Part 7: Evasion
[Needs edits as usual...]
The world is a different place once you are no longer cooped inside the aesthetic indoors of the Mercedes. With the continuous stream of people who ebbed and flowed along the roadside, fighting for every inch of walking space with the auto rickshaws that zipped passed within an inch of them, I was lost and stayed by his side all the while. Only after a few minutes, my skin had a thick layer of soot and grime, blended into the already dark shade of my skin, my Mulberry silk white kurta bordering on mixed shades of grey. The echoes of the french horn from the vehicles lingered in my ears long after they had left the scene. There was every kind of shop selling all things under the sky, from children's toys, street food and even your future for only a few tens of rupees worth of palm reading. Mothers with infants tucked under their arms and sought alms - it made for a sore sight, notwithstanding the innumerous shops that could provide for them, if they had the heart to do so, that is. Children of every age came in hordes out of unexpected dark corners, imploring you to buy their gajra or single rose bouquets or women's accessories.
Though we were walking the same road, it seemed everyone were on their own plane of life towards their envisioned destinations; their priorities varied and separate.
I looked at him pacing a step ahead of me, his tattered leather crossbody slung over his shoulder and I caught myself thinking which path he was taking then, choosing to drop me home.
At the entrance to the train station, he came to a stop and turned to me with an ongoing debate in his eyes. "It's going to be another 10 mts before the train arrives. Do you need anything?"
I gazed around: a broken cart selling boiled peanuts, a jalebi and chat stall and a mobile book store were still actively crying out to customers although it was half past 9.00 PM already.
"Water? Actually a coffee, or may be a chai would be nice." I stammered shifting my decision, half-wondering if I should thank him for his generosity - to stop in the middle of nowhere and have me choose between boiled peanuts and street chat, without so much as a barista in sight, before we took the long haul in a packed train.
"Good! There is a tea stall inside." He said with much cheer like I had made his day and hurried to get the train tickets first.
I walked to the platform and dusted the corners of a bench with a napkin I had found in my clutch and sat down.
Exhaustion beat down my bones and I only wanted to crawl my way into the bed. And yet I sat there, my back bolted straight like a rod against the bench, a tingle of anticipation trickling down my nerves. How quickly he'd moved into my life? I wondered; how in that impregnable silence and enfolding dark of the kitchen, he'd tucked himself laying in wait to ambush. Did he know the layout of these happenings like a carefully planned day? Or was he being played by the intelligible Vishwa like I was?
Even if I may never come to know the truth behind the question, I accepted this was a day that would remain with me till the end of my days, the sprawl of time recounted carefully in solitary and stored away as another comforting secret, his presence engulfing my own.
When I sensed that he'd been missing for a little longer than the few minutes he'd quoted, I scoured the place and sighted him near a chai stall only a few yards away, hurrying to packet a paper bag inside his crossbody.
It was then that the madness began as the first song of the 60's fluted out the radio by the corner chai shop.
Shaam Mehafil, the middle aged radio jockey announced in a fake timeless voice of the masters from that era.
And I shifted my gaze back to my feet, as the song began, the cracked concrete providing an unfamiliar footing as I steadied from a flutter of consciousness.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw him approach me with two plastic cups of tea.
"Chai," he said, commanding my attention as I reached for the cup closer to me; our fingers briefly touching along the cup's circumference.
Tauba tauba, woh nasha hai ke batau kaise...
Those words being the only dialogue, I lifted my eyes to him and the latent heat from that morning at the tips of my fingers, when I had taken the clip from him came to life again, traveling swift up my arm.
"So," he said breaking the moment and came around to sit on the other end of the bench, "besides quoting Shakespeare for a living and not having taken the Mumbai train in your blessed lifetime, what do you do?"
"I don't quote Shakespeare for a living and I have taken the train before," I corrected his assumption; he raised a brow with curiosity and so, I offered to explain. "Only I didn't also have to know the station names or worry about their schedules the last time around. Dhri had taken care of that trip."
"A trip?" he shook his head, his laugh giving away the derision at my suggesting. "Surely I can understand only why you could call something of a common man's convenience: a train ride, a trip, but that still doesn't answer my question."
Again, his eyes fixed on me as though it was only I, only me on that crowded stretch of platform. The stirrings, what much have appeared commonplace between me and a man, somehow had turned exquisite with him.
"I'm a decorative consultant for home and small businesses," I said slightly turning to face him, our knees pointing inward while at our conclave. A bright burst of light from the floodlight above the tea shop lightened the tips of his curls, his features darkened in contrast making it harder for me to read the avidity in his eyes.
"That center-piece in your father's office lobby. Is that your work?" he asked, his brows drawn together as if he pictured them the very second as he inequired of them. "The blue lotus theme on the tree?"
"Yes" I smiled, impressed with his astuteness.
"It's quite surreal, very fitting for an ad premise," he said tipping the tea cup in my direction; an unintended toast from his appreciation.
"Why, thank you?"
"And I'm sure it stands for more than what meets the eye," he was quick to suggest, catching me by surprise as I took another sip.
The song changed, the musical accompaniments from a yesterworld bordello of the 70s movies played contiguous to one another, the coy voice of Geeta Dutt, I recognized, spilled a contained enthusiasm.
My exhale squeezed out, an involuntary acknowledgement raising my shoulders up and down in a dash.
I had no intentions to share why I had picked the blue lotus theme and unable to lie to him, I intended to propose it had been as accidental and careless in their motivations as some passions are usually discovered.
"No reason really, but if you shall insist, then I would have to tell you that I chose it for the same reasons you had picked archery for your leisure sport."
He coughed, "Because though you have nothing left of your sovereign status, not two hoots worth of it, you were bound by tradition to take up the dying princely sport? Implying in your case, you were bound by family honor to become a designer?"
I looked at him a second longer before responding, sieving the private truth of his childhood he'd shared covertly, an easy rendering like it had been made insignificant by the years. On any other day, it would be difficult to imagine sitting down for tea with a prince, but not today, when it appeared both ordinary and extraordinary all at once.
"Oh! When you put it like that, my reasons are far from it." I shook my head in denial.
"And?" He persisted, his face moving an inch closer, prodded by curiosity.
"Well," my hand gestured trying to formulate a response and I amazed myself at the juvenile words that came out that of me then. "Secrets can only be traded, not told. I will tell you mine, when you can give away yours."
His eyes crinkled in contemplation, a playfulness gathered as his smile remained steadfast at his lips.
"But a secret would not remain a secret when shared - it becomes common knowledge for those involved and loses form," he offered by invoking the expositions of some vague school of philosophy, I couldn't identify.
"Then I guess the mystery of the blue lotus remains." I shrugged.
"Unless," he drawled, "by classical definitions of metaphysics, there is no distinction between the one with the secret and the one it's parted with."
Our eyes met, keen in its comprehension of the undercurrents that whirled between us, the cinching profoundness of the moment binding and permanent.
"The train is here, Arnav," I meted out in relief, the horn bringing with it a temporary cessation to what would continue in the train again.
"Arjun," he amended, as if he took more offense to my addressing him by his first name than by my evasion.
I refused to say his name, annoying him further and stood up to board the train.
Edited by -Mitra - 11 years ago
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