Chapter 1
It was a Sunday afternoon. Rain was pattering hard on the car’s windscreen. I took a dip of the milk bread in my thermos’ tea. Rain splashed hard on the muddy road exploding handfuls of dirt onto the porches of shops. I strained my eyes to gouge my vision through the algae splashes of rain on the windscreen into the shop on the other side of Charminar. Presently, a man in navy blue denim trousers and a black collared t-shirt stepped out of the shop. I pressed my car forward; sedately, the vehicle shushed along the burnished tar road. Avoiding a pothole unobtrusively, I brought the vehicle closer to him.
I was wearing a white chudidhar, matching sandals and an orange red scarf that I wrapped my shoulders with. I stepped out and hurried past him into the shop that was reeling under dark like an underground cave. Power cut. Rain drops darted off the mud pots that were propped upside down in the porch; splashes of water found my shimmering sandal tops.
His back pocket, the right one, bulged out under the pressure of an overstuffed wallet. He was about six feet tall, broad shoulders and tied his long hair into a pony. I pressed forward to stand by his side and rolled my eyes over the grand monument before me. Walls of charminar wore a pale brown tinge; rain water painted the monument in a shade of gradient beginning with the untouched dry chin under the wide porticos to the homogenously exposed wet feet of the four pillars.
I allowed him to examine me with impunity; with my back to him, I pushed the hood of my scarf back and reclined it on the nape. I turned towards him. He was looking away; consulted his watch and propped his brow on the upturned wrist. He leaned his elbow against the wooden pillar of the shop. And then my eyes caught the ID card that was suspended from his broad leather belt.
The creative team always shared close ties with the current affairs and editorial teams. For my last book, I drew inspiration from a major feud between the family members of a company that went public last year. It was such a drag; I invested about six months on the project, before I realized how I felt so deprived of an urge to get on with the novel. It was not a writer’s block so to speak, more of an anger that swelled in me in response to the snail-paced roll of justice.
This was going to be different. I knew it. All I needed was someone who I could feed on for the plot. The experience of last novel got me thinking. And I wanted to try my hand at a short story. ‘This is going to be a short story’ I told myself as I approached the nicely built young man with a salacious scheme. A definite smile escaped me and his pursed lips promptly reciprocated. I began with an innocuous talk about the company, and toured the rims of the non-committal conference that feasted over the directionless placid environs. Then I asked him if he was coming back from work, I directed my gaze to the ID card that was presently speckled with dust that bounced off the mud pots. A client urgency that needed his attention!
Rain water snaked along the raised platform beneath the portico, gurgled as it met the bend of the stairs and sprawled over the bottom stairs completely submerging them
Indeed. How was he to know? Poor thing! He fell for my charms. I noticed how he pinned his pale blue eyes firmly on mine throughout the glib talk. Every now and then, his gaze slipped beneath my plum rosy cheeks to rest on the Himalayan folds of the scarf. Between an awkward rub of his bearded chin and the scratch of brow, he shifted his gaze to fall longingly on the lowland plain and tropical belt. I was acutely aware of my modesty; the transparent white silk hugged my midriff which was spotted with a hundred hands of rain and there I bared my glow helplessly.
He gave me enough material for about two chapters.
Chapter 2
Ankur wrapped his palms around a hot cup of coffee. He drew the cup closer to his face and dabbed his temples with it. A mild headache, nothing serious! The client meeting did not go as well as he imagined it would. There were reservations on both sides. Brian Wright was the head of department on the client side. He seemed bothered with the pace of the project. Ankur realized the dipping morale in the team. It was up to him, the Project Manager, to instill courage. ‘It had to be smart work, not hard work’. That is what they said in the meetings all the time.
It was a Sunday afternoon. Neha was waiting back home. She understood him, she always did. It was a hard time for her too. She was carrying, and the couple expected the baby around December. It was only September, why did she have to go to her mother so early? The evening train left Kachiguda at six in the evening. Ankur was working on a Sunday to cover for his team mate. And the unprecedented client call spoiled his evening. The delivery head summoned Ankur immediately after the meeting. She happened to be there in the office when the call took place. ‘What was she doing in office on a Sunday afternoon’ Ankur could not believe it. The day was turning into a nightmare.
He rang up Neha and explained in as few words as possible. She understood. She sounded convincing on the phone. And later that day, she left home alone. She rubbed her palms over the smooth rounded belly. Grieved and distressed, she told herself ‘it is just the hormones. Calm down.’ But she knew it was not just the hormones.
The Delivery Manager, Mohini Ramanujan, a woman in her forties, greeted Ankur with a smile. Ankur pressed his conscience alertly to slip a smile but his lips were pinched tight as if they were sewn shut. She excused herself, pointing to a chair in the middle of the room. With her back to Ankur, she ran down the list of ‘to-dos’ for the day. A meticulous woman; she was an astute worker, always double and triple checked. There was nothing on the list, except for the unplanned entry the source of which was presently peering through his rimless glasses at the flesh around her waist. She always ensured to bare her skin between the hem of the blouse and the crowned embroidery of her sari. It made her feel younger. She felt it piqued the interest of a man and kept him busy pondering while she looked away.
Mohini dug her heel into the burnished floor tiles, swiveled her chair to face him and like a child in a toy car, she dragged herself towards the table in the middle of the room. The laptop’s dark finish with blunt edges faced Ankur while she switched her gaze between the monitor and his face. Why did it happen? Where was the lapse? What were the corrective measures? Was there a contingency plan? Did the team work smart? Was he merely a good team member? ‘Ask yourself,’ she said sliding her forefinger along the laptop’s mouse pad ‘are you a good leader?’
The telephone rang twice. Crouched between the two monitors on her desk, it bellowed and pierced through the painful silence that had slumped in the room. Mohini excused herself again. Ankur’s gaze fell on the Venetian slat blinds against the sprawling windows to one side of the room. On a normal day, he would have singled out two slats, slipped his fingers between them and lent his gaze through the separated slats to the overlooking downs of velvety green patches. But today was different. ‘yes..yes..got it..yep,’ she was nodding her head slowly ‘yes and the engagement feedback?’ Mohini finished her call, firmly lodged the receiver back into its wedge and brandished her gold studded ear at Ankur as if to provoke his words.
‘No. this was not over yet’ Ankur shrunk into himself like a turtle. Mohini beamed with authority, preened his thoughts to fit her roll of the dice, and minced his idea of a romantic farewell to pulp.
Ankur left the office brimmed with thoughts. His wife left a message to him. It was succinct. She understood.
And on the way home, it rained. It poured apocalyptically. Even his anguish of the evening could not stop him from riding in the rain. He almost skidded off the bike near Madhina. A kilometer ahead, near Charminar, he stopped. Left his bike in the rain and pressed his scrawny six feet frame to a halt under the portico of the bangle store.
Chapter 3
Neha was very accommodative. She admired Ankur. When she married him, it was a half-hearted decision. She was getting older and the proposal on table seemed befitting for her parents. They implored for her to agree. And she did. She had her misgivings. But Ankur turned out to be an amazing person. He consciously skirted around her personal space never invading it. He took the burden of household chores on himself, he cooked and mopped, ‘but I will only do my half of the share’ he would quip. In reality though, he did most of the work at home. When it came to buying household items, he would say ‘let’s invest in equal proportions. This will dissuade you from growing complacent like all the women do post marriage. You will be your own very self’.
When it came to invest emotionally; when she conceived, he pressed his head against her bosom and said ‘this is a difficult time. Most mothers sacrifice their careers and thereby individualities by renouncing work for motherhood.’ Planting a kiss on her forehead, he said ‘But, you are strong. You will return to work and cruise through the corporate ladder to oust the incompetence that is out there.’
Ankur’s methods were perhaps faulty. But Neha found a world of individuality around him. If she felt he was smothering her, she learnt to declare it before him and get it over with. A measure of solitude wrapped her through her marriage. But it was not a melancholic solitude; it was something altogether dignified and elegant. ‘A respectful solitude’ Ankur confirmed. They were unlike a typical married couple that scavenged on a pitiful romantic idea of an evening or an outing or a dinner. She would look at her women friends who dreaded the thought of working beyond the earlier years of marriage, and wonder ‘this is what it has come to? And they prided in it?’
Around her, Neha saw pitiful laziness. Marriage for all the women around her was an uncomfortable Arabian night’s mat to lounge over. It allowed them to spread-eagle and go to places; it gave them wings. The price, as Neha saw, was a life lived in celebration of mediocrity. The institution promoted intellectual sewage, it promoted complacency, it promoted a loss of valor and a loss of individuality.
Ankur was a desert rose for Neha. She was an apprehensive marigold plant that had not the courage to slip out into the open. But Ankur lifted the small pellet of stone that was obscuring Neha from the warmth and power of sun. And, since then, she grew stiff and straight. She never looked back. She blossomed; from the elevation she gained, she posed a great challenge to Ankur. The couple sat in their flat’s balcony and brandished their virtues. They treasured their times together at home.
About a year ago, Neha quit her job at the MNC she was working, and joined the National Geographic Channel. They offered her a position of scriptwriter. Occasionally, she did copy editing for the magazines and books that were adapted out of the miniseries programmes. Ankur wore an expression of pride that he could not slip out of. In the following months, not a day passed when Ankur would beg her for details of her work. The projects that she was assigned to; the excavation sites that she visited; the industry recognition that she garnered; and the pure radiance of charisma that she became home to…
When Neha toured the Hindu Kush, Ankur rang her up like a child would a mother. He kept tabs on her achievements and wore them proudly on his face. He talked about Neha at the team meetings in office. His colleagues were mostly confounded, and some grew disinterested, while others hush-hushed behind his back.
Ankur was a proud man. He sat ensconced on his knees before the TV set while the ending credits on NGC miniseries rolled, so he can capture a snap of his wife’s mention. He pinned up her travails and achievements on his Facebook wall.
Chapter 4
So! What was the plot here? I don’t know. My meeting with Ankur might help spawn a chapter or two. The story will feed on Ankur. I will merely form a coherent interpretation of it. A form that is familiar to a short story reader.
Last evening, we chatted up under the looming dark shade of the portico for about a couple of hours. It stopped raining and we steered towards Madina, slumped in the chairs with high raised backs, we conversed like old pals. When I loosened my scarf, Ankur relaxed and the story welled out of him.
His wife left home and won’t return for another four months. The lone shy full man! I could not help but feel for the man. He occasionally darted a glance through my onion ring pendants to drop his conscience on a distant object. He was reserved in his surveying of the surroundings. My slim posture in the dimming night somehow seemed to have shrunk his vision to a mere portrait where I stood out and everything else eased into the background. The irani chai hotel seemed to have shrugged into the background merely to bear my silhouette that presently dominated his mind.
At the end of it, Ankur and I exchanged our numbers. This morning, he promptly rang me up.
We arranged to meet at the necklace road. It was a calm evening. I sat on one of the wooden chairs girded with metal straps. Before me, Hussain Sagar luxuriated like a sari. As the sun settled behind me, it pressed a veil of shadow over the lake and a strip of gradient now separated the dark water from the gleaming pulse which shrunk shorter and shorter in my sight. The lake was mottled in the middle with sharp nosed boats and blunt chinned passenger shuttles; around the edges were lotus and water lilies.
Further into the land, one found mice the size of a fully grown human thigh. They squirmed through the dark rotten foul smelling rim of the lake while water occasionally issued a ripple like an old man’s shudder in cold. I lifted my gaze to meet the source of these occasional undulations that lifted lilies and gurgled uncouthly around the rim. Speed boats. A couple of speed boats sped past me leaving behind a sharp trail of undulating fluid trough that melted away into the background as the boats whirred presently somewhere far away.
Teenage boys paraded the footpaths behind me to steal a glance at my auburn flesh on the nape. I wore my long hair into a braid and sat with my brooded face pinched between the palms. Rings of hair, too frail and short to skewer tight into the braid, stayed stumped against my nape. These rings of hair were the first ones to greet Ankur when he dragged his feet over the misty grass tops to meet me like a cold fresh breeze does a flower.
He was wearing a chequered shirt and black trousers. He combed his hair with his hand as he neared the wooden chair. He was in his early thirties; a trimmed beard with no definite growth since yesterday, high cheek bones and a modest forehead. His hair, worn into a pony, granted him an appearance of maturity.
After exchanging pleasantries, as moon tiptoed overhead to sprinkle stars into a cloudless sky, I prodded him for more. I asked him about his project. How was the day?
And it grew colder. Mosquitoes rose up like a cloud of dust and they pattered like the sprinkle of sand against my face and exposed hands. I was wearing a pink V-necked t-shirt with a dark brown scarf wound round my shoulders. Flies distracted me. I was losing my scheme. This was going to be a step back. I was hoping to make progress. A chapter or two at the least! I made a suggestion. Perhaps we should lounge comfortably in my car. He seemed slumped by the suggestion. However, he recovered immediately and managed to merely nod his head. It was too quick for him.
Once inside the car, I took the wheel and steered it into an isolated spot. I turned the AC on, fiddled with the stereo as if by habit and turned it down before facing him. He looked about him, told me that he admired my car, paused, and said that he admired my way of keeping the car so neat and clean. He was now wheedling around the skirts of romance. It was only a matter of time now.
The affair had begun.
Chapter 5
Yesterday was catastrophic. The code that was to transact hundreds of records on production server was bugged. The delivery manager briefly summoned Ankur again this morning to ease things up, as she put it. ‘A true leader chisels his team to the need at hands’ Mohini said. She was wearing her glossy lipstick today. She had her hair done overnight. Ankur could tell; when she turned around to clasp her manicured fingers around the spine of the phone’s receiver, her hair lounged on her back like the streamlined fins of a cave fish.
In the corner of her desk were portraits of her propped in the middle of an eagle winged spread of her team. She was the eye, the mind and the seat of conscience of the team. To her sides, spread in the wing shapes were the members of the team who flapped energetically together for a lift. Mohini found the portrait elevating. She received many accolades in the past. ‘Surely,’ Ankur thought, rubbing his hands against the trouser legs ‘she can’t be wrong.’
In the team meeting that afternoon, Ankur gathered his team and briefed them on the situation. Mohini was going to have a ‘peep in’ into the project’s ululations for a while. There was no escape. He emphasized the need to funnel confidence back to the client. At the moment, Brian Wright, the chief architect of their engagement feedback had turned in a mighty squash. The team scored four on ten. Word was that Ankur’s team was about to see a major reshuffle. Client was reneging on a promised lot. Brian was very disconcerted at the moment.
That evening Ankur rang up his wife. She was comfortably snuggling in her mother’s arms like a kitten. Ankur hesitated to sulk over the details of his morbid meandering of office tale. He asked her how she felt. The journey was awkward. She had to visit the loo very often and it was not altogether comfy. But now she was fine. Yes. Her parents were doing very well.
In the following weeks, Ankur found his days at office turn into recurring abject form of nocturnal nightmare visitations. It was hard on him. Brian was adamant. If the engagement was to be continued, he expected the team to be preened to his satisfaction. This followed a thorough scrutiny of the records Ankur kept. Not that there was anything murky in it. But the team was downsized to a ten from about twenty. This was a setback for Ankur.
Two months later, the situation after screeching tumultuous shifts, came to a melodic swing. ‘A steady state’ Mohini called it. She still plugged in her antennae into the team like a queen bee and injected wisdom. The funnel, Ankur, suffered the dubious interpretation of his team. They were confused. Whose side was he on?
Four months later, Neha gave birth to a baby boy. She returned to find a fractured conscience in her husband. Ankur turned into an alcoholic. He lifted the baby in his arms, rubbed the tip of his nose along the baby’s skin, cajoled and coaxed it. He seemed fairly alright to a shallow surveyor. But Neha was no shallow surveyor. She dived into the muddled depths of an oceanic conscience; she charted the territories on those waters that were hitherto feared by many.
Cradling the baby hither and thither, Neha set about to repair Ankur’s world… He was the beacon of her life.
Chapter 6
Neha held the baby to her bosom as she typed away fervently. It was the third month since the delivery. She was ghost writing the script for a miniseries on cretaceous era. ‘Our planet has seen mood swings of the cosmos that we, infinitely negligible species, cannot even begin to comprehend in our many furrowed mushy brains.’ The baby began whimpering softly. Neha raised her thigh and pressed the child’s mouth to her bosom. Now the crooning wore off and the baby fell asleep.
She wiped the baby’s mouth clean, propped it comfortably between the soft pillows of the cradle and returned to work. Later that night, Neha sat in the balcony alone. Ankur was fast asleep. At least he pretended to be. The night was calm; it was summer time and the neighbourhood slumped in their AC rooms, so there was no one outside. The township looked desolate.
In the colony’s park, there was a commotion. Like a swarm of bees, people gathered and hush inquires rose to thoughtful voices in the back and unfettered activity in the middle. A group had formed. Neha slipped her feet into the bathroom slippers, locked the door from outside and pressed on to meet the slowly bulging group. What was going on? Someone, a woman in her thirties, was bit by a snake. In the supermarket, there was a first aid kit. But that was not going to help. A doctor had to be called. It was urgent. Was there a doctor in the township? Like ants that beat their heads against each other, people wore wrinkled expressions and asked each other. A doctor, woman, thirty years, snake…
The township was located in the outskirts of the city. So everyone merely waited for the ambulance. Oh but it is nobody. No one saw her in the township before. No one knew her. Where did she drop out of? Some lent their heads skywards, some squinted at the neon lights over the supermarket’s portico. Some merely buggered off. They had enough action for one night. But people dropped by. One by one, they formed independent huddles to discover the missing links in the plot. The ambulance arrived and the medics dragged her inside. Neha noticed how the victim’s hair was done up into a perfect braid and rings of frail hair hung loose on her nape. The victim, whoever she was, was gorgeous. ‘Lassie in thirties’ Neha said to herself.
And just as the trailing ants issue a chemical pheromone that triggers a wave of information and briskly sends the ants scuttling back on their way home, the group dispersed. Islands of huddles stood tenaciously for a while and promenaded with a hiss and a purr. Swaying on each other’s backs, couples shot past each other into the apartments. Here a room lit up yellow, there a white, and there a pale gradient of sulphur. The euphoria of the night needed a bit of TV gazing, so the occupants of lit rooms turned to TV for a while. And the excitement fizzled away; and each retreated into their bedrooms. Lights were put out in the balconies; halls slumped into dark; brief shuffling of the blinds, pulling of the windows and finally, the men and women of the township drugged themselves with sleep.
Neha was not as tired. She was working from home. It would be another three months before she could handle the physical travails at NGC. She ambled noiselessly around the park. The snake was beaten to death and burnt alive. As it grew calmer, the night wore a lively face. Slowly, dusty winds formed in the deep bosom of the woods, blew over the compound wall, and in a rapidity that Neha least expected, pattered a shower of sand, mud, twigs, and leaves. Like a curtain of invisible flank, it stumped Neha. Flakes of ash blew all around, wheeled along the floor for a while before a whirling pool of wind sucked it in handfuls and dropped it over the rooftops and in the balconies of apartments.
A scarf! The wind left the colony just as briskly as it invaded. It had dropped a beautiful silk scarf that hugged Neha’s neck tightly in the wind. Now it grew limp and collapsed like a wrinkled ornament around her bosom.
Back home, Neha examined it thoroughly.
Chapter 7
Well. In the last two months I saw very little of Ankur. Since his wife’s homecoming, we met only on two occasions. And those were too brief to prowl on his life’s miseries. Once, after my thorough entreaties, we arranged to meet at Nampally’s Karachi bakery. It was a discreet place. He chose it himself. Between mouthfuls of the famous fruit biscuits, he mentioned the baby and how healthy it was. But that wasn’t enough. I needed more. Like a blood sucking vampire, I had seen the intense emotions the characters were displaying, and there was no turning back.
Just as a predator approaches the prey silently, without a stir, I held back my need, to let the prey gaze on unawares and happy, while I preened my claws.
But two months later, my impatience grew its tentacles that spread far and wide. I felt dazed. It was time for the predator to surprise the prey with a closer scrutiny. I moved into the township. That night, I made my move.
Neha was in the balcony alone. I noticed her ruminating mood and pressed on. I had not even changed into a night dress. I was wearing my blue denims and a crimson red pullover. It also offered me an alibi. If I had to confront Ankur, I could always tell him that I was friends with so and so, and was actually leaving when I met him. That excuse would have failed in a nightie. Anyhow, I wrapped my shoulders with my dearest scarf and my feet in gilt sandals. It was through the slit in the roof of these sandals that the snake bit me.
It was painful. Very painful! Indeed, I thought I was dead. Until I woke up a day later in Banjara hills Apollo hospital.
My scarf was missing.
To my utter surprise, Ankur paid me a visit at the hospital. He pressed into my hands, a bouquet full of roses. He was looking tired, weary and confused. Slung on his shoulders was the laptop bag. He dropped by on his way home.
How did he find me? Apparently, his wife was wearing my scarf next morning. He checked with the neighbours and put the two and two together. I was to be discharged that evening. So I asked him if he was going to stay. Perhaps for a cup of coffee!
It went well. Considering how the predator lost its footing in the hunt and the prey paid predator a visit. Whatever the circumstances, I milked out of him a chapter’s worth at least.
Chapter 8
Things were getting back to normal. In the last annual meet, Mohini identified Ankur’s team in the ‘promising/budding’ team categories. It felt good. Brian Wright loosened his eye of surveillance from the client’s side.
Two years later, Ankur was sitting on top of a steady chair. A steady team! The going was good until the global market crashed without the faintest of an indication. At first, nobody believed the rumors. Then someone sitting in the corner of the floor by the conference hall disappeared. Two days later, an attractive young lady, the diva of the floor disappeared.
And weeks later, Mohini addressed all the project managers. A calm and demure looking Mohini turned the laptop off. She raised her hand to indicate that the team members should gather too. It was not just for managers. Ankur paraded his team and they came to a screeching halt when they noticed that Mohini’s cabin was not large enough to accommodate all the team members. Such was the urgency. The meeting was held in the floor under the watchful eyes of every newcomer and old-timer.
Some of the critical accounts that clients felt they could not do without, stayed; and every other account was to close down with immediate effect. Ankur’s project was not critical.
The company switched gears into the ‘cost-cutting’ mode. It preened to half its size. Like a polar bear that gains weight during summer and snuggles underground through winter, the company seemed to say ‘we will recruit you back once the market stabilizes.’
Six months later, Ankur found himself playing toy cricket with his son.it was not a time to feel disheartened. He wondered if Neha could find him work, in the interim, at NGC. And she did. By now Neha was rendering her voice to narrating some of the most astonishing miniseries aired on weekdays. The weekends were for the likes of Attenborough. Would Ankur mind doing copywriting for the website? No. now, he won’t mind anything at all.
Neha realized that an immature husband would have grown hysterical at the suggestion of leaning heavily on wife’s labours for living. But Ankur was far too mature for letting such petty social conventions thwart his nature.
At a time such as this, when Ankur was slowly recovering, Mohini struck a blow. Although unconsciously. Mohini’s long association with the company had resulted in an affiliation with the press. She was also heading the PR department at the time of market crash. About a year later, market seemed to regain its normalcy. The employees were called back. Recruitments were haphazard in the beginning. Soon it was streamlined and the routine spawned out great PR strategies. Mohini was bestowed the role of cementing the company’s image. How the company exhibited the will to retain its older employees throughout the downtime. And how the company opened doors for the victims of downsizing…
It was going to be a book. And Mohini was to author it. If someone from the top authored it, it would look scheming and pretentious. But if Mohini, a delivery manager were to author the book, it would come out as a true musing from an employee.
Chapter 9
One day, Neha received a call from the snoozing wussy in the department that handled the ‘Business’ section of the NGC magazine. He was one of those men who drooled over every woman in the office. She always avoided him. He would settle himself behind her in the lift and she could always make out that he measured her back. He would wipe his nose with his handcuffs; his pimpled face was a mighty abhorrence for her; he never tucked his shirt. In short, he was despicable. He was a voyeur. And the hair on his hands when he folded his sleeves over, ah! Neha maintained a distance.
‘Chief wants to see you all experienced guys in his office.’ What was it going to be? Neha’s African miniseries had come to a standstill. It just was not going to work. The funding from corporates dried out, for the market was exhibiting a slump. Their timing was not right. The team took a chance. But it did not work. It saddened Neha, for she had invested over a year in it. And now the chief wanted to see her. He was going to ask her. What would she tell him? That she was hopeless? She failed? But Neha never failed.
The chief was a tall man, six feet and an inch. He was balding and he sported a French beard. He always wore half sleeve shirts, tucked them in and his belt was visibly taut under the strain of a doomsday paunch. The paunch developed from the crack of his chin, bulged around the chest and almost ballooned by the time it reached the waist. His ears were short and a mole on the left temple seemed to swell with his age. He pressed his fat arms on the table before him. There was a lady in neat peach green chiffon sari sitting to his right.
The lady was writing a book and wanted someone from the office, someone with prior experience in writing/copy editing, to assist her for about a year. She represented a major MNC, and the book should come out as a novel, none of the business pedagogy. Should eschew business jargon altogether. Therefore, the need of the hour for an experienced script writer; ‘would she be willing to help’ the chief asked. Neha wore a confused look. Was he not going to bother her about the African cave expedition that went horribly wrong? That script? The one that had lain dormant in her study, ‘is it possible that the chief was growing magnanimous with age?’ Neha wondered.
Then the woman pressed forward to shake Neha’s hand ‘I am Mohini’ she said.
In the course of the following year, Mohini and Neha worked hand in hand to produce a work of art. Really! Neha did most of the writing. Mohini merely spelt out the details. Neha did the articulation while Mohini stood by the venetian blinds, slid her finger along the sari’s embroidery to adjust the gap on her back. Neha noticed that the former ran her index finger consciously to bare her flesh where the blouse’s hem ended and the sari’s embroidered strap began. Ah! She was a statue of sartorial elegance.
Slowly, Neha fell in love. She seemed to recollect that Mohini was the same mysterious woman who appeared out of nowhere in the township and fell flat, for a snake had bitten her. It was not now. It was on that night that Neha was besotted. Thunderstruck for Mohini! Neha still wore the beautiful scarf that wind beat against her bosom that night. She loved the way Mohini rolled a ring of hair round the ears and pinched it tight. She loved the air of confidence about her... Some might furrow their forehead at the mention of a woman falling in love with another. But there it was. Neha was in love with Mohini.
The naked touch of her palm on Neha’s when they exchanged notes about the book and the gentle press of her hand against Neha’s while they sifted through a heap of papers… Her warm breath felt so reassuring. And her eyes, she would roll them all over the place, glance here and there, before dropping on Neha’s. She froze in her walk when Mohini did that. She felt shy around her.
The night before the release of the book was perhaps the one Neha would remember for a long time. Mohini pressed Neha to her bosom and whispered in her ears. Neha, however, was not in a position to register the former’s words. Mohini’s embrace, warm and comely…
The book came out really well. It was an instant success. Mohini turned into a celebrity overnight.
Chapter 10
Six months hence, when the euphoria of celebrating the book subsided, I invited Ankur and his wife to my home. It was a dinner party. There were no other guests. Ankur found it awkward. But Neha seemed to easily make my home hers for the moment. She had a knack of doing that. She would dissolve into the surroundings like a mist cloud. She was so inconspicuous.
The dinner was nothing special either. Homemade food, I chatted up Ankur and Neha through the course of dinner. ‘Ankur, you are the man I respect the most in the present team,’ I said and dropping my measured gaze on Neha, provoked her ‘you are so lucky.’
But she was silent. Neha was silent for a reason. She was mad at me. Ankur was under the impression that Neha and I met now, for the first time. Well! Ankur was wrong about that.
‘You see. I married once and divorced. I implored my husband to give me room. But it was in his nature to be possessive of his wife. I longed to tear myself away from his overpowering need to possess me.’ I finished the desert and continued the monologue ‘so, I moved on, divorced him to never marry again.’ Here I paused and emphasized my next words ‘You Neha! You are lucky’
‘A man who identifies women not as silhouettes in the painting of marriage but as solid figures…’ Neha replied with a thoughtful gaze. ‘Yes. I am lucky. Few men surpass my husband’s virtues.’ She was caustic, mad, and unwilling to converse at the moment. I understood.
Poor thing! Ankur did not. He thought he knew Neha well. ‘She never revealed her emotions in public. Not like this. Something was not right’ Ankur seemed to say to himself. Slightly uncomfortable; he cleared his throat, reached out for the glass, took a sip and said ‘I liked your book. It is engaging.’
‘Yes. Thank you’ I pressed my lips tight and issued a smile ‘A certain copywriting and editorial experience ensured that the book came out as I intended’. At this point, Ankur excused himself to the washroom. Neha stared intently at me. There was an air of expectancy in her eyes. Behind my back, I heard the flush of the toilet, and seized the moment to declare my love ‘yes. I love you too’ I said to Neha.
Chapter 11
Ah! I confused my readers. Didn’t I? I am an unreliable narrator.
See. I wrote myself into the story. I think now I should identify myself. I am Mohini.
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