‘I actually came here to tell you something,’ he says and for a wild, crazy moment I think he’s going to declare his love for me and I begin going over how I can turn him down without it looking like a class thing, like I think I’m too good for him or something, but he goes on, ‘I think a friend of yours is here.’
I look around and he makes a ‘tch’. ‘Not here here, men. But around here. In a hotel. This guy was asking for you, I thought I’d tell you.’
This is kind of creepy. ‘Which guy?’ I ask.
‘I didn’t ask his name, but he looked decent. From Delhi, he said. Anyway, so he was at the cigarette shop down the lane, you know, and I was there and we started chatting and I asked if he knew anyone in Goa, and he said he didn’t, but he thought a friend of his was travelling through here. So I asked which friend, what’s their name, because you know I know everyone.’ A pause during which I agree with him. He does know everyone. ‘And then he said your name, and I was like, men, she’s right here! I give her a ride every day! And he got quite excited and said to let you know which hotel he was staying in. I didn’t think I should tell him your hotel, because you never know.’ This last bit said judiciously.
‘What’s his name?’ I ask, exasperated, and he shrugs. ‘He said you guys were family friends. You want to go to his hotel? It’s not far.’
I chew on my lip—a terrible habit which means my lips are usually sore and ragged, but I do it only when I’m thinking. Having a family friend may not be the font of delight and pleasure that Joshua seems to think it is. For one thing my family is, well, they’re not exactly Reader’s Digest-worthy. And they’re not exactly pleased with me at the moment. I have a number of family friends, and I’m hoping that this one, the one in Goa, not very far from where I am, is one of the three whom I actually like. Also, how in the world does he know I’m in Goa? I guess he could’ve run into my parents, and told them and they would’ve told him all about their disappointing daughter who, instead of doing the things they want her to do, is currently sitting on her ass, without a job or a man, in Goa. And they have probably sent him with loads of guilt in jars for me to open at my leisure. I consider totally avoiding seeing him. I wonder if that would be practical. But if he’s around here, then I guess I’ll run into him sooner or later, unless I move? I could move.
Joshua is still waiting for an answer. I decide to go see this mystery person, collect my guilt and then not see him ever again for the rest of this trip. Avoiding him entirely would just be more guilt piled on top of me as soon as I contact my parents. Which is also something I’ve been putting off. I’ve been sending daily text messages: ‘Hello, I’m fine.’ But not answering any of their calls. I figure as long as they know I’m alive and not dead after a drug incident, found face down in the sea, they should be okay. No doubt I’ll go home to weeks of long lectures, but that’s sometime in the distant future and so I try and put it away from my mind and not let it concern me too much.
‘Where’s this guy?’ I ask, sighing, so my words come out ‘gu-uh-uy’. He’s at the Sunshine Rooms and View, I learn. I always find it kind of funny that hotels put ‘and view’ in their name. Like, look! You’re getting so much more than a room, you’re getting a paid-for view! It’s besides the point that you can see the same view just by standing next to the hotel, but somehow the fact that the view costs 10 per cent more makes you feel like you should enjoy it more, like the alcohol you take from a minibar. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ I say, standing up and squaring my shoulders. I feel very martyred and put upon, and like someone heading into battle. Joshua looks amused, but leads the way to his motorcycle.
And then we get to the Sunshine, and wouldn’t you know it? It’s Des.
Des—that’s a soft d, not like in ‘Desmond’, ay, ess—used to be a plump little boy, about a year younger than me, and for the longest time, we were taken to the same gatherings by our parents. My father and his were colleagues back in the day before Des’s dad was transferred elsewhere, and I think he was the closest thing my father had to a best friend. They came to all major family occasions, birthdays, Diwali, and so on. A lot of my extended family lives in Delhi too, and Des’s parents were from Mauritius, so they didn’t have much family nearby, and were kind of absorbed into ours.
Des was not the new best friend I had been hoping for, an ally against my parents and the grown-ups in general; for the most part he was quiet, preferring to read an Asterix comic in a corner instead of running around like the rest of us. I was the ringleader of our small group, mostly second cousins and other friends’ kids, but I was the oldest, and it got annoying, especially when I was ten, and everyone else was six or seven, and a ten-year-old’s concerns are so much bigger than what they were only four years ago.
Occasionally, Des’s mother would bend down and talk to him in French—they were from Mauritius so it was a language they spoke fluently—presumably asking him to join us, or drop his comic and eat a sandwich, that kind of thing. I remember he was always the most stubborn kid, just sat there like a lump, shaking his head, until the grown-ups learnt to present him with a plate, all the food on it, which he would eat from, never taking his eyes off his book. When I was twelve and he was eleven, Des’s father got a transfer to Bangalore, and had a small farewell dinner party, to which, of course, we were invited. I had always been slightly curious about their house: although they often came to ours, for his birthday parties, we would be invited out, maybe to a movie or a park. ‘Why haven’t we ever been over?’ I asked my parents and they exchanged glances sitting in the front seat of our old Fiat.
‘I guess their house is quite small, and so they’ve never had a chance to have visitors?’ said my father tentatively.
My mother snorted, ‘More likely they just can’t be bothered with guests.’ I understood her tone, it was the brittle happy one she used when she wanted to imply something was a truth. Later, I also understood that it had always bothered my mother that she did ‘all the work’ as she put it, and they had never reciprocated the party invitations. My father peaceably placed his hand on her shoulder, my mother glanced back at me, but I pretended to be busy looking out of the window. Adult politics never interested me much.
It was a small flat, much smaller than ours, which surprised me a little bit. I was used to large spaces, and I knew our little flat was only temporary till my family moved to the larger plot of land they had been building on since before I was born. Only one bedroom, and a smallish hall off the side, which had been curtained off, that was Des’s room, where we all sat. There were two or three other people, all older, none of them with children, and Des was still bathing when we arrived. I braced myself for a long boring evening, but Des’s mother was kind, she led me over to his bookshelf and said I could browse all I liked, so I selected an Enid Blyton I hadn’t read in a while and curled up in a corner. Des arrived, hair wet, stuffed into a red-checked shirt and blue denim shorts and, when prodded by the adults, admitted with a shrug that he was curious about Bangalore and then came and sat down next to me.
‘You’re still reading Blyton?’ he asked, and if an eleven-year-old could raise his eyebrows disdainfully, he would have. It was perhaps the first time he had begun a conversation with me, and I marvelled at that for a second before I remembered to be insulted.
‘You don’t have anything else,’ I said.
‘Of course I do,’ he said, ‘I don’t read those baby books any more. Do you read Wodehouse?’ I had no idea who or what Wodehouse was, but I did know that I didn’t like his tone. I shrugged and came up with the ultimate insult that my girlfriends and I used with frequency.
‘I don’t read much,’ I said, wrinkling my nose. ‘Reading is for nerds.’ The look he gave me was equal parts pitying and something that I recognized as my own expression: oh my God, do I have to talk to this person all evening? But after that first interaction, he got out his own book, from a shelf next to the one to which his mother had directed me, the ‘adult’ shelf, I suppose
, and we just sat next to each other, flipping through the pages of our books. Stupid grown-up laughter filtered to us from where the party had moved into the garden and at one point my mother came upon us, both silently reading and said, ‘I have to take a picture of this! Sushil! Come take a picture of the children reading, so cutely next to each other!’
I was self-conscious for her and for me, though, to be fair to my mother, this was also a year when I was frequently mortified by anything that might imply that I didn’t just appear fully formed and perfect one day, but that I came from a family, embarrassing mother and all. My father did take the photo though, and I looked up and smiled, like a good daughter, but Des only rolled his eyes after the photo was taken and we still have it somewhere, I grinning, he staring at his book.
And then I didn’t think about him for many years, until his name popped up on the Internet, in my inbox. He wanted to ‘reconnect’, I was wary. I clicked through his photographs on a social networking site, and he was no longer chubby, but transformed into a thoughtful, not unattractive person. His nose, which had always been too large, now fit his face perfectly, almost like an anchor for the rest of his features. He was smiling only in one of the pictures, his arm around another thoughtful person, a girl person, and if you must know, I felt a slight throb of disappointment. Not because I was interested in him or anything, but because I always felt a pang when an attractive member of the opposite sex seemed to be attached. Is this normal? Does everyone feel it? They’ve got to. He wrote me a nice email as well, saying hello, that he had just moved to Bombay and how were my parents? I replied, giving the basics of my life over the last decade and a half, and he replied to that and then, I just never wrote back. That was almost a year ago now.
He is standing there, just at the entryway of the hotel, almost as if he’s waiting for me. Certainly, the expression on his face when he spots me walking tentatively towards him is not one of surprise, but oddly, of pleasure. He’s holding a battered paperback in his hands, a cloth bag slung across his torso. He has a beard. I look at his face carefully as I approach, and I can still see bits of the chubby boy he used to be. Somehow, this, us meeting in Goa, makes this meeting a lot more familiar than it normally would be. He’s a piece of my past and I’m of his, it’s like we’re in a foreign country almost, immigrants, and we have to cling to each other. Maybe that’s taking it a bit far, but not all the emotions I feel when I look at him are those of being put-upon. Imagine, if we didn’t have the Internet, we wouldn’t recognize each other right now.
Maybe I’d drift past him to the lobby, maybe he’d do a double take, think, ‘Hey, that girl looks familiar’ but then I’d meet his eyes and there’d be no catch of recognition and we would move on, move on, and this moment would never exist.
We are face to face. I think of my parents and, oddly, of Michael Loon, whom I have not thought of all day. I think of Des’s small flat and the feel of the back of my knees sweating. I look up at him. ‘You wear glasses,’ I say, the first words I address to him after seventeen years.
‘I do,’ he says, touching them. They’re wire-rimmed and unobtrusive. Silence. We shuffle our feet.
It is Joshua who comes to our rescue. ‘You guys go catch up, men,’ he says loudly and jocularly from behind me. ‘I’m off. I’ll be back in an hour to pick you up, haan, Ladli?’
‘No, wait,’ I try to say but my throat is too dry and he doesn’t hear me or pretends not to and rushes off in a great thud-thud-thud of his motorcycle engine. I suddenly hope Des doesn’t think I’ve planned this, that I’ve sneakily tried to be alone with him. That’s ridiculous though, because I haven’t seen him in so many years, why on earth would I conspire?
‘If you have plans …’ I begin at the same time that he says, ‘Was that your boyfriend?’ We both laugh, nervously.
‘No,’ I say, ‘Joshua is my friend. And my motorcycle taxi driver. I met him here. He’s been a good friend.’
Des’s eyes flick to mine, holding them for a second longer than normal and then he looks at the ground. ‘I don’t have plans. I was just going to go to the beach and read. Would you like to come?’ I thank everything I can think of thanking that, today, I’m carrying my ‘serious’ beach book, The Journals of Sylvia Plath, instead of the pink-covered shoe-embossed bit of fluff I was reading yesterday. We stroll down to the beach. There doesn’t seem to be much to say, but we try. He’s been to Delhi recently, where he looked up my parents, at the behest of his. They told him I was in Goa and asked him if he’d be so kind as to see if I were still alive. Not in so many words, of course, but I can hear my mother’s gentle but persistent nag. My phone was switched off, and he was going to try a couple more times before he called the cops.
‘Really?’ I ask, wide-eyed that he’d take so much trouble for me.
‘Weird things can happen in Goa,’ he says.
‘But I found you,’ I say, softly, kicking a shell in front of me.
‘You did,’ he says, and then he smiles for the first time since I’ve seen him and it flashes across his face, slow-blooming but swift and I notice a dimple and I am so winded by this that I begin to walk faster and faster, till I’m in the sea and the surf is licking at my toes and when I turn around, he’s still standing where I left him, watching me with a curious furrow between his brows, and I know everything. And I know nothing.
18
Becoming Who You Want to Know
It has been a good week for me, my darling. Joyous news, I made a friend! An actual friend, not just someone you call when you have nothing to do, this is a person you call when you have real plans, fun plans and you want the person to be part of them. Granted, I am seldom the one with the Fun Plans, but she is. Her name is Saneru, and she’s just moved in to the neighbourhood, and interestingly, it was Aunty B who brought us together. Her mother happens to be Aunty B’s one-time college friend, yes, Aunty B went to college, for a brief year that she now describes as the ‘happiest one of my life’ which you knew was the description she was going to pick anyway. Saneru’s mother, I take it, was somewhat star-struck herself, and even accompanied Aunty B to some of her screen tests in the hope that Bollywood would absorb her too.
Alas, she was somewhat plain. This is not me being cruel. It’s Aunty B’s dismissive gesture over her drink, after Saneru left, ‘Ugly girl, like her mother. That’s why she never made it in Bollywood.’ I felt defensive already, but why should I lie to you? Saneru is not what you would call pretty, not even relatively. Compared to your shining peacock-ness, she is a pigeon, compared to anyone, she’s lumpy-looking, with a squashed nose and tending towards plumpness in her upper body. She has a gap between her front two teeth, a spotty dark skin, that isn’t glowing or lustrous, it looks more like it’s been spackled on, and a honking laugh. Despite all these things, or maybe because of them, she’s perhaps the kindest and funniest person I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting.
At our first meeting, I was called into the drawing room, where Saneru sat with Aunty B, anxiously nibbling at a biscuit. ‘Ah, here she is,’ said Aunty B, and I could recognize in her tone the fact that she was tired and just about to foist off her visitor on to me. This happens more often than you’d think, and it isn’t just her young visitors either. I should ask for a rent deduction. ‘Dear, this is Sonali,’ went on Aunty B.
‘Saneru,’ said Saneru, exasperatedly and then to me, ‘Hello, nice meeting you, but I’ve got to go. Plans.’ She made a vague gesture with her arm and then stood up, and bent down to give Aunty B a kiss. ‘Lovely seeing you, Aunty. I’ll tell my mother you said hello, shall I?’
Aunty B looked momentarily confused. She likes to dismiss her visitors herself. ‘Yes,’ she said, collecting herself, ‘yes, Saneru. Come any time. Take this one with you when you’re going out, will you? She doesn’t go out enough.’
I blushed and retreated further into the dusty curtains, but Saneru’s eyes met mine and gleamed, one conspirator to another. ‘Of course, Aunty,’ she said, demure
ly.
I walked her to the door, it seemed the polite thing to do, and she gripped my wrist before I could turn away. ‘Hey, would you like to pop by later this evening? I just moved in, and I’m having some friends over. A bit of a mixed bag, but we’re neighbours! It’s nice to have neighbours.’
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, but couldn’t think of an excuse, and anyway, she was too quick for me.
‘What’s your cell number? I’ll text you my address.’ That answer I knew, and repeated it, watching her thumbs fly quickly across her phone keypad, before she looked up and gave me a troll grin. ‘Sent,’ she declared, slipping her phone back into her pocket, ‘I’ll expect you in a couple of hours.’
I lay on my bed for a long while wondering whether I should get out of it. I find I can lie on my bed for surprisingly long periods of time without getting restless or falling asleep. I suppose that’s the nice thing about having so few interests. I am calm in a rushing world. I should package my form of meditation and sell myself as the next Baba. Baba Bed. Lady of Lazies. ‘You can always come home if you hate it,’ said Wise Me in my head. Wise Me is me in my forties, always wears a little red dress when she appears, smokes one picturesque cigarette and seems to know everything. I wish I was Wise Me already. So, on the dot of a ‘couple of hours’ later, I pulled on a fresh T-shirt, sniffed under my arms to see if I was okay and made my way down the street.
Saneru had also sent me directions, and her apartment was quite easy to find. I walked around it for a little bit so I wouldn’t be the first to arrive and then walked up four flights of stairs and rang the bell. Shards of laughter slipped through the crack under the door, and then it was opened and she stood in front of me, grinning. ‘So glad you could come!’ she exclaimed and it looked like she meant it.
Cold Feet Page 15