?

  Riz: My wife and I are looking for a partner for a threesome.

  Debbie: I am out. Was nice knowing you.

  Debbie wanted to unmatch Riz. But this conversation had a bite to it that she wanted more of. She delayed the thought of unmatching him for ten seconds and closed her eyes and took deep breaths.

  The receptionist, a frail chalk-haired woman, wondered if Debbie was well. She had seen many an interviewee become nervous here in the lobby, but these deep breaths were a first.

  What Riz said next calmed her nerves further.

  Riz: No, silly! I am kidding. About the threesome, not about the wedding.

  Debbie: Why do married men do this?

  Riz: I don’t know about others . . .

  Debbie: But?

  Riz: Long story. I have only ten minutes before I take off.

  Debbie: Shoot.

  Debbie sees Riz typing something for the next ten seconds and no message comes forth.

  Debbie: What are you doing? Type fast. You are on a tight leash on time.

  Riz: Ho
ld on, getting into the plane. Dropped my handbag.

  Debbie: Ooh, did anyone find out about the bomb?

  Riz: Oh, move on with the stereotypes. Give me a minute.

  Riz: I am on the app for a distracting conversation, that’s it.

  Debbie: And why are you leaving town?

  Riz: To begin this life on a new note.

  Debbie: And what is this new note?

  Riz: Setting up a small farm in Mussoorie to grow mushrooms.

  Debbie: You aren’t serious?

  Riz: I am. Nobody in India grows good mushrooms. I am going to change that and supply it to restaurants in Mumbai.

  Debbie: And your wife is moving with you?

  Riz: No, she manages a big business here. We are going to be long distance for some time. Most likely, she will stay in Mumbai.

  Debbie: Now it all makes sense. You are using Tinder as your fail-safe option.

  Riz: I object. I just wanted to have a good old extra-marital fling. Not looking for a fail-safe option.

  Debbie: A fling, huh? Again, full marks for honesty. Why did you swipe on me?

  Riz: Your curls.

  Debbie: My curls? That’s all you have to say to a twenty-three-year-old who is not judging you for being married?

  Riz: Well, you did judge me when I said threesome.

  Debbie: Everyone has their threshold levels. Shouldn’t they? Why would I ever hook up with a stranger couple. What if you guys are ex-convicts who will drug-rape me.

  Riz: Why did you swipe?

  Debbie: You have pictures of the three things that help me get through life. Have you even read my profile? Or did you not go beyond my curls?

  Riz: It was uncanny. Don’t remind me. What are the fucking odds? I feel like getting off the plane just in case it crashes and I never get to meet you.

  Debbie: Hold your horses. Who said anything about a meeting?

  Riz: But can you imagine, we are both like . . .

  Debbie: Do you wanna say siblings?

  Riz: Fuck you. You are a killjoy, you know that right?

  Riz: But you know what I mean. This is a one-in-a-million kind of a thing. We should meet just to get to know each other better. Nothing more, nothing less.