Cold Feet

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  ‘Shayna!’ my producer bellowed. ‘Nice work today!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, and smiled. I’m a weather girl. No, really. It’s a bit of a joke of a job, people always do double takes and go, ‘You’re a weather girl?’ but I somehow stumbled into it, and it stuck. I had worked in TV before, for a year, with an up-and-coming music channel, who promised me that they’d make me a VJ in six months. That never happened and I was sick of being behind the camera. Add that to my list of sins—I like to be the centre of attention. Hey, at least I own it. And when finally, after a long round of auditions, which, ‘by the way’ they told me I didn’t even have to do, the director gave the open VJ slot to his new girlfriend, and I just walked out of there. Didn’t send in my resignation letter, didn’t wait around for my last cheque either. I like to make good exits. Entrances, maybe, but I believe the best impression you can give is by how you walk away.

  After a while of no work (helped by generous handouts from my mother and brother, both of whom also gave me a lecture to go with the handout each time, but neither of whom knew that the other person too was giving me money), I decided to try my luck at journalism. A TV channel was looking for reporters, I went in, happened to be in the wrong camera test room, and wound up giving a screen test for a weather girl instead. I think we’re called weather person now, actually. Anyway, I was called back, and I thought I’d give it a shot, and here I am, two years later. I’m good at my job. You wouldn’t think being a weather person requires much skill, but I’ve found that I can do loads to pep it up. Sometimes I banter with the anchors. Sometimes I make little jokes. But mostly, I think people tune in because I say a little something beyond, ‘Temperatures in Nagpur are expected to dip’. I’ll say that and then I’ll say, ‘So, better pull out those quilts and warm that chai!’ Stupid things like that really make people feel connected to you. I even have a fan site. It’s true.

  That day, my boss was saying good job, because I had been talking about the monsoon. I had worn bright yellow boots, courtesy the wardrobe department, and walked out from behind my desk waving my legs about and brandishing a yellow umbrella to match. Okay, okay, it doesn’t sound that cool when I describe it, but trust me, it was pretty awesome. Yusuf was looking me over pretty admiringly about then, and he finally said, ‘I liked your boots. And the umbrella.’

  ‘Oh, that wasn’t me—that was entirely the wardrobe guys!’ I began sidling off and feeling embarrassed.

  ‘You looked good in them,’ he said, and I’m thinking who is this strange man? He was quite old-looking. I’m not going to lie, he definitely had passed the first bloom of youth. Old dudes have tried to hit on me before, I’m not being arrogant, I’m just saying, they have, and I’ve always found it really odd. I’m just, ‘Can’t you find someone your own age?’

  My producer was looking at Yusuf and laughing. ‘Don’t flirt with my employees, Yusuf!’ he said, and I thought, ‘Oh, yuck’ but I smiled and again tried to leave.

  ‘I can’t help it if you keep hiring pretty young girls,’ said Yusuf, and this is where, I assume, I was meant to stammer and blush and giggle, but I didn’t. I just kept eye contact with him for a bit. I find that’s the best way to make men like that back off, just look them in the eye, and let them know you’re on to them. We used to have an Alsatian, and it’s the same trick I used on him when we were training him. Which meant that he listened only to me, because everyone else was too busy making him think he was the alpha dog, even though I tried to explain that’s not how it worked. Eventually, he got so confused, he bit my cousin, and had to be put down. I cried for ages after that. My family is really stupid. Most guys would have backed off, but not ol’ Yusuf. He held my gaze, like, I know you, and I’m not afraid and then he stuck his hand out and said, ‘I’m Yusuf.’

  ‘Shayna,’ I said.

  ‘Would you like to get a cup of coffee, Shayna?’ That’s it. No preamble. I had to admire his balls.

  ‘My daddy issues aren’t that big,’ I told him, and walked away. See what I mean about the impressive exit? I was slightly scared that my producer would be like, ‘Oh, how could you be so rude to my friend’, but I figured if he did, it wasn’t the job for me. I’ve never been so attached to something that I’m scared of losing it. I think that’s a good thing. And that would have been the end of that chapter, if I hadn’t run into Yusuf again. This time, I was at a bar, waiting for a friend who was late, and I just hate it when people keep me waiting. I think it’s disrespectful, and almost always, I wind up not talking to that person again. I’ve become slightly less rigid about it, because we live in Bombay, and the traffic is just so unpredictable, but on the other hand, since everyone is aware that the traffic is unpredictable, then why can’t they just leave their house earlier? I gave my friend a ten-minute stretch time, after which I was just going to leave, but I really needed a drink, and I had come all that way, and I didn’t want to get out and get back into the traffic again, so I sat by the bar and drank.

  There are days when I feel kind of … melancholic, I guess would be the best word to describe it. Sort of sad, sort of poignant, sort of like I’m in a black-and-white art house movie and I’m looking straight ahead, my eyes filled with meaning. This city does that to you.

  ‘Shayna. What a delightful surprise!’ There he was, my middle-aged wannabe suitor, grinning at me, and happily taking the next bar stool, like I had asked him to sit down. I didn’t really want to be alone though, my melancholy phases are nice and artistic, but they leave me feeling maudlin, like I was going to burst into tears. I wondered if it was just PMS.

  ‘You look lovely tonight,’ he said, smiling at me, and I was thinking of being all frosty, but then, it was nice to receive a compliment, even if the guy was ancient. I smiled and said thank you.

  ‘Waiting for someone?’ he asked looking around, and I told him about my friend and how she was late and how this was the third time she was late. He looked very serious and said, ‘Absolutely. People who are late are just disrespectful.’

  ‘That’s what I always say!’ I said, delighted.

  ‘I would never be late to meet you,’ he said then, looking deep into my eyes, and yes, okay? It was a very cheesy line, but at that moment, I found myself doing something so unlike me that I wanted to step outside my body and give myself a slap. I blushed and giggled.

  Three minutes later, my friend did arrive, and reluctantly—very reluctantly!—I left the stool and Yusuf by the bar, and we went and found a table.

  ‘He’s cute,’ she said, and I told her to be quiet. I was tingling slightly from my interaction, but there was no need to forgive her so quickly. At the same time, I was glad she said it, because it meant I wasn’t totally crazy for having this strange pit-of-my-stomach twisty feelings for some middle-aged guy. I hate to keep calling him middle-aged, but frankly, those were the only words that kept sing-songing in my head: MIDDLE-AGED MIDDLE-AGED, YOU HAVE A CRUSH ON A MIDDLE-AGED MAN!

  Not that I admitted to myself that I had a crush on him, of course. It wasn’t so much a crush as a gentle obsession. I thought about him a lot. Regular melancholy was replaced by I-turned-him-down-once-and-he-may-not-try-again melancholy, which is huge, because you end up feeling sad and stupid. I don’t know what it was about that four-minute conversation by the bar that flicked the switch for me, but I enjoyed that conversation, even though all we’d done was talk about the traffic and the weather, Bombay’s go-to topics when you have nothing else to say.

  It had been a while since someone had managed to do that to me. A long while, longer than I would like to admit, but okay, in the spirit of honesty, I had been single for two years at that point, and the last time I had sex was nine months prior. Hymens can grow back in that time period. I had received plenty of offers, but none that I wanted to take up. Quality control for the va-jay-jay, I thought of myself as a bouncer, and my panties as the velvet rope. Not everyone was getting into them. And while we’re being honest, I wanted to sleep with Yusuf.


  I wonder if other people do this thing where you’re talking to someone and you randomly imagine making out with them. It doesn’t even have to be someone you’re attracted to, you’re having a perfectly normal conversation, and suddenly, your head is filled with images of the two of you kissing. You’re imagining him with his clothes off, and then the person says something you’re meant to respond to and you’re flustered, because of this sex scene that just happened, and you’re wondering, ‘What is wrong with me?’ and there’s no way to control it.

  Maybe it is just me. Between the time I saw him at the bar and then saw him again, actually, on purpose, my head was filled with thoughts of the two of us hooking up, and I found myself getting turned on in the most random places, like not on my body random places, but locations, like when I was on set, and then I’d completely lose track of what I was about to say, or just waiting for a rickshaw, and then I’d lose track of the empty rickshaws that passed me, and before I knew it, it would be half an hour later, and I’d still be standing on the side of the road, having completely forgotten to hail one.

  ‘Shaaayna. Shayna? Shayna!’

  I snapped out of my Yusuf-related reverie and looked at the person making all the racket, my ‘Office Best Friend’. Actually, my ‘Office Husband’, but since Vidur is so glaringly gay, a fact obvious to everyone except his doting parents who can’t wait for the day their darling son brings home a darling girl and has darling babies, I think of him more as a girlfriend, than an actual husband. Which is not to say we don’t flirt. We flirt like crazy, in the manner of all fag hags and their gay BFFs in American sitcoms, but sometimes it bothers me: I wonder if I’m playing to the stand, whether I’m seeing him as an accessory instead of an actual person. Worse—whether he sees me as an accessory.

  ‘We’re going out tonight?’ he asked. Vidur is also the person who comes out with me the most, being unencumbered by a romantic relationship, and I guess, also because we just look so damn good together. We really do. If you didn’t talk to him (which is when you’d realize he was gay), you’d look at us across a bar and think, ‘Oh, what a good-looking couple.’ People have said this to me, been all like, ‘Oh, you and your boyfriend are so cute together!’ and I put on the same fake voice and say, ‘Thank you! But I find it so hard to get him to marry me!’ and then Vidur will giggle and I will giggle and we are mean, mean people.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked him.

  ‘Only to the most happening club this side of the burbs. I got us on the list. Well, you and I and a bunch of other people, but we don’t have to talk to them. Bollywood types.’

  ‘Ugh, not Bollywood types. You know my opinion of them, darling.’

  ‘I know, darling, but in order to be cool, we must suffer some pain.’

  ‘Isn’t that beauty?’

  ‘Cool, beauty, same diff, ya. So, you’ll come?’

  I considered my options. There was go home and watch some TV. There was, call up a girlfriend I hadn’t seen in a while who was due to get married to her Australian fiancé. Neither of those sounded very appealing. I was in a funk, sure, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t take my funk out. A funk can be very good company sometimes, and that’s when you break out the smoky eyes, the red lipstick and look dark and mysterious. Maybe, also, okay, maybe I was hoping that by some bizarre chance Yusuf would be there. Bandra is a small place, you’d be surprised who you run into.

  ‘No question,’ said Vidur. ‘Of course you’re coming. You’re becoming old and boring before your time.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I regarded him through narrowed eyes and then segued into thinking about my wardrobe. I had this new dress, lying unworn for a while, from one of the great sidewalk clothes markets that dot Bombay. It was black and swishy with gold detailing around the cleavage. I don’t have much in that department, but I have ways of making it look like I do. (Hint: some cleverly applied blush works wonders.)

  ‘You’re thinking about what to wear, aren’t you?’ Vidur has a way of reading my mind. I love him. I wish he were straight so I could actually marry him and be done with it.

  ‘We’ll go together?’ I asked him. ‘We can pre-game at my house first.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan. I’ve got to run now, give me a kiss.’ He leaned forward, I kissed his forehead. Kamala, one of the video editors, gave us a sourpuss look like she always does when we’re affectionate. She thinks we’re a) sleeping together and b) weird and unnatural. I think it’s been a long time since she got laid. There are some people who need sex so badly, it’s obvious.

  Before we left that evening, fashionably late at ten thirty-five, I stopped at the full-length mirror we have in our corridor. Well, ‘corridor’ is what a broker would call it. It’s just this little gap between the door and the living room, which everyone calls a ‘hall’ in Bombay, and I grew up in Delhi, so I feel like a giant in Bombay houses. Ours, the one I share with my often-absent model roommate, is what the broker called a 1BHK, which means there’s a bedroom with a door, which is a luxury. By Model Roommate (whose name I don’t bother with, because she’s unofficially changed it to ‘Nasha’ and I find that ridiculous), I mean that she’s a fashion model, not a model of what a roommate should be. She is very often away or spending the night with one of her shady dudes. Our agreement was that I’d have the bedroom and she’d have the living room, sorry, sorry, hall, which means that the mattress she sleeps on has to always be out and in whatever state of disarray she left it in.

  This agreement works in my favour, because I found the house and I looked for someone to share it with me, and in terms of real estate, the person who finds it is the one with all the power. On the other hand, I can’t, by our sacred roommate agreement mess with her things. (Also, she looked around when she moved in, sighed, rolled her eyes and said, ‘Fine. I’ll take it. But …’ this last bit within two inches from my face ‘don’t mess with my things’). We have to, unfortunately, share a bathroom though, but I have a shower caddy and her stuff is mostly gone when she’s not here, except for one crusty old razor lying under the sink.

  It’s a good thing I don’t care much about a clean house, because it would’ve driven me mad, that unmade mattress, the mouldy sandwich in the fridge. Now I’m just like, ‘eh’ and I step over it. We couldn’t have had drinks at Vidur’s anyway, because his parents would’ve been around, and that ‘cramps his style’, he says.

  I looked good, I thought. I’m not one for false modesty. I know I’m pretty, the mirror says so, people around me say so, and what’s the point of saying, ‘Oh no, I’m not much’? Some people have skills: you wouldn’t find, say, a computer programmer being all humble and saying, ‘Oh no, I’m not much at computers’, so I feel like looking good is part of my skill set. One of the things I was born with to help me get ahead in the world. Not that I’d ever use sexual favours to get something major, but I do admit to flirting with bouncers at clubs, with bartenders to get a free drink, and so on. Most reasonably attractive girls do, I think. If they say they don’t, they’re probably lying.

  We arrived at the club and Vidur instantly set about looking for his friends, air-kissing one or two people, the boy can network, and I stood behind him, longing for my first drink.

  ‘There they are!’ he exclaimed and dragged me over to the corner where some people were sitting. I guess I said hello absently, my eyes still scanning the crowd over their shoulders, I didn’t know quite what I was doing. Somewhere inside me, I registered that I was looking for Yusuf, but then the rest of me, the sane part, was in denial about it. I finally made myself understand that he wasn’t there, and why would he be? The odds that he might be were quite low, and I don’t know why I was so disappointed. I mean, I hadn’t called him there, I didn’t even know where he lived, or if this was his scene at all, and so, I had basically based my whole evening on the fact that I had once, at one time, run into him randomly at a bar. I gave myself a little shake, and accepted the champagne that was passed my way. I don’t know where it came fro
m, or what we were celebrating or whose bottle it was, or who was paying. My rule of thumb is, if someone offers you a drink, drink it. Why get into semantics about these things? The champagne was lovely, but it is my kryptonite, and by the second glass I was a little bit jaded, and a little bit giggly. So I’d mock everyone in my head, have another nice long chug of my drink and then smile about it.

  In a little bit, though, the club got super crowded and the champagne had gone straight to my head, so I decided to go outside and smoke a cigarette. One of the girls I had been introduced to, whose name I didn’t quite catch, but who had been looking at me with this weird, intense look on her face, decided to join me as well.

  I stepped outside, propped myself up against a pillar, one heel resting on it, the other leg crossed, and lit my cigarette so that the match flared and lit up my face for a fraction of a second. I took a long drag, looked downwards and slowly exhaled, looking upwards. It’s not a conscious thing, this posing, but ever since I was little, I’ve had a passion for music videos, and this is how the girls on them always are. Perfectly constructed body movements, haunted faces, against the music. It’s like the music is a foil for them, and vice versa, and they drape the melody around themselves like a fur coat. Even when they’re shiny, happy, dancing, the music is their accessory, their plaything and the two blend into each other. I used to long to be those girls, consciously, and now, I guess, subconsciously? Subliminally? Whatever it is, I often find myself falling into these poses, which, once upon a time, I used to practise in front of the mirror, with the music turned up high in my bedroom.

  The girl who had followed me out tossed a look at me, the same intense one as before, but I think I’d had enough champagne by this point not to wonder about it too much. I just thought in my head, ‘Huh. Weird Intense Girl’ and I was about to ask her what her name was again, when she said, ‘May I have a cigarette, Shayna?’ And she knew my name and I didn’t know hers, which was socially awkward but it was unlikely I was going to see her again, so all I had to do was get through the evening, pretty much.