Part 10: Shekhar
And then she met Shekhar.
Shekhar was a tall, lanky, long-faced man with handsome features and long curly hair that formed something of a dishevelled halo around his head. He came a short-sleeved sky blue casual shirt over white trousers, flip flops and a pronounced stubble which wasn't quite a beard yet. He came alone, quite to the dismay of Sandhya's family. His father, he provided nonchalantly to the curious enquirers, was in Delhi.
Sandhya had nearly let out an amused giggle when she saw the look on Geeta Chachi's face. It was easy to guess what was transpiring so feverishly in her aunt's mind: the guy needed a shave, and a haircut, and formal clothes. But Sandhya thought the look kind of suited him. It gave him the air of those eccentric, creative geniuses with their charming ruggedness. And for a feature journalist who wrote short stories and was working on his first novel, it was perfect. She could not imagine him to have been otherwise.
"So, you paint?" he asked once they were in Sandhya's room, his eyes having fallen on her favourite painting, the one with the curly-haired girl awed by the forest she was in. For a second the painting reminded her of Prashant. She remembered how he had said he painted too, and she wondered what his paintings would look like.
"Sometimes," she said drifting out of her musings.
"Do you have any more paintings? I'd love to see more."
"Yeah sure. It's all really amateurish though."
She fished out a few from a drawer and he observed them for a long time, throwing intermittent comments on her use of light and her apparent fondness for blues and greens.
"You paint well," he said finally, handing over the paintings to her, "So, you want to get married, hey? I bet it took you ages to decide that."
"I had some apprehensions, but that's normal."
"I thought so," he said distractedly as though casually humming a tune, "you seemed like one of those types who'd be afraid of change."
"You got that from my paintings?"
"Absolutely. They've all got this stagnancy. There's always some kind of path, but the focus is on the scenery."
"So you think you can read me?" she asked, her eyebrows arched up cynically in challenge.
"Why not? You teach literature, don't you? Isn't that what you do all the time, read into characters, analyse them?"
"Well, real people aren't that simple. There's too much context for the texts to be accessible."
"Exactly. So why are you bent on simplifying everything into binaries, on theorising it all into neatly packaged, sensible little compartments?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," she said uncertainly. His piercing, probing eyes made her uncomfortable. She resented the infringement.
"Sorry, we should go back to what we ought to be talking about. Pray, tell me, what are your hobbies?"
Sandhya laughed, "How did you even get here? I mean, you know, coming to see me and stuff?"
"Good question. I came to this wonderful sleepy little town for this article I'm writing on washermen. And my dad's sister, who reckons I should get married, and who is also a bit deranged and very fat, hooked me up with this random priest guy who said I must come see you because you're a good girl from a good family. Apparently, that's, like, the best thing ever. And I'm open to all new experiences, so I never say no to anything. I just go with the flow, curious to see what's in store. Hence I'm here. I don't think you should marry me though."
"Why not?"
"Oh wow! Because you wanted to?" he said, giving her a small wink.
"No. I mean, I'm just -"
"Curious, I know. I was pulling your leg. Well, sweetheart, you must know, I'd make a horrible husband. I'm very moody and temparamental.. and way too adventurous and restless to stick to one wife for a lifetime. I'd be bored out of my mind."
"Well, thanks for telling me," Sandhya smiled, warming up to his fearless frankness.
"You're welcome. And if I may say so, I think you're very attractive. I'd ask you out if it were not for that scary aunt of yours."
"Really?" she asked. She didn't think of herself as hideous, but was always very surprised by any compliment she happened to receive one in a while from people who weren't relatives duty-bound to praise her.
"No," he said seriously.
"Um, right."
"I'm joking!" he chuckled, "Of course, I would ask you out. Okay, so tell me, how come you're still single, a pretty, intelligent girl like you?"
"Not found the right guy, I guess," Sandhya shrugged.
"No way! So what's he like, your right guy? I know you girls walk around with checklists, rating guys and stuff."
"It's not a checklist, okay? Just a vague idea of what would be nice to have. First of all, he has to be courageous and strong. And I think honesty is very important. So he's got to be honest and sincere at all times -"
"Right, scratch me out," Shekhar said blithely.
"I wasn't considering you."
"Ouch" he said, feigning heartbreak, "Please continue."
"Anyway, so, honesty. Then, he has to be respectful, polite and considerate, and very sensitive to other people's feelings."
"How can you be both honest and polite?"
"He needs to be wise enough to know when to refrain from saying things that hurt others. He doesn't have to talk all the time. He can be the silent type, but when he talks, his words should be sincere and heartfelt."
"Trust me, you'll be single forever."
"And he needs to be the kind of person who loves deeply with all his heart, so that I'd fall in love with not just who he is, but with the love he is capable of feeling. He needs to be the kind who'd be able to give everything up for love."
"That's pretty gay."
"Also," Sandhya continued, ignoring him, "there needs to be something about him that connects me to him. Something profound and inexplicable. Something that feels right whenever we're together. When I'm him, words wouldn't matter, nothing would, except for him and I. I would respect him and love him and would want to do everything just for him to be happy. And he would say with his deep, pensive eyes that he loves every single thing about me because they make me, me."
"So, what's his name, your silent type guy?"
"What? Who? This is an imaginary person we're talking about. I've never met him, remember?"
"Really?"
"Really."
"What's with the deep, pensive eyes? Very specific detail. That's not from a guy you know?"
"N-No."
Shekhar didn't say anything, and waited, an amused smile on his face. Sandhya found it infuriating how he seemed to know everything, or at least thought he did.
"Okay, I was kind of thinking of a friend of mine, so that irrelevant detail just crept in."
"You think about him a lot, I see."
"Not like that. It's just he hasn't, well, I thought he'd be in touch and stuff. Because we're friends. But he hasn't called or emailed since we last met, which was, um, more than two weeks ago. Which I just thought was a bit strange. So I've just been thinking about him, you know, what is he up to, and is he doing okay, things like that. Nothing serious. And, um, he was a bit upset, so I would have liked to know if he's better now. And I don't have his email address, and I don't know if I should call. Well, actually, I don't want to call, because he needs to be left alone for a while."
Shekhar's smile had widened quite considerably now, to a banana-shaped dimpled affair. His sharp eyes peered into hers confidently.
"Sandhya, you seem like you really like this guy! You've been thinking about him non-stop for two weeks, haven't you?"
"What?"
"Look, we guys, we have this crazy radar sensor thing. We can tell when a girl likes another guy, because we feel this little twinge of jealousy even if we didn't like the girl ourselves. Something to do with male ego, apparently. So who's the dude?"
"I have been thinking about him, but I don't like him like that, okay? He came to see me, just like you did, you know as a potential would-be. We went for coffee. And he kind of proposed. But he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend, so it didn't mean anything. It wasn't really like he liked me or anything. We're friends. And we talked like friends. We're just friends, really. Will you stop looking at me like that?"
Sandhya absolutely hated Shekhar's apparently intelligent smile. She persuaded herself that he knew nothing, and was only hazarding stupid vague guesses to annoy her. It was working.
Vasudha
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