Arhi FF: Labyrinth - Thread 2 Link posted - Page 11

Vishwa asked me to meet him at Megha Sandesh, the newest of the many fine dining restaurants in the city, their enthusing mod theme being dishes named after poems by famous and forgotten Indian poets of all ages. As an act of revival, the menu (book) had the poem listed on one side of the page and bore a detailed description of the dish and an aesthetic picture to go with it on the other.

Though it had been jarring in its weirdness asking for 'Playthings' (a fragrant rice pilaf of sweet almonds; clay pot cooked baby potatoes in lemon butter and coriander sauce, a dash of carrot scribes aged in spices and oil, with cauliflower fritters dipped in honey chilli batter,) and 'Brink of eternity' (spiced buttermilk, really?), I humored the waiter and ordered the dishes by their listed names in the menu. Vishwa ordered 'KrishnaKali' (a savory eggplant peanut curry over a bed of yellow saffron rice.) as I shook my head with disbelief at the extent people would go to make themselves unique and wondrous.

Our dishes arrived while we exhausted our safe subjects, before delving into the obvious sermon I was here for. For a brief time, the promised dishes played a tune over our palettes, as a lone sitar in the background haunted the inner courtyards of my soul.

"So..." I prompted when we surfaced from being occupied with the tastes that indeed overwhelmed us, as claimed, for once.

He was silent for a moment, as if he was in search of a particular start to the intended conversation. "You remember the first time we met?"

"Not really," I shrugged.

He smiled, knowing well it could only be anything but the truth. "You had just come back from your grandmother's place. In a white sari, with a trace of gold border and you couldn't boasting it was real gold. That your grandmother had gotten it for your birthday. She had also plaited your hair, petals of a blue lotus and mogali (ketaki) woven into your braids at random. You had slept in the car and one long strand had fallen over your face, getting blown back every time you hurried through the living room to fetch your bags and get tea to your uncles who had driven the caravan of your cars," he spoke as if the etched details of the long past scene had been his own writing, without any measure of pause to revive the same.

"Another woman with a half opened lotus bud stuck behind her ear would have appeared nothing short of a street gypsy, but you..." And I looked up at him, while he was in wait to have my full attention, "you looked like temptation itself, wild and unattainable."

The fine points he'd recounted brought an involuntary tremble in my fingers. I braced the chair around its edges; a sheath of anger annealed tightness into my voice. "Well, what's the point, Vishwa? Some men are above temptation."

"Awh!" he laughed enjoying my slight, "That they are and only because they didn't submit to it. It's no proof that they were never tempted to start with."

"It makes no difference to me." I shrugged again and looked away.

My twisted eyebrows conveyed the rage I was working to abate and he held back his words, training his gaze on me, willing me to meet his eyes.

What was this game? I asked myself, to traipse over denser affairs and yet, not explore.

"Have you read this poem KrishnaKali by Tagore?" He opened the nearby menu and turned it around for my easy reading.

"That day, you made me look up this poem I had read as a teenager."

The words were far from registering in my mind, from having my secrets discovered and when I didn't make an attempt to show interest, I heard him read a few lines as a tone of mild anguish crept into his voice.

"Whether or not she looked at me

Is known only to us two.

Dark? However dark she be,

I have seen her dark gazelle-eyes."

"You had made me curious after that evening, if you had noticed me in your living room. It was humbling to be ignored by you when I had never once felt that."

"Blue..." I heard him say with measured intent and I got up at once, picking up my clutch, ready to run from the revelation that he'd been known my secrets all along.

"Vishwa...please." I crushed the clutch in my hands.

"Isn't that what you think as the color of your secrets?" he asked, seeking a confirmation he'd always known. And I shifted on my feet and closed my eyes, as if in prayer.

How subtly he'd conveyed reading me like the book I had been to him all these years? That I had only been pretending to ignore him some ten years ago. Bared of my secrets I felt naked in front of him, but it was irrefutable that there was also solace in that recognition.

I cringed at his disclosure, but he wouldn't stop. "At times," he continued with an unresolved awe rising in his tone, "I wondered what it is that makes you transcendent in most men's view. I know it isn't the color of your skin or the other worldly glow that you give off, or the up tilt of your eyes - no, can't be that. Then it occurred to me that it is perhaps, the secrets you steal for yourself, the silence that you wear, despite those discernible looks of yours."

"It's everything that I ever wanted to hear from a man. And I don't want you speaking like that. You are not that man." It was only after I had spoken those words, I began to wonder if I had meant those words for me more than him.

"I'm well aware that it's indeed someone else, Shyama."

That had been the last straw and I got out of our lone corner in swift strides and exited the restaurant.

Needless to say, he hurried behind and caught up with me in the parking lot. When he called out to me, I whirled about and yelled to my heart's content. "Why now? Why today? When you had pretended all these years that you'd had no hint of the same."

He came to stop in front of me. Holding my wrist to ensure, I wouldn't escape him again, he said, "Because, it's all right if we don't finish some chapters in our life, but it's essential that we recognize the start of another."

"You are talking about Arnav." My gaze flipped back to him.

"No, Arjun...isn't that how he introduced himself to you? And why Shyama to him? When you introduce yourself as Kushi to everyone else."

Letting go of my hand, he dropped his face into his hands and breathed into it, exhaustion pouring out as a sigh. He uncovered his face and spoke with a better resolve than he'd had a moment ago. "If not born from the fire itself, you were born during the great fire, Shyama. With such portents surrounding your birth, you cannot simply think any man could handle you?"

My shoulders slumped. Not that story again, I thought, one I had not managed to think for a while. "You make me sound like I'm a curse."

"A blessing," he amended, "an instrument of fate, nonetheless. You cannot simply think any man could handle you?"

My resignation settled and I felt oddly placated. In his question, I heard the answers I had been looking for. It wasn't that the men kept themselves at bay when they perceived me as elusive; I discerned I had carried myself far from those same men believing in the signs that had surrounded the tale of my birth, the awareness being invisible until that instant.

"I'm a man of many distractions, Shyama, and you need a man who makes you his one singular purpose in life. One who would lay down his life for you." He said hold both my hands and I felt tired to express any reaction, let alone exasperation.

After some contemplation, he added, "Or take a life for that matter."

And the words dug into my skin, a panic set in my eyes as my gaze swung back to him. He held the gravity for another beat and began to gradually smile, proposing I was a fool to not recognize a joke for what it was.

Somehow, I could only see it as a foretelling, but his bad humor was equally legendary and I let go of the ominous sense when he shook me back into the present with a pressing decision.

"Now when the question rises, what do I tell your papa?" He titled his head and tried to catch my downcast gaze.

"Nothing." I shot back at him, impatient that if there were to be a moment's delay he would be done disposing of my freewill entirely. "I hope destiny will prove me right and take it from here."

"You would think?" Raising a brow, he challenged me.

"Now go on, get out of here." He clasped my hand with both of his.

"What?" I glowered back at him. My car had already returned after dropping me at the restaurant, as it was customary for Vishwa to drop me back home after our dinners.

"My clients are coming early. Your ride should be here any minute."

"Have you lost it?" I snatched my hand back. "It's so unlike..." I was quite close to throwing a fit when I heard the only voice I had no intentions to bear that night, his presence stilling and unnerving

"Hey! So where am I dropping her?" Towering beside me, he stood with both his hands stuck in his pocket and sent me a nod of greeting, his presence allaying the disquiet in me, while in anticipation of the ensuing night an anxiety too set-in.

"Home! She is going home." Vishwa said smiling and took a step back facing us.

I realized that he'd given me the acknowledgement I had sought unawares; a fizzing closure bubbled up in the present to the unrequited affections from a bygone time.

I remained there watching him move away, but when I felt a coarse need to tell him something build inside me, I paced to him. His arms raised to hold me, but my prancing thrust me into his arms. My tears having snuck up on me glittered swinging from my lashes and I asked forgetting that initial urge to tell, "Vishwa, you have to promise me something."

He smiled recognizing the decision in my voice, the first surge of panic that would come at such finality. "You will be around? Always? You will be there at my beck and call?"

Surprised, his brows went up at my urgent, but dictating request. "Only you could make an innocent plea like that with such behest?"

His hands accepted my surrender and in that embrace, I was here and everywhere, at once. As I felt his assurance fill me, the tears landed on his shoulders.

"In another life I might have had the strength to lift a mountain, but now, I cannot bear the weight of your tears, Shyama."

"You haven't answered me." I reminded him, a laugh bounding at my lips.

"For my favorite cousin's wife, sure," his whisper swept past my cheek as I pulled out, "And for my sakhi, forever."

It sounded as if his promise would last an eternity, even if I was not to accept his choosing, but in this mortal life, he was also done marrying me off to his cousin who would take me home.

Note: Though, I have received buddy requests, its few and I suspect that there are many who are yet to send out their preferences to receive PMs upon regular updates. If I'm indeed right, send them out already ;) A difficult chapter and I hope to hear your sincere thoughts (hates? and likes?) to keep me improving the story in its making.