The Plunge Read online

  Everything had changed in just a few months, nine months actually.

  January 26, 2001, had begun like any other holiday for the people of Gujarat too: relaxed. India was celebrating one more Republic Day.

  It changed into the unexpected as the clock ticked 8:46 a.m. It began as a mild tremble; then the ground on which they stood, sat, and slept…shook crazily. It was as if a giant had picked up the buildings, shaking them furiously.

  “It’s a blast,” someone shouted. “Run, run to the middle of the room, the walls may collapse,” another said. People in high-rises panicked, not sure what to do. Families gathered their loved ones and moved about frantically inside their homes, searching for safe spaces.

  “What if the fan falls on us? What if the chandelier collapses?” These thoughts, spoken aloud, provoked shrieks.

  Someone yelled, “Get out of the flats. Run down.” This was followed by a rush.

  “Don’t use the lift, it’s not safe.” A voice shouted to those who were hurrying towards the elevator.

  Confusion, panic, and chaos were the order of the day.

  Seconds later, as the ground gave way, homes turned into graveyards. Hundreds of lives lay buried under the rubble that until then had been their homes.

  Fatigue had followed sleepless nights. Fear and uncertainty made living miserable. Every mild tremor created more panic. People rushed out of their homes and gathered below apartments. Neighbours who had hardly spoken to each other before the tragedy exchanged hesitant smiles and shared worries. It was quits to high-rises. Residents chose open grounds over cosy apartments.

  He had first called her up eight months ago from their Delhi office to discuss a special report. He was head of the Sunday desk of the Independent. As soon as the call ended, she had regretted not having paid attention to him when he had visited the Mumbai office a week before.

  Her assignment was a human-interest story on the earthquake victims in Kutch. A month after the earthquake, survivors were still in shock, but recovered enough to narrate their personal tragedies.

  “Get the emotions,” Siddharth had said.

  She loved his voice, warm and reassuring. He sounded familiar though it was the first time he had spoken to her directly. She did not think much about him after that, though a special feeling had settled inside her. The excitement lingered on through the trip.

  The tour was a painful experience. The badly affected villages resembled excavation sites with mounds of crushed possessions and culture. A part of the present had instantly been transformed into history, in barely seventy seconds.

  Reporters wrote exclusive stories in the initial days after the tragedy. Strong bylines made them more visible to the higher-ups.

  Politicians flew in to gain mileage from the tragedy. But there was a clear lack of coordination in relief work. Truckloads of used clothes donated by people from other states lay dumped on the roadside. Emotions lay sprawled across the landscape, forsaken.

  While quake victims looked for assurance that their lives would be back to normal soon, authorities were busy counting financial losses. One look and Anjali could see the irony.

  “This waiting around and suspense is killing,” whined every affected person.

  Their jeep moved past rubble, humans, livestock, worries, and uncertainties. The road was uneven, cut through the wilderness of the parched Saurashtra, winding towards the devastated Kutch. There was hardly any habitation along certain stretches. Instead, they saw dry grass and barren land. Twice they passed caravans, nomads moving from the arid region towards greener pastures, with their cattle. There were only a few edible patches in the drought-hit region.

  The younger children were tied to bundles on top of the camels. The tired animals slogged along, their movement swinging the children violently, making it a tragic sight. Sweat streamed down their otherwise dry faces.

  “This district has hardly made any progress,” driver, Esabhai, remarked as he steered sharply to avoid another pit.

  They reached Kutch by evening. The place seemed contrived like a movie set. Houses lay tipped sideways into heaps of bricks, and iron rods were splayed across the ground everywhere. The quake had reduced everything to nothing in just a few seconds.

  The victims recounted their stories as if they were not their own, which she found disturbing. Why did they not feel pain? Why did they not weep? It was not normal. It was dangerous to rein in emotions, even if it was not deliberate.

  The next day they travelled to Okha, a small port town in the region.

  Okha smelled of the sea. The sea was calm, and the water close to the shore clear. A slender patch of land ran into the water like a blade of grass, which allowed them to walk in. Once into the sea, a different feeling emerged, something like walking into a waterfall, cool and breathtaking. Waves caressed their feet, bringing along shapely shells. When she bent down to collect a few colourful keepsakes, a bold wave splashed over her. Startled at first, she burst out laughing, which had brought a smile on the face of Jacob, the photographer, who was standing a few feet away.

  Years ago, Anjali had met with more aggressive waves of the same sea at a far-off beach. The beach at Thiruvananthapuram was called Shankhumugham, or conch face.

  It was a familiar beach. Every Saturday for eight years, she would wait eagerly for the evening, to experience the flirty waves over her feet, and the tickling sensation when the sand beneath them slipped away. The girls would line up, hold hands, and giggle in the splashing waves.

  “Stay still; or you will be swept off your feet. Dig your toes into the sand,” the teacher would remind them as the waves rushed forward.

  Despite the caution, when a giant wave arched up and advanced menacingly, someone would always break free from the chain and rush ashore, screaming, the others laughing at the sight. Her lungs ached from the thrill.

  As the evening matured into night, the girls would pat the grains of sand from their frocks and short skirts and trail back to the boarding, in a single file.

  Anjali would remain quiet for the rest of the evening. Melancholy seeped into her whenever she sat watching the sun unhurriedly sink in the horizon.

  Why was she born melancholic? Why did she often feel so lost and lonely? Did it have anything to do with her stillborn twin sister? Or was it past life regression? On many nights she had searched for the answer. She still did.

  Anjali’s thoughts snapped back to the present when Esabhai waved at them from the shore.

  The coast guard was back.

  After meeting a few more officials at the Fisheries Office, they set off to file the stories and email them across to the office, with the photographs.

  It was almost midnight when they had finished their work and reached the government guest house at Dwarka. She called up the Delhi office and briefed Siddharth about the side-stories.

  “Good stories. Great job, Anjali. Now get some sleep. If you need me, call anytime, even if it’s late in the night, OK? Take care,” he said.

  Something curious happened to her that moment. A strange feeling had risen in her that made her both excited and scared. Was it the voice, so husky, or the tone, so warm?

  It had been a bumpy ride, an exhausting day. A layer of dust had settled on her body and sand between her toes. When she stretched herself on the bed before unpacking, she meant only to rest awhile before a bath. But before she knew it, she was fast asleep. The lights remained on throughout the night.

  She was almost in another world for the next two days in Kutch.

  Though she had not conjured him consciously, Siddharth had already claimed a prominent place in her mind. Her feeling of excitement had remained, like an insistent child tugging at her hem.

  Now, eight months later, on a train to Mumbai, returning from her second Kutch tour, Anjali made another failed attempt to hush her chatty mind.

  Someone sleeping on the upper berth switched on the light. It was well past midnight, but she could not sleep. That was always the case with her o
n trains.

  .

  4

  CHAPTER

  Obsessed

  Anjali switched on the reading lamp and checked the time. It was already 3:30 a.m. The train had slowed down. She would first go home and rest a while before taking a local train to her office in Mumbai.

  The beautiful Navi Mumbai suburb had been her home for the past two years. It was impossible to get decent accommodation in Mumbai; the rents were exorbitant. Besides, Navi Mumbai, the twin-city, offered peace, order, and space.

  Navi Mumbai was still developing. The wide Palm Beach Road, the tastefully designed railway stations, and the impressive high-rises added elegance. Construction work was at its peak in some neighbourhoods, while a few had only the basic structures.

  The displaced villagers were yet to be compensated. The builder lobby was incredibly powerful. Most elected representatives to the city administration had set up construction companies in the names of their relatives, and grabbed all the prime plots.

  Journalists got paid for not reporting, which was an open secret.

  “Reporters are also part of the society. The rot in society corrupts our lot too,” Siddharth had said when she brought it up once.

  Her thoughts shifted back to Siddharth as if it were the most natural thing to happen. What did he really look like? She could not remember his face from the one time she had seen him in her colleague’s cabin many months ago. Siddharth had mentioned in an earlier email that he had a full moustache. What did that mean? Did he have a thick moustache?

  Though she had fallen for him during the Kutch assignment, Anjali could tell him about it only four months later when he quit his job with the newspaper to join the Newsdigest magazine. It was just before he left the Independent that she managed to express her distress.

  “You are leaving! Please don’t,” she had blurted out.

  “So you have heard about it?” he asked calmly, laughing. “It’s an exciting offer,” he explained. “But I will miss you.”

  Did she hear him right? “Really?” she gushed.

  “I mean, you do such good stories,” he stuttered.

  Her heart sank. But in the very next moment, she was again sure that he really meant it when he said he would miss her.

  Why could she not ignore the strange attraction? Perhaps he was the first man who had voluntarily made a connection with her on an emotional level. It could have been the way their eyes briefly hitched when she looked in his direction during his Mumbai visit. Or was it the way he talked to her, the ease and the warmth? Siddharth did not intimidate or ignore her like other men did.

  He appeared to be interested in her as a person, not as a woman, at least initially. It was only after they were comfortably friends through emails and chats that he became flirty. What seemed like harmless teasing had soon developed into an intimate relationship, before she could even realise what was happening.

  With the rapid bonding, what had been comfort was turning into a desperate need. His voice, messages and emails had become compulsions that helped her feel secure. All for a man she would not even recognise in a crowd!

  “No, I wasn’t angry, but I was certainly disturbed when you wrote that you loved me as a woman would a man. Tell me, how can you love somebody you don’t even remember in the first place? You shouldn’t,” Siddharth expressed shock when she had bared her feelings for him a few months back.

  But that was the truth. She could not really recall his face or physique. She had not found his looks interesting then. Siddharth had a very ordinary face, and features, nothing striking.

  But now she was terribly in love with him. It was the endearing person she was in love with, not the body. She had never felt so intensely for any other man in her twenty-nine years.

  Agreed, it was a forbidden attraction. He was a married man, which she knew from the beginning, from colleagues. But that did not make him any less attractive. He was the ideal man, who thought, said, and behaved the way she wanted. He was perfect.

  She delayed any kind of argument with herself on her feelings for him. She would never be able to defend her feelings when she herself was not sure what they actually meant. The only thing she knew was that she was desperately longing for him.

  With the passing of days, as the frequency of the emails increased, she found the pain had evolved into an ache.

  She felt happy when he wrote:

  “I missed you sorely last night.”

  “I kept waiting for your mail the whole day.”

  “Thanks for that short note. You made my day.”

  “Love you.”

  “I had this terrible yearning to smear colour on you while we celebrated Holi yesterday. And I don’t mean just your face.”

  “I found you sensuous and sexy the first time I saw you in the Mumbai office.”

  She trusted him, his words. She felt closer to him than she had ever felt towards anyone before. She felt excited and valued when he edged towards her, awakening romance and sealing an attachment. It was like the beasts in the wilderness, like a male tiger nudging his mate, arousing desire in her in an unhurried way.

  But why was she thinking of mating? The thought brought a shy smile to her face.

  It was great to feel physically desired by someone who valued her as a person. How exciting it would be to be touched by him! But it might never happen.

  “Let’s not cross the line. It’s better to check your feelings well in time.”

  His words meant he did not want to take it beyond a certain point. Then why was he evoking desire in her, saying things that excited her? Did he think that a virtual affair did not amount to cheating?

  But were they not already beyond the point of no return? She was dying to see him, hear him, and be with him, all the time. She felt so incomplete without him.

  It was impossible to dismiss him from her thoughts. Just thinking about their emotional closeness excited her. It was perfect bliss. She was the heroine of every romantic novel she’d ever read, and he the hero. Theirs was a complex love story, and that made it even more desirable.

  The train had slowed down again, yet another station. The journey seemed unbearably long, so was the darkness outside. Thankfully, every night ends with the dawn of another day.

  The idea of his being near her physically, mentioned as an impossible supposition in one of his messages, had unsettled her. She could feel a shudder sliding up and down her spine like mercury in a thermometer.

  A mixture of elation and unease filled her. How could she be so close to him and remain composed? She would never be able to hide her emotions. He would know it, what he should not know, what no one should know.

  It was too dangerous a craving. It was not the right thing to do, for him or for her. He would be cheating and she would be ‘the other woman’. Society might forgive him after a while, but she would remain a slut for the rest of her life.

  But did she really care? The only thing that she cared about at that moment was his love, him.

  It wasn’t the usual suspect, infatuation, she was certain. She wasn’t so young as to be swept away by such a silly passion. She knew what infatuation was. She had felt it for Madhav, years ago.

  .

  5

  CHAPTER

  Infatuation

  Anjali had met Madhav during her college days. He was her first crush, at seventeen. Madhav was the twenty-year-old son of her father’s friend. She used to live with his family on the weekends, mainly to escape hostel food.

  Madhav was in the third-year degree course. He had volunteered to help her with her physics lessons when she had mentioned that she found the subject difficult.

  Madhav taught her after dinner. She would go to the room on the first floor that he shared with his brother Manoj, and there he would explain the tough chapters to her.

  Their parents slept downstairs. She, too, slept in the spare bedroom downstairs, with the maid on the floor beside her cot.

  Everything went well for five month
s, until his parents went away for a few days to visit an ailing relative in Pune.

  She was aware of Madhav’s interest in her body during the lessons. He touched her while explaining, pretended they were unintentional. At times it was a caressing warm foot over her cold and nervous feet under the table. Sometimes his arm brushed against her face when he stood behind her chair and pretended to point out a diagram in the book or placed his hand on hers ‘accidentally’. Madhav made her feel nervous. She was scared to be near him, but strangely, she enjoyed the proximity.

  Anjali knew he was asserting his masculinity; and didn’t mind it. He was slim and tall, had a chiselled face and deep voice. He had hairy limbs and chest, which he left exposed during the lessons. She loved to watch his Adam’s apple glide up and down as he talked. She heard nothing, understood nothing. As the days passed, she was in love, or so she believed.

  It was the last evening of lessons, since exams were near and they had completed the syllabus. Anjali remembered that rainy night as one would a dream.

  She had reached the room to find a copy an old Illustrated Weekly spread out on the table. She could hear him humming some romantic song in the shower. She gingerly turned the pages of the magazine and discovered shocking pictures, mostly temple murals of couples engaged in physical intimacy. The cover story of the issue was ‘The Art of Lovemaking’.

  She understood that the article was not about love; lovemaking was something else. The photographs on the pages were not as vulgar as the murals she had discovered in the Padmanabha Swami temple some time back. These were erotic.

  Anjali had been the first to spot one of the particularly curious pillar carvings at the temple, to the excitement of the other girls. A beastlike figure was licking a female form that was standing above it with parted legs. After the initial shock, they began searching for more, and were not disappointed. Probably since photography was prohibited inside the temple and the carvings along the corridors were miniatures, they mostly went unnoticed.