"What is the name again?" I asked my secretary, feeling relieved for the distraction her call was.
I'd refused to believe for days that Vishwa could conjure a poignant lie for nothing. When he could evade speaking about his past for this long, why lie now? I asked repeatedly.
There was Vishwa and then there was him, gone AWOL from everyone's mention. Though Dhri went for archery practice, it was as if he'd taken an oath of silence to not bring up his name in our conversations. While sometimes I was glad about the careful omission, mostly I was annoyed with their contrived withholding.
"Aditya Karan Singh, Mam! He said he is Vishwa sir's referral."
Aditya! I had only taken a quick glimpse of the man in Papa's boardroom, but his face was not one to be forgotten. With the mention of his name, I could recall his self-imposed silence, his tempered audacity that he could drawn on, if needed. His face...now that the shadows in my memory withdrew, something told me that he wasn't a man who made any offer twice.
"Ok," I said after a bit of contemplation. "Block the rest of the morning then. Call and confirm the appointment with the client."
***
Even as I made my way up to the stairs, his front door opened. "Hello, Mr. Singh. Kushi." I held out my hand to greet him.
He shook my hand; he held a pleasant smile, but appeared too obliged with my act of acquiescence to visit his home.
"Please no formality. We couldn't finish shaking hands the other day, but I hope that doesn't leave us as strangers."
"True, but I'm here on a consultation," I said removing my hand from his hold and stepping into his foyer.
Naturally, my eyes pirouetted to all corners. I noticed that the outside didn't match the inside, which was overly large to be empty and needed work. The house was new, but seemed used at the same time. It appeared everything, including him, were waiting to belong there.
"Tell me about the house, Mr.Aditya" I left my handbag on the foyer table and walked in.
"What would you like to have first? Coffee?" We walked alongside, until we reached his living room.
"Tea, if isn't too much trouble," I asked and he took off in the direction of the kitchen. "I mean the Indian chai," I clarified for good measure, in case my initial suggesting could be mistaken for the kind highfalutin hypocrites sipped on: just lemon and tea please!
"London hasn't changed you much," he said, smiling and swirled around walking backwards.
That wasn't a response, I expected and with my eyes narrowed, I followed him ignoring all propriety, without staying put in his living room. "Sorry, but I don't remember mentioning I had lived there."
"We have met briefly at the Pendley Shakespeare Festival a few years ago," he said, pouring me a cup from a tea-pot.
"Really? Which year?" My eagerness exploded with the searching that continued in my head; the irony, irrefutable when I had deemed him unforgettable the same day.
"3 years ago, if I'm not wrong." He shrugged; our fingers touched, as handed me the cup and his eyes held mine, in wait, to read something in them.
"Oh! I was part of the production team that year." I shook my head as the recollection from the festival came to me. "It was madness then. No wonder I don't remember you. Were you a participant?"
"I was visiting with my guardian. He teaches at the university there."
On our way back to the living room again, I determined that whatever little anxiety that had built inside me driving there had vanished. His voice echoed in the vastness of his walls, but sounded unguarded with my presence too.
"Which one? At Tring?" My inquisition seemed to have no end.
"No, Oxford."
"And you? You went to school there?"
"Yes, but a long time ago." We stopped by the arch that marked the entry to the family room that was built right off of the living room.
"Its funny that Oxford has come up twice in the last two days." I said, taking a sip of my tea; the hot beverage did more wonders than it was aptly credited for.
"You meet an old friend?" he asked with some certainty.
And I didn't know why, I had observed that when he turned to face me, at times, my forehead was at the same height as his mouth was from the floor - a detail that I needn't have noticed.
"Something like that," I hesitated giving him the particulars, knowing well that Aditya wouldn't be excited to know it was in reference to him. "A friend's mother also went to Oxford, but she is here now teaching at the city college."
"You are talking about Khyati Puru." There was no question in his asking.
"You know her?"
He took a step ahead and now, I faced his back, as he spoke on with an apparent severity in his tone. "Yes, she went to graduate school with my guardian. He was a senior and she was a few years younger, I think."
"Is she aware of your connection with her schoolmate?"
"No! but I believe she will come to know with time." He said, his tone ensconced in such disapproval, as though her ignorance could only be a crime.
"Its a small world, after all," he said wanting to assure himself, his smile effacing the earlier hardness in his voice
"More than you can ever imagine." I reaffirmed in agreement. Well, without doubt, my world, since last week, seemed to be filled with Vishwa, his stories, his cousins and his clients, who now wanted to be my client as well.
Having placed the cup on a bare table, I ambled into the middle of the room. "So, tell me how can I help you with your home design? What are you unhappy about? And what can we change?" Swirling a full circle about that spot, I faced him again. "Are there any limitations? Any particular preferences that you have about decorating?"
"That's a lot of questions, Kushi." He stood with both his hands stuck in his pocket.
"Ok," I smiled, as he joined me in the center, "I will make it easier for you. Look around and tell me the first thing that comes to your mind."
With my arms folded, I studied him, as he tipped his head up and closed his eyes. Distant; he was in a different space though he stood within inches of me. But oddly, it felt that he precisely desired that. An extended hand to reach him.
"The silence in the room," he answered, after a long minute.
I exhaled when it felt uncanny to understand more than what he'd spoke of. "And then?" I prompted with some uneasiness building in my chest.
"Scratch that," he laughed aloud sensing the awkwardness and launched into a long list of complaints and amendments he desired, like any other client would at this juncture; only his suggestions were too exact to have been ad-lib. "I think its bland and I don't have to tell you that it needs a bit of color. The house is new, only a few months old. I want to be able to invite friends over. Client parties. So, I want it to be an aesthetically appealing setting, comfortable, but not serve as a distraction. I like grey - nothing stark and clean. Lines that hide behind illusions and circles that never come to cease - in short, patterns, but nothing classic. Retro is fine. Vintage is welcome too. And something has to be done about this room." He led me to the door set into the
It was a long circular room, a tower with book cases suspended off of copper hydraulic systems. With the aid of a switch, he showed me, one could move the bookcases vertically along the shaft that nearly ran the length of the tower, until it reached the glass opening at the top, Around the glass look-out, a metal platform with enclosed railing circled the room to give a view of the world outside and a winding staircase led one there. Otherwise there were no windows and the light filtered through the glass walls at the apex of the tower and the sky view.
I stood on a black marbled platform that rounded the base to access the other corners of the room and the shelves at the opposite end. The inner walls were a textured white like that of a country lighthouse. There were no chairs or couches on the floor, but the platform dropped a few feet down; another narrow black staircase curved to the bottom of a large circular bed that spanned the inner circumference of the room; white rounded cushions lay scattered over a plain white sheet draped over the bed and it appeared one had to walk over it if they were to access a similar staircase on the other side. It took me sometime to realize the architecture, but the vision fell easy inside my head once I discerned it - I could picture myself picking up a book from one of the shelves and walk up the metal stairs; l could lean over the glass to watch beads of rain fall by as I got drunk on a book - the green of the trees tainted with the luster lent by the fresh showers; however, if I were to instead take the narrow set of stairs from the marble platform and lay on the bed on a moonless night, with the stars huddled together as tiny specks of light, it would seem I'm inside a tunnel that ascended into the abode of the heavens.
I looked for him and he was perched against the wall on the other side of the room.
And I could see in his eyes, the moments he'd read; that he'd glimpsed at the image in my mind's eye, with me being a part of the view I'd taken in.
My decision was quick in its making - it unsettled me that he accessed me without effort. Breathing in and out to pace my words, I turned towards the door and spoke to him as I made my way out. "Its a beautiful room. I take it you had designed it."
"Yes, I had dreamt of it as a child," he said, quick in his pursuing, "but I never imagined that I would make something of myself to materialize it."
"Don't mistake me Aditya," I swung around to face him again once I was in the family room. "But, I think my talents will fall short when it comes to that room. Its surreal and I don't want to sully it with the accouters that I dabble with."
That room, in my opinion, was a symbol of all that was denied to him. Of this, I could speak with a profound certitude. There was no telling how small I had felt inside that tower of his desires. If I had believed that the Syamvar had been in that tight office corner, I had been wrong.
"It won't," his voice was firm with insistence. "I have seen your work and I'm certain that you could only elevate the essence of the room, never diminish it."
"Thank you for that confidence," I said wringing my hands, "but my current schedule does not permit me to take up ambitious projects like that room. Perhaps, another time. For now, let's focus on manageable capacities like the living and the family room."
We decided on a few more things and agreed on the finer points of the contract. When we didn't haggle over price, it was discomforting that he would have accepted even if I had costed him an arm and a leg.
I could't let go of designing the room, but it had to be done, although, I felt I had to expel the ideas that had come to me when I had stayed in that room.
"Oh! just one thing if you don't mind me chiming in." I said picking up my bag from where I had left it, by the entrance. "When you find a suitable designer to work on that room, would you consider painting it red? A fierce red, if you know what I mean."
It was painful at best that he could freely give everything I had sought for years and yet, I couldn't bring myself to accept what he had to offer. We were too alike to be in the same space as the other.
"Are you sure you don't want to revisit the scope of the current work order, Kushi?" he asked, his smiled hadn't faded, but they were far from being enthused - unlike the one he'd held when I'd entered his home.
"No!" I said averting my eyes and exited the doorway. "I still think something better could come out of another consultant."
"I like what you have proposed so far," he said, leaning onto the door. "Red is good"
"Ok, Aditya," I drew on my polite smile reserved for my clientele and shook his hand again. "I have to leave now."
"I might not make this offer again, Kushi," his clasp was light, but his fingers slid atop my hand with a tangible unrelenting that lingered long after they had left. "Think about it."
His gaze softened with more disappointment over my choices, than the rejection that it stood for. "Yes, the current agreement stands," I said and came down the steps without a backward glance.
***
It would be weeks before I could start working on his place, but I felt compelled to do something about his erstwhile troubles.
"Singing canaries for the silence on the outside." I bought him two large cages of 5 canaries and taped a note to them before dispatching it to his place. Of course, I wasn't going to bill him for the delivery.
I'd also added, "A friend for the silence within," but after a moment of clarity, I'd discarded the original note and wrote another card with only the former message.
I couldn't tell what his response would be. When a few days passed, I began to wonder if he'd been busy and not gotten to sending out his mail. But when a thank you card didn't arrive after a week had slipped past, I knew then it would never come.
43