by Annie Zaidi
Then she scrambled to her feet.
‘Do you want your shoes now?’
‘No.’
‘We didn’t stop at Joshimath to get me new shoes.’
‘We will, on the way back.’
I stood up. She lifted her bag and put it across her shoulders.
‘I’ll take it now,’ she said.
‘It’s not too heavy, I can take it.’
‘No, it’s not fair. Tiring yourself out like this. And you don’t even like flowers, I don’t know why you’re coming. I mean, you don’t have to come along.’
‘I know I don’t have to.’
‘I mean, just because you said you would, doesn’t mean . . .,’ she paused. I waited for her to finish. ‘I mean, I will understand if you don’t come along. You can go down now to Joshimath and do whatever you had planned.’
‘Do you want me to leave?’ I asked.
She turned away, looked at the distant mountains and breathed deep.
‘Do you want to be left alone?’ I repeated.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you want me to do? This is your trip. I don’t want to ruin it.’
She turned back towards me and it seemed as if her eyes were full. ‘I don’t know,’ she repeated.
I threw up my hands and laughed a little, as if to say, you’re not helping. She laughed a little too through her tears.
‘I don’t know anything. You know the situation.’
‘You’re a girl alone on her way into a very lonely valley. You don’t have shoes. The bus has broken down. You’re almost engaged. That’s the situation.’
‘I’m going to get married. Unless the guy rejects me. Which could happen. I don’t think I can deal with any more rejection, though. I will put on lipstick and condition my hair. Perfume even. I hate perfume. I like flowers, but I hate perfume. But I’ll do it. It will give me a headache. I’ll take a Disprin before I go to dinner. He could still reject me. It’s hard to figure out how much I should talk. If I talk too much, he won’t like it. Lots of guys don’t. Older guys especially. But if I play it right, he might say yes.’
She stopped and looked at me again, as if waiting for me to help.
‘I’m not asking you to not get married,’ I said. ‘I’m only offering to trek up into the valley of flowers with you. In bathroom slippers.’
‘But you know what it will be like.’
‘It will be very dark and cold by the time we get back.’
She kept looking at me. I shrugged.
‘I am probably looking scruffy but I’m not dangerous.’
‘We’ll be alone,’ she said. ‘There will be flowers all around, and the sky will be mildly warm. We’ll be tired. We are tired people.’
‘I don’t have strong feelings about flowers. You’re going to expect me to sniff the air appreciatively and go berserk about the colours. I will disappoint you.’
I had my bag on my shoulders now and I began to walk. She followed a step behind.
‘What’s in Joshimath?’ she asked.
‘My grandfather once took sanyas. Near Joshimath. His first wife died when he was twenty-three. She was thirteen or fourteen. He stayed here for a couple of years. Like a monk. Begging. Eating fruit from trees. Drinking from rivers.’
‘Then he came back to Sonipat and fell in love with another woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘So you actually came up here thinking that after Joshimath, you would be able to fall in love again?’
‘I don’t know. I just came.’
‘Do you think we will be able to return by sunset?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You think there are wild animals there?’
‘Probably.’
‘You think we’ll be okay?’
I didn’t answer. On the slope, the wind slowly turned into a whiplash against our faces. I turned and gestured to her to walk beside me.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my Grandma’s children, who are all closet romantics, and who first told me sad stories of thwarted love within the family.
And my dear friend Shashank, who first read ‘Love Story # 1’, and wept. Which told me it was alright, after all. And Anita Vasudev for early feedback, and for being the loving and lovely creature she is.
I would like to thank Pradipta, who first said she liked the collection enough to want it, and Karthika, who took it on, and Ajitha, who edited it and worked with me to better it, and others in the HarperCollins team who are working hard to make this a worthy book.
About the Author
ANNIE ZAIDI writes poetry, essays, fiction of varying lengths, and scripts for the stage and the screen. She is the author of Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, a collection of essays that was shortlisted for the Vodafone Crossword book awards (nonfiction, 2011), and the co-author of The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl. She has also collaborated with artist Gynelle Alves on Crush, a series of illustrated poems.
Her work has appeared in various anthologies, including Mumbai Noir; Women Changing India; India Shining, India Changing, and literary journals like Pratilipi, The Little Magazine and Desilit. She currently lives in Mumbai.
ALSO BY ANNIE ZAIDI
Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales, 2010
The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl
co-authored with Smriti Ravindra), 2011
Crush (in collaboration with Gynelle Alves), 2007
Praise for Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and
Other True Tales
‘At its best, the book combines a reporter’s on-the-spot perception and a writer’s reflection and language to etch interesting, nuanced portraits of that half-mythical being in the throes of constant change: contemporary India.’ —Tabish Khair in Mint
‘Annie Zaidi brings to her representation of these grim matters a quality that can only be called grace, a delicacy of touch that I hesitate to call feminine.’ —Alok Rai in Outlook
‘A book like this, written by someone who may once have been just as sheltered as they were, will resonate with Generation iPad in a way that a more world-weary account would bypass entirely.’ —Manjula Padmanabhan in Outlook Traveller
‘Annie Zaidi’s collection of essays . . . is arresting and unforgettable; about realities we prefer didn’t exist.’ —Karthika Nair in Tehelka
‘Those involved with “development” would do well to read this book.’ —Alpana Chowdhury in DNA
‘It’s a rare look into the lives of dacoits minus caricature. Zaidi’s writing attempts to evoke an understanding of their reality.’ —Civil Society
‘Annie Zaidi’s collection has good reportage, peppered with humour and [was] most readable.’ —Khushwant Singh
Praise for The Bad Boy’s Guide to the Good Indian Girl
(or The Good Indian Girl’s Guide to Living,
Loving and Having Fun)
‘. . . it is certainly a guidebook to the interlacing lives of a group of young girls and women, the Rashomon-like dappled truths they tell about their betrayal, longing, rebellion, temptation and that minefield hopscotch of right and wrong, good and bad, in matters of friendship, status, sex, desire and occasional aspiration that makes up the lives of many Indian girls.’ —Paromita Vohra in Tehelka
‘[F]ull of casual mischief, surreptitious acts and carefully kept secrets . . .’ —Deepanjana Pal in Mumbai Boss
‘[A] book of surprisingly subversive tales . . . [that] are less about emphasizing the restrictions placed on Indian women than they are about how women use and test them.’ —Aishwarya Subramanian in Mint
‘Good Indian Girls does provide important insights into why many Indian women do the things they do, sometimes even without knowing it.’ —Anjana Basu in Women’s Web
‘I’m not given to clichés like these, but I think I’ll risk it for this particular book – this is one book that’s gonna stay with me fo
r the rest of my life.’ —The Pensieve
First published in India in 2012 by
HarperCollins Publishers India
Copyright © Annie Zaidi 2012
ISBN: 978-93-5029-367-6
Epub Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9789350295762
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Annie Zaidi asserts the moral right to be identified
as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under The Copyright Act, 1957. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers India.
Cover design: Arijit Ganguly
Cover photograph: Shutterstock.com
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