by Pankaj Dubey
He runs up the stairs, two at a time, and down the corridor, hunts for her room. He knows the room number. Has known it for long. Reaches. Waits not. And knocks.
Sanam has been waiting for Shivani. Draping the chiffon odhni is proving tricky. For long, she has been toying with the stole, but with no success. She has slipped on the long, pleated lehenga. Teamed it with a backless choli-cut blouse that is a bit skimpy, but the odhni should cover the dicey bits. She needed Shivani to help with her costume because her roommate, Neeti, came down with a viral fever the previous night.
It had been a madcap start to the day, what with her having to rush Neeti to the medical centre only to find no one there. Somehow, she managed to find a nurse and handed over the patient to her care and then dashed back to get ready, shouting out an SOS request to Shivani, her neighbour, on the way back, asking her to drop in before she left for the event. She had to knock on Shivani’s door because she forgot to charge her phone during the drama of the previous night, tending to Neeti. Now her phone is dead.
Sanam checks herself out in the mirror. The lehenga fits well on her hips, starting below her navel and flaring out to touch her ankles. It’s the bodice that is stressing her out. She had bought it on a whim from Dilli Haat, an ethnic bazaar in Delhi. Sanam has not tried the choli on before. It is her size all right, but it is too snug a fit, making her feel self-conscious as she swivels from side to side and inspects it in the mirror. Sanam is no prude. She has worn racier stuff to parties, especially when she went clubbing. But this is the academy and she doesn’t want to get it wrong. The odhni—only this stole can save her today, but it has to be draped just right.
‘Shivani! Where are you? It is getting late!’ Sanam cries out to the walls.
There’s a knock. Finally, thinks Sanam.
‘Come in!’ she calls out, whooping in joy. Sanam would have even pirouetted in joy had it not been for the flared lehenga and her stilettos. Yes, she has worn stilettos, wanting to add some inches. She looks so short beside him otherwise. Him? Wasn’t she overdoing this ‘him’ bit? Sanam bites her lip. She has to stop thinking of him every minute of her day. She has to stop wanting to see him every minute of her day. Sanam shuts her eyes in a desperate bid to blank out his face . . . How else was she to manage?
She takes a deep breath and turns as her room door opens to let in Shivani. Stops. Her heart nearly stops. For it is Aamir. Not Shivani
He sees her standing there, in front of the mirror. Her narrow waist catches his eye even as her navel beckons him. The lehenga he barely notices. It’s her choli that sinks its hooks into him. Draws him to it like a siren in stormy seas. Spellbound, he moves towards her, every step taking him closer to his destiny.
Sanam is lost. Blown away by his presence as much as his outfit. With his killer looks he could have donned any colour and scored. And he had chosen jade blue today, a shade that happened to be her favourite. Stunning her. She starts at the bottom. Slip-on sandals, he has worn, his toes peeping out. Begging her to play with them. And that pristine white churidar wound round his legs, it dared her to track its path. Her eyes follow it up and up . . . and lose. For it soon disappears . . . hiding beneath the blue sherwani that starts at his knees and goes up to collar him, binding every inch of him in between with its threads. Sanam sighs. That fabric was so lucky.
And that sigh proves to be her undoing. Aamir comes close, breathlessly close. His eyes feasting on her. Her black and red choli holding him prisoner. For that low-cut blouse, with all its sequins and mirror work, revealed more than it hid. Mounds popped mischievously out of it.
‘Perfect,’ exclaims Aamir, staring at her unblinkingly.
‘You said I wasn’t perfect,’ she reminds him.
‘You aren’t,’ he agrees. ‘But you’ve got some things that are just perfect.’
Sanam raises her brows to question. Inviting him to say more. Get more explicit. She knows she is playing with fire, yet she chooses to play. Giving him the one cue he needs.
Aamir spends the next two hours telling her and showing her all that he finds perfect in her. She does not seem to follow at one go and makes him repeat it again and again. He holds her hand and points out all that he likes about her. Till she is replete and sighs in satisfaction.
All this takes time. The duo thus perform in the room and not on the stage that night. The regional costumes have done their job.
In the auditorium, two states go unrepresented on India Day. Announcements for Madhya Pradesh and Kashmir draw blanks.
* * *
Aamir is puzzled for a moment about the soft head on his arm. What a morning they had! He feels like he has discovered a treasure and is told he can keep it for life.
She had fallen asleep almost immediately after making love, sated and replete. She is now curled up against his side like a kitten and snores gently against his chest. Neeti’s fever had claimed Sanam’s night but he has given her his day in return and she has accepted it with a reciprocating hunger that has exhausted her. Her face is turned towards him, her hair falls softly across her cheek and over her neck and shoulders. Tendrils of beautiful dark hair cover her eyes, obstructing his view of her face. Aamir pushes the tresses aside and looks at his girl. His Rank Number One. He feels different, as though something has shifted inside him. A new stillness fills him and mutes the worries of the world that lay unresolved within. The Kashmiri is at peace; a peace like he has never felt before.
A loud ringing threatens his peace before long and Aamir quickly reaches over Sanam to get to his phone before it wakes her.
‘Sabah?’ Aamir questions more than greets, startled by her sudden call. ‘Is everything okay with you?’ Worry overruns his mind once more.
‘Just wanted to hear your voice,’ she replies.
He relaxes. She tells him about college and her friends that Abbu does not like her to mix with, and a new suit she has gotten stitched in dusky pink with ari embroidery. Aamir listens.
‘You come back,’ she pleads. ‘I can’t stay here alone.’
He laughs and tells her not to exaggerate.
Suddenly Sabah goes hysterical. ‘You don’t know . . . Ammi dragged me to this seer last week who said that I was possessed by a djinn.’
‘And are you?’ Aamir is laughing now. He could well imagine Sabah’s Ammi smoking the djinn out in a peer baba’s cave.
‘I developed high fever from this nonsense!’ she complains. And so they talk. Her stories take him back to his Valley, a world that seems so far away even though the mountains are right there outside the window. Moeen is out on bail he learns. His time behind bars has hardened and radicalized him even more, she confides. He barely talks to them and is almost never at home.
‘You tell him to talk to me,’ says Aamir. ‘I don’t know which number he is using now.’
‘He won’t,’ replies Sabah. ‘He feels you let him down by going.’
‘Text me his current number, I’ll call him.’
‘I want to video call you,’ Sabah announces all of a sudden.
He looks down at Sanam still fast asleep, nestled against his arm, the blanket only half-covering their bodies, and hurriedly says, ‘No!’
But Sabah insists. She wants to see if he looks like an officer by now.
Aamir relents, ‘Okay, I’ll call you. In ten minutes.’
He disconnects and gently shifts Sanam’s head on to the pillow before he puts on his India Day costume which lies in a heap on the floor instead of being admired by the audience in the auditorium. Her lehenga is also in the pile along with the choli, its strings teasing him with rakish memories. He gathers all of her clothes from the floor, places them on a chair and then pulls the blanket over her fully before dashing out.
Five minutes have already passed and knowing Sabah, she will be watching the clock for the return call.
Sanam stirs as he leaves. Bereft of his warmth, she snuggles into the blanket.
The sun sinks into the horizon, draping the peaks in a
cloak of darkness as it vanishes.
India Day has come to an end. There was no saila and Kuldeep wants to know why. He strides over to Sanam’s block to check. As her hostel springs into view so does a flash of jade blue sprinting out of the building. A long coat unbuttoned and flapping in the evening breeze. It disappears up the path before he can make any more of it.
21
Sabah transports Aamir’s mind back to Kashmir, to its lakes and orchards, to the gurgling streams and blossoms of spring. He is reminded of the mighty chinar, radiant in amber, its leaves rustling and shedding in the autumnal breeze. He can almost hear the leaves crunch and crackle the way they do when he steps on them. Come winter, the leaves help light his kangri too, for it is this fire pot that helps a Kashmiri ward off the winter chill. And of course, the russet and gold sunsets with every shade in between. Well, sunsets and starlit nights and winter blankets of snow are here as well, in Mussoorie, and they are almost every bit as gorgeous. But without a cup of pink nun chai, the mornings are bleak. There are times when he craves wazwan, and his stomach growls with hunger every time he even thinks of the lavish spread.
The mind is not a simple device. One thought leads to another and one soon finds oneself very far away from the well spring of ideas. The telephone conversation with Sabah takes him down a road that leads to Kashmir, a normal and beautiful Kashmir. But soon enough his train of thought turns a corner and on to a different track that leads to a bloodied and battered Kashmir. This second route has numerous barricades, barbed-wire fences and armed forces at every check point. They stop him, frisk him, question him. This vision of Kashmir is replete with curfew and conflict. The sunsets, the orange blossoms, the bird calls, the refreshing rainfall are all prospects that no longer fill one with joy. A mother’s wail, a militant’s footfall, children that throw stones rather than tantrums, sons that don’t graduate but get martyred, are commonplace in this area. There are no tourists in this version, only a generation of youth that has no idea where it’s going. Confused and directionless, they may want to play cricket but are compelled to pick up the gun.
Aamir feels a chill crawl up his spine as he tries to force his thoughts back to sun-kissed meadows but the memory of row upon row of unmarked graves holds him prisoner. He gives up and walks out of the room.
‘Splendid costume, young man; only I didn’t see it on stage.’
‘Sir . . . sir . . .’ stutters Aamir in reply, trying to switch back to the present, and failing.
He had left his room in a bid to leave those memories behind. But he forgot that he was still in his flamboyant sherwani long after the India Day celebrations had ended. No wonder Ritesh sir had looked askance at him. Aamir smiles. Life has its moments.
The crisp air outside clears his mind a little but he feels that the mountains can do more, so he strides over to the point that gives him the view he seeks. Still in his sherwani. No point going back just to change. He will now show off his costume to the Himalayan peaks.
But hasn’t he already shown off his sherwani to someone, a voice inside reminds him.
Aamir shudders, suddenly cold. The mountain boy and cold? Incongruous as it seems, yes, he does feel chilly. What happened today is entirely new to him. And momentous. So much so that it overwhelms him . . . more than the mountains looming before him.
Sanam! Yes, Sanam has seen him in his sherwani. He can’t stop thinking of her however hard he tries; not that he doesn’t want to, he wants her more than he wants anything else now. She has suddenly become more important than even his dreams and this astounds him. How and when did this happen? Is it because of the way she looks at him, pretending she isn’t looking and doesn’t really care? Or did he fall for her insane and manic drive to excel? No, it has to be her smile—naughty and yet so naïve. She is so strongly committed to her beliefs that she ends up standing up for others against all odds. He remembers the way she lashed out at those TV anchors and callers that questioned her quota seat. She had hissed at them like a furious kitten. Yes, this was what drew him to her even before he had met her. This feisty girl with her child-like ways drove him insane. Aamir clutches his head in his hands—now where should he go from here?
Sanam has also been deep in thought; multiple thoughts that jostle each other. She would have been better off sleeping, cocooned in her happy dream, but the banging on her door jolted her awake. Someone, she can’t make out who, is repeatedly calling out her name. It isn’t Aamir, she is sure of that. Where is he, by the way? She touches the empty pillow where he had lain next to her, sharing her blanket. She reaches for her cell phone to see if he has sent her a message, but it hasn’t been charged and is still dead.
The banging on the door gets insistent and irritates Sanam. She throws on a pair of trackpants and a t-shirt and flings open her door.
‘Kuldeep!’
He hugs her in relief. A hundred dark scenarios had crisscrossed his mind while he waited at her door. ‘Thank God! Thank God!’
‘And what are you thanking God for?’ asks Sanam as he strolls in.
‘Why didn’t you open the door sooner? Why didn’t you turn up for India Day? Why didn’t you tell me you were not going to?’
He throws the barrage of questions at her. They arise from his tense moments of doubts, anxieties and anger.
Sanam is in no mood to answer Kuldeep’s catechism because there are other things on her mind. ‘I . . . I just didn’t feel like it,’ she shrugs laconically.
He is stumped. ‘You didn’t feel like it?’ He is incredulous.
She keeps quiet, wanting him to go. She needs to be alone with her thoughts, with herself and with the questions of her own that are now creeping into her head.
Kuldeep understands that she doesn’t want to speak any more and leaves it at that. He heaves a sigh of relief that she is safe and decides to find out more when she is in a better frame of mind. Kuldeep never quite knows where he stands with Sanam.
As he walks out, his notices her lehenga and choli on the chair. Kuldeep looks at her again, mystified. So, she had worn these but had not come. What happened between her wearing the costume and opting out of the show, he is dying to know.
He shuts the door behind him, taking himself and his thoughts out into the corridor.
He goes to the medical centre to seek out Neeti. Perhaps she has some answers to his questions. Unfortunately, all she has is a fever. She is drowsy and weak and not in a state to entertain Kuldeep or his questions, so he walks back slowly to his block. It was the first event he had organized at the academy and it had gone off very well except for Sanam’s non-appearance and yes, that Kashmiri boy had been missing too.
A jade blue costume flashes through his mind along with an image of the Kashmiri walking away after a word with Ritesh sir. The picture gets sharper when he remembers that the long, blue coat was half-open and flapping in the evening breeze. Another snippet floats into his mind—this is from earlier that evening, outside Sanam’s hostel as Aamir had walked out of her block. The Kashmiri too had skipped the event! Kuldeep is now starting to put two and two together and the result is far from pleasant. He has never liked that fellow, he was too calm and composed to be real. Now that dislike has turned into something deeper.
Sanam is in a bit of a dark mood. Why did Aamir leave her sleeping? When a man leaves a woman asleep after having shared something so personal for the first time, what can it mean? Only one thing—the experience means little to him. However, the mood lifts very soon and Sanam knuckles herself on her head. No negative thinking, not tonight, not after what has been the best day of her life. Yes, best! She has to accept that. She is drawn to him like she has never been to anyone, she didn’t even know she had it in her to be so involved with someone. He has made her see life in so many more shades. Not only that, he has made her see herself in an entirely different way. He freed her from worrying about what the world thought and what her family wanted. Sanam smiles dwelling upon every moment, every touch and every word that they e
xchanged, until sleep overcomes her once again.
Aamir, on the other hand, cannot sleep at all. He hasn’t eaten a morsel either. Hell! That girl has hijacked both his peace of mind and his appetite. And he still has no idea what to do about it. He had never wanted to take this route. No. Romance had no place in his life. Sanam had changed it all. Got him thinking of her and only her. Aamir flings his pillow on the wall in defeat. He is restless because he doesn’t know where all this will go and how he should handle the relationship. He gets up to pace the room. Badal looks up. He had been watching his usually staid roommate’s crazy new antics with delight. This new avatar that dabs on ittar, talks to himself, starves, doesn’t work and staggers around the room like a zombie.
Aamir notices Badal enjoying the show and pummels him with the fellow’s own pillow. A joke—that was what Sanam was turning him into. He will have to hide his emotions from the world. Yes, that’s one thing that Aamir knows how to do, and he will do so, although he seriously doubts whether he can do it successfully any more. She has changed him in ways he is yet to fathom, she has made him feel emotions that he didn’t know he possessed. Like poetry—as fulfilling and exciting. And with that agonizing analysis to list out what has changed and what has not, the night ends. Day breaks. It is PT time again.
Aamir is asleep today. He dozes off even as the sun awakens and rises to greet the OTs in the polo grounds. Badal had switched off his phone alarm sometime during the night when Aamir was busy surveying the mountains from his window.
Sanam has not remembered to switch on her phone since yesterday and so she misses PT as well.
Kuldeep misses her in class that day. What is up with her today? She wasn’t there for PT and now she is missing from the class. He turns around and sees the Kashmiri fellow a few rows behind him; so she is obviously not with him. Then where is she and why isn’t she here?
Aamir knows why Sanam is not in class. He turned her life upside down yesterday just as she upended his. Now, she must be struggling to find her feet and regain her balance; to develop another blueprint and master plan for herself. Aamir breaks out in cold sweat at an unpleasant thought—what if he doesn’t figure in her plan? What if she finds her balance without him? What if . . .