SS: Anthapura - Part 18 Upd - Apr 19th - Page 11

In the weeks that followed, I learnt that first impressions were just that. Impressions. Prithvi was not far from the picture he'd painted the first day at the reception, but he wasn't that man either.

It was some time before I could fully comprehend why any assistant to him would not work in the traditional capacity of a personal assistant. In reality, he didn't need a personal assistant at all. I was merely the outsider formally endowed with the diminished responsibilities of what his family member would have been entitled to; reminding him about dinner or coffee, however weird at first, felt necessary when I began to notice that he wouldn't so much as blink for long stretches of time and kept his gaze fixed upon the wall canvas, unless I interrupted him with a question or call his name to remind him that he'd tuned out for a while. Admittedly, it seemed justified to shoo away the interior designers who wouldn't stop approaching him with their changes for the other rooms in the hotel where he was yet to commence his work.

And though I was allowed to be in the same room as him those evenings, I knew I wasn't in the same consciousness of his art, or space or his silence.

What did he see? He made me wonder for all those times he appeared to have moved to another plane of living; a different realm. Was it a symphony of colors that played a hypnotizing tune? Or was it a captivating thought...an arresting memory that took him far from the present.

Conversely, there were just as much engaging discussions, anecdotes from his college days and angry debates over my understanding of the fundamentals. "Mandu', he called me at times, fondly chiding me in his native tongue, tamil, when I missed an obvious point he was making.

To this end, I could see he was two different people at once. But, it was as if those two different personalities were essential to his existence. He was nothing, if not split between those extremes. One distant and private, accessible only to himself and the other side of him who didn't mind smiling at my jokes was hardly exposed to others, with the exception of perhaps Shiv, I reckoned.

Of course, there had been a minor discounting on my part. I didn't realize I had made an apparent miscalculation until a messenger from the executive office came bearing an inter-office memo on the third week of my being on the job.

"Sorry," I said getting the door of the hall where he was working and where I had set up a study area by one corner. "Prithvi is working. I will sign it for him."

"Sorry mam, I have been instructed to hand these off to Prithvi sir and take back a response immediately." Strangely, the man appeared to have taken offense that I received him instead of Prithvi. I couldn't place where his annoyance stemmed from, but I couldn't go back on my bosses' order either and I sent him off after a long refusal.

Another ten minutes passed and there was a knock again at the door. It was a woman this time and even without a word of introduction, I sensed an understanding of who she was.

No, it wasn't until much later, I came to know of her official position with the hotel. But, that knowledge was hardly of any significance when I had already read the other unspoken details in her eyes. Things that couldn't be entailed in an introduction - the first touch of pain that came in her eyes at the sight of him.

It didn't take me long to put two and two together that she was the her he'd referred to.

She had been my miscalculation, I told myself as she smiled and told me her name. "I'm Mitra. Can I meet him?"

And without doubt, I knew then that she was the one who drew him distant - away from all others.