Chapter 23

22. Deliverance

Third time, this was the third time, Mithila had whispered something into his ears and giggled. Since Kirti sat in the back seat, she couldn’t see Nishit’s reaction.

He reached out and changed the radio frequency. The peppy voice of the radio jockey boomed. 

‘Hey, that’s the third time you changed the station,’ Mithila complained.

‘Shut your mouth and listen. Only listen,’ he instructed.

‘What’s the fun in it!’ she whined in response.

Kirti wondered if she should tell him that they did not play English songs if that was what he was after.

‘The song playing earlier  was a good song. More apt. No Kirti?’ 

Kirti hmmed. She wasn’t even paying attention to the song. Her ankle was hurting that bad. 

‘It’s not a snake bite,’ Sana had cleared up.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Who's the doctor here?’

‘Then what is it?’ Kirti had asked, quite worried about the remaining time she had in her hands.

‘An insect?’ Tejas guessed.

‘No, it’s an animal. See the teeth marks’

‘Kahin Sylvester ne toh nahi kata na?’ Buta wondered aloud.

‘Who Sylvester? I would have noticed a dog. My eyesight I’ll have you all know is not that bad.’

‘Sylvester is a rabbit,’ Tejas clarified.

‘Hare,’ Prasanna corrected. ‘Buta’s pet hare.’

‘I had let him out to play.’

When all the eyes had turned on Buta, he had said, ‘Kaat ta toh nahi hai...Pyar se nip karta hai,’ in a shaky, uncertain voice.

‘Kafi wild ho gaya  woh bhi pehli mulaqat mein’ Manisha quipped.

 ‘He was hard pressed for time and thus displayed all his prowess in the first chance itself’ Prasanna added.  

‘Possessive hare, he was. Had to mark her for himself.’

‘I’m happy that my predicament has provided you with the grounds to offer your witticisms.’

‘Hmm, looks like it was the hare only,’ Sana had said while inspecting her ankle. She had bandaged the toe already. Whatever ambivalent feelings she had for Sana, Kirti respected her for her craft and professionalism.

‘Now that you mention it, I think I did feel something fluffy. Ahhh..,’ she gasped when Sana tried to move her ankle.

‘I think it’s a sprain. You should get an X-ray though and don’t put weight on it’

‘I never knew karmas are real. Delivered quite fast, wasn’t it?’ Navyam sneered.

‘True,’ Kirti said, ‘It must be Sylvester’s good karma indeed that he met me. Imagine it biting into a skin, then realising it’s you and spot death. Good soul gone too soon’

‘Let me take you to the hospital,’ Tejas had offered. 

‘But we were supposed to go to our…’ Sana began but stopped sensing eyes on her. Kirti gauging the conflict in her voice said, ‘No need, Tejas. I don’t want to spoil your and Sana’s plans. You both don't worry on my account. This is nothing. I can manage. I had called a cab. It must have arrived.’ On cue, her phone rang. The driver was outside. Standing up would be a task though.

‘If anybody can just assist me till the gate...I’ll manage on my own from there.’ Manisha had stepped in. Tejas had been pulled aside by Sana.

She managed to hobble until the foyer, the rest of the distance looked like the arduous task of scaling Kilminjaro. The willowy Manisha wouldn’t be able to carry me to the cab, would she?

 ‘Let me,’ came a resolute voice. She looked at him and cried out, ‘NO, NO, don’t carry me.’ One time she could pass it off as a hallucinatory dream. Second time would be imprinting it into deep recesses of memory. The moment Nishit had placed her on the sofa, and Tejas and others had surrounded her with Tejas sitting next to her, she had felt him recede into the shadows. There’s something about touch, an embrace, in whatever form it came, it makes you aware of the other person. She knew where he stood all along even though he betrayed no word or shift.

He didn’t carry her this time but let her lean her entire weight on him, her hands around his shoulders as they filled the gap.

‘Misery needs company, Kirti. Allow us to drop you. You don’t want to travel in a cab all alone with an injured foot. Even the sound of it is so depressing.’ It was Mithila. The One who had been appalled at mention of ripped shoes. She had asked the cab driver to leave. Just like that. Talk about high handedness. Were all of them control freaks?

‘Come, come, Nishit, let's drop her home.’ 

Kirti didn’t know what to make of this overture of kindness or friendship, whatever it was.

‘You must be taken aback. Forget that night’s Mithila. She was moody, depressed and drunk. Today’s one is better. Anyway I am told I don’t do first impressions well. But I’ll grow on you.'

‘But in my state, I’m the climber here. How will you grow on me? If anyone growing on others, it should be me.’’

‘What?’

‘You know climber tree, support...Forget it.  Bad joke.’

Thus, Kirti found herself being the third wheel for the second time.

‘Tut gayi tut ke main chur ho gayi...teri jid se majbur ho gayi,’ Lata Ji’s mellifluous voice now filled the car.

‘This is not bad either. For the first time they are all playing good songs.’ Leaning on his shoulder, her hair spread on his arm, Mithila began to sing along.

‘You’ll have to take the long way for my home. Drop me somewhere I can get a taxi,’ Kirti offered but received no response from him.

‘Chill Kirti, long roads you say? My man here,’ she slapped his arm, ‘he’s been trained to cross rivers and mountains.’

‘Good for you. Life will be adventurous?’

‘Good for you, Kirti. You. He’ll drop you’

‘Get off,’ he said then.

‘What?’ Mithila turned to him.

‘Your building is here’

‘Ohhh...I didn’t realise.’

‘Because you were busy spouting nonsense. Next time you come to meet me, leave all of it behind.’

‘Oh but don’t you love me because of it? My adorable nonsense chatters,’ and she batted her eyelids.

‘No, despite it. Now, go,’ he dismissed her.

Beaming at the confirmation of affection, Mithila hopped out and waved at them, turning to her building but she had forgotten her purse behind.

‘Oofho this girl,’ he said, before calling out her name. She ran back, took it from his hand,should have left then but bent in and said,‘Your spells have a long way to go, Mr.Magician. Up your game if you want complete and unabandoned surrender. Until then do with this,’ and she kissed him. Cheeks, lips? 

Kirti had turned away to look out of the window.

A small distance they travelled with only the prattle of RJ and jingles of advertisement between them. But a while later he tapped the stereo off, stopped the car and then swung in his seat, to face her. 

‘Are you crying?’

She shook her head.

‘Is it hurting very much?’ She shook her head once again.

It was hurting but what was ‘it’?

‘Is it about Navyam? If it is. He’s a first class ass’’

‘All of you are narcissistic jerks! I want to have nothing to do you with you all’

‘Except Tejas’

Her eyes swinging to his, she said, ‘Don’t take his name in the same vein’  Neither on the cheeks, nor on the lips but bordering lips. To close and yet far. Tempting with a promise of more. A foreplay that was to crawl into one’s dreams.

‘A grave sin, indeed. Absolutely unpardonable’

‘Yes, unpardonable, very.’ She looked away once again.

He had started the car after a brief, ‘Don’t cry...please’

‘I’m not,’ she’d said and then added, ‘Don’t tell anyone that I did’

‘I do not tattle’

‘Past records speak otherwise’ 

That had him silenced until they stopped outside the hospital.

‘Why are we here?’

‘No rocket science’

‘Wait here, I will get the wheelchair. It’d be difficult to cover all that distance’ But he came back empty handed.

‘There are none. I asked an attendant and they said all are busy’

‘I’ll try to walk,’ she said. But like Sana had warned, with each passing minute, the ankle had gotten heavier with swelling.

‘I can’t, she heaved after two steps and so she let the hallucinating dream become an imprint-forever-reality.

Since, she had nothing to do she watched him. The well shaped eyebrows, the long eyelashes that curled, the slope of his nose, the two nostrils as well, and the hair too. You couldn’t unsee things however unsexy they sounded.

‘Stop staring,’ he warned.

‘Oh no! NO! Did you go inside and talk to the attendant like this?’

‘Like what?’

‘With a peach tint next to your lips?’

Natural red tint climbed from his neck, to cheeks and ears, ‘Wipe it off’

‘Huh?’

‘My hands are busy’

‘Ye..ss’ The girl who had never dared to brush off the chalk powder off his hair or shoulders or his sweater, despite various inner callings, he had asked her to wipe a lipstick smudge off his face.

‘Kirti, I don’t want any more witnesses, so hurry please’

Two quick strokes of thumb, it was that easy. 

XxxX

‘I CAN! So don’t think about carrying me.'

‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’ve fulfilled the quota of resistance training today’

‘But can you walk?’ He closed in the car's door after having extricated the medicine bag.

‘Hmm. The pain has subsided after the shot’ They were again outside the narrow lane.

‘Let’s go, then’

A half moon hung in the sky with the dusk having given way to the night.

‘Will I be allowed inside your home today?’ He asked out of blue. ‘Last time I was not’

‘Why are you interested in my place?’

‘Just want to have a look at the place where you grew?' Then he shrugged,  'Just being a busybody’

'If you promise to refrain from passing comments on it's crampiness.'

'Nitpicking, callous at that, is an undeserving attribute that you've been linking with my name since forever. Is there a deliverance in store for me in near future?

'Undeserving? Conceitedness is a chromosomal aberration passed on steadfastly to all of your kind'

They walked through the dimly lit streets. Some of the lane was illuminated solely by the bulbs hanging in the porches of people's houses.

'All of but one. What a fluke that the one who matters has been spared . The nee plus ultra. The exception to the rule. '

She leaned in to his hold around her arm when both her pain and weight became unbearable, sighing and finding the will to continue. His clutch was gentle and warm unlike his words and persona.

‘Since you seem well versed in this field, what in your opinion is passed on to ‘your kind’ Kirti?’

‘Disappointments? Resentments?’ She answered.

‘Not anti-elitism? I always thought y’all have an initiation ceremony where kids of age are gathered, with the elders in attendance. They are walked through stories of injustices, fed on the wine of preconceived notions, venom…demonisation of the rich, canonization of the have nots.’

‘See that’s where your limitations lay. Everything should happen with pomp and fare. When it actually is very simple. One day, an adult nudges you into the middle of ‘life’, the rest as you put it , injustices, prejudices, venom, everything follows; all first hand, I tell you. Meted out by your very own people.’

‘But, seriously, there should be a word for the likes of you as well. Con-ascending, may be? The ones who have conscientious objection to a person just because they happen to be rich, or belonging to a class upper than theirs.’

‘You might be alluding to inferiority complex’

‘No, I am implying the high brow attitude that comes from the belief that they are better than the supposed have-it-alls because they are struggling and the latter is apparently not. Hence, they are deserving and the former is not. You do realize that there will always be class structures in a society. There will be a ruling class, a lower class and then a class in between.It’s an unequal society.’

‘Made unbearable for the likes of us by the likes of you.’

‘There is a group of people in the rung below yours who might resent your privileges, too.’

‘At least, I am neither condescending nor patronizing.’

‘How do you know? What is the measure? Where is the guarantee that a well meant innocuous statement or action will not invariably be twisted out of context, taken to heart and stacked against many such, left to fetter over the years?A giant mount of resentments staring back at you? Holding onto all kinds of unfairness they are doled out, no one wants to accept they are privileged; the scales will always be tipped, Kirti’

‘Conveniently in your favour’

‘Depends from where you’re looking.’

They had reached her quarter, and she opened the wrought iron gate that screeched like an old man in pain. 

Before walking inside, she said to him, ‘A word of caution. Poverty and ill luck, I have heard, are complementary and contagious. So tread further at your own peril. I will take no responsibility for the disasters and misfortunes that you shall be impaled with following this visit.'

'Will verbal declaration do?'

She looked on blankly.

'I hereby give my explicit permission in a fully alert mind...That I have been explained the risks associated with entering your house...have been explained in language I understand.Or... will I have to fill out the consent form?'

When her Dadi opened the door, she let out a shrill , ‘Beta! What happened?’ 

‘Just a small ankle injury. Harmless. Nothing to worry about.’

‘Small? Harmless? It doesn’t look like it.’

‘It isn’t as bad as it looks Dadi. The dressing guy was an amateur intern and bound heaps of cotton around me.’

‘Acha, come inside.’

Even in her alarmed state, Karuna could not ignore the man who stood supporting her grand-daughter, looking stiff and out of place at her door. Tall figure, taut muscles beneath  expensive clothes. Sharp features, genial eyes.

‘This is Nishit, Dadi. He was kind enough to drive me to the hospital, then home and even walked me here.’

‘Oh. Bahut bahut dhanyavad tumhara beta. Andar aao’

'Leave your shoes outside,' Kirti directed.

'My ''conceit'' you mean?’ He whispered back.

Kirti limped to the diwan and sat down finally sighing a breath of relief. Nishit was made to sit on the worn out sofa that had thin spindly legs; the fabric of it, she had been planning on changing since forever now. In the next long and awkward fifteen minutes, Kirti had made note of all the shortcomings of her house, all of them intensified. The chipped and peeling paint, the cobwebs in the corners of the walls, the broken handle of the out-of-production Kelvinator fridge; the keys,locks,plastic bags in black, white and pink,boxes and other paraphernalia stacked on the TV set racks.

‘Ab ache se bata, kya or kaise hua?’ Her grandmother asked, once she had brought pillows - pillows with their pale covers - from inside, and had mounted her injured feet on it.

‘Jaldi me thi, dhyan nahi diya aur pair takraya, aapas mein ulajh gaya pair aur main gir gayi’

‘Oh ho..kitni baar kaha hai dhyan rakha kar...dard ho raha hai?’

She nodded to be pampered. Her grandmother’s warmth might chase away the unworthiness that had descended upon her. He sat there stiffly, his hands linked together, taking in every little filthy detail. And to proclaim that he wasn’t snotty!

Her grandmother refused to indulge and smacked her head instead. ‘This should remind you to make use of your eyes.’

His lips twitched. 

‘You forgot the hare part,’ he mentioned and then to her grandmother he said, ‘She collided with a hare,’ then added the ‘khargosh’ bit in Hindi. She realised he did not address his grandmother as anything particular.

‘Little correction. Khargosh nahi kharha tha Dadi. Andhere mein dikha hi nahi. Mera angutha bhi kata usne.’

‘Bas kharrhe hi ki kami reh gayi thi. Kutta,billi, kauwa tak kaat chuka hai tujhe.’

‘What have you done to spite the animals? Bet they must be all from the elite class,’ he said, amused.

She pressed her mouth in a thin line.

‘So...I had no idea crows bite too?’ He asked her grandmother, rendering an opening to a story that he was snoopy about.

Her grandmother was about to humour his curiosity, when she cut in, ‘Let’s keep it for the next visit.’

He raised his brows following which an elusive small smirk alighted his lips.

‘Yes, yes, let me get something for him to eat,’ Karuna thought to herself. She was besides herself with joy and hospitality. What should I serve him? Dragging her feet, she opened tins and cans; nothing seemed suitable for the well bred guy who sat outside. 

She had made a batch of besan laddoos and banana chips last week. That will have to do, aside from the normal biscuits, fried flattened rice mixture they served everyone.

Setting down the plates on the table, she asked, ‘Ye sab khao, chai banati hoon’

‘It’s okay. I don’t drink tea. Chai nahi peeta main’

‘Oh, coffee lete hoge. Hamare yahan sab chai hi peete hai. Tum ruko thoda beta, main bagal dukan se coffee mangati ho..’ Fixing her sari, she was going to fetch coffee powder when he intervened, ‘No, no, please. It’s late. If I drink coffee now, I will have a hard time sleeping. Ek glass pani bas’

He left soon after, Kirti did not see him out. Could not.

‘Is this a new friend?’

‘Nahi. School mein tha sath’

‘Acha tabhi shakal jani pehchani lag rahi thi’

‘He never came before so how come jani pehchani’

‘Tujhe school lene gayi hongi tab dekha hoga’

‘Haan ho sakta hai’

‘Pehli baar koi school ka ghar aaya. Woh Tejas toh kabhi nahi aaya’

‘Jab sabse jaruri tha tab bas wahi aaya tha aur koi nahi’

‘Phir bhi...ab ek baar nahi aata hai ghar par’ 

‘Kya karogi Dadi. Jab mahalon mein log rehte hai na toh darr bhi bahut zyada hota hai... kahin woh aaya aur hamara bura waqt uske piche lag baitha toh. Ek sabun ke bulbule ka kuwan hai, jisme woh mauj se hai, na andar ka sukh bahar jaye, na bahar ka dard andar aaye. Sirf vahi nahi hum bhi toh vaise hi hai...Kisiko jutha pattal chatte dekh dahal jate hai, aisi garibi mujhe nahi dekhni aapko nahi dekhni...jab kuch kar nahi sakte uske liye toh dekh kar mann kyun kharab karna’

‘

‘Aaj itni philasphy kyun jhad rahi hai.’

‘Ye jo ladka aaya tha na...uske vajah se.Bahut philosophy jadhta hai. Pehle to kuch bolta nahi aur ab achanak se ye badi badi baatein’

‘Acha ladka hai,’ her grandmother released her report card.

‘Ho sakta hai...par mere kisi kaam ka nahi’

Her grandmother was removing the snack plates, Kirti stopped her from doing so. ‘I will eat. All of it’

Later when the lights had been switched off and Kirti had laid down after downing her medicines with a glass of turmeric milk, her eyes close; it was then she had let her mind wander. 

She replayed the moments he had waited for her. Outside the doctor’s room, outside the X-ray room, beside her in the dressing room.

She let her mind roam to even forbidden places, staring at her thumb, the feel of his stubble impinged on it. 

She must be really lonely to think about other woman's man and that when she was in love with yet another woman’s man. A new low, Kirti. 

She promised to be good, in the light of day.

If only...

Kirti realised she' d have absolved him of all the snubs, slights he had dealt her in the past if only... 

If only he had partaken of -even a small morsel - the humble offerings her grandmother had spread before him. 

[NOCOPY]

[MEMBERSONLY]