"Can we all be adult about this?" Ashwit pushed Luc down into a corner chair, "And please no screaming in french..."
"Sanaa, we are not going to leave Binoy and you alone in the room to talk this over" Keerthi addressed me with her usual cynicism, the immodest one of the lot and lit a cigarette, "We all know what happens when you put two people into a room after such questions have been raised. Married couples decide on getting a divorce, engaged lovers part as friends and straight men end up being gay," she eyed Ashwit as she spoke, "We will moderate this, if need be. Otherwise, forget we are in the same room as you two."
"Jesus!" Ashwit said through gritted teeth, "Nobody wants to build an argument without making a gay reference..."
"Get over it Keerthi," Alice said, sitting by the window.
I was attending to Binoy, holding a wad of cotton to absorb the bleeding from his nose. "Argh!" he hissed and I felt an uncontrollable urge to remind him of his follies for the umpteenth time, "You just had to give in, proving you are no less of a brute than he is," while he stuck to the only question he'd been repeating ever since he came back into the house.
"You haven't answered my question, yet. Did you or did you not share a romantic interest with him in the past?"
"Answer him," Keerthi fed his curiosity, "RK, has a clean slate where affairs are concerned. It would be a shame if he was gay too."
"Get over it," nearly everyone in the room charged at Keerthi and she gesticulated zipping her mouth after she let out a puff of smoke. It had been years since the day Ashwit, had come out of the closet and broken Keerthi's heart. For all the show of indifference she put up at other times, she never let any chance to gibe at him pass by. If they were to call this a convene of the broken hearts, no one in the room would have disputed that, except Ritu, who was on the speaker and had married the first man she'd fallen in love with; she'd cancelled her travel from Calcutta last minute when her four month baby had taken ill.
"There is no way Sanaa would ever fall for him," Ritu cooed to the baby silencing it again, before she continued, "Isn't that a little obvious to you guys? She is too level headed for him, while he is..." there was a pause, "What is that word for someone who changes a lot, too slimy..."
Alice smiled and jumped up from her seat to come closer to the phone, "Would you kick my ass if I were to say, I was waiting for you to do that?"
And with that there was a smile on nearly everyone's face. Even mine. For Ritu, had the most inconveniently adorable case of mild aphasia - a language disorder that seldom made words inaccessible to her.
"You bet," Ritu laughed.
"Capricious is the word, doll" Alice said.
"Mercurial? Impetuous?" Luc raised his voice, to be heard from far.
"Or just call him fifty shades." Keerthi said with a flourish, "And lets hope he is not into the kinky stuff..."
A silent wave of laughter rocked the room. I looked down at Binoy, who had his head tipped all the way back to control the bleeding, while I couldn't help seeing someone else in my mind, left disoriented on the ground with blood pooling from his nose into his mouth. Resisting the urge to close my eyes from replaying the moment his hand had lifted lightly off his chest towards my face, I drifted my attention back to Ritu who began speaking over the phone.
"So, I was saying that she is too level headed and he is too capricious, mercurial for her. The two ends of the spectrum. Like complete opposites...Uh! oh
She'd finally hit the spot, which their entire basis had hinged on for the last quarter of an hour.
Keerthi coughed, taking on derision, "You need to catch up, doll! Perhaps, that is the only reason we all are interested."
"You understand, that I don't give a damn about your past, right? Its just that I don't trust him." Binoy said.
"You need to keep your head back for some more time. Here." I moved the pillow against the headboard for him. "Lie down" I said and he leaned on the plush of the pillow with his eyes on me, while an inquiry still remained in them.
That was my cue, I thought, to leave and walked to get a change of clothes before I headed to the bathroom. It was then that Alice called out, surprising me, when I had assumed she'd not let herself be involved in the matter as others had. "Hey! we are all waiting for you to say something..."
Nearly exasperated, I exhaled loudly and said, "You guys are worried about nothing. After the book release, he has lost it."
A vision of his hand resting in the small of her back, came into my head again without warning and I blinked it away,"I believe everyone would if such questions around their birth was being asked on national television, like it was public news, when its a private piece of his life. And, I can't be certain that I have nothing to do with that media cook-up."
It wasn't the book that had made news. It wasn't that fact that Binoy was lying there asking me if I had - or was having - an affair with him. Nor, did it matter, that he'd held me by my waist in front of my relatives who still held arcane beliefs about the proprieties of a bride.
It was the window that Alice had closed a second ago. It wasn't the million seconds of my life that I will live facing my decision. But it was this second when it was closing around me. And I needed air.
"I need to talk to Maira Maasi and get those checks going again," and my eyes grazed a far spot on the floor and my voice sounded distant to me, yet rising with contempt they all kept me from leaving the room.
"I have a feeling of disquiet inside me - some heavy thing sitting on my chest, about this matter and I doubt I can feel normal or relieved until it is resolved. But, that's about it. I don't know why you needed me to explanation that."
"If you were to pay attention, Sanaa," Binoy said shaking his index finger at me, "that wasn't my question at all. Did you two have feelings for each other?"
Everything he said was as removed from my head as tomorrow's dinner was.
"How does it matter?" Nearly yelling, I said,"You said it yourself, that you don't care for my past?"
"So you did..." Keethi concurred.
"Guys, please I need to sleep." I rolled my eyes. "Can you all crash too?" While I felt all of them were missing the point that I deserved to be in the limelight for different reasons, I drawled with sarcasm, "Because...We all have a wedding to attend in the morning?"
"That moment after the dance said it all." Binoy, spoke low from a contemplation, his gaze staring at the ceiling, "You are evading, so you two were a thing..."
"No, I'm not evading." I knew he was right; that he had to understand the complication I had often failed to do so myself, "Let me speak to you alone. I believe, I'm right in my place to be of the opinion," I looked around at everyone else, "I don't owe an answer to all of them"
"Then no one is leaving this room either." Binoy said with an absoluteness that called for smacking and sat up from the bed, "I can't trust myself alone with you. You just happen to be good with words. We are not there yet, Sanaa, where I can read you like a book"
"Like, it has become any less of a task for us over the years..." Keerthi scoffed.
"These people here know you better than I do," Binoy continued without paying attention to what Keerthi had said, "And I want to be certain you aren't lying to yourself about this. I need them to hear what you have to say on this matter."
"Binoy..." I was aggrieved at his suggesting and waited for just one of my Judas clan friends to take my side.
"Fine! stay here," Throwing the clothes down, I rushed out, "I'm leaving..."
"Sanaa..." Their voices reached me as I rounded the hallway to take the stairs down for a walk.
"Look you can't go in there..." I heard a faithful help of Naanaji, scream from the foyer as I shook my head, wondering what new problem had walked in at midnight, "This is not your grandfather's house to lord over this place"
I was wrong. It was an ancient problem, as old as the plague, I was already running from: him.
"I need to talk to you, Madhu" he came storming up a flight of stairs and stopped at the landing to look up at me, "Just two words...But, we need to talk, now!"
"Hey! Sanaa!" Keerthi, all over again, was far from giving up, "you can't walk out on us and al..."
Her reaction was as expected seeing him there. "Oh!..." and went mute as if she'd sighted Peter pan himself, from Neverland.
Even, as Keerthi's face turned red from alarm and cried, "No! Don't do anything to spite him." She spoke in quick succession, hurried to reverse that slow resolve she saw form in me, "May be, his doubts are baseless this moment, but doing this will only give it a lasting place in his head."
"Then, he should know better than that..." I said, spinning around on my heels, my gauzy dupatta and the long gathering of my lehenga swish about my feet.
"Two words!" I said facing him, sounding stern like a school teacher, "And you don't get to say anything else. Understood?"
He vaguely nodded, surprised, may be disappointed, finding it difficult that he'd perhaps, prepared a speech in vain, when I'd been bought with his first proposal.
"Done. You drive..." I told him coming down the stairs.
"Argh!" I flipped to see Keethi stomp at the floor and do her mad dance, "Just don't get your pictures taken. No new, controversies..."
"I will try not to," I called out.
"I'm telling Binoy you are out for a walk..." she said, in a loud mocking whisper, with her face stuck through two balusters.
So much for calling her Judas. I smiled.
"Don't make the headlines..." Keerthi had finally calmed down. "And don't do press statements. Remember, you can always claim the 5th."
Stopping at the threshold, I saw her crouching on the floor, her hands animatedly swinging through the gap in the railing, her cheeks like that of a puffer fish, "You live in the US, Keerthi, not I. This is India."
I was beginning to break into a laugh, until he took my wrist and whisked me towards his car, like he was kidnapping me with my own consent.
Book Talk
