by Vikram Bhatt
Exactly at 4 p.m. the intercom buzzed. Veer had arrived. My heart began to suddenly beat very fast and I had no idea why it was happening now. I was married and taken. Veer was the past and this was business. My heart seemed to answer that with a simple, ‘Bugger off!’
Veer looked almost shy as he walked into my office. He wore his stubble with a lot of careless panache, he had on his favourite striped shirt and a pair of heavily worn jeans to finish his appeal. I wanted to hold him, once, just once. Would that be so terrible?
We talked perfunctorily, going through the motions as we settled in. Veer talked about the ad.
‘It looks good I think, but the boss has to decide,’ he said charmingly.
‘Let’s see it then,’ I said with a smile.
He had brought his laptop along; he fished out a pair of headphones and set up a home theatre for me in minutes. The film was indeed very good. ‘Oh! East is east and west is west, and Lo! The twain have met!’ It was great copy. It was a job well done. Ironically, I was more proud of him than I was happy for my company.
‘The boss approves,’ I said, looking into his eyes.
He smiled and said nothing in return.
We sat there quietly, so much to say and yet nothing to say.
‘Well then, I should get going. The boss must be busy,’ Veer said with a pained grin.
I nodded.
Then he lost his smile slowly and I saw the familiar pain lines on his face. ‘I don’t have an excuse to see you again, Mira. It is as if something inside my head is telling me to look at you long and hard, take in enough Mira for a lifetime so that I can hang a picture of you in that cobwebbed hall of my mind.’
It broke my heart. The tears came easily and then I have no idea why I did what I did next.
I slapped him hard.
VEER
Wednesday morning
I had kept my promise to Kavita and surrendered my side of the bed to her. She had moved back in and this time I did not mind where she kept her things and what part of my cupboard she was taking over. If you have to share your world with someone, then somewhere along the line you have to stop seeing the things around you as ‘yours’, for if they are yours you would be willing or unwilling to share. But if they are not ‘yours’ then there is no conflict.
I had become wiser, I thought.
I was so far from the truth.
Shazia was back from Spain and I could see that her Greek god millionaire had splurged on some serious designer wear for her. A new Gucci handbag lay in clear sight and her new heels had Gucci scribbled on them rather ostentatiously. How stressful it must be to be the owner of designer wear, I wondered. You have to first spend all that money on it and then learn the craft of showing the world that what you are wearing is indeed haute couture and should be the object of envy. Ah! The misery of the rich!
We were in the editing suite of Pearl and Grey having just finished with the final sound edit for the film for the Indian Food Company. I could tell Shazia was visibly impressed with my effort.
‘All for love, eh?’ she teased.
I nodded with a smile.
I had told her about the weekend and how it had been a rollercoaster ride of the past and the present. She was shocked to learn of the double date that Mira and I had had to bear at the Italian restaurant and felt my pain when I shared with her the details of the conversation under the stars.
‘Star-crossed lovers, quite literally,’ she whispered.
I did not argue with that.
Rodney handed the finished film to Shazia on a hard drive. ‘Well, let’s hope the Lady Boss of the Indian Food Company likes the film as much as we do,’ Shazia said.
‘Why don’t you give the film to me? I could probably go and show it to her myself,’ I offered.
Shazia did not hand the drive to me, and in response to my offer she merely walked out of the edit suite with the hard drive in her hand.
‘Hey, I meant it!’ I exclaimed, following her.
‘I know you did. But it’s not your job to show the client the finished film, it’s mine, so let me do it,’ she said with an enigmatic smile.
‘Oh, come on! You know this is not about doing my job!’ I countered.
‘Exactly!’ The smile disappeared from Shazia’s face and I saw it replaced by concern. ‘Don’t look for excuses to see her, Veer. I have an instinct about these things and right now my instinct tells me that you should stay away from Mira. You have done your job on the film and it’s great. Leave it at that.’
‘You are right, Shazia, I am looking for excuses to see her, but that’s because I know that this is probably the last opportunity I will have to see her. I have no excuse to see her after this. So please!’ I must have sounded terribly distraught for I noticed Shazia’s eyes well up with tears.
‘There are no second chances at first love, Veer. It’s over when it’s over.’
‘I know, Shazia. I am not seeking a second chance here. Just a last look.’
Shazia looked at me tearfully for a long moment and then handed me the hard drive with the film. ‘The tragedy is not that we fail, Veer. The tragedy is that we almost make it,’ she said woefully, her voice choked.
Her words slammed against me like a thunderstorm against a hapless weed. She was right; it was tragic, just tragic.
‘I don’t have an excuse to see you again, Mira. It’s as if something inside my head is telling me to look at you long and hard, and take in enough Mira for a lifetime so that I can hang a picture of you in that cobwebbed hall of my mind.’
I had finished showing Mira the film, she had finished liking it. I had told her how I felt and she was done masking how she felt.
She slapped me hard across the face.
I looked at her, stunned by the sudden blow, but almost immediately came the answer to her unexpected show of emotion.
‘Why, Veer? Why did you have to sleep with that . . . that . . . and change our destinies forever?’ Mira was letting it out after years and I knew it couldn’t be easy for her. ‘You were my Veer, mine! You were mine when I was with you, you were mine when I was confused about us, you were mine when I had broken up with you, you were mine all those days when I was in Singapore and did not speak with you, and you were most mine on the day I saw that woman walk out of your bedroom.’
Mira was sobbing, and the pain of that dreadful night was writ large on her beautiful face.
‘There hasn’t been a day that has gone by without the vision of that bitch coming out of your bedroom. I have woken up to that image on so many mornings and slept to the pain of that moment on so many nights. I have imagined you in bed with her. I have imagined her running her fingers through your hair calling out your name. I have imagined her moaning with pleasure entwined with your body; I have imagined her lying in your arms, in my Veer’s arms. You broke my heart, Veer. You crushed my soul. I hate you. I hate you so much!’
I found it hard to move. In that moment all the reasons that I had done what I had done that night with Ronita did not matter. What mattered was that I had hurt the girl I loved so much. I heard Shazia say, ‘The tragedy is not that we fail. The tragedy is that we almost make it . . .’
‘And now you want to take in as much Mira as you can for the rest of your life?’ she howled. ‘Should I give you a picture like the one you gave me to hang in that cobwebbed hall of your mind? How would that be? Would you like that, Veer, me with someone who did not matter in bed? A picture that you could see in your mind’s eye every day?’
Her question was potent enough to paint a morbid picture of Mira in bed with someone. I found something inside me coming apart. I could not bear it. She was killing me with her pain.
Before she could say any more I grabbed her and kissed her hard. If I was hers, she was mine, my Mira.
She kissed me back as intensely as I had kissed her, our lips locking like they hadn’t forgotten after all these years. We burrowed into each other with incredible longing, a longing that demanded al
l those years of pain and misery back with just that one touch. There was urgency as our tongues dissolved into each other. A need so overpowering and perhaps the need was driven by fear, a fear that this was the last time these lips could meet and this would never happen again.
I felt her nails claw my back like she was holding on to me for dear life and I could smell the fragrance of her shampoo all over again. We were breathless but we couldn’t let go. We couldn’t stop.
Just then, her intercom rang. The world around us swooshed in. She pushed me away.
Mira straightened her hair and her soft satin shirt as she walked across to her desk to answer the phone.
‘Yes, Mr Weston.’ Her clipped tone was back, albeit a bit shaky. ‘Please ask them to wait in the conference room. Mr Rai was just leaving. Thank you.’
She hung up the phone and did not turn back to look at me. I waited for her to say something but she stood with her back to me, waiting for me to leave.
I collected my laptop, wrapped the electric cord around it and walked out of her office.
Mira had given me more than a picture to hang in the cobwebbed hall of my mind. Even if it was just for a moment, she had given me her entire self.
MIRA
Wednesday night
I had lost track of time. I let the hot water wash over me hoping it would scald some of the guilt that clung to my body. I felt like I had fallen into a ditch filled with putrid-smelling mud and now that mud clung to my body like a blood sucking leech. My skin had turned red and I realized that another round with the loofah would surely draw blood.
Akhil walked into the bathroom and knocked on the now fogged-up glass partition. I could not hear what he was saying. There was the sound of the shower and as always an aeroplane flying overhead that drowned his voice effectively. I could hear concern in his voice. I told him I was okay, guessing that was what he was trying to ask me. In all the time we’d been married, this was the first time that I actually felt naked. It was inexplicable. Could he have sensed the guilt that seemed to seep out through my body?
All through dinner I remained lost in my misery. I nodded at the right moments and stopped to ask the right questions, I was clearly on autopilot mode. I suspect Akhil noticed that my mind was elsewhere and stopped talking after a bit. Thank God for that!
Later, Akhil held me close while he travelled to the centre of his dreamless state, while I lay awake in bed dealing with a nightmare.
How did I let it happen? How did I do it? I kissed Veer and the bloody problem was that it did not feel wrong! It felt like I had never gone away from him. Like we had been intimate all our lives. It made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long while—I felt alive.
It was time for me to accept that I hadn’t stopped loving him either. Veer had the courage to say it to me. I did not have that kind of courage.
An aeroplane flew up above, Akhil stirred in bed, and another wave of guilt came at me. How could I accept that I loved him? What about the man who slept next to me, holding me? Akhil had been nothing short of wonderful and I loved him deeply. How could I love Veer now? It was just not possible!
I had to stop, just stop. It was a mistake and it was done and it was never going to happen again!
The mind makes excuses for the heart and it made one for me almost immediately. It asked me to treat the moment of my sinful behaviour as a much-required closure for the chapter called Veer, an end to that bittersweet feeling that I carried with myself. Yes, that is what it was. A closure. It was over.
I looked across at my wristwatch lying on the bedside table. The numbers glowed in the dark. It was 3 a.m. I had five hours to catch some sleep, then Heathrow and a mid-morning flight to New York.
I had agreed to attend the trade fair at the Four Seasons in Manhattan on behalf of the company. It would be three days away from London and, truth be told, three days that I could really use to get the whole Veer incident out of my system. I had to quickly get back to being Mira the Resilient.
The light of the cell phone came on. A WhatsApp message so early in the morning always made me worry about Mom and Dad in India. I moved Akhil’s arm away gently, careful not to wake him up, and grabbed my phone.
Are you sleepless as well?
I felt a blow in the pit of my stomach. Like an elevator that had begun its downward journey somewhere near my throat and crashed into my lower abdomen with scant concern. Why the hell was he doing this? And those dreaded blue ticks on WhatsApp had told him that I had seen the message. I kept staring at the phone like the future of the world depended on my response.
Perhaps I should just not respond at all and let it be. I did not have to answer now, did I?
Yes . . .
My head and my heart had agreed to disagree. Love is a primordial beast, the most fearsome predator in the world. If it decides to attack you, nothing stands a chance against its assault. No thought, no family, no country, nothing can stop its advance.
Your perfume doesn’t leave my senses . . .
I had no idea what had emboldened Veer and made him so unabashed about how he felt.
I have an early morning. I must sleep.
Oh! I’m sorry. Goodnight. Didn’t mean to bother.
No bother.
Right.
That was that. I turned away from the phone and forced myself to sleep. It was a lost endeavour. An hour of twisting and turning later, I slipped out of bed to engineer a pot of coffee. If I was going to be restless, then it would be much better to be restless on caffeine.
Twilight was slipping into the kitchen with the early morning sun through the large garden windows. It was becoming colder each day. I could see the frost on the grass under the glow of the garden lights.
I sat at the little dining table in the kitchen absently playing with a cup of coffee. In the silence I could hear my beating heart and in that I could also sense a deep pain. It was true. The heart did ache physically. The poets and bards had got it right. Love surely lived there.
I looked over at the four messages exchanged between us once again. I had done that more than a dozen times already. The pain in my heart convinced me to send one more message.
You were not a mistake, Veer. Never.
It brought tears to my eyes as I wrote that down. I had no idea why.
Do you believe in destiny?
Veer’s response was prompt and I had a vision of him stealing a message while the leggy girl Kavita slept next to him. Suddenly, I did not like her so much.
I don’t know. Should I?
Why else would we meet again . . . like this?
Perhaps God has an evil sense of humour?
Ha ha! Either that or . . .
Or?
Or He believes in giving tortured souls second chances.
Second chances? What the hell was he thinking?
I put the phone away. A little person inside my head was dancing around with a red flag. I acknowledged the person with a mental nod. The person put the flag down but did not seem convinced that I was Mira the Resilient by a long shot.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport? It’s not very far you know?’ Akhil was wearing his tie and looking at me through the mirror on the dresser while I busied myself with some last-minute packing.
‘With these damn aeroplanes flying over my head all the time, do you think I need to be reminded that the airport is not very far from here?’ I meant that as a sarcastic comment but I think it sounded a little sharper than I had intended it to be.
Thankfully Akhil took that in the right spirit and laughed out loud. ‘I have been checking on some properties in central London. A space as big as this would cost an arm and a leg but if you are okay with less space, then we can heave-ho!’
‘Heave-ho? You are becoming a Brit now, are you?’ I said, amused.
‘I am but an Englishman trapped in the body of an Indian,’ he said in a clipped accent.
I burst out laughing.
He picked up
his jacket from the armchair and strode towards me, kissing me gently, ‘Have a great trip, honey.’
I smiled and nodded.
I heard the front door close on itself as he left the house.
There are moments in your life that you remember distinctly even after years have gone by. Not those big dramatic moments, but quieter, seemingly insignificant moments. This was one such moment that I would never forget, for it was in that moment that the alarming question came to me—was it possible to love two people at the same time?
The taxi made its way through the early morning traffic. I wondered if Veer still kept an Indian passport after all those years in the UK.
Do you still have an Indian passport?
He did not respond.
There should be a psychiatrist for a new disorder called The Cell Phone Response Disorder. It is when a person suffers from an acute sense of rejection if his or her message or call has not been responded to immediately. I was feeling a few of the CRD symptoms.
Yes I do.
I was checking in when I received that one. Then while I stood at the long queue for security I sent him another query.
Do you have a valid US visa?
Yes.
An hour later at the business class lounge:
It is always handy to have one.
Yes it is.
☺
Do you want me to get to New York?
Was that what I was trying to get at all this time? Did I want Veer to be with me in New York? Did he see that in what I messaged or did he see that in what I did not? This was wrong. All wrong. I put the phone away.
The seat belts were fastened, the trays set aside and the chairs in the upright position for takeoff. The cell phone had to be turned off, but before I did that I sent a one-word message to Veer.
Yes.
VEER