Can This Be Love? Page 3

  ‘Your smile fills my heart with joy,’ the cursive hand of the inscription read.

  ‘My smile fills your heart with joy?’ I asked, tilting my face to one side and smiling my widest.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, lightly tapping one cheek. ‘Especially when you smile this smile.’

  Pitajee and Anu, who were sitting further away, now turned to look at us.

  ‘Guys, shouldn’t we get going?’ said Anu.

  ‘Yes,’ said Purva, nodding his head.

  There was one more thing that I needed to speak to Purva about and I put a hand on his arm to draw his attention.

  ‘Yes?’ said Purva.

  ‘Who is your favourite actress?’ I asked, pouting.

  Purva laughed for a good minute before he placed a finger under my chin and pulled up my face. ‘I love you so much Kasturi!’ he said, his eyes dripping with unadulterated adoration.

  ‘Your favourite actress, Purva?’ I insisted, my voice low and glum.

  ‘Madhuri Dixit. We Dixits kind of rock, you know,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘Food?’

  ‘Mexican.’

  ‘Dream holiday destination?’

  ‘Paris, with you.’

  ‘Favourite sport?’

  ‘Tennis,’ he said, but hurriedly added, ‘though I do like cricket,’ when he saw my face fall further.

  ‘What relaxes you?’

  ‘Looking at you goofing around,’ he said, smiling.

  I grimaced. I had zero correct answers and, as always, Purva had made sure that I bore no public embarrassment.

  ‘Do you want this gold bangle? This was the prize for the winner, you know.’ I asked, pouting and pointing at the gold bangle that Anju Aunty had given me.

  Purva guffawed. ‘You absolutely crazy girl,’ he said, smiling as he planted a tender kiss on my forehead. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ I mumbled and leaned in for a kiss. Purva always kisses slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. For him, I know the earth stops spinning. Sometimes, just sometimes, I feel a little bit like I know he feels. But mostly…

  ‘Koooochhiiiieee, Beta Koocchhiiieee,’ a voice came from downstairs, breaking the spell.

  To my sheer horror, I realized that it was not Anju Aunty’s voice. Mum. Mum, who had spent twenty-five years calling me Kasturi, was now calling me Koochie.

  ‘Koochiieeee Beta...’ said Mum again, as I looked on, appalled. ‘Come down, Beta … Anju Aunty is leaving.’

  Pitajee clasped his hand to his mouth and laughed uncontrollably for an eternity before he regained his composure. Looking down the staircase, he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Kooochiiee is here, Aunty … she is coming down now! Koochiiee,’ he said, keeping his face straight with obvious difficulty, ‘let’s go down.’

  I stuffed the pallu of my sari into the waist band, turned around sharply and, without any warning, lunged for Pitajee’s jugular. Purva and Anu tried, in vain, to stop me.

  ‘Bhabhiji!’ shouted Pitajee, shaking with laughter, right before my hands clasped around his neck. ‘You are the very epitome of poise!’

  Before long, we had all tumbled into a mass of limbs, one on top of the other.

  5

  Vijaywada & Sons Headquarters, Delhi, 11 January 2013.

  ‘That just cannot be true, Mum!’ I said into my cell phone, aghast at what I had just heard. I twiddled the ring on my finger, still not quite used to it. I could not believe my ears. My cubicle partner – P.P. Padma – busy tapping away at her laptop, glared angrily at me.

  ‘It is, Koochie Beta!’ Mum hollered in return.

  ‘What are you saying?’ I said, too shell-shocked to even reprimand Mum for calling me Koochie. In the last week, after I left home to come back to Delhi, I had had eleven fights with Mum. Seven of them were because of ‘Koochie’. I digress.

  ‘The truth,’ said Mum.

  ‘Say it again,’ I said, disbelievingly.

  ‘Arjun is in love with you.’

  ‘Dear Lord!’

  ‘Don’t “Dear Lord” me, Beta. It’s rude. If you were younger, I would have spanked you for this.’

  ‘Okay, sorry,’ I said, meekly. ‘How do you know that Arjun loves me, given that even I don’t know that?’

  ‘He told me … I mean he told you.’

  ‘What? Mum, what are you blabbering about?’

  P.P. Padma cast me a glance that would have made even a dead man turn cold. I ignored her and continued to chat with Mum, my legs resting on the table next to the desktops.

  ‘Okay, let me explain. He sent a package addressed to you.’

  ‘Okay…’

  ‘So I opened it.’

  ‘Mum! How can you open my mail?’

  Mum ignored me and continued. ‘And out came a CD. I put it into my laptop and it was a voice-recording. Frankly speaking, Beta, there was a lot of gibberish in it. I think he was reciting some poetry, which made no sense to me. There was some nonsense about stars looking like your eyes or maybe your eyes looking like stars ... which, of course, is a ridiculous thing to say; stars are like dots, they don’t resemble eyes either in shape or form. Anyway, after a lot of dilly-dallying, he finally came to the point and said that he has loved you since he first saw you. But it doesn’t make sense either.’

  ‘Why doesn’t it make sense?’

  ‘Now I know we first met his family when you kids were a year old. So if I were to believe him, he has been in love with you since you both were one, which is ridiculous,’ said Mum, doing some quick maths.

  Arjun is my next-door neighbour, occupant of the famous A/138 apartment. To be honest, he is quite cute but I have never fancied him. He and I were at school together, then went to the same mathematics coaching centre and then the same engineering college. Thankfully, we parted ways after that and ended up in different business schools. I distinctly remember a time, in class six, when I hit him on the head with a ruler, after which he was taken to the infirmary and given twenty stitches. He still bears the scars. If that were not enough, in engineering college, I was cheating from his answer script and he got caught. I know I am very mean; still I can’t help but giggle uncontrollably when I think of that.

  Why he would ever fall in love with a girl who displays a distinct streak of violence at the tender age of twelve and grows up to become a cheat was beyond me. Anyway, people do strange things.

  ‘This is weird,’ I said, staring at the little black bindi that adorned P.P. Padma’s forehead.

  ‘Yes!’ said Mum.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘Then I got angry. How can you send a courier like that to the girl’s mother, of all people? These boys have no sense of decorum and protocol. It’s fine if you are in love with a girl, but go tell the girl! Why send a CD recording to the girl’s mother?’

  ‘But Mum, he didn’t send it to you,’ I said feebly, my head reeling.

  ‘Whatever. Now don’t go around defending him,’ said Mum, chiding me. ‘I called up Leela Aunty and told her that your wedding is fixed. I told her to convey this to her rowdy son…’

  The world swam in front of my eyes. Poor Leela Aunty.

  ‘Kasturi!’ I heard my boss, Mr Vijaywada, holler in the background.

  ‘Mum! I need to go now,’ I said impatiently.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Mum! I am in office, that’s why.’

  ‘So?’ she asked innocently. ‘Pankudi Aunty and I chat for hours when she is in office’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Oh okay,’ said Mum half-heartedly and hung up.

  ‘Kasturi!’ Mr Vijaywada hollered from his cabin once again. I sighed.

  P.P. Padma tucked a strand of religiously oiled and very long hair behind her ear and looked disapprovingly in my direction. The daggers in her eyes, I thought philosophically to myself, will kill me one day.

  I smiled apologetically, feeling, as I always do when I am on the receiving end of that stare from P.P. Padma, quite small. One day, I vowed
to myself, I will tell her I am not as bad as she thinks I am.

  P.P. Padma is the EA to the MD. Tall, thin and dark, with long hair that she generally keeps oiled and tied in a ponytail, P.P. Padma is undoubtedly a force to reckon with. Irrespective of what she wears, a tiny black bindi adorns her forehead without fail.

  When I was new to the organization, I had asked her a question that turned out to be the final nail in the coffin within which our potential friendship lay, already dead. ‘Why don’t you take the bindi off your forehead?’ I had asked her, meaningfully eyeing her jeans and ridiculously pink, frilly top.

  She stared at me, stunned, unable to speak for the next few minutes. Is she having a heart attack, I wondered as I saw her face turn purple.

  ‘Take off my bindi?’ she asked incredulously, in a low growl.

  I cowered under her glare. ‘No ... no … I mean … why not take this one off and put on a pink one instead of the black one … err … to match your pink top...’ I fumbled. P.P. Padma said nothing and simply turned away, disgust written on her angry face.

  With that innocent suggestion, I knew I had squashed any chance we had of becoming friends. However, there are other reasons for this friendship to not have bloomed. P.P. Padma is more dedicated to work than I would have thought humanly possible. The aim of her life is to serve the MD. The aim of my life is to make the MD suffer. Our interests, ideals and work ethic clash, rendering this friendship effectively impossible.

  ‘Kasturi!’ Mr Vijaywada hollered from his cabin, interrupting my line of thought. I yawned again, not bothering to cover my mouth and turned my attention towards the Facebook page open on my screen.

  ‘Kasturi!’ Mr Vijaywada hollered for the fourth time.

  I rolled my eyes. Not a moment of peace in this god-forsaken office, I thought to myself. The day was indeed not turning out well.

  ‘No harm in working once in a while,’ Padma muttered under her breath, loud enough for me to hear. I turned around sharply to look at her.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I said, belligerent, yet dangerously polite. ‘Did you say anything to me?’

  ‘No, not to you, just to myself. General observation,’ she said in her thick south Indian accent. She continued to stare at her laptop, allowing herself a rare, small smile.

  ‘KASTURI SHUKLA!’ screamed my boss, giving me a start.

  I will deal with P.P. Padma later, I told myself and, giving her one final stare, stormed off in the general direction of Mr Vijaywada’s office.

  Mr Swaminathan Vijaywada – the MD of Vijaywada & Sons – is, if nothing else, a fair man. He pays me half of what he should pay someone with my qualifications and I do half the work that someone in my position should do. It is a simple arrangement. Our goals are contradictory. I try to get him to increase my salary and he successfully resists. He tries to get me to increase my working hours and I successfully resist. However, in spite of the situation, the two of us get along fairly well, much to the disdain of P.P. Padma.

  The door to his office was open and I stormed in, still piqued at the comments of his faithful EA.

  ‘Morning, Mr Vijaywada,’ I said angrily.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, looking meaningfully at the small antique alarm clock on his table. Our meeting was scheduled for 11.00 a.m. and it was already 11.15.

  I smiled apologetically, feeling no remorse. ‘I was busy making the presentation, Vijaywada Sir,’ I said meekly. Both of us knew that was untrue.

  ‘I called out your name twice,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Five times,’ I said to myself. ‘Sorry sir, I did not hear it even once,’ I said, making a sad face.

  His face softened. ‘Ear problem?’ he said, shaking his head sadly.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I nodded my head. I sighed a deep, sad sigh, befitting the occasion. Mr Vijaywada looked at me with pity in his eyes, shaking his head sorrowfully. Poor girl, fairly incompetent and partially deaf. Whatever will happen to her, he seemed to think to himself.

  So, yes, Mr Vijaywada thinks I am partially deaf. I’ll delve into the long story of how that came about later. Suffice it to say that I do little to correct it.

  ‘Okay, so moving on. How are we coming along with the PowerPoint?’ he asked, referring to the presentation that I was making to suggest ways of increasing brand awareness.

  I was walking back to my cubicle after the meeting, out of which nothing useful had emerged, when my cell beeped.

  ‘Emergency meeting. Premarital issue. Same place. Right after Purva’s shift at the hospital,’ the unusually dry text from Pitajee read.

  ‘What has happened now?’ I wondered to myself. I got a distinct feeling that all was not well in the world of Pitajee and Anu.

  I sighed as I sat at my desk and flicked Facebook open again.

  Sweet ‘n’ Chilly Café, AIIMS, Delhi, 8.00 p.m.

  I nervously twiddled with the ring on my finger. The four of us were sitting in dismal silence around the table, the red bottle of ketchup staring dolefully back at us. Purva was bleary-eyed; it had been yet another thirty-six-hour shift at the hospital. The mood of the group was sombre for obvious reasons. Anu and Pitajee had just dropped a bomb.

  ‘So what exactly did Ahya say?’ asked Pitajee. Ahya Goswami is Anu’s rather corpulent and stern mother. She also happens to be an IAS officer, fully capable of instilling the fear of God in the heart and soul of any man on this planet. That she is not very popular in our group is evident from the fact that none of us call her anything but Ahya.

  ‘That I should not even think of marrying you. If I do, she will chase you to the ends of the world and kill you,’ said Anu, her face glum and voice matter-of-fact.

  The five-hundred-kilo Ahya Goswami cut a threatening figure even while standing still and I could understand why that little shudder ran through Pitajee’s body when Anu repeated the threat. No one would want to be chased to the end of the world by Ahya.

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Purva.

  ‘Kill Ahya?’ Pitajee asked innocently. I nodded my head in vehement agreement.

  ‘Shut up or I will kill you,’ threatened Anu, but her eyes were not angry.

  ‘What about Govind?’ asked Pitajee, referring to Anu’s father, who was a widely-respected IAS officer as well. Let’s just say that he is not known to be soft-hearted.

  Anu shook her head. ‘He is dead opposed to the match.’

  ‘But why?’ I asked. Pitajee, of course, has no brains but he is good and kind and from a very reputed B-school and also an investment banker. (It is a universal truth that you do not need to have brains to get into a good B-school or land a job as an investment banker, but let’s not get all controversial here). Surely he would be considered a ‘good match’?

  ‘Mom and Dad think I should only marry an IAS officer.’

  ‘MBA graduates are no good?’ I asked indignantly, mentally brandishing my MBA degree in front of Anu’s eyes.

  ‘Marry an IAS officer so that you can spend half your life in a village without ever being able to remember its name?’ contested Pitajee, equally indignantly.

  ‘Do you want to spend evening after evening sitting on the stage as the wife of the chief guest?’ I continued.

  Pitajee shot me a ‘thanks-buddy’ look. ‘Or spend them getting ready for cocktail parties?’ he added.

  ‘Or get together with the other wives and throw kitty parties?’ I piped up.

  ‘Or cut ribbons when the local school opens a new lavatory?’ Pitajee chipped in.

  ‘Or flirt with your IAS husband’s IAS boss, whose wife is too busy flirting with his IAS boss to bother?’

  ‘Or…’

  ‘Shut up, you two,’ glowered Anu, interrupting Pitajee. I gave him a ‘tell-me-later-okay?’ look.

  Anu settled the dupatta of her salwar-kameez. Ever since her parents have refused to allow her to marry Pitajee, Anu has taken to wearing chikan salwar-kameezes. Her growing love for theatrics is becoming quite evident to us. ‘They even have a boy in mind,’ she a
dded in a small voice.

  ‘What?’ I almost shouted. This was news.

  I noted that Pitajee had stilled, all the goofiness disappearing in an instant. ‘Boy in mind for what?’ he asked.

  ‘A boy for me to marry,’ said Anu.

  ‘When did this happen?’ asked Purva.

  ‘This morning.’

  There was silence as the four of us exchanged looks, the gravity of the situation not lost on us. The silence was broken a few seconds later by Anu. ‘There is more…’ she said in an even smaller voice.

  Three pairs of eyes turned towards her.

  ‘They are meeting the boy’s parents this Sunday. If the parents like each other, they want me to meet him by the end of this month.’

  The Goswamis meant business and we knew enough of Anu’s parents to know that it would be a very bad idea to cross their paths. Ahya’s wrath was enough, but Ahya and Govind combined were a force that even Anu shrank from.

  May the force be with us.

  6

  Anju Aunty’s Apartment, Sarojini Nagar, Delhi, 20 January 2013, 5.00 p.m.

  Most doctors have a horrible sense of humour. Anju Aunty, a gynaecologist, is no exception. My cheeks and spirit hurt as I smiled, yet again, at her attempts at humour.

  Of late, I have made it a point to visit Anju Aunty at least once a month and try to call her up once in two weeks. I have reminders in my phone and little crosses on the calendar at work to remind me of these visits and calls. Protocol, Pitajee calls it. One would think that being professional women, Anju Aunty and I would have a lot of professional things to talk about … hopes, dreams, aspirations…

  Sorry to disappoint you, but we don’t.

  For example, the last time we spoke, Anju Aunty spent a lot of time explaining to me the various types of dal one should always ensure one’s kitchen is well-stocked with. Another time she told me how best I can manage the maid. Before that, it was a monologue about boiling milk or something equally important.

  I digress again. This evening, I came to Anju Aunty’s apartment to spend some time with her and then have dinner with Purva and Vikki, who were to join us later. The conversation so far had been fairly uneventful.