Cobalt Blue (11 page)

One day, I popped him on the back of my bike and we blazed out of the city. We came off the ghats and hit the highway and coasted along. A mango tree, large and old, loomed up along the edge of the road. Next to it, a path led to some little village. It was about four in the afternoon. I parked the bike in the shade of the tree and we leaned against it. A little boy was playing in the mud. His mother was standing next to him, in brilliant colours, nail-enamel bright. Gradually, some more people arrived. An old granny type in a nine-yard sari, two or three men who looked like Warkaris in their huge turbans, that kind. And then the State Transport bus arrived and they got in. Only he and I were left.

We hadn't said much to each other after we'd left the city. I hadn't climbed a tree in ages, so I clambered up until I was astride a branch. He grinned as I climbed swiftly. ‘Come up,' I beckoned. ‘No,' he shook his head.

I sat there, looking at the fields, the trees, the wells. After a while, he said, over a yawn: ‘You want to say something? Why did you bring me here?' I had been waiting for this very question, I realized. If he asked me, I could tell him.

I told him everything. About myself, about Anubhav, about my feelings for him.

The sun was almost at the horizon by the time I finished. I sat on the tree and spoke and he sat by the road and listened. At first, I could see his expressions as I spoke but it grew dark and then I could only hear some vaguely encouraging grunts. I rambled on for nearly an hour or an hour and a half before I tired. That he could listen without speaking for such a length of time did not surprise me.

He only said, ‘This is like something out of Jim Corbett. Evening and the hunter up a tree and the tiger waiting below. Only this tiger doesn't bite. Come on down.' I came down and started the bike. When he climbed on, he put both his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder. I said, ‘Hello! I talked for hours and you're not going to say anything?' He began to sing, in French, I think. As we rode along the highway, now lit by headlights, he sang on. He sang into the breeze, he sang as we came into the city. He ignored the way people stared at him when we stopped for signals and he continued to sing. He ignored their mockery.

What had I gone and done? Had I proposed to him, as the girls in college would say, or what?

I refused to go back to the doctor. This talking isn't helping me at all. In the last month I've been for ten or more sessions. That should be enough. I don't want to be treated like a patient. I enjoy writing and for that, I have Dr Khanvilkar to thank.

Staying here annoyed me at the beginning; then it became a routine; now I've begun to like it. Maushi and Kaka had wanted to adopt me. If they had, this house with its artefacts from across the world, this room in which I am now, all this would have been mine, no?

This morning I asked Maushi, ‘If I had been your daughter and I had done something like this, would you have sent me somewhere else for a change of scene?'

Aai was having her bath. Maushi looked at the bathroom door, took a deep breath and said, ‘I would not have sent you away. Not even if it meant keeping you in a house where everything would remind you of a man. But the decision was your parents'; they asked me if I would have you and I agreed because I knew, at some level, you were also tired of your home. Otherwise why would you have left with that boy?'

I interrupted: ‘Okay, the truth please. Does the doctor report back on what I tell her?'

‘Not everything. Just what we need to know and what is related to the treatment. And it isn't as if we know nothing about you. You're not someone we met yesterday, you know.'

At this point, Aai came out of the door, a prayer on her lips, her wet hair wrapped in a towel. I left the room.

It would have been well-nigh impossible for me to tell my parents that I was in love with the paying guest. Perhaps they would have been able to listen without getting angry but they would have asked: why had I felt the need for secrecy? And then why had I left home?

That afternoon, Maushi and I looked at her wedding album. I couldn't recognize Aai and Baba. Aseem was in some of the photographs, asleep on Aai's shoulder. Tanay and I hadn't been born. Aaji and Ajoba were smiling in the photographs. It was as if they were sighing with relief. Anil Kaka sported a moustache and was wearing bell-bottoms and a shirt of a hectic floral pattern, Sharayu Maushi looked just the same. Perhaps it's because she never had kids, never had to raise them. That seems to keep a woman young. You could tell what had happened to Aai and Baba in the process of bringing us into the world and raising us.

That might be why I didn't tell my parents. They would have taken charge of everything and we would have lost control of our lives. They would have accelerated straight to the marriage hall. He would have been sat down and they would have demanded all kinds of confidences from him. They would have read me a sermon about the importance of education and how I should finish my degree before marriage. Then they would have hired a hall, called five hundred or six hundred relatives that no one had ever heard of and fed them and declared us married.

This is why I concealed even my friendship with him. Even when we went out together, I'd make him get off the bike at a traffic signal before the house. I did not visit him in the upstairs room. Anubhav saw all this happening; he knew. How could he not? His face was heavy and helpless with knowledge but I didn't have the words to explain. When these answers surfaced, I fell into a deep and lovely sleep.

The results came out. I got 89 per cent. I was delighted. I had planned on an MSc in the same college, after which I planned a master's degree in zoo management. I had no worries, no cares. When the holidays ended, I returned the Green Earth forms and my report. That year, they had decided to pay volunteers a stipend. Two thousand five hundred rupees! My first cheque! I was over the moon. I thought I'd take everyone out to dinner.

‘Can I ask him too?' I asked my parents. ‘It won't look nice, leaving him out.'

‘Okay,' said Aai. I bounced off to ask him. Once again, he surprised me. ‘I'm not coming. We can go out on our own.'

After the family treat, I had four hundred rupees left. I said to Anubhav, ‘I've decided that I want to taste beer and see. I've also decided that I can't do it alone. And I want to pay for it from my own earnings.' He was more than ready to come with me. On the way home from the beer bar, I felt light and happy. It seemed a wonder that I'd never drunk such a great thing before. I felt a great liquid love for the world surge through me.

That left two hundred rupees. Aai said, ‘Give me that passbook. I'll put it in the locker with the others.' And so ended my spree.

But it was fun while it lasted, even the family dinner. At home, we didn't eat together, as a family. So it seemed odd for all of us to be at the table at the same time. Baba perused the menu with great care. Aai was telling me something about Prakash Kaka's Kanchan who was pregnant. Aseem was sending messages on his mobile. Tanay had bought me a Bon Jovi cassette. He gave it to me after dinner and left for parts unknown. And all of us went our separate ways, as if we weren't a family at all, just a bunch of friends saying bye to each other after dinner.

I had never been to a beer bar before. Okay, once with Orayan and Sahadev but I had had nothing to drink there. This time, I pressed the cold beer bottle to my face. The waiter stood there, opener in hand. When the bottle was opened, a whiff of vapour escaped. The waiter tilted our glasses and filled them slowly. I raised my glass and tried to clink it against Anubhav's but he said, ‘You only raise your glass with beer.' Then he raised his and said, ‘To your first salary.' I said, ‘To my life, to my great life.' Then I closed my eyes and took a long deep swig. Five minutes later, the garlic mushrooms came. I nibbled and sipped and looked about.

The bar was packed. Cigarette smoke hung over us like fat clouds. Mario Miranda sketches on the walls. An old juke box in a corner. A great sense of fellow feeling for everyone in the bar swamped me. I stroked Anubhav's cheek. I got the feeling we were all sailing in the same boat. The boat was cutting through the waters, purposefully. But where were we headed? No one could ever know. Since we shared this common fate, it was incumbent upon us to love one another. Anubhav ordered another bottle and filled my glass. I pressed the glass against my lids and tried to see something in the darkness. Colours flashed and sparkled. When I opened my eyes, a man at the next table was pointing at me and laughing. I felt that I should invite everyone I knew to sit with me and drink ice-cold beer. No one should need to do anything else.

The treat I gave him? He said, ‘I want bhakri and mutton rassa.' He knew where he wanted it too: Kolhapur Durbar behind the market yard.

‘It costs nothing to eat there,' I said.

‘Why does that matter?' he replied.

The place was full of peons and farmers and truck drivers. The tables were arranged as in a college mess. It took half an hour for us to be seated and we weren't even at the same table. But what food it was, what food. From his table, he demonstrated how to crush the bhakri into the rassa and eat it. We ate our fill, even as our breaths hissed wetly through our noses. Behind me some women stood, waiting for my seat. One of them patted my back and put a glass of water in front of me when it became apparent that my mouth was aflame with spices. Outside, pouring water over my hands from a tumbler, he said in the nasal tone of a thousand Brahmin aunties, ‘So, Joshi? Still hankering for the sedate pleasures of rice and varan, ghee, salt-and-lime?' I laughed and wiped my hands on his shirt.

And then those golden holidays ended and the routine of college started again. Lectures, practicals right up to two o'clock and then freedom. In the beginning, I'd go to the art school and dig him out. But after a week, he got annoyed. ‘I'm working seriously at my art. I can't be disturbed like this, every day. Go home. Go sow some seeds. But don't expect me to drop everything just because you're free.' I bridled. ‘Sure. Keep at those abstruse canvases. Perhaps if you could paint something one could recognize, I might take your art a little more seriously.' He looked at me sardonically and laughed.

The next day he and Tanay went off somewhere and did not come back for two days. Aai said they'd gone to Tanay's friend's farm in Karnavadi. The cheek. Not a word to me. On top of that, no apologies and to add insult to injury, they took the bike too. I had to use the bus for two days. I felt I should go to that godforsaken village and drag him back by the collar. Half the day, he and Tanay were in each other's pockets. What need to wander off together?

When they returned, they brought home all kinds of farm produce. As if nothing had happened, he asked: ‘Coming for a swim?' I didn't want to fight with him so I said, ‘Sure.' And then it struck me that I was a goner. In those two days, I had thought of nothing else. I had let him and his ways get to me. It was the first time such a thing had happened. This just wasn't me.

I haven't been able to write for the last couple of days. Yesterday when I sat down at this desk, I thought I should read what I'd written up to now. Tanay has lots of books like this: the correspondence of So-and-So and Such-and- Such; the diaries of this person or that. When I read what I'd written, one thing became clear: this act of writing and reading what you have written helps you see yourself clearly. Writing this seems to have calmed me a little. As long as I can be sure it's private. Aai, if you're reading this on the sly, please don't. Put this book back where you found it and don't open it again.

It's been a month since I came home. Aai, I'm going to trust you. I'm assuming you've put this diary down. What a terrible month it has been.

It was as if my mind was fractured, the way a bone can be. My thoughts were a hairball inside my head. Now I'm beginning to be able to tease them out a bit.

I kept on reading and then I didn't feel like writing at all. I was taking a walk in the garden, when Baba puttputted up on the scooter. He had brought me some Rajgira laddoos. I crunched them until my teeth hurt.

‘I am really feeling better now, ‘ I told Baba. ‘Now, let's put this behind us. I don't want to be treated as if I'm ill any more. I'm coming home.'

Maushi's face fell. So I quickly said, ‘Or let's do it this way. You take Aai home now. Maushi will drop me off in a couple of days.' When they looked unsure, I added, ‘I won't do anything to cause you a moment's worry.' Aai went off to get ready. She had been yearning to go back anyway. Her conversation was peppered with remarks like, ‘Do you think he'll have eaten?' and ‘Aseem likes a glass of warm milk when he gets back from work,' and ‘The turmeric should have been ground today.' Aai had made both these men—Baba and his carbon copy, Aseem— dependent on her. For many years, I had noticed that Aai would be working like a navvy all day in the house: she would have shabby clothes on, her forehead would be sweaty. But as soon as it was time for Baba to return, she'd have a wash and put on a nice sari. She'd get a hot snack going for him. Just before he was to arrive, a glass of sherbet would go into the fridge. The house, already clean, would be given a onceover. And when he knocked, she would open the door with a smile. Everything was aimed at that brief encounter at the door. Then the drudgery of the day would return. Baba would slump in front of the TV in his banian and pyjamas. I often wondered why Aai would not dress up for herself, just because she wanted to? Or why didn't she just stay well-dressed all day? But if this was her world, who was going to disrupt it?

When she left with Baba, Maushi and I went to the market. We bought crabs and ate them until we could eat no more. All washed down with sol kadi.

Yesterday, Maushi and I went for a walk. In her canvas shoes, short hair, T-shirt and tracks, she looked like she could be one of my friends from college. As she strode along, you wouldn't believe she was pushing fifty. She told me she was going to feel lonely once I left. Until Anil Kaka came back, she'd be alone. I asked why she didn't go with him.