Love Story #1 to 14

by Annie Zaidi

  She sipped her tea in silence. I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. Probably pahari – those cheekbones, those eyes. About twenty-five, give or take a year. Most probably an MPhil or PhD student. The sweater was definitely Tibetan Market maal. She turned her head suddenly and caught me looking at her. I blinked.

  ‘How long do you think it will take?’ I asked.

  She looked away. ‘Depends on where you are going.’

  Of course. The usual super-senior attitude. Wants to ask questions but doesn’t want to answer any. I knew enough girls like that at University and didn’t want to know any more. She could talk. She could stay here and throw attitude. What did it matter?

  I looked over my shoulder. Our driver was stretched out on a khatiya. The bus wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. I puffed my cheeks out and exhaled.

  ‘Valley of flowers?’ she suddenly asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You are going to the valley of flowers?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I don’t care for flowers much.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I like flowers,’ and she looked around the hills as if she might spot some.

  After a while, she added, ‘Some flowers. Not all.’

  ‘I see.’

  She had finished her tea and was staring into the bottom of the glass. ‘That wasn’t enough.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed.

  ‘Funny, no? They are so generous with their portions up here. Chandigarh upwards, you see big-big parathas. This much lassi and that much malaai, but never more than a thimbleful of chai.’

  It suddenly occurred to me to be polite. Well, chivalrous. Whatever. Between men and women, it is almost the same thing. ‘Do you want me to get you another chai?’

  ‘Oh no! No, thanks.’ She glanced down at my feet. ‘In fact, I should be getting you some more. Give me that.’

  She took the glass out of my hands and walked back towards the dhaba. I stared at her retreating back, at her legs, at her feet. Grey-blue North Stars. I could have sworn they were two sizes too big for her.

  There was nothing for it, but to wait for her to return, gripping both glasses around which she had wrapped a corner of her dupatta. My eyes were fixed on her feet.

  ‘Here. Take it quickly. It’s very hot.’

  I took the steel glass from her hands. She went back to sipping her tea and gazing into the valley below. The shoes were almost certainly mine. I took a sip of chai. Then another.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I finally said. ‘Excuse me, but I think those are my shoes.’

  ‘Oh! Are they?’ She looked down at her feet. ‘These?’

  ‘Yes, aren’t they?’ For a moment I wondered if I could be mistaken. Then I began to work myself up into a temper. ‘I should have guessed. You were sitting just ahead of me, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, okay. Maybe they’re yours. I didn’t know what else to do, so I took them.’

  ‘What do you mean you didn’t know what else to do? Do you normally do this? They don’t even fit you.’

  ‘Yes, but my shoes were gone. I looked all over the bus.

  Somebody must have taken them. They were brand new. Bought them for this trip. And then I saw these shoes, and they were right under my seat, so I thought, maybe the thief left these behind instead. So I took them.’

  ‘Rightrightright. And you haven’t noticed that I have been standing here barefoot? On the highway! And you just stroll up –’

  ‘So I noticed,’ she interrupted. ‘Later. I thought maybe they’re your shoes. Maybe I made a mistake. I would have returned them when we went back into the bus. I just thought I’d borrow them for a bit longer.’

  ‘Borrow! Aren’t you supposed to ask permission before you borrow something?’

  ‘You didn’t get off the bus with me. You were fast asleep. What’s your problem?’

  I was so taken aback at her casual response that I laughed. ‘I don’t believe this.’

  ‘What? What do you mean? Are you accusing me of stealing these?’ Her eyes were flashing now, and she tossed the dupatta back on her shoulder with some force.

  ‘Hey! You’re wearing my shoes! I mean, they’re not even your size.’

  ‘Exactly. So you can relax. I am not running away with them.’ After a moment, she burst out again, ‘Why are all you men like this?’

  ‘All you men? There’s only me here.’

  ‘No, all of you. Always jumping to the worst conclusions. And you don’t even stop to think. Just point and accuse.’

  ‘I mean, I am the one who should be upset. I’m standing barefoot here.’

  ‘So I will give them back.’

  ‘Yes. Please do.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay, fine. I’m going to sit in the bus. Then I’ll take them off.’

  She set her glass down on the ground, near my feet, and stomped off towards the bus. I finished my second chai, returned both glasses at the dhaba and went back into the bus.

  She had taken them off and left them sitting on my seat. ‘Your precious shoes.’

  I began to put them on. She clicked her tongue.

  ‘Don’t you want to wash your feet first?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been walking barefoot.’

  ‘Where would I wash in this bus?’

  ‘There’s a tap over there. Right side, at the dhaba. Take your precious shoes along.’

  So I picked up the shoes, went to the tap, washed my feet, dried them with my hanky. Then I pulled my socks out of my pocket, and finally, my feet were warm again.

  The driver was still napping. The sun wasn’t properly up yet. I went back into the bus. She was in her seat, flipping through a magazine. I lay across both seats in my row, and shut my eyes.

  ‘So who is stealing now?’

  I sat up. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That seat isn’t yours.’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m only lying down for a few minutes.’

  ‘Borrowing, were you? Whose permission have you taken, though?’

  I sighed. ‘Look, I don’t want to accuse you of anything. I just think it is weird that you should take my shoes like that. I thought they’d been stolen.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they weren’t there.’

  ‘Well, that’s your attitude to life. You are basically suspicious of people. Like they are all out to hurt you.’

  ‘You know jackshit about my attitude to life.’

  She ripped out the centrefold from the magazine and spread it on the floor to rest her feet on. She wore thick socks – hand-knitted Tibetan stuff, with figures of frolicking kids woven in. Most definitely a DU girl. The humanities, of course.

  ‘I can tell from your face,’ she said. ‘I am good at guessing people’s character as soon as I meet them.’

  Women! They just didn’t know when to shut up. I shut my eyes again. The pages of the magazine went flip-flip-flip, and she went on talking.

  ‘For instance,’ she said, ‘I can tell what you are thinking right now. You are thinking that women are so annoying. Not just me. Women in general. You wish you know how to make me shut up, right?’

  I opened my eyes. Through a tiny space between the seats, I could see that she was still bent over the magazine. Which one was it? I sat up. ‘No. That’s not what I was thinking.’

  She tossed the magazine aside and, like me, put her legs up on the seat next to hers.

  We were both leaning back against the grimy glass of the windows. She looked at me through the gap between her seat and the bus wall.

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Arre!’

  ‘You were. But you also wanted to talk to me. That’s why you came back into the bus. Otherwise, you would have taken your stupid shoes and stood alone at the stupid railing.’

  I turned my face away to hide my smile. ‘I came back into the bus because I wanted to sleep.’

  ‘Men are such liars.’

  ‘Oh? Like
, men in general?’

  Her cell phone rang. She took it out of her pocket, frowned at it, then she disconnected the call. She kept her eyes trained on the window across the aisle. The view should have been the stunning Himalayas, but the window was too grimy to allow a view.

  ‘Boyfriend?’ I hazarded a guess.

  She turned her head. Through the narrow gap between seat and bus wall, our eyes met. I knew I had guessed correctly.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I grinned. ‘Women are such liars.’

  She just smiled a slow, sad smile, and looked away. I sat up higher in my seat.

  ‘So! What flowers do you not like?’

  She looked perplexed.

  ‘You were saying outside that you don’t like all flowers. Only some.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ and she grinned at me. ‘I don’t like roses.’

  ‘What? Not even red roses?’ I deliberately raised my brows high.

  ‘No red roses. The English roses especially. They’re so . . . they’re too . . . I don’t know how to put it. They look just like their photographs.’

  ‘They’re supposed to.’

  ‘I find it annoying,’ she said. ‘Things shouldn’t be exactly like their photographs. Or they lose their promise. You can’t only be a faithful reproduction of yourself. Infinitely; ad nauseam. Nothing to discover. That’s like being a statue. A photo.’

  ‘Are we still talking about roses?’

  She didn’t answer that. She was balanced on her knees now, holding the back of the seat and looking at me directly. Her eyes were shining.

  ‘Look at bouquets. They’re so pretty. So tidy. So much like a 3-D Archies’ card. You know? Some of them, they won’t even die. I keep waiting for them to wilt, to show some sign of decay, but they just stay that way. For days! It’s so scary.’

  ‘Aw, come on –’

  ‘No, listen. It is like Frankenstein.’

  ‘Frankenstein?’

  ‘Like something that is essentially dead to begin with. But through the force of someone’s ambition, it has been brought back to life. Made functional. But this thing isn’t really human.’

  ‘Roses,’ I reminded her. ‘We were talking roses. They’re not human.’

  ‘But they’re supposed to live, and die. Like humans.’

  ‘Listen, they’re plants. Okay? Not even plants. They’re cut flowers. Bouquets. Long stems, thorns removed, artificial dew. Wrapped in cellophane, pink and silver ribbons shredded and twisted around. Why do you expect humanity from that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why. But they annoy me. Sitting there, all tidy and pretty and lifeless. And then they don’t even die quickly so you can throw them out. Don’t you feel that way? Like, something is beautiful, so dewy and innocent, but you cannot stand it. Deep down, in your core, you know that it is evil. You know?’

  I stared at her. She stared back at me. As if she really expected me to answer. What a funny girl, I thought. What was funnier was how she seemed to have a knack for stepping on all my raw nerves. I looked away.

  ‘Okay. So English roses are evil,’ I said. ‘What flowers do you like? Lively ones?’

  ‘Canna, gulmohar, bela, narcissus, snap dragons,’ she said. ‘Wild daisies too.’

  I laughed. ‘That was quick. You’ve actually spent time thinking about this flowers thing, eh?’

  ‘Of course. You should always think about what you like and don’t like. Which flowers do you like?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You never thought about it?’

  ‘No.’

  She balanced her chin on her hands and looked into my eyes.

  ‘Why are men like that?’ she asked.

  ‘Like what? I mean, I have nothing against any flower. They’re okay. Flowers in general.’

  ‘It’s not about flowers. I mean, why do you say “I don’t know” or “never thought about it” to every question we ask?’

  ‘I don’t. Actually, I always thought that is a typical girly thing. Saying “I don’t know” all the time.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Of course, yes. Nothing is clear-cut. Nothing is firm. They don’t know their own minds. Do you want a drink? I don’t know. Do you want to come over? I don’t know. Do you want to eat? I don’t know. What do you want to eat? I don’t know. And you always want to ask questions. So many questions! Guys are supposed to know everything, including all the things you don’t know.’

  She began to giggle.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, and after a moment, ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Oh please!’ I threw up my hands and sat up to protest, but she was giggling again.

  ‘I’m a stranger,’ she said. ‘You can tell me. In two or three hours, I will disappear. Into the mist. Into the hills. You will never see me again. It will be like talking to yourself, except you will feel lighter. Give up the angst, come on.’

  ‘I don’t have any angst.’

  ‘You do. You got on the bus with a truckload of angst. I saw it.’

  ‘You can’t get into a bus with a truckload of anything.’

  She clicked her tongue. ‘Don’t get technical on me. Just tell me. Come on.’

  I threw up my hands again. The girl just had no sense of boundaries. Perhaps she wasn’t a DU girl, after all. IP, perhaps. I cleared my throat.

  ‘It isn’t polite to prod and probe into other people’s private lives, you know.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Yeah, so? I did not come here just to be polite to you,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! I see. And I came here like your in-flight entertainment? You want me to amuse you with some stupid story about how my heart is broken, how I am full of angst, and how I hate everything, women especially.’

  The gall was rising inside my system. I had raised my voice. Her eyes were fixed on my face.

  ‘And do you hate women especially?’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ I sputtered. ‘What do you think you’re trying? What, you study Psycho? You think I’m your case study? Misogyny in the foothills? Haan?’

  She didn’t even blink. Her chin stayed propped up on her laced fingers. I took a deep breath. Another.

  ‘I don’t hate women,’ I said. ‘I was just talking generally. Sorry, I raised my voice.’

  She gestured with her thumbs, as if to say, it was alright. I went back to my lying position and stared out of the window. The sun would have been in my eyes, but for the grime.

  ‘So you’ve been hurt badly?’

  Jeez! The woman just wouldn’t give up. I sighed and turned my face towards her.

  ‘Who hasn’t been? Haven’t you?’

  ‘No. What makes you say that?’

  ‘You don’t look stupid. You aren’t a kid. You don’t look married. Any woman who gets to her mid-twenties has probably been badly hurt at least once.’

  ‘Ooh, Sherlock Holmes!’

  She turned and pushed open the window. The cold wind shuddered in. I peered outside. A couple of the other passengers were stretched out at the dhaba. Their wives were sitting on wooden benches, heads bent low. A cell phone rang. Everyone promptly took out their own phones and held them at arm’s length, turning them around in this way and that, checking for network.

  ‘Amazing how people want to check for network all the time, na?’ I said. ‘I mean, what do they want to say? Who do they want to talk to? They don’t talk to their wives for hours and hours. It’s been eight hours in this bus. Nobody’s talking. But they keep checking their phones to see where network is lost and where it is found.’

  She didn’t reply. The smell of food drifted in from the dhaba, which reminded me that I hadn’t had breakfast.

  I reached up for my bag. It had my sandwiches and coffee in it. I took out the food packet and sat in the seat across the aisle from her. She turned away from the window.

  ‘They aren’t looking f
or network. They’re looking for a connection,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘A real connection. The network only represents the world. They are afraid of losing touch with it. It really bothers them when someone else finds a connection and they cannot. When someone calls someone, but nobody calls them. They wonder if somebody might be trying to call them, and whether the network is at fault.’

  I noticed that her large eyes were a bit sunk into the sockets. The eyes of a student. Her lips were perfect – not too wide or thin, not too pink. A hint of blue, or black. I noticed that her lips moved only slightly when she spoke, almost as if she didn’t want to be seen as the owner of her words.

  I held out a foil-wrapped sandwich. She shook her head. I unwrapped it.

  ‘Peanut butter and jam,’ I said. ‘Sure you don’t want one?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘So, you travel with your own sandwiches?’

  She looked vaguely amused, as if I was one of those fussy kids who will only eat the red candies out of an assorted pack of Gems. Or one of those upper-caste ‘pure-veg’ matriarchs who will not step into trains without a large supply of their own pooris, their own pickles, their own laddoos. I felt the need to explain myself.

  ‘I ate so much paratha–rajma and rajma–chawal and chana– bhatura this last week, I thought I’d die of it. How can anyone eat parathas at six in the morning? If it’s not that, then it’s fried samosa or fried kachori. They even fry bread! First thing in the morning! Don’t know how people can stand it.’

  ‘And you eat just toast for breakfast?’

  ‘And coffee. I have some in the flask. Do you want some?’

  She hesitated and I took it to mean, yes. The coffee would be stone cold, of course. But at least it was black. I poured out some into the cap of the flask and handed it to her.

  ‘What will you drink in?’ she asked.

  ‘You go ahead. I’ll find something in a minute.’

  ‘Oh, but –’

  ‘No, please. Really. I think I have a paper cup somewhere in my bag,’ I said, and began to unwrap another sandwich. ‘You must eat something. I have more, please eat one.’

  She hesitated for a moment, then took the sandwich from my hands. She broke it in two, and handed one half back to me.

  ‘Thanks.’ She chewed hungrily. ‘So you are from?’