Arhi FF: Labyrinth - Thread 2 Link posted - Page 29

I observed minutes later that the stations were quickly beginning to empty in that still busy hour; men and vendors disappearing like gas vapors.

My phone rang in stark alacrity even as it begins to die drained of charge. Contiguous to that missed call, his phone rang too. Now, I was certain there was news to be collected from whoever was trying to reach me. Vishwa or Dhri, I couldn't tell, but it was one of them, I was sure.

He stepped aside a few yards to take the call. Nodding a few times, he ran his thumb along his cross-body's handle, his face strained with interest and caution. When he came back to address me, he revealed his discomfort about what he'd heard; the knot of worry between his brows, being one he tried to hide.

"Looks like there is some unrest enroute to your home - the local MLA's son-in-law has been shot. Your brother called. We will have to skip the train, not that I think you will miss it," he smiled trying to ease the gravity of the news I'd heard. Mumbai was a hot stove, after all; if people sought this city leavened with their unrealized dreams, some came equipped with the rage of their nightmares.

"He wants us to wait at my place and we need to head east from here, I think," he continued before wavering a bit to orient himself. "We will have to take a cab. Dhri will pick you up from the apartment."

"Your place?" my questions fell in succession with panic. There could very well be others in his apartment, but I couldn't risk spending time alone with him yet. "Did he tell you when he will be there? Perhaps we can meet him half-way."

"What's wrong with going to my house?" He asked ignoring all other inquiries, his brow lifting up with prejudice I might be misjudging him already.

"Well, I don't want to be a bother to whoever is staying with you. Roommates or family. Its late," I managed; it was the truth in partial.

"It's not a problem," he shook his head with some relief, "Ma would have retired to her room. My brothers may not have come in yet. And the brats might be playing Wii - it's all the rage at the apartment"

"Brats? I thought you had two elder brothers," I asked telling him I'd paid attention and he turned around, walking ahead to exit the platform and get us a cab.

After agreeing to the terms of the taxi fare with the driver, he opened the door for me. "By brats, I was referring to my cousins - they are twins, actually and visit us often."

"You have a full house," I remarked settling in and he smiled; something about what I said - those precise choice of words - amused him, as if he'd expected a snarky comment in its place.

He came around the back of the car and stepped inside. "Nivedh and Sahasra love Ma's food, so they spend more time in our apartment than the hostel that is paid for."

"That is a lot of testosterone for any one women to handle," I found myself saying, speaking easy the words that came together in my head, without wondering if they would scratch or compose him.

"Cooking for 5 grown men of prime age is no less a feat and its needless to comment on their ravenous appetites; despite this your mother keeps an equally draining job teaching adolescent women with the attention span of a gold fish."

For a second, I paused and smiled looking out the window. "She reminds me of my ammamma - my grandmother who still runs the entire household in Badrachalam." The brief silence that punctuated what I had to say stilled him next to me. "She raised six sons and two daughters on her own - my grandfather traveled a lot, but of course, she had help."

This disclosure was exclusive and different from everything I had ever told Vishwa, but then Viswa gathered most about our family from Papa. A distinct openness gathered around us in the back of the cab. We weren't only sharing, but giving away stories that belonged to the other.

"Ma has Nilofer maasi to help," he hesitated to go on speaking, but when he did, he was decisive in his declaration. "She was my mother's lady's maid in her maternal home. After marriage she'd accompanied Ma to my father's place, but when Ma was asked to leave, she refused to abandon her and moved in with us."

I understood his initial indecision then - it was a subtle, but a final proclamation of their princely lineage, unlike the time he'd made light of his sovereign status justifying his choice in archery.

"Does it ever get crowded for you?" The question showed my particular curiosity, but I hoped my trained pace belied my intent to pry.

"Seven people in a 2 bedroom apartment. Are you kidding me?" he scoffed, "I love them all to bits, but I could use my own room. It's a men's boarding house, in short."

"Where do you actually sleep? It seems there is little room for all of you."

"I sometimes sleep on the terrace," he went on without qualms, "but I often crash in the office, or in the living room. We do have a plot on the other side of the city, however it's going to be sometime before I start building there."

He wanted to build; not his brothers; not the brats. In essence, his previous claim about being the glue of the family was reinforced.

"Are there others in your family? Sisters? Sister-in-laws?" I asked, again at the risk of coming across nosy, however his unforeseen response averted my gaze to him

"No, both my brothers don't plan to get married until we have could have our own home. Moving out is not an option for them.

But, I don't share their ideals," he added as an afterthought.

"So you plan to move out and get your own place?"

The driver, perhaps annoyed with our chatter, switched on the radio. Another of those black and white songs sprang up from the rear speakers; it seemed, by a strange act of fate, the program had ill-timed songs from first seasons of love between the movie leads and juxtaposed it with our serendipitous meeting.

"It's a bit complicated, moving out is not an option for me either," he said and moved in when I found it difficult to hear him over the consort of the song. "Our own home or not, if I mean to take a wife, she lives where I do, for I have no intentions of marrying a woman who cannot comprehend my circumstances. Or the person I am. I own a media start-up and employ six employees. Besides their salaries and operating costs, I'm left with just enough to shuffle house hold expenses and to manage a bit of savings. In brief, I live hand to mouth; until we actually win back our inheritance, I'm not the heir who can plan around that share. Even then, I doubt I will abide by grandiosity."

The last pages of his book had been left in the open, while the prologue, beginning and the middle were still withheld from me. I had done that a long time ago, devouring the denouement of the title first and it had only sparked an impetus to read the book in its proper order, not having understood the motivations of the characters leading them to their fates. A similar urge bore into me.

"How long do you think the court will take to reach a decision?" I asked looking at him, trying to veer from the last subject that had landed a chill in the pit of my stomach.

"Perhaps forever," he sounded resigned to that outcome.

The song ended and the silence added to the dourness of that instant. Either of us was reluctant to broach any topic, for we both knew the shift that had occurred, the murmurs of the displacement rippling in the space around us. I wondered if he regretted any of what he'd told me.

"You might have visited our palace," he said affirming that the extent of information he divulged, no longer mattered to him. "Now it goes by the name of, "The Hastin Point" A distant pride shone in his eyes.

"Yes, I did visit," I smiled containing the surprise in my voice. "For my cousin's wedding. The reflection of the sky over the lake is ethereal. The classic white structures have always been the signature of the Indian regal. However, I can never imagine having it for a home though."

"Yuvi bhaiya is the only one who remembers living there and I don't think he wants to go back either," he smiled in return and I saw no pain in his eyes.

A good liar, I thought to myself.

Again, a calm had crept in and I observed him remain unseeing out the window. My gaze drifted to the rise and fall of his breath, his throat convulsing with a need to speak and yet refrain from it.

"I may not have been accurate when I said I have nothing left of my princely status," he said and I was relieved at the return of our confab.

"I'm not corporate material. I don't do well with order taking," he decreed. "The very lack of that quality can be the death of my company, when it's a servile ad world out there. Your father or Dhri can tell you that it's all about keeping the clients happy."

"Then why do you do it?" I asked, tucking back a strand escaping into my view of him.

He smiled pleased I had gone for that question. "It's an addiction - my father's gift to me."

A speed bump in the road threw us off the seat and he spoke again, as if the bounce dispensed a long suppressed memory. "I wrote my first copy when I was 9 years old, only I didn't know it was copy writing that I had done back then. It was to get more parents to come watch the school charity play."

"Did you have a part to play in it?" My eagerness appeared to have no end when it came to him, I realized; the indifference I usually sought after had withered, dissolving in the swirl of words, sights and moments with him.

"When you are the only one who can wield a bow and arrow at that age, you don't get to choose. I was Rama." He shook his head with disbelief, like that still unsettled him.

"Oh! well..." I began, but the cab driver interrupted us.

"I have to drop you off here, sir," he said turning around to face us and pointing ahead at the road that bustled with workers paving a fresh road. "The tar is still fresh and moreover, the address you mentioned is only around the corner from here."

He shrugged and motioned that we get down here. After he paid the cab driver, we continued, once again, by foot. We were yet to reach the part where the workers were pouring tar from a perforated tin, swinging it like a black lantern across the breadth of the road, my insides quieting from watching the sway of their hand - a human pendulum at work and I was made aware of our night trip that will come to an end upon reaching his apartment.

"Now that you remind me, I can see what a spectacle our play must have been for the audience." Walking side by side, he was closer to me than we had been at other times.

"When Subha, she played Sita in the play," he clarified smiling at the mention of her name, "asked for the golden deer, I actually shot the boy dressed as the deer on his bum; the minion was too slow for my dummy arrow. And what do you know? I ended up fighting with him on the stage that my aim had been perfect, that he was dead already and dragged him by his feet to the kutil even before Sita could come out with the dhaan Raavan had asked for."

We laughed together. "You sure did change the course of that play, if not Ramayan," I said.

"You should have seen the look on the face of my teacher," he said, his hand animating his teacher's reproach. "She was ready to hang me on the wall. Shaking her head from end to end, she motioned me to run back. The audience were in an uproar."

"There is such a thing called posing and acting, you know?" I swiveled and walked backwards catching his eyes.

"I never got Ramayan anyways," he dismissed, turning into the first right off the road; it was deserted save a lone crucible mixer and a roller; a stretch of apartments lay to the right of where the machines stood which I figured was where we were heading to. "Why scale the seas and fight a long winded battle, an epic one at that only to banish Sita to the forest?"

"Hush!" I gestured him to stop with a finger over my lips and spun around to walk forward with him. "Do you not recognize the lands you walk on? If the VHS men hear you, you will be toast. Not a subject to be discussed in public."

"Now a private conversation about the merits of Ram is not my cup of tea," he stopped while I inched ahead.

"How about Raavan then?" I suggested without pausing to face him.

"Abducting another man's wife and standing up to the entire world defending it, is a debate fit for the podium." He raised his voice to be heard and I discerned he hadn't moved from that point he'd come to a halt.

Reeling around, I saw him a few tens of feet behind me. "I guess we will have to do with silence then," I said, folding my arms.

His brow curved as he smiled and I saw the distance between us disappear.

Quite disappointed with the turn up at the thread...whatever! While a heartfelt thanks to those who faithfully do - :)