Chapter 10

9. The Scent Of Pining

Tejas woke up with a start remembering something. On the bed he was naked under the sheets, Sana peacefully asleep next to him. The room was dark and cold, and he felt the bed for his phone. It lay under Sana’s pillow.

The dim light illuminated his face as he checked his phone for calls and messages. Seeing four texts from her, a missed call, he muttered an expletive. Getting down the bed and fixing his dress, he left the room. The hallways and the large room downside was mostly empty except for a few guests who had passed out on the sofa.

She wasn’t here.

Walking outside, one hand cracking his knuckles, the other attaching his phone to the ear, he kicked an aluminium can high in the air, his eyes following the trajectory as the can tumbled and splashed into the swimming pool.

He waited for the call to be picked up but even after two and three rings, when the call wasn’t received, he began to get tense, a frown marring his face.

‘Where are you?’ 

‘Tejas, Dadi must be getting worried. I need to go back home.’

‘Tejas?’

The texts were three hours old. 

Where was she? Did she reach safely? How could he forget? He had just been stealing moments with Sana and did not realize when things had escalated.

Kirti was half asleep, half tossing and turning when her phone lighted up. When she put the phone in front of her bleary eyes, to check who it was, her first reaction was to dismiss the call or simply let it ring. The image from the farmhouse was too fresh. But a part of her wanted to prove that she could remain unaffected, that she was above petty emotions, she was a rational being. She watched the phone ring a few more times just to test his persistence, his devotion.

Devotion, she did not know, but his persistence won.

‘Hello,’ she said, slowly getting out of the bed, trying not to disturb her grandmother. 

‘Kirti! Thank God! You okay? Where are you?’

‘Home. Where else?’

‘I am so sorry. Pata nahi kaise..’ She knew how he had forgotten. Also knew that it was the start of things. From now, he will always forget her. 

She will slowly disappear from his vision, his memory, each beautiful special exclusive moment of theirs being replaced by a better one with Sana,  like leaves shedding and new leaves growing in its place. One day he would look up to find only the remains of her in fragments of stories and anecdotes. 

‘How did you?’ Taxi bulani padi thi?’

‘I took a lift,’ she answered.

‘Oh,’ he replied.

‘Nishit offered’  ‘Gussa hai kya mujhse?’ They both said together.

‘Nishit?’

‘Han,’ she replied. 

‘Oh. How polite of him!’

‘Gussane ki kya baat hai. You aren’t my chauffeur ki gadi nikal kar hazir raho har waqt. Bas I felt you should have informed me if you were busy.’

‘Ab yaar moody na ho. Galti ho gayi bas maaf kar. Driver kya naukar ban jao main tumhara, bas muh mat fulaya karo’

‘I am not being moody. I’m sleepy.  Main tumhari tarah nischachar prani nahi hoon ki raat mein vicharan karte hue gappe marun. Let me go to sleep.’

‘Nishachar?’

‘Nocturnal. Kitne snob ho yaar tum. Good night!’

‘Arre sun ye Nishit…’

‘Good night, Tejas.’ She cut the phone then. It hurt to act as if it was all the same between them and that she hadn’t seen him kissing another girl.

When she returned to the bed, she couldn’t sleep. Her eyes accustomed to the dark now, she saw, the borrowed dress hanging on the arm of a chair. It reminded her of all the veiled insults. She began to feel the beginning of a headache. The images, the girls comments, all playing in her head in a loop.

She got out of the bed once again, then picking up the dress and the shoes that lay in the corner of the room, she traipsed out of the room.

Under the light, she now inspected the dress, it was beautiful, indeed. Handling it carefully, she folded the dress, and put it back in a paper bag. She’d have to return it tomorrow morning itself or would have to pay fine. The shoes she picked up to put into a box, but her gaze got transfixed on the tassels of it, one of these he had put between his fingers. Was he looking down on her? Was he making fun of her when he mentioned the shoes? 

Would she never get out of this life? Will there never be a time when she would actually feel good about herself? She had tried to change her life once.

Her gaze landed on the trunk placed in the room. A huge green trunk covered with an old bed sheet. Dust lined the frayed threads of the cloth. In the trunk lay all her dreams, her polytechnic books.

‘They keep releasing junior engineer vacancies’ Manisha had said. Yes, they did. She knew for she was always receiving notification of it on YT, on mails. Her head began to pound now.

‘Kirti,’ her grandmother called her and Kirti, switching off the lights, immediately went to her grandmother.

‘Kahan gayi thi? Kya itni raat mein chuhe ki tarah fudak rahi hai?’

‘Pani peene gayi thi, Dadi.’

‘So ja, subah kaam pe bhi jana hai.’

‘Hmm,’ she replied and hugged her grandmother, her head nestling between the old woman’s soft breast. She smelled of pines and camphor which was the odour of an ayurvedic oil that she would always put on her head before going to sleep, and her sari  also smelled of detergent and saunf, which she would always tie in the knot of the corner of her sari’s pallu. She liked chewing anise even if she had no real teeth. 

It was easy to forget everything else in a mother’s embrace. And Kirti had known only one mother, Her grandmother.

‘Dadi, be with me always,’ she murmured into her.

‘Kya badbadi rahi hai, ladki, so ja!’ 

Her phone had lighted up twice after that but she was turned away and asleep so did not notice.

When Tejas returned to the room and got into bed, still scrolling his phone, Sana asked, ‘Where had you gone?’

‘Was asking Kirti if she reached home safely. I was supposed to drop her home but had forgotten.’

‘Oh.’

‘Nishit dropped her.’

‘Nishit? Interesting.’ 

‘What’s interesting?’ 

‘Nothing. Mom and Dad are meeting your parents. Will you be there?’

‘I have to.’

‘Who else is coming?’

‘Bua and Fufaji and Nishit, I think.’

‘Nishit too?’ She asked.

‘You have a problem?’ He looked into her eyes.

‘Why would I?’

‘No lingering feelings? I can help you forget.' He asked coming close to her, his hands going around her waist.

‘Never had any,’ she nuzzled his skin.

‘Yeah, sure. No scent of pining, here,’ he said before pulling her lips into his.

[NOCOPY]

[MEMBERSONLY]