28. North And South
‘So many books? You have free time to read all of them?’ Biplab asked, eyeing the hardbound and softcovers in her lap.
‘Oh, they won’t even last a week.’
Biplab nodded. ‘That must have cost you a fortune. Why do you spend so much on buying them when you can loan them from a library? I know a place where they sell books by weight!’
‘Oh, is there a place like that? I don’t know,’ Prasanna replied. ‘Anyway, these will go to my personal collection and I don’t really like used books. These books on sale have really low quality pages which sucks! I find it an impediment while reading. I need my books fresh and clean.’
‘Did you finally start reading?’’ She counter questioned.
‘I read a little now and then,’ He answered.
‘Enough to be not clueless about the characters and authors anymore?’
‘That I cannot say. You’ll have to quiz me on that.’
‘I might take you up on the offer. There’s nothing more that interests me than talking about books.’
Biplab smiled.
‘Lunch together? So much to catch up!’ Prasanna offered.
‘Sure, why not?!’ Biplab agreed.
‘Sorry to be a damper but Biplab...Dadi is alone...we should head home,’ Kirti reminded, cutting into the younger people’s conversation.
‘But didn’t she say she was going to visit Ananya aunty? Her daughter delivered a son. She’ll be back only by late evening,’ Biplab said.
‘Oh, it must have slipped my mind,’ Kirti’s tone was clipped.
‘It’s done then. We’re having lunch together,’ Prasanna eyes glinted with glee. ‘The food court here has really good options. Let’s go.’
‘No, not here,’ Biplab objected. ‘The prices here are really exorbitant.’
‘Don’t worry about that. It will be my treat. I can pay,’ Nishit, who had been quietly listening to the back and forth after the initial greetings, offered generously.
‘Treat for what?!’ Kirti asked.
‘We’ve no doubts about your ability to pay, Nishit Bhaiyya. It’s just that we would really like to eat with an easy mind and clear conscience,’ Biplab said, steam rolling his sister’s fiery outburst. ‘So if you both have no problem, there’s a place nearby. The quality is good and prices affordable too.’
‘Bhai?’ Prasanna looked at her brother, asking for his opinion.
He nodded, all of them heading towards the exit, when Nishit halted to make a call. Gesturing all of them to continue, he hung behind making a call.
When he returned, Prasanna was insisting Kirti and Biplab to accompany them in the car.
‘No, it’s okay,’ Kirti said. ‘You know the place, right?’ She asked Prasanna’s brother. When he nodded, she said, ‘Then let’s meet there.’
As Nishit helped Prasanna inside the car, he listened on to the little argument Kirti and Biplab had on who was going to ride the vehicle and a certain ornament she didn’t buy.
Dismissing all his pleads and arguments, Kirti keyed in the scooty, ‘We’ll buy the earring some other day. How shall I let the Lord of Lords, our budding lawyer, the Messiah of the poor, ride on his own. No, never! Now, if my dear little lord will get on the bike, this lackey of yours will take you to your destination.’
‘You better take care. A scratch and I’ll tan your hide, you flunkey!’ Biplab thundered, as he got on the pillion.
‘Little easy there, Milord. This lackey has a weak heart!’ Kirti said zooming off.
‘They are so cute,’ Prasanna remarked to her brother who was putting on his seat belt.
‘Who?’
‘Biplab’
‘Hmm?’
‘And Kirti’
‘Hmm’
XxxxX
‘Which are your favourite plays?’
‘Not including Shakespeare, here. Shakespeare's is an entirely self sufficient world full of human nuances, the moralities and immoralities all captured in his genius works. Incomparable. Sheer poetry all of them. So favourite plays, Pygmalion for the masterstroke that the heroine does not marry the professor! Talk about breaking stereotypes. Sarah Rhul’s The Clean House for it’s poignant take at class, it’s whimsical writing about love and redemption. Most importantly for it’s quotes like, ‘I don’t read magazine, Virginia. I go to work exhausted and come home exhausted. That is how most of the people in this country function. At least people who have jobs.’
‘Ouch, I haven’t read this. But why do I feel personally attacked!’ Prasanna said.
‘Girish Karnad’s Hayavadana for it’s remarkable wit, the moral dilemma of identity, of what one loves in a person, body or soul. Samuel’s Beckett’s Waiting for Godot for it’s minimalist style. Keep reading the play to just know what it wants to say. There are more in Marathi as well but I would stop here.’ Biplab finished his list, many more names springing in his head.
‘Marathi? You can read?’
‘I can. I studied it till ninth as my chosen regional language.’
‘Okay, so small quiz. Hamlet or King Lear?’
‘King Lear. Bad egoistic dads over indecisive brooding heroes anytime.’
‘But Hamlet is such a dynamic character! A bisexual, a brooding cynic, a man who weighs between the wrongs and rights,’ Prasanna protested.
‘For far too long in my opinion,’ Biplab said.
‘Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy?’
‘Dickens, undoubtedly.’
‘Because he wrote about the middle class?’ Prasanna asked, tilting her head.
‘Because Hardy’s novels are generally grim and depressing and Dickens works despite all his realism and exaggerations to draw out tears, are filled with hope and new beginnings.’
‘Pride and Prejudice or North and South?’
‘North and South’
‘How come? You are choosing North and South over Pride and Prejudice?! It was Austen that had inspired Gaskell.’
‘Might have,’ Biplab replied, ‘with all due respect to Jane Austen and her fans, I liked both Thornton and Margaret more than Elizabeth and Darcy. The industrial revolution, the stark differences between North and South ideologies only added to the beauty of it. It is commendable how Ms.Elizabeth Gaskell imbued social concerns along with an epic romance.If there is any man who loved fervently, it was John Thornton.’ He, then quoted the man, ‘I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me.’
‘You remember the lines?’
‘I don’t intend to. But anything I read and like, it stays with me’
‘Haruki Murakami or Kazuo Ishiguro?’
‘Ishiguro is a British writer, by the way. Anyway, none of them. Yasunari Kawabata!’
Prasanna sat back and looked at him.
‘Which school did you go to?’
‘Holy Acrostic Public School, why?’
‘Where is that?’
‘Borivali’ Biplab replied.
When no flit of recognition passed through her face, he said, ‘Don’t give me that I don’t know where Borivali is, in a typical SOBO girls’ fake accent. Very off putting, it is.’
‘Of course, I know!’ Prasanna bluffed. She didn’t want to be counted among those frivolous South Bombay girls.
‘ICSE board?’ she asked.
‘No, state board, why?’
‘Nothing,’ she dismissed.
‘You think Borivali, state board passouts can’t know literature?’
‘No...generally…’ her sentence petered out.
‘Generalizations are dangerous. Even this one,’ he winked, quoting Alexandre Dumas.
Short, curly hair. Spots of acne on left cheek. Braces. Eyes small, and friendly. Ordinarily cute, Prasanna thought. ‘Read little now and then, eh? You know your texts too well for that,’ she commented.
‘I had to! Once upon a time there was an Estella who had mocked Pip’s lack of knowledge in books.’
‘So you owe all of this to me, then?’ Prasanna asked, her tone flirtatious.
‘Ever in character you are, Estella!’
Kirti felt proud looking at her brother being able to hold his own in a conversation. She wished their father were alive. She could have shown him that school doesn't matter.
The man next to her cleared his throat. She turned to meet his eyes, the color of which were more defined because of the rich blue shirt he wore.
‘Dessert order. They have sewai kulfi,’ Nishit informed her.
‘I know! I’ve been here many times.’
‘So sewai kulfi for you, right?’
It was the surety in his tone that made her say,’Chocolate Fudge’
Coursing her hand through her hair, she flipped it, gathering the entire mass of her tresses on one side of the shoulder. The side where he sat.
He scrolled through his phone as they waited for their desserts.
She tapped the table, taking in the people around her.
‘Why were you shopping in this part of the suburban world?’ She asked finally. ‘Phoenix not enough to cater to your needs?’
‘Why? You have a monopoly over the area?’ He asked, his eyebrows raised.
‘But I understand even though your side of the world might boast of having firsts of everything, we can now boast of all the international brands malls here.’ She continued unperturbed.
‘Right,’ he said.’I agree. You answered your own question. That’s why I am here.’
‘Aren’t you having breathing issues? I’ve heard the air on this side of the world is cheap and dirty as compared to your cleanlier South Bombay atmosphere.’
Biplab and Prasanna, lost to the world, were discussing The English Patient.
‘But you forget I have dropped you home more than twice,’ Nishit said, ‘The air quality is the lowest there or so I have heard. I survived. This is still East where we are sitting in.’
Bristling, she sat back, looking away.
‘Sometimes, Kirti, I think you are unnecessarily picking fights with me. Like, the underlying issue is altogether different. Is it so?’
‘You tell me, Nishit? What underlying issue could I have?’
‘I am clueless,’ he shrugged.
‘Unless it could be about you ignoring me a few days back at Food Plaza. But that is your regular behaviour, isn’t it?’
‘Ohh. That!’
‘Yeahh that!’ She mimicked him.
He did not clarify any further.
‘So what system do you have? Odd even rationing? Something like that? I acknowledge her today, don’t the other day.
’
‘I see, my acknowledgement or the lack of it has quite an effect on you. Should I be flattered?’
‘Oh. Don’t take it personally. In my leisure time I prefer researching human behaviours to swatting flies.’
‘And I am your muse? A trial subject? Should I,at least, now allow myself to feel flattered that I am given preference over flies?’
‘Why are you so insistent on getting flattered? Don’t you have enough gir... people around you fattening up your ego?’
‘There are,’ he made a show of thinking/counting all of them in head, ‘But no harm in adding one more to the list.’
The waiter brought the desserts for them.
‘Kirti, do you read Literature?’ Prasanna asked.
‘I don’t. Apart from school texts, I know nothing. The texts also I have forgotten.’
‘Nishit Bhai also has no interest in reading. Novels work as soporific agents for him. He would prefer a volleyball game any day over books.’
Kirti smiled, humoring Prasanna, when in reality she had no interest in the girl's ‘Bhai’.
Her head bent, she began eating her ice cream. Prasanna and Biplab were now discussing something about the greatest judgments of all time.
'62******09 is your number?' He asked out of blue, showing him his phone screen where her contact lay open. She raised her head to look at the screen.
'It is. Why do you ask?'
'Personal number? Exclusively yours? Not sharing with anyone else?'
'What kind of question is that?' She asked.
'Very legitimate, I would say. Last time you were sharing your number with your brother.'
'That was a long time ago.' Her brother was still in school and she was in college. There was only one phone and they shared it between the two.
He nodded, then his eyes glued to the phone, his fingers swiping the screen.
‘Sooo,’ he dragged, ‘These texts were sent by you?’ he whispered, keeping the phone between them.
The texts jumped out at her.
Her face coloring, she not meeting his eyes, nodded. Her ice cream cup was sweating.
‘It was real, then.’ He said.
‘Hmm?’ She looked up.
‘No, it is legit to doubt no? The circumstances in which it started, the timeline, the pace at which it died off...I thought it happened all in my head. Or maybe someone else had been posing as you and texting the entire time. Your Dadi isn’t into texting, is she?’
A mortified Kirti could find no humour in his statement.
‘The other day you came...I did…’ He had no doubts that day. Hadn’t she given him the umbrella? Hint of sorts.
‘The other day, right! When you hardly spoke anything, is that the day we are talking about?’
She should have ordered her usual kulfi. Chocolate fudge was tasteless but she had paid for it. She would have to finish it.
‘So no, it’s not even odd rationing. It's the same as yours. Ekadashi days I recognize you, on non ekadashis, I don’t.’
Edited by Ginnosuke_Nohar - 3 years ago
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