And lastly there was the boy himself, stalwart and sinewy, the sharp rugged features on his clear face and his neatly trimmed crop of black hair matched by the immaculateness of his black designer suit, he sat stiff and perfectly motionless in the couch, add a pair of trendy dark goggles and he would have been India’s answer to western alien fighters.
Side by side the three of them sat on the couch, a host of snacks, condiments and potables present on the table in front of them, beyond which, upon an armless wooden chair, sat Anoothi, dressed in a black churidar pajami and a yellow kurti along with a black dupatta, her attire completed by a pair of yellow sandals and yellow framed spectacles, which along with the disgruntled look in her eyes made her look like an angry wasp, ready to sting these intruders out of her house.
And she would have, if it was not for the preclusive presence of her father, who was seated in an easy chair by her side, making himself too a part of this masquerade. And it was quite natural that he be a part of it, for by inviting these eminent personalities to their house, he was the man responsible for arranging it in the first place, the shriveled father of the boy being his childhood friend.
“So beta Ji, for how long have you been teaching history?” It was the mother who spoke, her insidious honey laced words directed towards the maiden seated in front of her.
“Eleven years,” Anoothi answered, stifling back a groan. She had been through this grind numerous times before, having been compelled to meet many a suitors and their families when her mother was alive.
“Bravo!” the mother bounced in exultation after hearing her response. “Eleven years is wonderful indeed. I firmly believe that to be good in a profession, you have to stick to it for at least a period of ten years. The rule of decadence I call it, and I advise everyone to adopt it in their lives. Look at Mr. Kharbanda here for example,” she said pointing to her husband, while Anoothi wondered if this ingenious lady had any idea about the meaning of the word decadence, which in her pretentious cleverness she had thought to be some fancy form of decade. “After his retirement from his government job, he decided to try his hand at cooking, but lost his interest in it after a while. But I, being the wife I am, did not let him break the rule of decadence, and so to this very day, he cooks all three meals in our house, and with time, he has gotten even decent at it. If I had not forced his hand to persevere at it, then he would never have acquired this skill. Aren’t you thankful for that, Mr. Kharbanda?” she asked with a look of lofty pride upon her face, to which poor Mr. Kharbanda, the majority of whose days were now spent in the kitchen and the scullery, replied with a subservient nod, thereby allowing the life sucking succubus, that his wife was, to continue her monologue unabashedly.
“And don’t think beta Ji that I am someone, who preaches without observance. If ten years are required to make you good at a task, then it takes at least fifty for achieving any level close to excellence in it. Take my own personal example, for thirty five years I have been head of our society’s women committee. Each month, I put my efforts in towards organizing the best of the kitty parties for our members, the finest food, the best locations, the trendiest tapestry, the classiest cutlery, and a myriad of other little hassles there are, involved in organizing a proper kitty party, and despite thirty five years at the job, I still mess up with some aspect of it every now and then. It is only natural, since I still have fifteen more years to go to reach that level where the possibility of a mistake is finally eliminated, and though it can be hard on one’s nerves, going through such an arduous ordeal every month, I am still keeping at it, not letting my patience dwindle, like some soldier standing firm at his post, like a perfectionist grinding to make his ultimate master piece,” the lady thus pontifically concluded, smiling in some kind of great self-satisfaction.
Anoothi’s father, who had witnessed the proceedings up to now in relative silence, concluded from the look in his daughter’s eyes that she was perilously close to losing her patience with this woman, and knowing that some sort of a sharp retort could come from Anoothi at any coming moment, he haphazardly intervened in an attempt to rescue the situation.
“Oho bhabhi Ji. Why are we boring these young people with our tedious talks? I say it’s best if we leave them alone and give them a chance to know each other,” he slipped his old bottom forth in his easy chair and suggested with an uneasy chortle.
“I don’t mean to offend Bhai Sahab, but this is not some tedious talk,” the lady, that great mother expressed her disaccord by wrinkling her heavily made up face in to all sort of contortions. “But you are right, there will be enough time for me to teach your daughter my ways of life after the marriage,” she said, her last statement prompting her to loosen her twisted face back in to its human form.
“So you have already decided to marry your son to me?” Anoothi asked, raising a brow from behind her glasses. Aren’t you supposed to ask my opinions, or will about it first? – She wanted to add, but refrained herself from expressing any dissension, for she had thought of at that moment a better way to get rid of these morons.
“Well of course beta Ji, you are the missing puzzle to our otherwise perfect family. Mr. Kharbanda here is a retired government official, I myself am an illustrious socialite, Ayush here is an Engineer from IIT and have been employed in Doodle for the past ten years, a job for which he draws a very handsome salary, my older daughter, she is a renowned Heart Surgeon, while the younger one is doing her MBA from IIM, you see, all we needed then was someone like you, a college professor to complete our family, and so when Mr. Kharbanda told me about you, I had to pounce upon that chance,” Mrs. Kharbanda said, before turning her eyes towards her son, Ayush Kharbanda, who had been sitting there all this while, upright and stoic like a piece belonging to the ancient Stonehedge. “Go ahead beta, spend some time with your future wife,” Mr. Kharbanda added, and as if on cue, the brawny pillar got up from that couch and was ready to go wherever his mother would direct him to.
Mr. Rai, who was expecting his daughter to throw some kind of a scathing tirade in response to the rubbish tripe this woman was muttering (yes, despite his strong desire to see his daughter get married, even he was finding it hard to bear with Mrs. Kharbanda’s insightful views!) was rather surprised and a little bit disappointed, when his daughter docilely got ready to leave with the pillar for the privacy of her room. He had not raised his daughter to take this sort of rotten talk from anybody, why then was she putting up with it? Was it her way of punishing him for arranging this meet in the first place? Anyhow, there was nothing he could do about it now but witness the ongoing travesty with a meek smile.
By and by, the Pillar disappeared with Anoothi in to her room, and once in there, he started asking the questions his mother had taught him were appropriate and necessary for such an occasion.
“So what are your hobbies?” In a firm voice he asked, his handsome chiseled face expressionless.
“Porn,” Anoothi promptly replied, completely nonchalant to what she was saying.
“P..porn?” A stutter! Perhaps there was a chink in this man, whom up to now we had thought to be some kind of an impregnable fort, as he now looked at the girl in the room with a somewhat agitated look on his face.
“Yeah porn..I mean, do you like watching porn?” Anoothi asked with a casual shrug of her shoulders.
“No, of course not!” he answered defensively, crossing his arms in front of his stout frame.
“Then you would not know about this I guess,” Anoothi stepped to her vanity, and rummaging through the drawers in there for a minute or two, came up afterwards with a newspaper clipping in her hand. With a resentful smile, she handed it over to her supposedly future husband.
‘Local Professor falls prey to an MMS scandal’
In a shameful turn of events yesterday, as obscene MMS was discovered featuring one of the local female professors of the city. Rubina (name changed to protect identity), a local professor here in Ludhiana, was in for the trauma of
a lifetime, when she inadvertently came across on a confiscated student mobile, a video clip that featured her in some of her most intimate moments with an ex-boyfriend. The distraught teacher, suspecting her ex-boyfriend to be behind this loathsome crime, went on to file a complaint in the police, who is now investigating the matter. Now while a great number of similar MMS cases have come to light in the city in recent times, the victims in most of them have been young college or school girls, although this one shows that not even a professor is nowadays safe from this technological nemesis.
While he read that column, Anoothi was busy noticing the changing colors of his countenance, first there was the inquisitiveness, then came the whole ‘why am I reading this’ bewilderment, little by little sprouted forth the signs of suspicion, the ones she had been waiting for before she gave him the prescribed dosage of shock.
“Rubina, name changed to protect identity, was actually me,” she revealed, turned her back to him and began counting down from ten in her mind. She had barely reached seven when she heard the dull thud of the bedroom door closing, three seconds, that was all it had taken for her would-be husband to cast her off.
She turned, knelt down, picked up the newspaper clipping that was lying on the floor, dusted it off with her fingers before moving to put it back in one of her drawers, in case she needed it again to ward off similar candidates for her hand in the future.
It was ten minutes later that she came out of her room. The guests were gone, leaving behind them half eaten victuals and a sour aftertaste in the mouths of their hosts. Her father was sitting in his easy chair, looking desolated and forlorn.
“Sorry daughter, I am sorry I put you through all that,” he said in a faltering voice.
“It’s alright Dad,” softly she replied, leaning down and kissing him softly on one of his cheeks. “I know you were only doing it for my happiness, but its best to let these things happen at their own time.”
“Still..” the old man shook his head and sighed, this last hour seemed to have added years to his age.
“Don’t worry dad, life will turn out to be just fine for me, I have full faith in that,” Anoothi said, rubbing her old man’s shoulder.
“Can I ask you something?” After a long pause he spoke. “Why did you tell him at all about that horrid incident? A simple No would have sufficed.”
“I don’t believe these people were at all interested in my say on the matter. For them I was just some perfect product they had come to shop for and a product has no choice. I thought the best way to send them away then was to show them a blemish or two that the product carried.”
*******
In a city full of expensive restaurants and fancy food joints, there stood the pleasant anomaly of the EAT N TREAT café, one of those rare places that bestowed upon its patrons the warmth and coziness of a home. Situated above a ground storey housing a number of shops, the café’ consisted of a wooden shack like structure in the back and an open terrace up front. Under a canopy on that terrace, the old and young of the city were often seen immersed in games like the chess and checkers, while on the benches near the wooden balustrade one could every now and then come across a dilettante musician playing his guitar and singing old rustic songs, and inside the shack, apart from the service area and the kitchen, there was also a quiet section with a little library of books provided for those wishing to absorb their senses in to the imagination or the didacticism of the written word, and despite all these amenities’, EAT N TREAT did not at all overcharge its customers, a delicious hot cup of coffee was only priced at a reasonable twenty five bucks while its famous chocolate pastry could be had by shelling out a sensible twenty.
This cool summer evening, scurrying up the wooden flight of stairs that led up to the café’ was Raghuvir, and as he stepped on to its terrace, he was greeted by the deep bass voice of the musician who was singing of the coming rains.
‘With thunder aplenty..
the cold drizzle will fall upon me face…
long this summer have been..
now I need the rains to give me some solace.’
He noticed her sitting at one of the tables, dressed in all white she looked serene and beautiful in that twilight, like some angel of the first order. The musician’s solace was in the rains, but Raghuvir’s was in the vision of her face.
As he approached her though, there was a miffed expression of annoyance on her visage.
“Fifteen minutes late huh?” she said, rolling her eyes and pointing to the watch on her slender wrist. In a louder, more emotive voice, the singer went on.
‘Lo! How the dark clouds rumble and groan..
The lazy quiet of the hot days now gone..
And the violent winds, yeah the violent winds ablaze..
In to the eye of the gale, in the eye of the gale I gaze..’
“I got late in trying to find this place,” Raghuvir explained, in response to which Anoothi just turned her eyes away sulkily.
“Come on now,” Raghuvir said in a bit of a wheedling voice, as he pulled himself a chair beside Anoothi. “It is just fifteen minutes, an infinitesimal and insignificant amount of time if you compare it to the age of our cosmos. Surely it is not some infraction that cannot be excused.”
‘The rains come as heaven’s forgiveness..
For these scorching lands, they are a new breath of life..
Surely you can’t stay broody in these rains..
It don’t matter, if you are someone’s mother and no one’s wife.’
“Fifteen minutes my dear professor is far from being an insignificant amount of time,” said Anoothi in a taunting sing song, as she turned her eyes back to look in to that of Raghuvir’s. “I was ten, when I was taken by a couple of men, kidnapped I mean. They took me to the railway station, I think they were trying to smuggle me out of town. But because their train arrived 15 minutes late that day, my father and the police were able to get to me and rescue me from their clutches. Had it not been for those 15 minutes, who knows, my life would have been completely different today, or perhaps it would have ended long ago.”
“I think, you are missing the point of the story,” Raghuvir pointed out with a sheepish smile.
“No, I am not. The point of the story is that 15 minutes is not an insignificant amount of time, that’s what it is,” Anoothi objected sharply.
“No, no, the point of your story is..” And Raghuvir paused for a little dramatic effect before continuing. “That being late is not always a bad thing,” he added with a guilty grin.
“Alright then,” she picked up her handbag from the table and got up abruptly.
“Wait, where are you going?” asked Raghuvir, getting concerned.
“Around for a walk, I will be back in 15 minutes. I waited for you, so it is only right that you wait for me too,” Anoothi announced and began stepping away from the table.
“No, stop, I am sorry okay,” Raghuvir apologized haphazardly.
“You are what?” she inquired, pausing in her way.
“I am..sorry okay..” he reiterated, gently.
After musing upon his apology for a couple of seconds, she sat back down, the dull grimace on her face turning in to a smile. “So what do we do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he replied, shrugging his shoulders. “It has been a long time since I have been out on one of these.”
“Well I am no regular at it either,” she echoed his sentiments.
“Shall we order something to eat?” he wondered out loud.
“Have you come here to just eat then?” she teased.
“Well what are we supposed to do then?” He asked, acting clueless.
“Should not we sit holding hands or something, for a while at least?” she proposed.
“You want me to hold your hand?” he slowly began moving his hand in her direction.
“I don’t know..may be..I think you should..” she said after a brief moment of hesitation.
&n
bsp; “O..okay,” he said, gulping, feeling a little feverish as his fingers brushed the soft skin upon the back of her hand. Her hand shivered in the warmth of his touch in return before grasping it.
“Okay you are supposed to..open those..fingers now..interlace them, no don’t squeeze so hard…you sure you have done this before?? Okay..it’s finally good now,” she expressed her satisfaction when they were finally able to overcome one or two clumsy failures and managed to twine their fingers in to each others.
“I like that you don’t have a sweaty palm, I have never liked sweaty palms, yours is warm but not sweaty, I like it,” she added.
“Yours is…wonderful too..” he responded, as his eyes wandered to the beautiful pearl necklace she was wearing around her neck.
“What, our first date and you are going to start ogling my breasts?” she asked sharply, seeing where his eyes were pointed to.
“W..wait..who said anything about..breasts..I was talking about your palm,” he clarified, stuttering, looking up at her face again.
“Heading west, looking north huh?” she shot back.
“No, I was just…looking at your necklace,” he explained.
“Since when did men become all interested in necklaces?” she refused to believe him. “If you were looking at my breasts, at least be honest about it.”
“But I was not…looking…” he groaned.
“Well I don’t believe you,” she said, and looked away.
Dumbfounded, he sighed and began to pull his fingers out of hers, only for her to grasp them firmly. “I said I don’t believe you, I never said I want to stop holding hands with you.”
And while the two of them were engaged in this awkward confabulation, there arrived upon that terrace a younger couple who were having no such troubles. Arm in arm they walked, with the girl’s head laid upon the boy’s shoulder, their forms lightly swaying to the soft melodious guitar picking of the musician.
The twilight around them was fast fading, and the lamps at the terrace were lit to immerse the whole of the environment in to a romantic light of a faint orange hue. But the romantic birds with their souls lost in each other were little aware of these optical gradations, as with arms around each other they began to dance to the music.