Ten Minutes

by Meera Raja

How does one define the space between friendship and love? Is it clear, or is it blurred? Is it broad or is it narrow? What does it mean to ‘cross’ this space, and does crossing it have the potential to destroy something else? In this story by Meera Raja, Vidya wonders what it might be like to cross this space and imagine a new life for herself.  

Vidya and Ganesh’s new life together lasted ten minutes.

They sat on the terrace of her three-storied apartment complex, leaning against the parapet wall, the mosquitoes biting yet not bothering. All around them were flats and houses, taller and shorter, wider and narrower, so that they were in the comfortable middle. It was nearing ten o’clock, and they were tired, but not nearly sleepy.

Vidya and Ganesh (best friends in college, two peas in a pod, ‘of course you love him di’) were the couple most people assumed would end up together, even after Vidya and Rahul (chalk and cheese, ‘nothing but sexual attraction di’) got engaged.

They were the friends who finished each other’s sentences, had the same likes and dislikes, and were christened Ardhanari by Professor Rajendran, a name Ganesh could never live down.  

Next to Vidya was the bottle of wine they had not finished. Rahul was asleep on the mattress he had insisted they bring from downstairs. He had grunted and complained when Vidya suggested they sleep on the terrace, yet acquiesced. Now, he looked peaceful, asleep between their two daughters, symmetrically leaning towards their father.

Vidya could barely hear his soft snores now, the same snores that bounced off the walls in their bedroom, oppressive in their refusal to leave her alone. Dissipated, they seemed like long, resigned sighs.

Ganesh gazed up at the moon, its lack of fullness made starker by the fact that it was so close to being full.

Vidya reached across him to grab his wineglass, and grazed his pants. Well, Rahul’s pajamas that he lent Ganesh, but she knew that they would now forever be his, The Pajamas[MOU1] That Ganesh Wore. She poured out a glass each.

They entwined their arms like they did in the movies, and tried to sip the wine. They realised that it only looked easy in the movies; they spilt a whole lot. They laughed.

‘It always looks easy, doesn’t it, Vidya?’

‘Perhaps it is. We just don’t know how to. We got hopelessly tangled.’

‘Maybe if we do it more often, we’d know how.’

‘Oh, once is enough. I think we’ve spilt enough wine already.’

‘Come on, Vidya. Don’t cry over spilt wine.’

She laughed, far more than she would have if she were sober. The lights were on in a few apartment complexes around theirs, like lazy robot eyes. In most houses, she knew, mothers would be preparing for the next day: breakfasts, lunches, idli batter, and vegetables. Exactly what she would be doing if Ganesh were not here today. She had no idea what she would do tomorrow morning, a thought that briefly unsettled her.

She recalled the events of the night leading up to now: the kids’ return from school, Rahul’s call breathlessly announcing Ganesh coming home for dinner, her preparing the dinner featuring some of Ganesh’s favourite dishes but mindful not to overdo it, her choice of clothes carefully casual, the calling bell, Ganesh standing at the door with a bottle of wine in his hand, her heart nearly exploding but giving him a quick hug before Rahul’s bellow from the den, kids packed off to their rooms to finish their homework, and then the slowness of it all: the three of them drinking, talking about Ganesh’s life in Seattle, the weather, his friends, his work, and his gaze, like a housecat, meandering everywhere, but always finally homing in on her. Just as she suspected they did ages ago. At least now, she noticed.

The strains of the title song of the 10 o’clock mega serial reached them through the night air, echoed with a time delay, like an Ilayaraja song sung in college culturals, in parts.

‘En kadhale, en kadhale, ennai enna seyya pogirai?’ Ganesh sang, softly, his voice having gained pain. This was the song he won a prize for, at a college event where she had met Rahul for the first time, introduced by Ganesh as his ‘school best friend.’

The months that followed whirred in Vidya’s mind, as Ganesh sang on: her first date with Rahul during which a tiny part of her superimposed Rahul’s face with Ganesh’s but, fed on Indian movies, decided that friendship and love were immiscible; pegging her irritation at Ganesh’s disastrous attempts at dating to simple concern for a friend who was always looking for the wrong type of girl; calling herself Dolly (after the Sheep) when he said he wanted someone exactly like her as a life partner (oh, what a misnomer that is); considering the idea of Ganesh and her together and dismissing it, for how could love be as easy as brushing your teeth—it had to consume you whole, like an addiction; and the final knot in the thali when Rahul convinced her to sleep with him, the passionate physical act, according to him, cementing their relationship irreversibly, and in a way that mental synchronicity never would.

The schism called friendship was too wide to bridge then. Here they were, fifteen years later, trying to. Perhaps the Coke had lost its fizz, and the wine had aged well.

As he neared the end of the song, Ganesh’s voice quivered.

Five seconds, and their eyes were locked.

Ten seconds. Each saw in the other might-have-been worlds.

Thirty. His left hand was in her right, fingers interlocked and predictable: Vidya, Ganesh, Vidya, Ganesh, Vidya, Ganesh,… like the so-obvious patterns her five-year-old was asked to complete in school. As if life performed in patterns.

Fifty-five. Her heart was hammering in her chest, as both of them, eyes down, simply leaned on each other. She liked how her face still perfectly fit on his shoulder, like a jigsaw piece, and not the way she had to slightly slump forward on to Rahul’s. It was so easy to get used to.

Three minutes. She felt their hands clasped together. She opened her eyes to see Ganesh pointing at the silhouette of the coconut tree that had risen far above the buildings around it, declaring its supremacy.

A lone crow sat on the tree.

It had been a similar night, a long time ago, their final year of college. They had not been drunk or sleepy, but teetering dangerously close to both. They had spotted a crow like this one, through the window, no less, and had talked for hours. The topics flowed freer than the alcohol: they spoke about the crow, how crows were considered to be the ancestors of human beings, and what a load of crap that seemed to be, to how the simple crow was trapped and eaten, and could never be safe, to the one thing that Vidya remembered very well: that the simple crow mated for life.

‘What lessons we can learn from even a simple crow,’ Ganesh had said. ‘Sometimes, it’s just waiting for you under your nose.’

They had christened that night “Crow Night.”

‘Do you remember?’ he now asked her softly.

She nodded, tickling his neck. He smiled.

‘We’re not crows, are we?’ he asked.

She closed her eyes, and the could-be-world came to life more vividly; in this world, everything was easy. A visa application, followed by a trip to Seattle, and the two of them would walk hand in hand and play in the ubiquitous snow (it’s got to snow if it’s cold, she reasoned), the way the two people did in that Diary Milk ad in Shimla. They would talk about life and the shallowness of the current generation of youngsters. They would cook up international recipes, unburdened by the task of locating ingredients, and would entertain multicultural soirees. They would create harmony in music and music in love. They would grow old together, and like made-up heroes and heroines, retain their skin texture, while covering themselves with stately-looking shawls and jackets. The rest of the world would simply be absent. BFFs could be soulmates too.

She opened her eyes, and they grazed her sleeping husband. Ganesh followed her eyes, and as if pierced by their combined gaze, Rahul stirred. The girls did too.

As if connected by an invisible thread, the dominoes fell. Vidya untangled herself from Ganesh, who did not resist. The rest of the world, and all its attendant complexities, had entered the tableau.

Tomorrow, Vidya decided on autopilot, it would be poha for breakfast, papaya for snacks, and puri for lunch. She smiled at the pattern: P,P,P.

Exactly ten minutes. That’s all her new life with Ganesh had lasted.

Meera Raja is the editor of iMPACT, an international magazine for the development sector. Her short fiction tends to veer around issues of identity and has appeared in anthologies including the Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing Vol. 6, Amaryllis’s Have a Safe Journey, and Strands Publishers’ upcoming anthology, Water.

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