by Pranav Mishra
‘Aye you Kumbhakaran ki aulad, won’t you be getting up at all?’
It was sweet and shocking. Sid could never imagine it volleying from Nandini, a girl who despised almost everything about India. She loathed Hindi words, phrases and proverbs as much as she hated Indian cuisine, dressing, mythology, politics, everything. Sid had long stopped detecting oddity in her thought process, because he’d been trying hard to adjust to her moods and beliefs. Sid believed he could get along pretty nicely with a girl who hated her own motherland, his motherland. And when it was someone as gorgeous as Nandini, other drawbacks were conveniently ignored too. One of them was the lack of any common point of talking: Sid was dreadfully native in his talks and Nandini considered every Indian topic unworthy of discussion. Sid had had enough taste of it already, and it’d started when one day he tried to discuss the monsoon, its bearing on the Indian economy and the stock market. Nandini didn’t utter a word and kept working on her laptop. Hey, she wouldn’t waste her time discussing ‘Indian’ economy. You ask her about BREXIT, she’d be game.
***
Those Indian-hating, foreign-obsessing germs were instilled in Nandini’s psyche by a distant uncle of hers, who was an NRI living in the US. She was eleven when the bugger visited the middle-class family. Of course, there was incessant dialogue about the inferiority of his motherland and the superiority of the west. Seeing a certain sparkle in Nandini’s eyes, the fellow took her for a long walk and further cemented his damned conviction in the young, unshaped mind. ‘India is waste. West is the place to be.’ Nandini had to work hard for it though, since her father wasn’t a millionaire to send her off just like that. He was after all a petty engineer in a cement factory, and his shoulders had started sinking since he had two daughters apart from Nandini.
Nandini stoked her foreign dreams day and night, but she had to ultimately curse her destiny since the road ahead was too long and uncertain. Nay, unavailing. It’s no joke settling in the coveted west. Hating everything Indian and adoring all things western was her only succour: through it she garnered the solace of being ‘western’ whilst still in India. Years passed, and her dreams of moving to the west kept fading.
She’d grown into a beautiful girl, outwardly radiant but internally smothered, shattered and incomplete. She worked as a web developer in a software firm in Gurugram, a couple of hundred miles from her hometown Chandigarh, living alone in a small flat, visiting the glitzy malls, cafes and slick bookshops to feel west. One day her boss called her to his chamber and said, ‘Nandini, would you like to go to London? We have work for you there.’ Nandini didn’t sleep for many nights. Her nerves were edgy, and her breath was short and frantic. She didn’t know how to handle the excessive joy.
While working in London, she tried to convince her heart that she’d live there for eternity. She felt like a Britisher, ate what (and how) they ate, wore what they wore, read what they read and spoke how they spoke. Thames, London Bridge, Millennium Wheel and The Big Ben felt like companions since birth. White-skinned English-people felt like her own folk. But as fate would have it, she was called back merely eight months later. No word of any language can describe the grief she felt then. She was relocated to the firm’s new office in Mumbai.
***
In Mumbai, she shared a small flat with Sid. The idea of sharing a flat with someone wasn’t too appealing, but Nandini went for it to save some money. She’d started contributing towards the education of her two younger sisters. Further, ultimately, she couldn’t deny that she felt too lonely sometimes. She did need someone’s company. Sid was a simple, decent and robust young man who was a web developer like her. The guy was recommended by one of her colleagues, a girl, and Nandini hadn’t given much thought to the predicaments and taboos associated with living with a man. If truth be told, she’d liked the idea since it was something her conservative parents would strictly disapprove of: living with a man in seemingly private conditions. Oh, she’d been a rebel, always.
They got along pretty ok, Nandini and Sid, though Nandini had to bear tiny inconveniences. Sid was a small-town guy and harboured a notion that if a man and a woman live together, they should fall in love. Indeed, the guy had quickly fallen in love with her. Nandini understood it but didn’t find it too dangerous, or ridiculous. She was young and beautiful, and Sid’s behaviour only served to boost her ego. This, despite the fact that she detested Indian men, deeming them male-chauvinistic, female-repressing and uncouthly lascivious.
She found it amusing though: how could the duffer believe that a girl like her would love someone like him? Nandini, who liked to be called Nand, the way a Britisher would pronounce it, could be very frank and ruthless about her opinions and preferences, and her mother had savoured more than enough of it. She’d lose control and shout over the phone whenever the ageing woman tried to impart her ‘Indian’ wisdom. ‘No!’ Nandini would howl. ‘I won’t have it from a backward Indian woman who likes to be enslaved by her husband, puts vermillion in the parting of her hair, and is traumatized if she forgets to put bindi on her forehead.’ Well.
Sid and Nand. Nand and Sid. God only can tell how many times stupid Sid must have uttered the combo-duos by now. It cannot be called amiss, not completely, since Nandini, whenever she was in a state of unforgivable drunkenness, made him kiss her and hold her waist. She didn’t take it too seriously, but for Sid, it could have well been a road to the rosy gardens of love. He felt blessed to be gifted a few intense moments with the object of his love and passion. In the morning though, he’d stand confused, because the same girl who made him kiss her the previous night would sound bitter and alien.
He could detect distance in the girl’s voice when she purposefully dumped her western knowledge and preferences over his love-bitten soul. She liked Spaghetti Bolognese, bangers and mash and shepherd’s pie. She hated vada-pav, chhole bhature, chaat, jalebis, samosas, pooris and kachoris… She hated Bollywood crap and Ghazals the love-sick bro listened to. She’d rather go for Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, and occasionally Celine Dion. Classy, classy. Dresses… she wouldn’t ever touch salwar-kameez, the sari was moon’s distance away. She wore miniskirts sometimes, as mini as the metropolis allowed.
***
She was philanthropic in belittling Sid. She wanted to shoo the dreamy boy away so he didn’t feel heartache afterwards. Tut, tut. But Sid wouldn’t mind being her mongrel, so much he loved and wanted her. He aspired to express his love, declare it right away. Oh, how he loved her. And oh, how love can be a cruel tyrant sometimes, if not a destroyer downright. Things had been boiling, and the next move was obvious. To voice his feelings.
Though to say those three dreaded words…hmmm. That was a deal as big as conquering Everest, particularly when he was so unsure about the reaction from the other side. Still, the deed had to be done, sooner the better. He was no longer able to withstand confusion, doubts and uncertainties regarding the matter. He decided to throw the ball in her court. It wouldn’t be totally out-of-order if she chose him, he was convinced, since he was earning, noble, loving, caring and honest.
He’d metamorphose himself if she so wished, he’d decided. He’d listen to Marley, Dylan and Dion. He’d speak like an Englishman. He’d read classy literature, not those thoughtless romantic novels and cheap crime thrillers. He’d eat continental food, the stuff she ate most of the time since she returned from London. He’d never want her to wear Indian clothes. He won’t talk anything Indian. He’d talk about London and its class and glitz all the time.
***
‘Think we should go to Devil’s Peak tonight?’ Sid offered from the bed. Devil’s Peak, a not-so-plush club in Bandra, which Sid could easily afford.
‘I am game!’ Nandini replied promptly.
Sid found her a little more chirrupy than usual. It gifted him some strength and hope.
Seven hours later, at seven in the evening, when darkness was gathering outside like devils marching, Sid and Nandini occupied two corner-seats inside Devil’s Peak, listlessly watching the duos dance sleepily to a mild tune of a piano. It was western music, and Nandini liked it. With uninhibited affection she beheld Sid once in a while. One can’t help it sometimes, and Nandini, being a smart, ruthlessly practical and well-travelled girl, knew there were too many dimensions of love, countless kinds, and many of them could be adopted a moment and forsaken the next, like how you try a dress and put it back in the shelf. Sid, who had still not recovered from the torment of a hot, mini-skirted girl walking by his side, felt encouraged like an idiot, showing his small-town attitude. Oh, he was from some nondescript town in Rajasthan. Still, he wanted to stretch his destiny more than he’d be allowed to in a burgeoning metro famed for quashing dreams.
He was a brave chap, a Rajput. His ancestors fought for Maharana Pratap hundreds of years ago. He carried that valiant blood in his veins. Still, he had to drink quite a lot before he could utter those three horrible words. So, he drank, and there was something in the mild, somniferous tune of the piano; the whiskey started singing in his head much sooner than expected, and he grew more optimistic and enthusiastic about the project than anyone with normal sanity would. Things, however, were growing hazy, fluid and fleeting, and much of what happened that night never registered in Sid’s memory.
A few hours later, somewhere outside, maybe on a deserted pavement, he went on his knees, his hands clenched together in entreaty. He had said it with a grand prelude, sort of, though a bit clichéd. His voice all mushy and wobbly.
Dearest, the love of my life, my sole reason to live. Since the moment I saw you I can’t stop dreaming about you. In my office, I close my eyes and your face gifts me a solace I can’t tell. Let me make this announcement this glorious night. I just want to say that I love you. I love you truly and with the depth of my soul.
She watched him ruthlessly, like a stern matriarch, and his heart fell from its spot. He realised his folly, in a flash, as if all those moments of passion were lived in a flaccid dream. No, now it appeared ridiculous to his heavily intoxicated brain. How could he even dream about someone so… so… How on earth! And that’s why she was burning with fury, look at her. Wasn’t it enough that a girl like her… a girl like her!… chose to stay with you, bugger?
But then, she started giggling, with such gusto, her face was flushed red.
‘Get up,’ she said, good-humouredly. ‘You are a big duffer.’
When they walked, she had her arm around his back. For some mysterious reason, she felt joyful about the stupid incident.
‘You are so sweet,’ she chimed. ‘But don’t ever do it again. I warn you.’
They marched on, tearing the blank solitude of the night.
