Chapter 41

39. Ae Khwab Hai Mushkil

‘Kirti, have you started with your new job?’ Mayank’s mother asked, her head covered and hands folded in prayer as the priest chanted the last of the mantras. The white of talcum powder was visible now, as it stuck to her face in the humid room. Her dyed hair had been pulled back from her face and tied into a careless bun at her neck.

‘Not officially, Ammaji. I had taken a demo class before the coaching closed for Diwali vacations. I will be starting from next Tuesday.’ 

Kirti after opening the windows wide, and tucking away the curtains, had come to sit next to her. The Homa fire’s smoke had filled the whole house, tearing up everyone, irritating their throats and nose.

‘Once you join the class, can you spread the word that we are looking for a renter? The terrace room, you must have seen. It is quite spacious with a bathroom attached. These students are on a lookout for PGs no?’ She was offering ghee dipped wood chips into the blazing fire.

‘I will let them know, Ammaji.’ Kirti’s entire attention was on her grandmother who was crossing and uncrossing her legs, her struggle for a comfortable position continuous. Sitting down for hours must cause strain to her legs. Biplab had even brought her chair to sit on but since the prayer was about to end, Karuna had shifted to the mat on the floor.

She had been thinking for days to take her grandmother for an Ayurvedic therapeutic massage. The week being off at work, she would have to take an appointment this week itself. Biplab would help her convince Dadi. Kirti stood up as the priest announced ‘Aarti’.

XxxX

‘How does it make you feel, Kirti?’ Shruti was plating the prasad bhog in leaf donas/bowls. 

‘I felt bad for Tejas and disappointed in Sana and by Tejas’ family’s apathy.’ Kirti sprinkled flour powder on the area of the fireplace, the floor side where the square hawan kund had been set up. She had removed the sand and swept away with hands the ashes of the wood and other burnt materials. The floor had become greasy because of the use of clarified butter and using wheat flour was a hack her granny had taught her long back.

‘But you had been so heartbroken after Tejas’ wedding news. Now, does it make your heart flutter with hope?’

‘Shruti! What do you take me to be?!’

‘No need to overreact. I am just asking…’

‘Don’t! I am not such a lowly being!’

‘What’s there to be a low being? You had feelings for him. It does not evaporate just because the other person is getting married. I wouldn’t blame you if a tiny miny part of you is rejoicing that he’s free again. It’s not like you brought about the cancellation of the marriage.’

‘No part of me is rejoicing, Shruti! I hope they resolve their problems soon. No loving couple should go through this.They must have weaved a future for themselves.’

‘Are you sure, you are not relieved that he’s single again? You can confess to him now.’

‘Why would I confess? Now that I think about it, I am glad the confession never happened.’

‘Glad? So you no longer love him?’

‘I love him, obviously. But let it be a secret longing. I am more comfortable in loving from afar.’

‘So basically you don’t love him but want to be content with the idea of loving a person. A safe and comfortable choice. I am sure the marriage cancellation must have thrown a wrench into your pining business.’ 

‘Why didn’t you take psychology, your calling?’ Then, looking at her friend, she said, ‘I am sorry, Shruti,  that I am no Lord Hanuman who can tear open my heart to show you who resides in it or what my exact feelings are for him.’

‘He does not reside in your heart in a lover’s capacity, surely. One cannot be so giving - I want him to marry her. They must be so sad - and understanding when it comes to heart’s business.’

‘Why? Should not one be happy if their love of life is happy? Does one have to be a scheming bitch all the time? What is this, anyway? Aap Ki Adalat? What are you playing at? Do you see me asking such probing questions about your love life?’

‘You will ask, baby, but let me find my Fahad Faasil first. What probing questions you can have now about my non-existent love life?! I don’t have squad leaders making me wait in their offices and then insist on being invited categorically by me. I wish you could tear open and show, if this Moody Aggarwal inhabits any of the small pockets there.’

A handful of flour was thrown at her.

‘Such overly displays of emotion. Tsk..Tsk,’ Shruti shook her head as she flicked off the flour flecks that had settled on her shoulders. ‘Han Bhai, all this flour dust is our kismet. After all we don’t have ‘classmates’ sharing their stardust with us.’

‘You just wait, Shruti. Now I am not going to share a word with you.’

‘Haha. Try all you want. You know you can’t do that.’ 

Kirti could. She had. She did not share a secret when she was of the mind.

She hadn’t told Shruti how her skin had crawled when Tejas had glanced at her lips. It must have been a weak moment for him and she did not wish to make small of his character in front of others. Only her being at his side must have confused his feelings for her. He was Sana’s and she would respect him better if he remained loyal to his fiancee notwithstanding the status of their engagement. 

Her skin recoiling when he had been intimately intertwining their fingers had also brought back past memories. Her doubts about herself. So much she had not shared with Shruti. As long as Tejas had touched her as a friend she had been fine. The moment her body had sensed his changed intent, it had begun to show it’s true nature.

‘Kirti, I have been wondering this for a while now suppose Tejas proposes a marriage to you then?’

‘Then what?’ Kirti did not believe it was ever going to happen. Picking up the broom, she began to sweep away the flour that was now a little heavier having soaked up the ghee.

‘What would you do?’

‘What would you do? Would you be okay becoming a second choice of someone?’ Kirti countered.

‘It does not have to be seen as a second choice. If I find any guy now, does it mean I will see him as a second choice? It’s all about making mistakes, being late in realizing what you want and then after years or trials finding the one who is really the one for you. So suppose he realises you are the one for him, and he proposes a marriage then?’

A bent Kirti who was accumulating the flour dust in a shovel, stood straight and pretended to think for a few seconds.

‘You know this is so unreal a situation that my mind refuses to process it. All the times I had dreamt about confessing to him, in the most optimistic of those dreams - he accepting my proposal and we hugging each other had been the limit of it. Even in my thoughts have I never crossed the threshold beyond confession.’

‘Cross the threshold now. Imagine if he proposes then what?’ Shruti questioned.

‘Have you watched Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, Shruti? The Suraj Hua Maddham song? The last of the lyrics, remember? Jalta rahe suraj, chand rahe maddham...ye khwab hai mushqil...na mil sakenge hum...the Chandni Chowk girl knows her reality. It is one thing to dream about romancing the rich guy in the lands of pyramids. But requires a really stubborn head to think that she would be able to have a life with the guy. Rahul was okay sacrificing Anjali for his family. If not for her father passing away, they would have never gotten married. And, if the cost of marrying the love of your life is losing a parent. Thank you very much, I am good as a single.’

‘Such an overthinker you are. I mean people watch a movie, enjoy the songs and move on. Nobody sits and dissects it like this, making real life parallels with it.’

‘There’s no future with these guys, Shruti. No future. Dadi says, some things are better suited in one’s own circle. Had you been an officer now, would you and I have been able to have such an open conversation? We sit together now because we see each other as equals. Just a slight change in our circumstances and there would crop up time constraints, inferiorities, insecurities and hesitations. A marriage between two mismatched families in the same way does not last. They have been born into wealth and I have only seen struggles. We will never see an eye to eye.’

‘They?’ Trust Shruti to gloss over every other detail. ‘I was only talking about Tejas. Does Nishit come as a 1+1 free offer? Or has he skyjacked your thoughts that you can’t stop thinking about him?’

‘Shruti, do me a favour? There’s no point denying that I do have a lowkey crush on him. When and if he comes tonight, see that I don’t go overboard and embarrass myself. How I wish I was like my father! He had loved only one woman his entire life!’

‘How are you so sure he loved only one woman? The parents we adore and put on pedestals in our young age, very often turn out to be as common and erring an individual as us.’ Shruti’s father, Pareekutty lived in Kerala in a small village, refusing to leave his home despite his wife’s and daughter’s constant coaxing. Sandy having grown up in Mumbai did not want to leave the city of dreams, the sea of hope. Her husband, in love with his rustic fields and a fisherman both at heart and profession lived by the smell of sea, and did not compromise either. He did not want to leave behind his gulls and curlews, his fishes. Caught between the two tides, Shruti grew up hoping for a reconciliation one day. 

‘Maybe. But as far as my memory serves me, my father continued to turn down alliances, because none of them were his Urmila. My love is fickle, Shruti. It is nothing like his. One moment I express my love for Tejas, the other moment I confess my crush for his cousin. How different then I am from Sana? Or all the other girls who I have judged harshly in the past? There are people - I hope and believe there are - who love only once and then spend their entire lives living by it. It is them who are canonized in the world of love and who continue to preserve the sanctity of love.’

‘But Kirti, imagine how sad it is to be able to love only once! If under any unfortunate circumstances your love remains unfulfilled... unrequited, the love that must liberate you, the same love becomes a prison. No, I do not agree with you. Where will betrayed people like us be? No, one must have the capacity to love and trust again and again. The show  must go on just as life goes on.’ 

[NOCOPY]