A Long Way Home Page 5

  ‘I’ll have it. Tell her not to—’ he stopped because a man ambled out of the bar behind him, rugged clothes, seemingly not in his senses, someone who closely resembled the man who had troubled Arvi. He landed a friendly pat on Ishaan’s back, shook hands with him. They exchanged a tiny wrapped packet.

  ‘Are you done?’ Ishaan asked me when the man left.

  My eyes followed him. He stared up a group of girls as he passed them by, a sneer forming on his face. ‘Yes,’ I said, my teeth gritted. ‘Very much.’

  The phone beeped off.

  Ishaan pulled the phone away from his ear, looked at it with confusion, then vanished inside the bar. Back in the Bombay Brew café, I ordered a glass of water and a cappuccino.

  Arvi arrived a while later, wearing a tank top and shorts and instead of admiring her legs, which I was seeing after a long time, my mind lingered on the image of my brother clinking beer glasses with other losers at that bar.

  ‘Hey,’ she said excitedly, dragging a chair back to sit. Her scent of essential oil mingled with light jasmine perfume made me nostalgic. She still used them.

  ‘Hey.’ I said, giving her a small smile. I’d ask Mom where she thought her favoured kid was on Sundays, see if he lied to her all the time. Mom admired us equally, but her love was essentially weak when it came to Ishaan. If she heard something happened to him, she’d probably go nuts or simply faint. In our cases, she was more rational, more mature. But Ishaan was like a part of her body breathing outside it and somehow still connected to her core physical well-being.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Arvi asked me in a low voice, her enthusiasm punctured. She kept her purse on the table, entangled her fingers in it. ‘You don’t look too happy to see me.’

  There was no use thinking about Ishaan when he rarely thought of us. ‘Just work stress,’ I told her, shaking off thoughts of him to focus on another distraction of my life. ‘Nothing to do with you.’

  She smiled weakly. Her cheeks had puffed out. Her eyes were still the same kind of beautiful dark night sky with a glint reflected in them like the waxing crescent moon. ‘How are you?’ I offered her a glass of water, pretending to be nonchalant to her presence.

  She sighed deeply, her shoulders slumping with it. ‘I don’t want to lie to you,’ she replied, taking the glass. ‘It’s been a rough week.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She arched her back, but before she could answer, my coffee arrived. ‘Would you like to order anything else?’

  ‘Get me the same thing he is having, please.’ She pointed to my mug. ‘And a plate of nachos. That’s it.’

  When he left, I tilted my head at her. ‘Nachos,’ I repeated. ‘Since when?’

  She smiled sadly, fingering the rim of her water glass, not meeting my eyes. ‘Picked up a lot of bad habits in the past year and a half.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call eating a plate of nachos a bad habit, per se.’ She just never liked it before.

  ‘It’s not. But eating a plate every day is.’

  ‘Every day?’ She glanced up, nodded. “Well, it’s still better than smoking up or something.’ I scoffed and she winced, lowering her gaze, her eyes following the motion of her hand. ‘Arvi,’ I called, slightly horrified. ‘Weed?’

  ‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘But cigarettes.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Well, initially with him, it was a packet a day. Now, just about two.’

  Just about two. I let that sink in. I was afraid to ask her any more questions. She glanced up at me, looking guilty. She wasn’t answerable to me. So I let it drop, picked up the steaming hot coffee mug, the waft of the drink and its tantalizing aroma calming me. ‘What were you saying about the week being rough?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think you’d want to know…’ she trailed off.

  ‘Do you want me to get some drinks in you before you open up?’

  She grunted, then covered half her face with her hand. ‘God, that was embarrassing. I’m really sorry for those messages. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for an apology.’

  ‘I know. I’m just saying.’ She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, then tapped her ring lightly on the glass.

  I took the water away from her hand and placed it out of her reach. ‘Stop fidgeting and spit it out.’

  She dropped her hands in her lap. ‘Where do I even begin?’ she said. ‘My dad lost his job last month. Mom is cranky ’cause she can’t get leave from her office to go to my cousin’s wedding in Japan. I flunked in one subject, so now, I have to prepare for my KT exam next month when all my friends are planning a trip to Kerala. In a way, I don’t mind missing the trip. I want to stay with my parents, especially now that they are pretty stressed out.’

  She reached over, picked up my mug and took a sip. Her lipstick was marked on the edge. If it was someone else and if I wasn’t used to Arvi doing that all the time when we were together, I would have been pissed off.

  ‘But just when I thought my problems couldn’t get worse,’ she added, ‘Vikram broke up with me last month. He cheated.’ At that confession, her voice broke and she peeked up at me. ‘I know it was karma,’ she mumbled. ‘But I still wanted him to stay. How pathetic was I to tell him we’d find a way to work it out even after what he did?’

  As pathetic as me probably, I thought. I guess it’s just difficult to move on from someone who is worth holding on to.

  ‘Anyway.’ Her shoulders dropped forward with an exhalation. ‘I didn’t come here to cry over my sad life. How’s your life going?’

  ‘Good.’ I took another sip of the heavenly drink. There’s got to be magic in coffee. ‘Fine.’

  ‘That’s it?’ she scowled. ‘No updates since the past eleven months? The last time I saw you, you were in a sweatshirt, old stinky jacket and some ripped jeans, trying to fit into social groups.’ She smiled at that, nudged me in the arm with her elbow.

  Her touch and the fact that she noticed, remembered and kept a count of the months seemed to alert my mind because my heart jumped slightly. The reaction of my body was a bad sign. ‘Some, probably,’ I replied, leaning slightly away from her without letting her notice. I needed the distance. ‘But not as interesting as you. For one, I got a job in a magazine.’

  Her brows shot up, forehead creased. I remembered the touch of my lips against it. ‘That’s great. For writing?’

  I shrugged. ‘What else?’

  ‘Why don’t you start a blog or something? You know, share your writing with the world.’

  ‘That would make me incredibly vulnerable to you’, I thought. My blog was filled with either imputing a ‘particular unnamed ex’ or dedicating metaphorical vignettes to her beauty and betrayal. It had my family and relatives’ quirks and idiosyncrasies at the forefront too, which wouldn’t exactly please anyone I knew or loved.

  ‘I’ll see,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you should. Whatever you wrote when we were together, it was worth putting out.’

  Another sip. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And just to be clear, I don’t mind if you write about me.’

  I looked at her. ‘Even if not everything is pleasant?’

  She hesitated, then smiled weakly. ‘I should get used to it.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘some things are better kept a secret.’

  The sarcasm wasn’t lost on her.

  Her order arrived. She placed her bag near her feet to clear the table. I dipped a nacho in cheese sauce and popped it in my mouth. She took several slurps of her drink and we sat in silence. I needed to bring up the topic now.

  But as if on cue, she asked me first, ‘So… is there any new girl in your life?’ She sounded tentative, looked nervous for some reason. Very unlike her.

  ‘Yes,’ I answered and a flicker of disappointment glazed her eyes. I had been expecting that reaction and it took everything in me not to let it get to me. ‘But not anyone who made a lasting impression.’

  She took a moment to underst
and that. ‘So you’ve been single since … us?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  She reached over and closed her warm hand on mine, then rubbed her thumb over my knuckles. The touch lasted for about ten seconds. When she pulled back, I asked her, ‘Do you know why I called you here?’ She blinked, then shook her head. ‘Take a guess.’

  She soaked in the warmth of her coffee mug between her palms. ‘You wanted to hang out?’

  ‘Hang out’—I turned the words over in my head. ‘And why do you think I’d want to hang out with my ex-girlfriend who broke up with me the first time because she wasn’t sure of her feelings, then came back just after I’d started dating another girl, forced me to commit by giving fake assurances on how she was sure this time and then cheated on me four months later?’

  I knew I had hit her where it hurt the most from the stunned look on her face. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, then pulled the coffee mug close to her, leaning back in her seat, away from me. ‘I have apologized to you ample times, Ari. If you want, I’ll do that again. But there’s no reason to be insulting about it. Everyone makes mistakes.’

  ‘I’m not insulting you,’ I said softly, meaning it. ‘I just stated a fact. Sometimes, truth is so bitter it sounds like an insult.’ My coffee was down to the last sip, which I drank. It felt nice to hold the reins in this relation for the first time, to have control over where this was headed from here. ‘And yes, everyone makes mistakes. I made one too and I’m here to rectify it.’

  She was now frowning at me. ‘What mistake?’

  ‘Of taking you back once. Both the times after we split you kept in touch, kept the strings attached one way or another, and that was selfish of you. All you wanted was to have a shoulder on standby. But now I’ll take the liberty of snipping those strings because I’m done being your safety net.’

  She took several seconds to react. ‘If you think I texted you because I wanted you back, you’re wrong.’

  ‘Then why come here?’

  ‘Well, why did you call me?’ she almost snapped.

  I was calm, both on the outside and inside. ‘I just told you.’

  She let out a sigh. I didn’t want to get her angry or have bad blood between us, but I’d be a fool to have anticipated any other reaction. ‘This is mortifying.’

  ‘For me, this is heartbreaking.’ I said, and her eyes softened. ‘Arvi, I loved you. I still do, but that’s about it. I don’t mean to insult you, but I couldn’t find another way of finding closure.’

  She was frowning at the table. I wasn’t sure if she was angry or simply shocked.

  ‘Don’t text me again or I’ll have to block you. And lord knows, I can never do that.’ Her eyes met mine, kinder now, lips pursed, as if holding back her words. I reached into my wallet, pulled out a note of hundred rupees and tucked it under the coffee mug. ‘Thanks for the treat, but I don’t see why we have to pay for each other anymore.’

  When I left, I watched her for a moment from across the street. Her elbow was resting on the armrest, her head in her palm. It was a while before she moved from that position.

  She downed her coffee in one go, something she rarely did, then pulled up her purse to pay. When she opened it, she found a note inside, the one I’d left her. She read it, her eyes gliding along the lines, the expression on her face not changing at all. When she was done, she let her hand drop in her lap, sank back in her seat and I saw a tear roll down the corner of her eye.

  That is the last image of her etched in my memory.

  The note read:

  To the one who had me when she had nothing.

  You yearned to touch the flame dancing on a candle. You wished to taste the wild and feast with the wolves. But when the flame burned you out and the wolves feasted on your flesh, you returned to your old abandoned house.

  My love, humans are not places to be visited. They are homes to be built together. And this home … you let it perish long before you sought it.

  CHAPTER 8

  N

  yra Basu had a pleasant face, but not the kind that demanded a double take; it was the sort that made you curious, because it seemed to hold secrets. I had begun to share evening coffee breaks with her for the past couple of days, which were mostly wrapped in prolonged silences and polite smiles.

  Her smile barely revealed her teeth and I hadn’t yet seen her burst into laughter. She had an ever-present forlorn look in her eyes.

  I had had a glimpse of her all-encompassing smile the other day, the kind that reaches the eyes, cracks and crinkles your face. She was talking on the phone in the corridor. I assumed the person on the other end to be the guy she met on that first day, whom I assumed to be her boyfriend. A lot of assumptions. To be fair, it’s human nature to make up a personality if the person doesn’t give us many details to fill in. Maybe that is why mystery to a person is so compelling. There are endless possibilities as to how he or she might turn out to be.

  I stood in the elevator door, holding it apart for Nyra who skipped down the hallway towards me, adjusting her camera bag on one shoulder. I was carrying the office laptop, the one I’d use to write and she’d use to coordinate with Heena.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said as she slipped past me into the elevator. I got a whiff of her perfume and as inconspicuously as I could, I inhaled it in. Two months after she’d be gone, this would be one thing I’d remember of my desk partner.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I stepped in behind her. Quietness seemed like the girl’s second nature. To break it, I gestured to her camera bag. ‘Do you want me to carry that?’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  ‘You sure? Heena always makes me carry it for her.’

  She smiled slightly, which vanished just as quickly as it had come. If only she did that more often. ‘Then today, you can take a break.’

  Point. The elevator stopped, the door opened to reveal a lobby filled with corporate professionals. On walls to the left were logos of all the companies in this wing, including the cursive block letters, ‘Splash! The Pulse of Youth’, with a splatter of dark blue ink over it.

  We were going to cover an NGO event in Marine Lines, something like a farmer’s market but with gift articles, paintings and essentials contributed by different underprivileged groups of the society. This article wouldn’t go into the print issue, but it’d be up in two days on the magazine’s website. It was still a big deal and a leap from writing product details and headlines for already written articles.

  Once out the main gate, past the high-end cars that I vowed to own one day, we waited on the street for an auto to arrive. Heat pressed down through a cloudless sky, sprouting beats of sweat over my forehead.

  ‘How are we going?’ Nyra asked me, dabbing her upper lip with a handkerchief.

  ‘We’ll take an auto to the station. Then train.’ I stuck out my hand, trying to flag down rickshaws that wheeled past us.

  We waited for a long time. No luck.

  Nyra turned to me. ‘Um, do you mind if I book a cab?’

  I spared her a look, then my eyes were back on the road. ‘It will cost us a fortune. The office isn’t paying much for our travelling expenses.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I can manage it.’

  Her hair tucked behind her ear, skin glistening in the sunlight, she squinted at her phone. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Because it might cost us—’

  ‘710 only.’ She held up the phone to me, the cost flashing at the bottom of the screen.

  For a second, I simply stared at her. ‘That’s only one way,’ I said slowly, not sure if she knew. The cost of our entire travel through train was less than 150.

  ‘I know.’ She frowned. ‘It’s not much.’

  It was more than what I spent on travelling all month.

  She waited for me to approve her decision and I nodded once. While she booked the cab and made the payment online, her fingers moving expertly on the phone screen, I waved off an auto that slowed down after seeing us. This was pro
bably the first time I had turned down a driver willing to give me a ride.

  I didn’t know how rich this girl was but it sure seemed a lot, seeing how she ordered lunch food from the expensive Italian restaurant near the office more often in this week than I’d ever done in six months.

  Out of curiosity, I asked her once we were inside the cab. ‘Where do you live exactly?’

  ‘Pali Hill,’ she answered. ‘Why?’

  Figured. ‘No reason,’ I said.

  Nyra was quiet in the cab ride, mostly just staring outside, and whenever our eyes met, she gave me a polite smile.

  When the cab slowed down at a signal, two slum kids tapped on her window. She reached into her bag and pulled out a fat velvet pouch stuffed with assorted candies. She grabbed a handful and lowered her glass, then handed them to the two kids, who scooped as many as they could fit into their tiny palms, their faces cracking with grins. One of them called his friend over, telling him to grab some chocolates while he can. Nyra gave some to him too.

  ‘Toffee?’ she asked me and I almost declined, the ‘no’ bubbling up in my throat, but I thought, ‘What the hell, I might as well.’ She offered one to the cab driver, who smiled at her in the rear-view mirror. Our little chocolate party lasted until the signal turned green. But Nyra didn’t roll up her window until the kids were out of sight.

  ‘You do that every time?’ I asked her, the tough chocolate skin sticking to the roof of my mouth.

  She shrugged. ‘That’s the least I can do.’

  It was four-thirty by the time we reached the exhibit. I didn’t feel like stepping out of the cool, sheltered car into the blinding sunlight, crowded street and scorching heat.

  Propping our equipment on our shoulders, we headed in. I called the volunteer who was supposed to show us around. He greeted us at the entrance, thanked us for covering the event and handed a welcome gift bag with a booklet of the NGOs and their details and a food voucher.

  I made notes in my phone as I went. An unembellished arch for an entrance made of —I felt the material and typed in—satin tied to thin wired metal frame. A flex board with LED lighting placed on either side displaying logos of the participating NGOs.