The wind twirled her tresses and I curled my fingers tight around the cup before I handed the chai to her.
For the life of me, I would never comprehend the reservations I held about touching her when we were in private. It was as if I was only emboldened to do so in the presence of others, when lack of privacy was a good motivation to pull apart from her. But, when its her and I and all that was conducive for intimacy surrounded us, I was not sure about sitting within fifty feet of her, let alone let her fingers brush mine. I could not let myself be turned a primitive caveman again and force my mouth on hers.
Again, for reasons I couldn't tell, I had driven us to Marine drive - like I was trying to give closure to everything that had started from that place, when I was, in truth, far from it.
Neither, was I aware, why she hadn't spoken all through the drive and or, after we had reached here. In attempts to break that long stretch of silence, I had offered to get chai for us, when she didn't particularly appear antagonistic towards me.
As if that night was in full-on replay, only, this time it had taken a determinedly amiable rhythm, we sat in quiet on the cement block that encircled Marine drive. Everything had either come full circle, signifying an end to the chain of events that had begun long ago; or, we had just returned to the foundational moments that would let us start something anew, catching us unawares.
"Do you know, whenever I listen to Bach's Cello Suite 1 - prelude, it gives me wings?" she asked facing the sea and I shook my head.
Hell! I didn't even know me what she was talking about.
She looked at me from under her lashes, while taking a sip of her chai, "Please don't tell me, you actually believe I'm going to hold you to that two count word limit."
I wanted to tell her, perhaps that was a good idea, when I had no other two words swimming in my head, except the ones for which I had asked to see her.
I shrugged and gave her a wry smile. "I wouldn't know unless it was BGM from one of my movies."
"Don't count on it," she said, drawing a brow haughtily high up.
With her feet dangling above the deep end, rather intent to keep up with her random trivia, she added, "I can make 62 Mascarpone Amaretti cups in under an hour."
"Sorry, what?" I shook my head with incredulity, although what she was intending at became less hazier.
"I can rattle 278 most commonly used french verbs off my head in less than 2 minutes." She said.
"Are you ok? Because, you are not making sense at all..." In a remiss, I flattened my palm over her forehead, as if I was checking her for a fever. Instead of an expected averseness, her eyes softened visibly from the surprise, before it closed and she laughed at my reaction, as though she needed the chime of her laughter to drown out the moment; to fill the intones of the sea breeze in our ears.
"I wrote my master thesis on an alternate hybrid cultivation of Bombyx mori, the common silk worm," she started and I went back to drinking my tea - the chaiwala's kadak in the ten rupees beverage was a pleasant sting under my tongue. "That might help increase light reflection off the crystal lattice in the silk fibre by point two degrees if harvested two days after optimal maturation day," she took in a deep breath. "A paper that required three post doctoral teaching committees from animal husbandry, optical physics and textiles engineering to sit on my arguments."
"Wait..." I raised a hand to stop her from continuing with her haranguing, for I had little doubt that, that is what it was. "You are either showing off - for, only god knows why - or, having a nervous breakdown"
"Which do you think?" She asked, playing with a thread in her gauzy gold dupatta.
And the sight of her, sitting by my side, with her feet folded under her, churned a never before felt curiosity inside me, for what she was thinking then and her question escaped my thought.
"You know what I just realized?" I said, after a while, "I can handle a last minute script change after going through a full night of rote memorizing a 10 page scene. Shooting for 3 days straight, in the rain, only to find its been cut in the final print. But, certainly, I cannot handle a woman who is having wedding jitters, one night before her wedding."
"Hey! If you can't have wedding jitters before the wedding, then when else are you allowed to have it?" she asked, shifting to pull her knees up to her chest, a laugh floated in her tone, "Two months before or two weeks after?"
I crushed the plastic cup as she ended and given that I didn't particularly feel a need to answer her, I remained silent watching the dark water lapping against the stones.
"But, you are wrong, I'm not having wedding jitters," Her voice was low, barely above a whisper, "Lord! I know, I can marry him with half a mind in my sleep."
"Technically," I said with my forehead crunched,"that would be called a nightmare..."
I least expected her to laugh out then. "Why haven't we talked like this before?", she asked and sounded a bit wistful than I liked to hear.
"What is going on? What were you running from that made you take my offer at first go? Without all the high strung drama of a daily soap."
"One simple truth." She said and drew a pause, as if that explained everything.
"Obviously, I have good tastes to enjoy Bach, I make for an exceptional sous chef at the french culinary institute, a star student in all my french classes and passed Masters with 3.8 GPA." She appeared sullen to me, despite the orange halogen lights that hid most of what laced her face then. "But I just, understood that we purposely like to misconstrue the one simple truth, life's lesser situations show us; ignore, or even try disproving it, because, it can be go against all that we ever believed in our lives."
"You will have to be a little less cryptic, if you want me to remark on that. I'm a movie star not..."
She cut me off, "Nah! don't fake dumb to me Rishabh" and averted her eyes to me with a knowing look, as if she'd known something all that time, but had never willfully shared in fear of judgement. "I know you dropped out in your second year of Criminal Psychology."
And the measure of veracity in her exposing was a bit astounding when it wasn't something of common knowledge, which led me to tilt my head to one side and size her up on the share of snooping she'd done.
She lowered her gaze with contrition, albeit, smiling. "Yeah! guilty as charged, if you count reading your fansites that is, who by the way, keep record of everything - ever since your first barfing as a baby..."
"So, you are going to tell me about your little situation?" I asked evading the subject.
"I will tell you if you tell me why you dropped out of college?" She leaned forward, resting her chin on her knees.
"First things first, Madhu." It was annoying that I could no longer hide not having taken offense at her finding, when it must have pleased that she'd taken an interest to begin with. "The news of my dropping out of college is not public. All those websites state that I passed high school. So, I still hold you to a fault. Second, however sudden and preposterous it might be, if you agree to what I have to suggest..." I hesitated wondering if I was trivializing what I was asking in return in the context of the barter, "I'm willing to make up my mind and answer you."
"Ok...what?" she asked mindless; a mild eagerness at its wake.
"Madhu," I spoke without letting a blink stop me, when the words were slipping back into my throat, just as soon as they had come. "Marry me..."
Book Talk
