Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (7 page)

I begged my female cousins to hold my arm just the way Ananya did but
no one was better at it than her. She would hold my arm just above the
elbow, and as we walked, she would let her hand slowly give in to the
gravity and let it travel downwards towards my wrist. She would hold it
there, at my wrist, neither grasping it nor letting go, like the atmosphere
around earth, helping it brim with life and at the same time, protecting
it from the debris of outer space. It was during one such walk that we
made a pact to always stay in touch after school, even if we ended up in
different colleges. I liked the thought of it, the thought of her constant
presence, real or virtual.

***

It was the last session of school. Valentine’s Day of the year 2000 was
about a month away. The millennium was about to end. Everybody
seemed desperate to spend the last Valentine’s Day of the millennium
with ‘someone special’. Ananya wasn’t. One day, I asked her about it.

“I have already found mine!” she said.

I had no idea how to react. How could someone just say something like
that without any regard for the other person’s feelings? Why couldn’t she
have told me already that she liked somebody?

“What? You
like
someone?”

“Yes! I am going to tell him on this Valentine’s Day that I like him,” she
said with a smile. I had known her for so long; she hadn’t talked about any
boy with me. What if it was me? She hadn’t kept a secret from me ever.
If there was someone else she was attracted to, she would have definitely
told me. But she hadn’t, so, that just confirmed that it must have been me!
I realized that I couldn’t be more desperate and self-centered.

I grabbed her hand and asked, “Who is he?”

“Patience,” she replied, looking right into my eyes. There was a rare glint
in her eyes. She didn’t attempt to release her hand from my grip. I could
hear my heart pound. The power of that moment was so strong that
I could hear blood rushing through my veins as water runs through a
pipeline, the fluttering of my eyelids as a bird takes its first flight of the
morning. At that moment, I had three trillion ears.

The next day onwards, I pestered her about the mystery guy that I now
hated. Except of course, if it
was
me in which case I had a lot of respect
for him. She said she didn’t want to tell me yet, that she was waiting for
the right moment.

“But why wouldn’t you just tell me?” I asked.
“But why wouldn’t you just wait?” she replied.

For the first time in three years, I was not completely sure about what
she was doing or thinking. She was different every day. She would ask me
questions irrelevant to the situation we were in, like “What do you like to
eat in winters?” “What places would you like to travel if you had money?”
“Which books would you like to read other than course books?” She
seemed to want to know all about me. Her eyes sparkled whenever she
looked at me. Her gaze didn’t stop at my eyes, but went further upwards
and downwards. My eyebrows, my eyelids, my nose, my lips, my forehead,
my unshaved beard, my ears, my hair, everything, I could feel it photo-
copying my face. Somehow, I controlled the urge to hold her face in my
hands, tell her eyes to stop traveling all across my face and kiss her right
there.

Two weeks before Valentine’s Day, she disappeared. Whoosh! No intima-
tion, no information, no news. Ananya was gone.

Some friends said her father had gotten transferred to a new city. Some
said she was avoiding Valentine’s Day on purpose, as if to make a point.
Teachers said she must be preparing for the finals that were due in an-
other two weeks after Valentine’s Day. According to me, these were the
stupidest reasons one could ever give. They didn’t know her. I did. They
weren’t in love with her. I was. They weren’t waiting for the right mo-
ment. I was.

I waited for a couple of days for her to show up. I had thought of every
possible reason for her absence. I could stick to none. When my curiosity
almost killed me, I decided to go all the way to her house. I had prepared
a list of questions in my quiver that I was going to shoot at her. After
school, I rushed towards her house, only to find a big lock hanging at the
entrance, mocking me.

Even to this day, I don’t know where she disappeared. I refuse to cel
-
ebrate Valentine’s Day, even with the girl I am presently in a relationship
with. Call me stupid or a hopeless romantic. Not that they are very differ-
ent from each other. I have honestly tried to get over Ananya, to get over
the relationship that never even started. But whenever I have tried to do
so, I have ended up feeling sadder than the last time. Those who say they
know it all, say there is an age when people fall in love; they say it was
just infatuation, that love cannot happen at such a tender age. But, I don’t
believe them. The fact that we are born out of love means that we, at all
times, have had all the love that two people shared at a certain moment.
We love our family, friends, even gadgets and toys since childhood. Why,
then, do we have to be mature enough to love a person for a lifetime?

It doesn’t matter where she disappeared, neither does it matter if she
felt the same way about me as I did about her. What matters is that she
could have told me that she did, but she didn’t. What matters is that I
could have told her too, and I didn’t. Both of us waited for the right mo-
ment, and that moment passed right through us. Now it is too late to find
her, tell her that she looked like Aishwarya Rai. I wish
someone
told her,
though
.
Or she might have discovered the resemblance herself. But that
is unlikely; she was never a slave to reflective surfaces.

I hope she is in love with that someone. And I just pray they haven’t
named their daughter Aaradhya; that would be way too filmy, even for
her.

***
8.
Tainted Red
Aathira Jim

Renuka was trained for marriage from the time she could remember. To
cook. To make idlis soft and fluffy. To make sambhar, a bit on the tangy
side. To roll the dough for rotis just perfect so they don’t stick. To make
them the perfect geometric rounds. The perfect way to fold clothes. To
iron them, so that the creases look crisp and neat. And so when her
parents found Arjun, the perfect groom, soft spoken and handsome,
well-educated and settled in the US, a green card holder no less, she was
confident.

The wedding was a grand affair: she was decked in jewelry and wrapped
in the richest pomegranate-red
kanchipuram
silk-saree that flattered her
dusky skin; no one noticed the nervousness and uncertainty in her eyes
that she hid so well. Or of how fidgety her slender hands were. The way
they shook when she bid farewell to her old life. Or how, when she cried
after the wedding, her tears were mistaken for homesickness.

How tough can it be to do all those little things she was trained for, with
-
out supervision? A week into the marriage, she flew with him to start her
new life in an unknown country. In a strange place, filled with strange
people. The weather was unpredictable: sometimes bright and sunny, at
other times rainy and gloomy. She got stares walking on the streets in a
saree, with the bright red parting in her coconut oil-laden hair. The one
time she attempted to blend in with the crowd in a blue jeans and tank
top, she felt strangely naked.

Her husband, Arjun, didn’t say much. He remained immersed in his re
-
search and that was all she knew. How on earth would she make friends if
she couldn’t speak English without a strong accent! The place was filled
with skyscrapers and was a sea of people, who despite their differences
fascinated her with their busy lives. Like butterflies flitting from one flow-
er to another, each one seemed too busy gathering their own nectar to
notice the others. She spent her time taking long walks in the park nearby
or browsing at the local Indian provision store. Renuka enjoyed those
walks by herself. Those everyday things that people tended to, tediously,
brought her joy, even if it was short-lived. A mother pushing her baby in
a pram, a child laughing, lovers meeting. So many relationships – yet each
one unique, delicate and sacrosanct.

Till the day she noticed the young guy in black. He was young, probably
in his early twenties. With skin like melted chocolate and messy hair that
looked like he ran his fingers though it all the time. Tall and lanky, un-
kempt and unruly. He was dressed all in black as if afraid of colour; his
eyes stared at her with an intensity that was unsettling.

He was probably just a couple of years younger or maybe the same age
as she was. But she felt too old in the saree that was draped carelessly
around her lithe figure, in the way her body was devoid of any jewelry
except for the simple gold fare that adorned her ears, and the fact that
she wore no makeup.

At first, she pretended to ignore him. What did he want? A bead of sweat
trailed along her back, moistening her blouse. Like a parched throat that
craves water, a longing, to be held and caressed, that she had not known
existed, welled up inside her. And she was acutely aware of it.

The next time she saw him was in the park. It was the very next day; he
sat by the bench, nursing a cup of coffee, watching her and following her
every move with his brooding eyes. Was he waiting for her?

She continued to see him, daily on her walks in the park, in the pub
-
lic library that she frequented often. But they never spoke; they merely
walked past each other as if they were strangers. As they rightly were.

But he was there when she went home and began to chop vegetables for
lunch. He was there watching her as she nursed her pinky finger when
the knife had slipped. Also when she served Arjun his tea in the evenings;
with her, he would watch the tea become cold. He was there in the bath-
room with her while she took her evening shower. He was there when she
braided her long hair that lay like a thick black snake across her back. On
those nights that her husband felt like making love to her, he was there
more than ever.She looked away and smiled when she was underneath
him. It was anything but love. That reminded her of the Titanic and how
it sunk, with its promises of love and togetherness. Maybe her life too,
was like that dreary ship, without the romance in a vintage car, of course.
Her ship was boring and she was weighing it further down with her ob-
ligations as a wife. She tried to seal the tiny holes that appeared but the
water always managed to trickle in.

Until on a Friday evening, when he took the plunge and asked her out
for coffee. She was browsing the fiction section at the bookshop when
he walked up to her. Up close, he towered over her. His voice, when he
spoke, reminded her of the monsoon nights back home. She wanted to
get drenched in his words, in the same manner that she would in the No-
vember showers that she secretly loved.

Don’t worry, it’s just a cup of coffee
, he assured her, smiling at her stricken
face that must have looked like the calm before a storm. What was she,
a loyal daughter and dutiful wife, getting into? With a stranger, someone
who could be much younger than her.
Debauchery
. The word reverberated
in her ears.

She tried to ignore the ringing moral refrain. She needn’t have worried.
The warmth that he exuded engulfed her, much like the rain used to, with
its promises of foison and companionship. She could talk to him and he
listened. And for now, that was all that mattered to her.

His name was Sandeep. He was new to the US as well. He was a student
who had come here to pursue his Masters. Like coffee, he was an acquired
taste. No matter how bad the both of them were, one for the health and
the other for her marriage they offered relief. In many ways, talking to
him was like going home. She soon discovered that he shared her love for
books. They vied with each other to quote from Shakespeare, Dickens,
the Bronte sisters, Sidney Sheldon, J.K. Rowling and R.K. Narayan. His
favorite author, he said, was Jhumpa Lahiri, whom she had just started
to read and abandoned on a whim. He compared her to Gauri from The
Lowland. She went back and finished it and treasured the comparison..

They started meeting regularly. She learned the little things about him.
Of how he liked to dress in black, for the familiarity of it gave him com-
fort. Of how he liked his coffee the same colour as hers, strong with no
sugar that it was almost bitter. She noticed how he would drink it piping
hot that it must scald his tongue. He shared his secret of dreaming to be
a writer someday, someone whose words would herald a revolution. It
was always in those tiny coffee shops, just like in the movies, where they
would lay their hearts on the table and seek each other out As it turned
out, he was twenty-four, just a year younger than her.

What brought them closer was their shared adoration for South Indian
food. One time, he happened to mention how much he missed the masa-
la dosas and vadas that his mother made back home. The next day, she
made it her mission to churn out food with undiscovered relish. When it
came to feeding her husband, the food was barely noticed. As if it were
an extension of her. Plain and bland, yet necessary.

She cooked to please and the result was worth the effort. The potatoes
inside the dosas were neither too soggy nor were they undercooked. They
were crunchy and just right, he certified. The vadas were a golden brown
and so crispy that they would have put to shame, even the most popular
vadas from Ambiswamy’s back home.

Magic fingers, that’s what Sandeep called her as he licked the plate clean.
She blushed and tried to brush him off, but was secretly delighted.

She could not help but compare him to her husband. Arjun never both
-
ered to notice the new recipes that she had painstakingly made upon her
arrival, merely to please him. In the secret hope of winning over the new
husband. But whoever had said that the way to a man’s heart was through
his stomach had apparently forgotten to exclude workaholic husbands
who hardly cared to notice what he ate as long as it was edible.