It took them all a moment to get over it. That they were standing in front of one of the finest mean racers of the road there were. Of course, she didn't know which car brand the logo stood for and she went wide eyed at the high-tech security that the sheet of metal, nuts and bolts demanded, when he walked into his private garage to key in a passcode silencing the incessant beeps that had risen from the alarm since the garage door had opened.
"Is that a..." Yash's voice was a bare whisper and he seemed to be choking on the envy that the grey sports coupe the car was.
"Yes...", he said with a smile, albeit a smug one.
"A bond thing I take it...", Yash winked at him.
"No...", he said opening the driver side door of the Mercedes standing next to the coupe, "Its about men and their guilty pleasures", he winked back at Yash, "Of their fascination for machines that give them a false sense of control..."
They stepped with care around the other car to get into the Mercedes as if it was a mass of grey lava; too hot even to touch. Not until they were half way to their destination did she find out that she was riding in a best in the class Mercedes CL coupe in the market and that the other car still safely locked inside the garage was a Aston Martin; all of which more worth than every trinket, bauble, her life savings, their farm and house in Hoshiarpur put together.
What a showoff?, she thought and met his eyes momentarily in the rear view mirror. It appeared - for his eyes had a knowing look - he'd expected nothing else that instant and she quickly turned to continue looking out the window. She didn't have the courage to go seeking answers to why he had a day job when he could perhaps live without having to work for generations. They were his ghosts and she had hers and it was best not to invade the people who lived behind those veils of silence.
They walked the store length in lazy steps that came with window shopping, stopping to look at the artsy, vibrant displays. But it wasn't long before Meera and Yash fell into their first fight of the weekend when she'd picked up the same dress he'd approved for another leggy blond, telling the woman taller than him by a full feet, "That's a good choice to complement your long legs..."
"You just told her that it would look damn fine on her..." Meera scowled.
"You would be a minion if you stood next to her...", Yash took the little black dress out of her hand with force and put it back on the rack, "You just need to know what suits you and what doesn't..."
"Oh! I know what doesn't suit me...YOU...YOU...YOU", Meera kept poking at Yash's shoulder with a sharpened nail, promising to deliver death if he wasn't going to yield to her at some point that day.
Watching them from where the men's section began after the escalators, she whispered "Hot Chocolate..."
"Sorry...", she heard from behind and cringed at the nearness to him; another foolish slip, "Did you say something?"
Spinning on her heels, "Oh! I didn't know you were there...", she said, smiling, "It's just looking at Meera and Yash...I feel like..."
Her eyes were downcast with a mild embarrassment from having caught talking to her herself; she had no doubt that that is how it must have come across to him.
"Argh! I can't tell you...", she gave up with a wave of her hand, "You would not understand..."
"Try me...", he leaned back on the wall and folded his arms, "After last night, I thought you wouldn't talk to me. But here I'm with you on your day out shopping...and you are still insistent about buying me that shirt", he tipped his head in the direction of the sprawl of men's clothes that covered the entire basement, "I think, I'm just beginning to get this..."
Ah! Mr Pompous-perceptive-my-ass, she told herself, had been bothered about their continued camaraderie after all.
"Oh! common...", she said in a dismissing tone while shifting her weight from one feet to another, "Inciting personal remarks always get in the way when you are getting to know someone. You can only dwell on it so much. A wine spill, one ruined shirt, a bottle of wine and a night to think over how very silly it was. That is all you need to get over such minor infractions..."
"So no apologies are in order then..." He unlocked his arms and began walking to a nearby arrangement of shirts.
He flipped his head to catch her shaking her head in time and he nodded in agreement, his smile wider from an obvious easing of a previously unobserved tension set around his mouth.
"And you were saying...", he hinted at their previous topic that had given way to clearing the air around last night.
"I thought I could hope all that distraction would have bought me time and you would have forgotten about it...", she said shaking her head again from a decided resignation.
"No! that was too interesting a choice of words to let it go...What was it?", he stopped and drew his brows together, faking a difficult recollection of what was more permanent in his memory then, "Hot...Chocolate?"
She wanted to whack him in the head like how Meera often did to Yash, but resisted the urge and swallowed, choosing to give out her secret.
"Umm!", she took a deep breath imagining a warm sensation spread through her, "Its like this good intense tingle you feel in your belly..."Unconsciously, she put both her palms on the flat of her stomach and his gaze dropped to her hands while his smile shifted to a full blown laughter, with a 'Are you for real?' look on his face.
"See...", her nose flared, and her hands dropped to her side, as she straightened herself to walk away with a sulky pout, leaving him where he was standing, "This is why I said, I wouldn't bother with you..."
"Ok...Ok...sorry...", he sped to overtake her, "Let's start again...", he came to stand directly in front of her, "You mean Cozy?"
"Umm! You can say that...", she sounded reluctant in that assent, "That is what I felt seeing them fighting their way into each other's lives...", and she couldn't look him in the eye anymore, "Like having a mug of hot chocolate on a cold winter evening..."
"Oh!", she added quickly, as if he would miss out on the essence of it all if she didn't let him in on the details, "With your feet up on the couch and huddled inside a blanket too...and when the warm liquid puddles in your belly you can't help, but wiggle and then curl your toes..."
"I'm sure I would...", he nodded, sounding every bit mocking, however, having the good sense not to laugh at her again.
"Oh! please...", she walked into one of the aisles stocked with only designer labels of black and grey shirts, her tone ousting his naivete over his incredulity, as though it was only him who lacked a deeper understanding of such matters, "There must be someone or something you might might have seen and felt like they are just meant to be...", she said and without her knowing her hands got animated with the memories that came flooding into her head.
"Or even if your best friend surprises you when you least expect it. A tiring day and you go home to a hot meal of rajma chawal. Or a rainy evening, you are wet to the bone and the first sight of shelter happens to be a chai shop and you warm yourself to a short glass size of adrak chai...One long hug from anyone, or your Daadima is all it takes for those sensations to be born inside you..."
"I will sure remember this talk of ours if that ever happens to me...", he said and she faced him then, "this hot chocolate of yours..."
"Its real, Maan...", she spoke low, "Its my thing...My own little thing", leaning back on a display table, she said, almost disappointed that he would not believe her.
"So...you are telling me..."
She cut him off before he could insinuate anything outrageous beyond what she'd suggested. "I'm just telling you, that if it isn't something you have already paid attention to, then it means you just haven't yearned long enough for it...Like really really want it bad; those simple pleasures of life. Not happening if you are going to hide in a high-rise on the 63rd floor..."
"And you have known me for how long?", his arms akimbo, he had a causal stance and shook his head disbelieving that they were having this conversation for real.
"You are sitting with me in the office till 9.30 PM when the weekend is approaching. How much of a life can you really be having outside office?", she said without taking her eyes off him.
"That's just one day and its only been one week since you joined office...", he walked to join her far into the aisle.
"And people talk", she looked up at him, tightly holding herself just as she felt unsure that moment, "They take notice when they have been in the company as long as you have...Why? Even Meera and Yash stay in your own apartment complex and you have not so much as gone out on a Friday night with them"
He wasn't annoyed and oddly showed a stirring amusement even, curious at how she was lining up her facts.
"Did you just leave out a whole world of other things that I could possibly be engaged with? May be, I just don't think Meera and Yash and I will have something in common to talk about or for us to hang out over drinks..."
"Well! I'm here and you are talking to me...", she spoke in rapid bursts, "And if the last five minutes were anything to go by, we seem to be getting along fine...We just have to do this more. With a lot people. Then someone will come along one day and bingo...you too will be holding a secret smile when Hot chocolate hits you...Thinking, all the while 'I hail to the all knowing Geet!'"
"Ah! I see...", he took a small step towards her and she sidled to the other side, "So its all about getting to prove to me that this weird physical phenomenon that you so fondly seem to believe in, is not just in your head..."
"Argh!...Forget it...", she had a scowl on, miffed that he was still mocking her.
"I was saying it was all about making friends for a start...", she mumbled as she moved to the back of the aisle.
"Hey! common..." his voice was laden with a sudden seriousness, "I thought you said we were getting along fine..."
"Yes...", she paused at his words and had her back to him, "All until you just had to..."
"Had to...", he interrupted, his voice thick with hesitation, but as he spoke on a certitude came up on them at end, "Pull a friend's leg..."
She didn't turn then and instead rested her hand over a grey Burberry shirt that was in the adjacent table. Unseeing, she gazed at the thick stripes of the same color that ran up and across the shirt, when her shoulder felt a small twitch from seeing his hand on the pocket of the shirt; a strait of buttons between the islands that they had mindlessly conjured on either sides of the shirt.
"This one?", he asked and she placed him over to her right from his low utterance and slowly her fingers pulled back into the heel of her palm. And from an unfamiliar sense of hold his earlier words still had on her, she mustered to raise her eyes to him over her shoulder.
This too, he'd been in wait of, she saw there in his eyes. All at once, the word friend appeared precious out of all that she cared for in a dictionary of relationships.
"Hmm...No...", she managed finally after tearing her eyes away from him and having unavoidably read the price tag on it; she blinked a few times at the insane price of 269 dollars for one shirt, "I don't...think buying a shirt here is a good idea...", she was vexed with her own self from having led him to that section, "Its all too..."
She shrugged finding plausible words to evade him from liking any shirt there.
"Plain and striped and with checks and too glossy, don't you think?", he ended for her, smiling.
"Yes...", she was laughing too, "Exactly, the words I was looking for..."
Later they went in search of Yash and Meera, after some more time of aimless walking inside the store, during which none brought up a discussion on the terms of their mutual acceptance to what they had each taken turns suggesting to the other. It was enough that some things were agreed upon in silence, than disrupt the natural understanding that at times fell into place without words.
When they had wandered off outside in their expedition to find her friends who had disappeared off the face of earth - also leading to that conclusion since both wouldn't answer their phones - she felt a strange need to enter a near by souvenir shop
"Can you just wait one minute here?", she told him before she walked in.
And when she did return after a few minutes, she emerged with a brown bag and said, "Here, take this...", thrusting the bag into his hands.
Reading the clear show of surprise on his face, she went on to explain that cursory gesture which had caught him off-guard, "I don't think I can take back yesterday's words and since, we are friends now, I don't want to buy you a shirt. Hey! Spills happen", she was nearly about to wink at him, but nipped that impulse just in time as she continued to speak, "But, I want you to have this and hopefully you will know hot chocolate'"
She couldn't help giving off the impression that she sounded almost wistful before she added, "Someday'"
"Oh! you can't open until after you reach home...", she said as an after thought, when she saw him reaching for the flap of the folded bag.
"Fine...", he rolled his eyes, "Thank you!...but, you didn't have to..."
She smiled too at his half-amazed, staggering smile and found herself returning one of his full gazes as their smiles faded gradually.
It was also when Meera and Yash rounded the corner as Meera pulled a large yogurt cup from Yash fighting for her share. Soon, they left for the Third avenue garage to get back to the apartment, after they'd established none of them wanted to go back into the store again.
While in the car, a new song came on Yash's ipod and the woman's voice - laced with intense longing for requital by her lover - stunned her into listening to it with complete submission. Rubbing her neck, she reclined far with a sigh, into the lush leather seat and had unknowingly called his attention back to her, falling into yet another of their long intent stare downs during which she felt torn unable to look away.
For it was those confining moments that one counted towards the end of it and yet hid from that other part which wished for a drawn out continuance; and may be because, those small lapses of time had no intentions or meaning, which needed no amount of time poured over them to decipher their lost significance. They were just that: a small lapse of time in a lifetime of living. Same as her hot chocolate!
Parineeti
Chakravarti Samrat Prithviraj Chauhan
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