After the grades were submitted, Ashutosh and Nidhi had free time during winter vacation. On Ashutosh' advice, Nidhi decided to forgo couple of paper submission deadlines and instead decided to take rest, spend time with Nandini and generally sort herself out. Ashutosh often came to their house and spent time with them.
"Love is a strange thing Ashutosh," Nandini spoke suddenly. Nidhi was not in the room. She had gone out to buy some grocery with the cook, while Ashutosh was keeping Nandini company.
"Sorry?" he was taken aback by this sudden mention of love.
"I said love is a strange thing. It makes you push the envelopes, do crazy things like no other feeling or ambition can."
"Why are you suddenly philosophizing about love?" Ashutosh asked jokingly, but the laughter accompanying it was nervous.
"I don't know. May be because today I am missing Yograj too much," Nandini said and then thinking that Ashutosh may not know him by name, added an explanation, "Nidhi's father."
"I know. I am sorry. Is it something special today?"
"Not that I have celebrated this day life long, but I was suddenly reminded that this is the day when I had joined his company all those years back, as his interpreter."
"Interpreter? Which language?"
"Sign language."
"Sign language?"
"He couldn't speak."
"Oh!"
"I had just finished my graduation. He had been inducted into his family business few months back. But to communicate with staff and others, he needed someone to interpret his sign language to them. I had learned sign language out of sheer curiosity. One of my neighbors used to teach it. So, I had taken free classes from him."
"That was nice."
"So, I was idling around after my graduation, when I noticed this ad in a newspaper. I walked in for an interview. He himself took the interview. I fumbled with some hardcore business words. He laughed seeing me go red with embarrassment, but gave me the job anyway. On the first day of my job, he gave me a list of business words to remember. It ran into four pages. He was that organized!"
"And then?" Ashutosh was drawn into the story by then.
"And then we just clicked. I became very good at interpreting what he said in the sign language. Three months later, he was to speak at the Annual General Meeting of the company. He hadn't pre-written his speech. So, I also had to interpret it on the go. But I could do it almost instantly. It was as if I knew what he was going to say. Like there was a connection..."
"There, after all, was a connection, wasn't there?" Ashutosh smiled.
"Yes."
"So much that you never thought of remarrying?"
"I couldn't. I have had a fulfilling married life for eleven years and four years of wonderful friendship and love before that. And then I had Nidhi. I couldn't have left those years behind me."
Ashutosh nodded, "She is lucky to have you as her mother. You make a rather cool Mom." He laughed slightly as he said "cool Mom" and Nandini joined him.
"Unlike me though, she isn't lucky in love," Nandini said startling Ashutosh once again. He averted his eyes, wanting to change the topic, but not knowing how to react.
"May be sometimes love is not meant to be... it is misdirected... even inappropriate..."
"Love is never misdirected. Our social conditioning is what is misdirected. It makes us think of love and marriages in the same way as buying a refrigerator, where you look at the features and the price. Love doesn't happen with features, it doesn't look at the price. It just happens. My parents thought I wouldn't survive a marriage with a..." she had difficulty using the word, but she finally did, "dumb man even for a year. They thought I was marrying for money. But see - I could not get out of that marriage even after he was dead. Things that society makes you think matter, don't matter Ashutosh. Money, status, age, community, religion - none of it matters. When the heart and the mind connect, when two people make each other happy, everything else pales, becomes unimportant. Even if there are other barriers, love can conquer it all."
Nandini suddenly felt tired and leaned back on her bed, while Ashutosh stared at her. Given how close Nidhi and Nandini were, he assumed that Nidhi would have told Nandini about him, about... their feelings.
Nidhi entered the room just then and saw Ashutosh' somber face and her mother lying down on the bed. She panicked, "What happened? Mom? Are you okay?"
"She is fine Nidhi. Just a little tired. Let her sleep. I need to leave now."
"I was going to make some coffee."
"Some other time. Right now I must leave," Ashutosh said and walked out of the room. He had some soul searching to do, before he faced Nidhi again. Nidhi was left confused, but her attention soon shifted to her mother. She sat beside her on the bed and gently caressed her forehead, while she slept.
--
Ashutosh was lost in thoughts the entire night. Some memories came back to him
He was passing through the noisy college grounds, hardly taking notice of what was going on around him, when someone uttered a name that always made him listen.
"Oh my God! Stop Nidhi. Please stop," a girl was in splits and her words were punctuated by the sound of laughter, "I will die if I laugh anymore."
Her companion, none other than Nidhi Verma, was herself behaving as if possessed by something. She was laughing so hard that she could not keep her balance and kneeled on the ground without caring about her jeans collecting the dust at the knees.
"You actually did that? You threw the cockroach in the staff room?" the first girl asked incredulously.
"I couldn't help it when I saw Dr. D'Souza sitting there with her huge lunch box. She had been such a bitch in the class and I knew she was scared of cockroaches. What I didn't know was that the entire staff is a bunch of cowards. They were all running helter-skelter, men and women alike!"
"I saw that... It was funny," she got into another fit of laughter as she recalled whatever she had seen, "But you are crazy Nidhi. What if someone saw you?"
"Even if they did, they should be too embarrassed about their reaction to really say anything to me..." Nidhi was confident.
Ashutosh suddenly became conscious that he may be observed by someone, foolishly grinning at the girls' antics. May be he should go to staff room instead and enjoy the commotion she had created, while it still lasted. He shook his head smiling and walked away.
Yet another day... He was the faculty representative in the committee that was organizing the inter-college debate competition.
"Of course, the lavish marriages of the politicians and rich people are a good thing for the society. At least this way, some of the money they are hoarding flows back into the economy, to the cooks and the decorators and others involved in the preparation of those lavish weddings..."
There was something in her voice that made people forget the logic. You just felt like agreeing to everything she said. At least it happened to him, he thought and smiled. No! It must have happened to the judges too. She was declared the winner. She was bouncing happily towards the stage to take her prize... that broad smile... that confident body language... she probably thought she could conquer the world.
Ashutosh came back to the present. It had been a while that she had seen her smile like that. Not since her accident. And especially after that fateful day, when he had spoken the unspeakable, and she had tried to reciprocate, but was rebuffed by him, and then had gotten to know about her mother's illness, she had that grave look on her face, that wasn't like her at all. She had kept herself together. When she saw her mother worrying, she forced a smile, but she never really smiled. Where was her cheerful self gone? Crushed under the knowledge that she was going to lose her mother? Her only support?
But he was there, wasn't he? Probably not. Probably being there as a friend, mentor or boss was not the same thing as being there as...
--
"Nidhi! What happened?" Ashutosh had come to her house early in the morning and found her on the veranda. She was leaning back on her chair with her eyes closed, but she was crying and tears were flowing out of her closed eyes.
She got up with a start, "Sir?" She quickly wiped her tears, but realized that she would need to wash her face, "Please sit down, Sir. I will be back in a minute."
"Wait," he surprised her as he stopped her from going by holding her hand, "Why were you crying?"
"It's nothing. Please let me go."
"Sit down," he forced her to sit back on her chair and pulled another chair lying on the veranda for himself, "Tell me the truth Nidhi."
"Please don't force me," she replied. The forced coldness in her voice hurt him.
"You don't trust me?"
"I trust you, completely. But that doesn't mean that I will bring you in the middle of all my problems. There are things I will have to sort out for myself."
"Is there something I can do to change that?"
She looked at him blankly for a moment; then nodded, "No."
"Nidhi!" Ashutosh felt very helpless and it reflected in his voice.
"Don't misunderstand me, Sir. I don't know what I would have done, if you hadn't been there for me and Mom. I really appreciate everything you are doing. And I would be lost without you. But I don't want to get more used to your support than I already am. I also want to become stronger for myself. Do I make any sense? Are... you... angry at me?" she looked at him with frightened eyes.
Ashutosh' heart went out to her. He wanted her smile back. He wanted that cheerful girl back, who had the power to make him smile even during the darkest days of his life.
"I am not angry at you, Nidhi. I can never be. Have you had your breakfast?"
"No. Shall I ask the cook to serve some? Mom won't be up for another two hours or so. We can have something."
"In that case, let's go out somewhere. You need a change."
Nidhi was surprised at the proposal of going out. But she thought she had already hurt him earlier; so she did not refuse, "Why don't you wait in the hall. I will get ready and come back in a minute."
"Sure," He nodded.
--
"What would you like to have?" Ashutosh asked when they were ready to leave.
"I haven't had a typical American breakfast for quite some time. Do you know some place?"
"Yeah. It would be about twenty minutes' drive from here. Is that fine?"
"Sure. But do you like American breakfast?"
"I like it very much. What kind of food do you generally like?"
"I like all kinds of food. I love experimenting with food. How about you?"
"I don't mind anything. Can't call myself an active experimenter though."
Nidhi smiled. That felt nice to Ashutosh.
"And what do you like to read?" he asked her.
Nidhi laughed slightly and then said in a self-deprecating tone, "I read a lot of self-help books in my last two years in US; everything from how to make friends to how to look confident to how to succeed in relationships. Then I realized that those books can't help you fit in a place you don't belong to. So, I came back."
Ashutosh also laughed and asked further, "And before and after that?"
"I read fiction. All kind - classics, contemporary. And you?"
"I don't read much outside of the history books and journals, to be honest. And a lot of current affairs, of course. My home would look like a magazine warehouse."
"Yeah. The current affair will also be history is next few years, right?"
"Right," he smiled at her quip, "Movies - I can watch anything though. Crappy action to mushy romance to mindless sci-fi, Hindi, English and any other language with sub-titles."
That made Nidhi laugh. Ashutosh stared at her. She had laughed after a long time. And it was genuine laugh.
"What happened?" she asked when she suddenly became aware of him staring at her.
"I realized how much I was missing your laughter. Remain that way Nidhi. This is what suits you. Not the tears and moroseness."
Nidhi fell silent and smiled nervously. Ashutosh regretted having made her conscious, but resolved to try and bring her cheerfulness back.
--
What was she to do? Nidhi wondered as she paced up and down in her room. His words were echoing in her mind, "Remain that way Nidhi. This is what suits you. Not the tears and moroseness."
She also didn't want to remain morose. But what could she do about her happiness? Mom wasn't going get any better. She forced herself to smile in front of Mom. But her deteriorating health could not make her anything but sad and scared. And the only other person who could make her happy was not there. Well... he was there and still not there. He insisted on knowing why she was crying in the morning? But how could she tell him that she cried because she longed for him. She felt lonely and she could not reach out to him the way she wanted! Because he wasn't willing to be that person in her life. What could she do to find love and happiness? She could not beg him for that. That's not how love came to anyone, did it?
She felt tired and sat down on the bed. 'Be happy with what you have,' she told herself, 'Stop going after a mirage. At least he is around you. At least you can see him, even if not hold him.' She decided that she will try to be happy.
--
Cricket
Debate Mansion
