Cold Feet

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  ‘I’d be the man then,’ she said, ‘because being attracted to an aeroplane is a being-inside-something fantasy.’

  ‘Women can be inside things too,’ he said. ‘But I see what you mean.’

  They stepped outside and into a waiting taxi cab. The whole evening had a pre-made quality to it, like it had been rehearsed.

  ‘My house?’ said the man.

  ‘You could be a rapist,’ said Akshara.

  ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘Do you have anyone you could call and tell your whereabouts to?’

  She almost didn’t, but then, with a little smile, she dialled the number and handed him the phone.

  ‘Who am I speaking to?’ he asked her.

  ‘My friend Mo,’ said Akshara.

  21

  Wisdom is as Wisdom Does

  My second week in Goa, I do two foolish things. One is just regular stupid. I get a haircut at a place I probably shouldn’t have gotten a haircut at. It is called the Mona Lisa parlour, at least, that’s what I can make out from the peeling sign, now it just looks like O A I S A all scraped up. Someone had once lovingly stuck on those 3D Catholic decals, Jesus with his hand raised, his heart exposed, Mary in blue (why is she always in blue?), holding a baby, a sign that says, ‘God loves you’, but those have been pried from the wall years ago, you could tell, the edges are coming off, and each is surrounded by a halo of dirty fingerprints. I am hot, my hair flopped like a furry dead fish, even in its bun sticking to the back of my neck, and I am waiting for Des. He isn’t late, I am early, and I am early only because I haven’t had much to do this morning except lie on my mattress, directly under the fan and think about my life.

  Here’s what happened right before I came to Goa, I broke up with somebody. His name is Ankur. I know I said I wasn’t ready to talk about it, but I’m ready to talk about it now. Ankur wasn’t the picture I’d draw if you asked me who my perfect guy was, but after I met him, I had a hard time believing anyone else could be. He sort of wormed his way into my life, I guess, in this insidious fashion, and before I knew it, I couldn’t do without him. That makes me sound passive, but if you’ve been with me so far, you know I’m kind of passive. I like, I liked, nothing better in relationships than for someone else to have the answers and take the lead. I believed in marriage and babies. I thought that was what the world had in store for me. I didn’t believe in them passionately, like I never made it a life goal, but on my flowchart of how my life was supposed to go, marriage was definitely on it. I didn’t allow myself to have any ambivalent feelings, and so I didn’t.

  One by one, over the years, my friends have been getting married. It started with a trickle and grew to a tide. Now, people call me months in advance to warn me about their weddings in the winter—the most popular time—and usually, I have to juggle between three or four weddings every season. It’s one of the things that make me think I’m getting older, like marriage is part of a checklist I should be crossing off, this is my role as an adult woman. I make my own family, having risen from my parents’ family, and so on and so forth. Sometimes I think there’s something wrong with me for not wanting marriage enough, for not making it a priority. How do I know marriage isn’t my priority? I’ve seen people who’ve made it theirs, and their goals and their focus are so different from mine. I drift and they aim; I am a piece of wood, they are arrows. I am of the school of thought that I’ll get there eventually, refusing to believe in the existence of mortality or ageing. I’ve looked the same age since I was in my early 20s, and this makes me think my womb too is youthful-looking.

  I spent the two years I was with Ankur as a study in contrasts. In year one, I was deliriously happy, so happy that I often checked with myself to see if this was really truly happening, if this was really truly me. I like to think he was of the same state of mind as I was, but he wasn’t. He was a matter-of-fact guy, he took his happiness and mine for granted. He was never overcome like I was; say, sitting in front of my mirror suddenly awash with happiness; and because of this, he could casually kiss my shoulder and go about his day. Once, I tried to talk to him about it. ‘Don’t you feel lucky?’ I asked and he sort of shrugged and sort of smiled with one half of his mouth and said, ‘Yeah, I guess.’ But I knew he didn’t feel the same sort of amazed glee that I did, his was ‘This Is What I Deserve’, and this very subtle but very real difference led us straight into year two, my second year with him and my swing from overjoyed to heartbroken.

  It was my fault, my friends say, and so do I, in the middle of the night, to myself. Here’s what happened. My checklist rolled around. It was time, very simply, for me to cross off that next big goal in my life, to Get Married. To be a Mr and a Mrs. Nothing outside prompted this, it didn’t change my vague feelings towards marriage in general, and much as I’d like to blame it on my parents, they’d been putting pressure on me for years, so it’s unlikely that I would’ve started listening to them just then. But you go through your whole life—well, maybe not you, but I certainly did—swinging from one point to another. School to college, college to job, job to marriage to job to kids, being a parent, and so on. When I hear about people abroad taking gap years, it’s about as alien a concept as the country itself seems. Imagine taking a year off. Imagine how far behind you’d fall.

  One morning, over coffee, I decided I wanted to get married. I was having coffee with a friend, actually, she was a friend of Ankur’s. I don’t have that many friends of my own. And then she asked me, quite casually, reaching over for the brown sugar, ‘So, when are you guys getting married?’ and it was like this light went off in my head. I mean, literally, a light. I thought I was having a seizure, there was this sudden flash in my brain and I came out of it open-mouthed and gasping a little bit.

  ‘What?’ she asked and I looked at her and said, ‘I think we’re getting married quite soon’ and she said, ‘Oh, wonderful! When?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, I have to go.’ And threw some money on the table and ran out of there, okay, maybe not ran, but walked fast, my chappals catching on the mat, so I nearly tumbled, but I was so excited.

  I went running to Ankur’s house, it was a Sunday, so he was in. I smiled at his mother when she let me in, and she asked if I wanted breakfast but I shook my head, I was in such a hurry. His parents were nice about me staying over, and being at their house at all hours, so it was okay that I opened his door and went straight in to wake him up. Which I didn’t need to, because he was already by his massive monitor, clicking on some link or the other.

  ‘Hello! You’re early!’ he said, sounding pleased, and I sat on the edge of his bed, all excited, and said, ‘I think we should get married now.’

  ‘Now?’ he said, laughing, ‘you mean right this minute?’ It was so like him to pretend to take literally what I said and twist it around so the sentence lost its meaning.

  I see now, that then, in my impatience to convey my feelings to him, I waved him aside and said, ‘No, not right this minute, but like, that should be our next step. We’ve been dating for over a year now.’

  ‘Ladli,’ he said, a look of alarm passing over his face, ‘we’re not getting married.’

  ‘Like ever?’ I asked and he shrugged like he did when I asked him if he loved me, a shrug that meant possibly or maybe but usually meant no. ‘But then,’ I stammered and he asked, ‘But then what?’ and I said, ‘But then what happens?’ I could see our future stretching out in front of us, in hiatus, boyfriend–girlfriend for the rest of our lives. Was that what I wanted? No, I decided then, that was not what I wanted. What else is a relationship for but to grow from point to point? What is a relationship except two people evolving with each other?

  ‘I guess I can’t see you any more,’ I said, my eyes already filling with tears.

  He crossed over and took me in his arms and murmured, ‘Baby’, and I thought he was going to sort it out and he’d tell me he would marry me, just not right then, and everything would be all right. ‘Who’s getting married next, hanh?’ he ask
ed. ‘Did you get an invitation in the mail?’

  It was at this point that I swung from How Lucky Am I to The Person I Love Most In The World Doesn’t Know A Thing About Me. We limped along for the rest of the year, but the M word had been said and it couldn’t be unsaid.

  The funny thing is, looking back, I never had another flash-of-light revelation. Everything just seemed to grow dimmer, not quite so bright, and already our days together had a dirty quality about them, like they had been used. I guess Ankur thought I’d forgotten about it, because I didn’t bring it up for another week. But I’d be in the middle of a happy moment, we’d be watching a movie, or having very romantic drinks and somewhere, I’d think, ‘This is all a farce. This is not real, this is not true, because he doesn’t want to marry you. And never will.’ It got sort of annoying, having a third party along on our dates, but the voice in my head refused to quit. I spent a lot of time by myself, just sitting in darkened rooms, the drama of it somehow appealing to me, and I could tell Ankur was getting irritated.

  Six months on:

  ‘Why do you even want to marry me?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s what people do,’ I flashed back. ‘You date someone, and if you’ve been dating them long enough, you marry them. It’s the way of the world! Otherwise, why waste time?’ I started to think of myself as a product, rapidly growing old. Who would want to buy an old model of a cell phone when a brand new one had just been released? If you could have anyone you wanted, why would you pick the one who was already a little stale? I began to think of the time we had spent together as time I could have spent as a younger woman finding someone who would want to settle down. A bad investment, our whole relationship was a bad investment. And Ankur’s not dumb, he picked up on this too.

  ‘I could be anyone then,’ he spat out. ‘You don’t necessarily want to marry me, you just want to marry anyone you’ve dated for over a year. Is that it?’ He looked at me a little bit like he was trying to learn me all over again and a lot like he was waiting for me to contradict him. I didn’t. Instead, I looked down at my bare feet. My toes badly needed a pedicure. I felt awkward and ugly and unloved. The first lesson I had learned about men was that marriage or a commitment equals love. If he loves you, he will date you; if he loves you, he will want to marry you. I loved Ankur, I wanted to marry him, and now, it was becoming clear that he didn’t love me. ‘You’re unbelievable,’ he said, shaking his head and I yelled, ‘Give me one good reason why you don’t want to get married!’ and he started to walk out of the door and turned around and said, ‘I only want to marry someone who wants to marry me, not just someone who wants to get married’ and I said, ‘That makes no sense!’ even though it did, it made total and utter sense, but I couldn’t say that and then, oh, he was gone.

  We made up the next week, made love mid-week, and by Thursday night, it looked like we were back on track. I wasn’t saying anything, barely breathing for fear I’d ruin it, but he brought it up anyway. We were eating leftover Chinese food at his house, watching a movie on his big computer monitor, the AC was on high, and I was in my lounge pants, soft cotton that had been washed so often that they had ceased to be attractive, but were still the most comfortable things I owned. The movie ended, and I had fallen asleep without meaning to, waking up to him touching my shoulder and softly murmuring my name.

  ‘What?’ I asked, eyes still closed.

  ‘Get up, you’ve got to go home,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll sleep here,’ I said, I had done it a thousand times before, and I prepared to roll over and curl up, back to my dreams.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘go home.’

  Something about his voice made me open my eyes finally, he was standing by the light switch and when he saw I was awake, he flicked the lights on, the horrible tube lights, not the yellow lights that I preferred. Normally, he’d wait for me to be fully awake before he did this, sometimes telling me to cover my eyes so he could turn the lights on, but that night, he stood there, unapologetic.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, getting out of bed, shading my eyes with my palm.

  ‘Got everything?’ he asked, still in this strange voice, this ‘tube-light’ voice, harsh and unflattering and removing all shadows.

  The door to the Mona Lisa parlour swings open and there’s a fat woman there still laughing about something someone inside has said. I’d put her in her mid-thirties, wearing a nightgown. The most remarkable thing about her is the line of stubble on her upper lip, it looks as though she’s taken a razor to it, and I realize I’ve never seen that blue line on a woman’s lip. I can’t stop staring at it, but then, she’s looking at me with distaste, so I suppose we’re even.

  One of us has to say something, so I do. ‘Haircut?’ I squeak.

  She looks me up and down, but I’m relieved that she doesn’t look doubtful. She seems convinced that her beauty parlour is the best place to get a haircut, at this point she’s just looking at me to see if I’m worthy. Then she swings open the door, yells something unintelligible and the door is closed in my face. Am I meant to follow? A giggling girl sticks her head out and looks at me, deeply amused. ‘Haircut?’ she asks and ‘Haircut,’ I acknowledge, and she does a well-come-in-then gesture with her head and I follow her indoors. A bell over the door jangles when we walk through. The low cane table against which my hand brushes feels sticky and undusted.

  It’s not too late to change my mind, but I submit to being whisked into a grubby plastic sheet and place my head over a sink. Water runs down and into my left ear. Giggles McGiggleson is going to town with the shampoo. Her fingers probe my scalp like it’s diseased, she can’t bear to do it, and I get shampoo in my eye.

  The fat lady’s back, but she’s changed out of her nightie.

  ‘Get up,’ says Giggles, ‘you can have that chair.’ She tries to wrap a towel around my head like a turban and gives up halfway. I sit in the chair and she pumps a lever bringing me down two levels, with her eyes all the while looking off into the middle distance. It looked like she was giving the chair a hand job, to tell the truth, and I’m halfway through having this thought when I give myself a scolding for being dirty. Hand jobs are on my mind though, well, maybe not hand jobs per se, but penises, definitely. Ankur had a lovely penis—is it weird to say that? I was fond of it, it seemed happy to see me. I think about bulges in pants, and then I think about Des, and maybe causing his pant bulge and then I feel a rush through my body so vivid I’m scared that everyone will be able to know what I’m thinking about! Moustache Hairyface picks up bits of my wet hair and looks at it.

  ‘What you want?’ she asks and I’m tempted to reply with an existential answer, ‘What does anyone want?’ but I shrug instead. Maybe other hairdressers would push, but Moustache just picks up her scissors and begins snipping away at it. I try not to say anything—really, I do—but there’s one point where at least four inches of my hair are on the floor and I let out a strangled sound. Moustache ignores me, combs half my hair over my face and looks—if I can tell through all this hair in my eyes—a little gleeful. Snip, snip, snip go her scissors, oh my God, she’s given me a fringe. Not bangs, bangs imply something stylish and mod, this is the kind of fringe the heroine has in the Before part of a makeover scene, thick, in my eyes and completely dorky-looking.

  ‘Okay, blow dry!’ she barks out to Giggles, who comes scampering up with a machine which looks like it’s used regularly for ritual bathtub suicide.

  ‘No!’ I yelp, climbing out of my chair, trying very hard to push my fringe out of my eyes.

  ‘No blow dry?’ Moustache looks sceptical. ‘Price is still the same, but.’

  It’s Rs 150, cheaper than my last drink, and I pay and leave, trying not to look into any mirrors on my way out.

  I guess you could say Ankur and I broke up that night, although it took another six weeks of unhappiness before we—and by ‘we’ I mean ‘he’, I didn’t do anything—decided to call it quits. I’m still not very clear why he didn’t want to marry me, or why he did
n’t want to get married, period. I just know that he didn’t and I did. Note the past tense. I no longer think I want to. But if Ankur were to appear right now, and say, ‘Ladli, I’ve made a huge mistake, please marry me’, I’m not sure what I’d say.

  I’m meant to say, ‘No! Get out of my life! I’ve moved on!’ but I can’t find that response so easily at the tip of my tongue. Does that mean I still love him? That I still want to marry him? Do I want to marry anybody?

  My second foolish thing, while we’re on the subject of marriage and people who are married, is hooking up with Michael Loon. And I do mean ‘hooking up’ in the teenage sense of the word. There was no coitus, but there was some groping, his tongue in my mouth, his hand under my bikini. I was passive through all this, I wanted him to kiss me, I guess, or I wouldn’t have gone over. It had been a particularly hot day and I wasn’t in the mood for the beach so I called Michael and he said he was home alone with the kids. Nina had gone shopping with a friend, and I was welcome to go over and use their pool.

  Joshua had an aunt’s birthday or something, so he couldn’t drop me and I took an auto rickshaw. In retrospect, maybe Joshua would have talked me out of it? But when I went over, I didn’t know I was going to do anything that required being talked out of. Okay, that’s not completely true. There was a strange frisson in the air that morning, even when I dialled his number. I kind of knew that something was going to happen. The past couple of times we had met had been completely innocent, except a gaze held too long once, his knuckles passing casually over my knee another time. Nothing to base an affair upon.

  But I knew I had read the mood right when the door swung open and he was waiting for me, leaning casually against the fridge. I didn’t want to make out with him and yet I did. Something in me wanted to erase the bitterness of my recent past by imposing bitterness upon him and his marriage. Marriages are a lie. I took off my sundress as we walked down the corridor and jumped into the pool in front of him. The children were napping. He jumped in with me, I swam very close and I heard him take a deep breath. Our bodies were almost touching, I smiled a little bit and then he was kissing me like he had wanted to for a long, long time.