by Annie Zaidi
‘And you? Are you saying “no” too?’
She stood in the kitchen, swaying slightly on bare feet. She watched Ma’s pudgy, tremulous mouth, watched her warm up some leftovers for dinner. She pressed the cell phone against the side of her neck.
‘He is asking. He is asking a question,’ she said. ‘Ma, listen, he is asking.’
Ma stirred the pan with one hand and turned over a paratha with the other. Then she limped to the dish rack for a plate, hobbled back to the stove. She said nothing.
She watched her mother, and thought of toast dripping butter, of throwing up, of bedsheets in red-and-black checks. She thought of queues at railway stations, public phones, bellboys. She thought of armchairs and dust. And she said ‘Yes’.
LOVE STORY # 6
(aka The one that was foolish)
They were married in June (to different people, of course), and it felt like things were falling into place.
He wanted to be married. She wanted to be married. He wanted to be married soonish. She wanted to be married sooner than soonish, but would have settled for soonish if it came to that. Both were in a hurry to find someone.
He wanted a large, airy house with a dog, and a kitchen with a red ceiling. She wanted a large, airy house with a kid. She was not violently opposed to kitchens with red ceilings, but she preferred whitewashed stone walls. He liked to sit up late at night with a glass of something finely distilled, not actually talking so much as enjoying the fact that he was up late, talking. She liked to stay up, talking non-stop.
If anybody knew that they had known each other for years, they would have been screamed at for not getting married at once. To each other. If they had had common friends, their friends would have suggested it. But they had no common friends. They didn’t like the chaos of intersection.
Perhaps, it was their love of order and familiarity that kept them apart. It was easy. They were friends. Why disturb such a neat assumption? He knew how she looked after a two-hour commute in the rush hours. That she struggled with a fish knife and couldn’t use chopsticks. She knew how he looked in a rumpled formal shirt hanging untidily over his belt. How he refused to touch food with his hands. She didn’t want to make him handle food like she herself did. He didn’t want to see her in her underwear.
Or perhaps, the thought had crossed their minds. It would have been unnatural if it hadn’t. He was calling her once a day. Touching base, as he did with his own family. She had taken to reserving Friday and Saturday evenings, asking if he wanted to make plans together. He had started telling her his fantasies. She took his advice when they went shopping. He took it for granted that she would eat out with him rather than at the canteen, if he happened to drop by her office at lunchtime. She took it for granted that he would drop her back home, no matter what time of night it was.
So, yes, perhaps they did know that this was just a little bit more than friendship. Perhaps they spent a year struggling with a blotch of sadness on their hearts, wondering why they couldn’t find other people to date.
Then, one day, a colleague asked her when she was planning to start a family. It dawned on her then – everyone assumed that she was already married. Of course! This was why none of the men in her office had expressed any interest. She’d been acting like a married woman. Talking to the same man every day, sometimes even twice or thrice a day. Talking about him all the time. Watching movies, going to jazz restaurants with him. Dropping all prior plans to make last-minute plans with that one man.
This wouldn’t do, she told herself. Nonono. If she spent all her time and energy on a male friend, how would she ever find someone to marry? So the next time they met, in her usual direct fashion, she told him that they were spending too much time together. That he should find a girl and she needed to find a husband.
He was taken aback. But what could he say? And now that she had said it, it was clear to him that she was right. She was the reason he was failing so badly in the romance department. So they both went home . . . well, if not happy, at least enlightened.
Perhaps they wondered if there was a possibility – the two of them. But they rebelled against the idea. Nononono. They had invested too much in each other to risk losing what they already had.
Besides, they had dreams. He wanted a certain kind of girl. His kind of girl. Somebody with light eyes and pale brown hair (perhaps a dull gold) and small, perfectly pert hips. He didn’t have the rest of the details pencilled in, but certainly the girl would have to have a clear, tinkly laugh, and an appetite for beer. Not that he liked beer. He preferred whisky. But a girl who drinks beer suggested something to his mind – an appetite for life, or a desire to fit in, drink like the boys. He wanted a girl who wanted to fit in.
She was not a drinker of beer. And she kept her hips covered – always kurtas and jeans – for a very good reason.
Besides, she too had a certain kind of guy in mind. Intense, black eyes. A rich, brown complexion. Tall, with thick, wavy hair. Ideally, her husband would not drink at all. She herself could drink a whole bottle of wine once she got down to it. But the idea of a marriage where the wife drinks and the husband doesn’t appealed to her. She was also very sure she didn’t want to live with a joint family. Her husband needed to have his own flat.
He lived with his parents in a tiny flat and shared a bedroom with a younger brother. Besides, he was quite fair, even by north Indian standards. And he refused to eat at restaurants that didn’t have a liquor licence.
So they knew they were a mismatch. And they signed up on Shubhvivaha and Bharatmatrimony, respectively.
He reminded himself that most business plans take a year to go from idea to ready-for-execution, assuming you are serious about the project. So he worked hard at this idea of the girl he wanted to marry. He sifted through endless profiles. He met at least fifty women on Sunday evenings. The fifty-first girl turned out to have most of the qualities he was looking for. Hair, pale copper-brown; small hips in tight jeans; large, greyish eyes. When he suggested a drink before dinner, she opted for beer. Within a week, his mind was made up. The wedding was fixed for June.
As for her, she didn’t know how to execute business plans. Marriage was what other people did to you. So she let her father short-list the eligibles. It came down to a choice of three candidates who had good jobs. Of these, one was tall, dark, with a head full of thick hair. He was nine years older and had specifically requested a non-drinking bride. She shrugged it off, thinking it was not necessary to reveal absolutely everything right now.
She wanted to be married in April, when the weather was pleasant, but her future in-laws insisted on waiting until June, so that their three married daughters would be able to attend the wedding. She had to wait until after the school exams of her future nieces and nephews-in-law.
She called her best friend, abused him in a good-natured way, invited him to her wedding, only to find out that he was getting hitched three days before she was.
She began to scream. How was he going to help with her wedding if his own would take all up his time? He didn’t abuse her back. He only teased her about wanting to prove a point by getting married at the same time as him. They decided to meet again.
Newly confident about indulging in naughty talk, now that both had engagement rings and weddings round the corner, she teased him about his fifty dinner dates. How did he decide so quickly that he would not like to see the same woman again?
He blushed, but decided to tell the truth. He decided on the strength of their butts. He waited until they stood up to leave. If he didn’t like what he saw, he never called them again. His fiancée, though, had perfect buttocks. So he called her again, and on the second date, he proposed.
She laughed at him then. She told him that tight jeans helped to give the impression of a better shape; that’s the point of them. He may well be disappointed.
He shrugged and declared that he would find out soon enough. If the bride didn’t measure up, he would look elsewhere. There was
this other website, where women put up photographic evidence of their relevant charms.
It was a joke. Nevertheless, a shred of doubt crept into his mind. He had no experience of women’s jeans, much less their buttocks. His ideas about women’s bodies came from magazines, swimsuit special calendars. In photos, mostly of foreign models or actresses in thongs, all butts looked more or less alike. What, then, was the perfect butt? And what about her hair? Would he really care so much about gold tints? He had not thought about what to do if a real woman was in bed with him and he found that he was disappointed. And worse, what if his own body disappointed the woman?
This thought gnawed at the fringes of his newfound joy. It forced him to think of all his difficulties – frustrating encounters with women in jazz bars, not being able to pick up anyone, not being able to watch porn peacefully in his own bedroom because his family didn’t encourage locked doors. He grew afraid that his married life would resemble his current bachelor life. For all he knew, he might never even get to look at his future wife’s buttocks. He had heard stories of how some wives insisted on turning off the lights before they took off their clothes. He began to feel sorry for himself.
It would have been a lovely courtship if he could muster up the courage to tell his fiancée that he wanted to sleep with her before the wedding. But he was afraid the engagement might be called off. She might tell her family, who might complain to his family. There would be further humiliation.
As these thoughts came crowding into his head, he shut his eyes and reminded himself to stay positive. Then it was June, and he was married. Three days later, she was married too.
In the last few hectic days, while they were still single, they escaped for one last Saturday night out. Just the two of them.
It was incomprehensible, of course. This idea of one last Saturday night. They would keep meeting; there would be many such Saturday nights. Of course they would go out on lunch dates and weekend matinee shows, with or without their spouses in tow. They promised themselves. Yet, that’s what it felt like. Their last Saturday night.
Several times, he seemed to be on the verge of saying something. Nothing as dramatic as confessing to having toyed with the idea – the two of them. But he wanted to tell her that he was afraid. What if his fiancée refused to take off all her clothes? He wanted to confess that his fixation for light eyes, pale hair, perfect butts was only the result of having looked at too many foreign models on swimsuit calendars. It was a familiar image, not a real desire. He recognized that now. He even considered confessing that he had taken to buying cheap, local porn where the models were either dark or fat, or both. But he had been disappointed because the camera emphasized the breasts, not the butt.
But he didn’t say any such thing. He sat there with a glass of whisky, and watched her put away a bottle of a cheap, sweet wine. Both had lied at home about where they were going. He had mentioned a bachelor party. She had mentioned a late-night movie with some girls from office.
He noticed that she had begun to wear make-up. There was silver on her eyelids. She noticed that he had a new habit – running his hand over his chest, over and over, as if his heart was aching.
A few days later, both were married. They attended each others’ weddings, and then they didn’t meet for nearly four months.
He was at a new Japanese restaurant, waiting for a client. She walked in, alone. They saw each other, and for the first time, they shook hands. Both would have preferred a warm hug that afternoon. But neither could get past a surprise note of awkwardness.
She was waiting for her husband, and for a table. He asked her to sit at his table until the waiter found another. They may as well catch up.
She had quit her job. She regretted it. He had moved jobs. He suspected that he would soon regret it. He had put on a little weight and had taken to wearing glasses instead of contact lenses. Just too much trouble, he explained. She had lost weight. Her eyes stood out in her face and her chest had begun to look rather flat.
He asked if she had been ill. She shrugged. Nothing, just adjusting to a new life, she explained.
He wondered whether there were so many adjustments to be made, but didn’t ask. Instead, he took in each detail of her face, the angle of her elbows on the table, what she did with her fingers.
She asked, carefully, if he was well, biting back the word ‘happy’ at the last second. Before he could answer, his client arrived, and she quickly moved to another table.
His meeting went badly, anyway. He was disinterested in his client, and focused all his energy on not looking at her. He had seen her husband arrive. They had been introduced very briefly at the wedding reception. The man who had seemed a cocky, self-absorbed bridegroom now appeared to be a prissy, self-absorbed husband.
He was secretly disappointed at her choice of husband, but he was also secretly pleased. Then he was ashamed. He watched their table from the corner of his eye. She seemed to be spending a lot of time looking at the menu, or peering into the soup bowl, or moving things around on her plate, or gazing into her glass of water. No laughter.
After his client left, he came over to her table to say hello to her husband. They shook hands again, and there was something in her look that he couldn’t decipher. Not then. But late that night, he lay on his back, recalling her face and the way she had said ‘bye’, and he knew.
He called her on a Friday morning. Lunch, he suggested, if she couldn’t step out for dinner. She hesitated for a second and a half. Then she decided: dinner. Jazz. Whisky. He took off his glasses and switched to contact lenses.
Over dinner, she confessed that her husband – the tall, dark boy of her dreams – used fairness creams. He confessed that his wife wasn’t really a beer-drinker; she ordered beer because it was the only thing she knew how to order without feeling stupid.
They laughed. She tossed back her hair and, still laughing, enquired about his wife’s backside, whether it measured up to his high standards. He wasn’t complaining. But he couldn’t say whether he was really lucky or not – not until he had managed to position himself five inches from a foreign blonde model in a thong. Then he could compare properly. She wondered aloud, why five inches? He explained he couldn’t see if he went any closer. She laughed again. Then suddenly she went very quiet.
They were both drinking whisky. She refilled her glass and said that, sometimes, she just wanted cuddling. It wasn’t much to ask, was it? He said it wasn’t. But she could just ask for it, couldn’t she? She said nothing, then she took a large gulp of her drink, and said that perhaps her husband didn’t like her. Not very much.
It was at that moment that he started to wonder what his best friend looked like under her clothes.
She gazed into her glass for a long time before she finally asked why. She didn’t need to say the rest. He understood what she was asking him. He said he had gotten very tired and very afraid. After fifty dinners, he thought he might never find his dream girl. She herself was talking about narrowing it down to one of three men. What else was he to do?
She said it didn’t make sense. No, he agreed.
Their drinks were almost gone. She poured the last bit out into her mouth. He told her to take it easy, to eat. She was going to get very drunk. She said, yes, she was. Indeed she was. And she asked for another round. Then she asked if he would drop her home. He slapped her arm lightly, as if to say the question was irrelevant, insulting even.
Then he called his wife and said he was going to be home late, don’t wait up.
LOVE STORY # 14
(aka The one that stepped off a broken-down bus)
The loss of my new grey-blue North Stars was the final blow-dart. I was convinced that fate had it in for me, that I was going to die. Indeed, why else was I heading up, up, up in these Himalayan foothills with no friends, no plan, and no return ticket?
No shoes either. I bent as low as my jeans would allow and looked under all the seats in my row. Shoes often slide ahead as the bus jerks along. B
ut no, my shoes were very definitely gone.
It was cold and the floor of the bus was dirty. I balanced myself on the tips of my toes and the outer edge of my heels, and went to complain to the bus conductor. The fellow looked down at my feet, then looked up at my face and grinned.
‘I told you not to remove your shoes.’
It’s true. He had warned me; shoes were in short supply in these parts and many other men have found themselves barefoot at the end of a night trip in the hills. I resigned myself to filthy feet for the rest of the journey, and stepped off the bus.
There wasn’t much around. The usual – a small boy with a huge kettle, the singing of water sprinkled on the hot tawa, a sardar-ji stuffing his heart into thick parathas, a small fire, a light mist. That’s the highway for you.
The only good thing about the hills is that there are fewer people here. Less dirt underfoot. Less man-made dirt anyway. Some of the passengers who had boarded the bus with me were sitting at the lone dhaba, breathing out smoke.
I looked at everyone’s feet. I wasn’t expecting to find my North Stars, but the ground was cold and ticklish and I envied them their shoes. Should have listened to the conductor.
The sardar-ji gave me my chai in a tall steel glass, which I appreciated. I wrapped my hands around it and crossed the road. That was the side with the railing, and a steep drop into the valley.
If you fell, you’d die with an impossibly pretty view. Cute cottages, swirls of smoke, emerald cut into hills like a winding staircase, dots of colour that you knew were human beings but they were so tiny that you couldn’t imagine them having problems, or not very big problems at any rate.
A moment later, she was at my elbow. A steel glass cradled between her hands, like me, she too leaned against the railing and stared into the valley.
‘What place is this?’
I shrugged. ‘First time I’ve come up here.’