The Plunge Page 3

  Thankfully, the pictures in the magazine were not as explicit. She closed the magazine when the shower fell silent. It meant he would be out of the bathroom any moment. She pretended to read something from her physics book, while her mind was trapped in the graphic details of the couple on the cover page.

  She felt a little feverish. Fear crept in. Why did he leave the magazine open on the table? Was it done on purpose?

  It was impossible for her to focus. She didn’t want to leave the room, but nor could she stay there any longer and pretend to be unaffected.

  “Are you sleepy?” he asked.

  She looked at him, struggling to hide her anxiety.

  Manoj, his younger brother, was fast asleep in the same room.

  “Come on; let’s go out to the terrace for some fresh air. You’ll feel better,” Madhav suggested.

  Once on the terrace, for some reason, she felt calmer. It was cool after a drizzle. The peace of the moonlit night was breached only by the croaking frogs from the waterlogged vacant plot nearby. She giggled distractedly to hide the awkwardness of the loud noise that invaded the silent night.

  He moved to her, shoulder brushing her arm. “Do you know why frogs croak?” he whispered into her ear.

  She looked up startled. She was scared when his clasped her shoulder and his breath fell on her face. Anjali felt a shudder when he looked intently into her eyes.

  She knew what mating was. She had read in the zoology text about the mating call of frogs, but moments before, the thought hadn’t crossed her mind.

  She looked away into the distant darkness, unable to meet his gaze. Why was she trembling?

  He turned bold, finding no resistance from her. He suddenly turned to her and boldly raised her chin towards him. He stared into her timid eyes, and said, “It’s the call for mating. Understood? Call for mating.”

  She was too stunned to respond. Was there a hint of aggression in his tone? She hadn’t expected him to speak so openly of something as primal as mating. He had never said he loved her. Other than their supposedly innocent touching, they had never consciously expressed feelings for each other before.

  “Do you know what mating is?” he asked. He began caressing her face and neck.

  She wanted to stop him that moment, as his shaky fingers trailed beyond her neck to her shoulders.

  She did not know for sure what people exactly did during lovemaking. But she had to somehow stop this impatient male from going any further. She wrenched his hands off her shoulders and rushed out, to her room.

  The maid was fast asleep.

  The incident had remained the closest she came to lust until a few years later, when Rasheed made that funny attempt. Rasheed, her libertine colleague, had almost convinced her that physical intimacy was necessary in close relationships.

  But she had resisted lust until Siddharth came into her life. With him, she learned to believe that physical love was desirable, with the right partner.

  Although she had gone to Madhav’s house with her parents a few times after that incident, he had remained confined to his room.

  Three years later, when they met in Kochi, she was studying journalism and Madhav doing his post-graduation.

  They had run into each other at the inter-collegiate arts festival. He pretended that there was no embarrassing past between them.

  They went out to the movies, book fairs, and art expos. She enjoyed being near him. And why wouldn’t she? He was her first crush. She had to struggle to hide her excitement, with the warmth of his body near her when they walked together and his breath on her cheeks when they snuggled on the park bench.

  The attraction was mutual. But was it love?

  “We are a very conservative family, you know that,” he said. “We are not from the same caste. Marriage is difficult.”

  They were standing in front of a small temple in a reserve forest, just the two of them.

  “The goddess of this temple is believed to grant wishes,” he said.

  She stared at him, unable to make sense of his words, trying to stifle the volley of misconnected thoughts.

  He moved closer and grabbed her into a tight hug. When he pressed closer to kiss her, Anjali pushed him away.

  Perhaps that’s all he had in mind, she understood. But, why did he imagine that he could sell her that story? She wasn’t stupid.

  “I need to go now,” she had said, wiping sweat off her pale face with the back of her hand.

  They did not see each other after that. They did not write to each other. She did not feel sad, only disgusted, and not just with Madhav, with men as such. Why were they so scared of committed relationships, yet so adventurous, when it came to women?

  She had never been attracted to another man again. She never fancied men until she met Rasheed a year later. But then, that was never love, not even infatuation. It was an intrusion, a blotch she would remove from her life if she could.

  As she tried to rein in memories, the train had picked up speed.

  .

  6

  CHAPTER

  Anteroom

  It was raining heavily when the train arrived at Belapur, the far end of Navi Mumbai.

  Anjali glanced at her mobile phone as she hurried down the stairs with the crowd headed towards the underground walkway. 11:30 a.m. She waved down an auto-rickshaw outside the railway station.

  By the time she reached her accommodation in the Artists Village, Priya had left for work. Good to have the house to herself. She sat on the cane sofa in the drawing room, near the window; her favourite reading spot.

  Priya, her young colleague, was a perfect housemate.

  When they had first seen the colony months back, both of them were instantly charmed by its unique design.

  The Village was designed by the town planners as a housing colony for artists from various fields: painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, and the like. It consisted of numerous clusters of small houses facing common courtyards. Each cluster had eight homes, more like cottages, humble two-room structures. All the houses looked similar and had tiled roofs. Some of them had garden areas.

  The open space in the middle of each cluster was a challenge to self-restraint. It was meant as a courtyard for the occupants, a sort of anteroom for every house, where people could meet in the mornings or evenings to chat, socialise, and live as a community.

  A few years after the colony was opened to the residents, the idea of community living was abandoned for good. Those who did not have a garden area invaded the commons. When their neighbours objected, it brought on hostility.

  Despite this, the place had a singular appeal. The tastefully conceived original design remained the basic structure of the colony. Most of the owners had rented out their houses. Now hardly twenty percent of the residents were artists. The rest were mostly bachelors, students, or working women like them.

  The colony was a quiet place. It reminded her of the place where Sue and Johnsy lived in the short story ‘The Last Leaf’, the O. Henry masterpiece. She imagined it was probably a similar place. The walls of some of the houses in the village had moss on them, just like the ones in the story.

  The story had a tragic climax. She felt sorry for the selfless artist, who died helping a sick colleague come out of a hunch. He was out in the storm a whole night painting a leaf on their neighbour’s wall to keep his friend alive. Johnsy? Or was it Sue? Whoever it was, her irrational belief, that the fall of the last leaf would mean her death, had instead killed him. Did he fall from the ladder? She could not remember.

  Why did people pick up stubborn delusions?

  A strange obsession kept a homeless woman busy in the lane outside their office. The beggar constantly drove away an imaginary something that she thought was hovering over her head. She had unkempt, short, grey hair, most of it covered with a scarf. Was it a swarm of bees or just one bee that bothered her? Or was it some disturbing thought from her past, maybe a horrid event in her life?

  “Don’t look if it
troubles you so much,” Priya would tell her each time. “Why worry about something you can’t change?”

  When Anjali was about to leave for work, Parvati arrived. The housemaid prepared upma and tea for her. The fried grams, curry leaves and dried red chillies sizzled on being tossed in the hot mustard oil, releasing their assorted aroma. It made her hungry. The maid had started mopping the floor when she left the house for her office in Mumbai.

  The station was somewhat crowded when she returned to it. Commuters at that hour were mostly students. The scarcely occupied compartment would have more passengers by the time the 1:20 p.m. local reached midway, from Vashi station.

  There were only two other passengers in the first-class ladies’ compartment. An elderly woman was reading Mid Day, the popular Mumbai tabloid, at the far end. A young woman was occupied in texting on her mobile from the seat across hers.

  Did Siddharth reply? And, did he really love her? She willed her mind to unfailingly answer to her liking. It made her happy when she believed that they were lovers.

  Both the women got down at Vashi. A bunch of schoolchildren entered. She knew they did not carry first-class tickets, but did not mind them being there. It was safer with them around. The entire compartment would be empty without them.

  It was barely two months since a shocking incident on a local train had created a fear psychosis in women commuters. A drunken man had raped a young girl in an Andheri-bound train, during the late hours. The act was all the more heinous considering that the seventeen-year-old street urchin was mentally challenged. Appallingly, it happened in a general compartment, in full view of five other passengers. Four men and a woman were mute spectators, and claimed they were too scared of the rapist to stop him.

  The local train usually stopped at stations in five-to ten-minute intervals. This meant that the rape could have been prevented. How could a drunken man rape a girl in front of five other people? It was unbelievable. Fellow passengers could have shouted for help at the stations. Someone could have pulled the emergency chain. If not for such times, why was the chain there in the first place?

  One of the passengers was a journalist with a reputed national daily. He lodged a police complaint when the train reached Andheri, the last station.

  The abused girl was terrified. Unable to react, she sat huddled on the wooden bench at the station, barely clad, according to news reports. Charges were pressed against the offender, and the man was taken into custody.

  The journalist went ahead and wrote a page-one anchor story for his newspaper, which was published with his byline the next morning. It was August 15, the Independence Day of India.

  “Shame on us,” people reacted.

  This followed reaction stories, and quotes from shocked citizens.

  The girl was taken to a shelter for destitute women. Her family was located a week later.

  Journalists eventually lost interest in the story. Newspapers stopped fussing over it. The matter was moved to the courts. The incident would resurface when a judgment was passed, years later. This time, the story would be filed by the court reporter, with a paragraph of background.

  The train chugged along smoothly for most of the journey. Occasionally, it acted funny, went crazy, and galloped like a spirited horse. Was it the alignment of the rails or the empty compartments that made the jerky movements so terrible?

  People normally pretended to be oblivious to the experience, though each was probably hoping the ordeal would end soon. One had to sit firmly on the seats to escape being violently tossed in the air. The bulkier women stared out as their breasts shook distinctly, inviting stares from horny men in general compartments.

  Suburban trains invariably appeared more crowded than they actually were. Daily commuters stood near the doors, so as to escape being trapped between the seats or the stench of sweaty underarms.

  A cool breeze rushed into the compartment from the creek that separated Navi Mumbai from Mumbai. On a cloudy morning, it was difficult to trace the thin line that separated the sky from the creek. Both the greys merged into each other at their point of connection. You had to strain your eyes to trace the hillocks in the distance that jutted out like shadows between the sky and the creek.

  The calm waters dotted with small fishing boats were hemmed with mangrove thickets. In contrast, there was hectic movement in the water near the cool mangroves, with fish trying to breed in privacy.

  It was similar to the illusory sense of seclusion of the slum dwellers when they lined up along the railway tracks to defecate. Men, women, and children squatted, mostly in the morning hours. Some faced the passing trains, others the low walls of the shanties they called home. What could be more mortifying than having to excrete in front of fellow human beings? Sad, what depressing lives they had!

  Anjali looked away each time, every time, feeling sorry for them. Most passengers looked away, looked ahead, looked past the buttocks, big and small. If anybody wanted to research Indian bums, they should head to Mumbai for sure.

  The creek was a wonderful stretch of calm water, an extension of the Arabian Sea that separated the two cities. The government was planning to convert part of the salt pans into a housing colony for slum dwellers, in order to relocate them from the heart of the city. The project would destroy the mangroves, dislodge the fish, and turn the place into breeding grounds for politicians and thugs. The slums were loathsomely dirty. They housed a vulnerable population, deprived of basic amenities. Disturbing thoughts…

  It was still raining when the train reached Currey Road station. She walked through the drizzle, covering herself with the umbrella to escape unwanted attention.

  She loved the ten-minute walk to the office, except the last stretch near the stinking men’s urinal, which made her want to throw up each time she passed by it.

  The newsroom was buzzing with activity, with most of the reporters already in.

  “Hi, Anjali!” Priya called out from the far end of the room as she entered. “You look tired,” she said, hurrying towards her.

  Anjali checked her face on the glass divider of the chief’s cabin.

  “How was the trip?” Priya came over and sat down next to her.

  “Good, but tiring. Is sir in his cabin?”

  “Not yet,” Priya said with a shrug.

  Anjali switched on her computer and checked for Siddharth’s reply. She could not stop grinning when she found four emails from him. Wow! That was something.

  She felt feverish as she went through the email:

  Dear,

  How was your trip to Kutch? Hope things are better for the quake-hit. Did you see any major change in these eight months between your two visits?

  I missed you sorely during the past week.

  BTW, I’ll be in Mumbai on November 2 and 3, for a meeting. Let’s meet. We’ll discuss the details later.

  Yours

  Siddharth

  P.S. Don’t panic. I won’t eat you up; at least not this time. Hey, don’t blush, silly.

  What? Was he really coming to Mumbai? He would meet her? Her palms turned cold but sweaty. It was difficult to decide if the trembling that originated in her brain and ran through the rest of her body was the result of the journey she had just completed or the one ahead. The only way for her to escape the blizzard of thoughts was to busy herself in work.

  If she filed her story before the bureau chief came in, he could go through the copy and forward it to the Delhi office without delay.

  As she started working, Priya sat next to her and watched her key in the story with unsteady hands. The rest of her colleagues did not seem to have noticed her.

  As usual, Lara was the centre of attraction. She was sitting with her legs crossed, the chair pulled away from the desk so as to give a provocative view of her waxed legs.

  “Unbearably sexy,” one of them had commented the day she walked in, months ago. All male heads had turned to admire the new advertorial head.

  Two weeks passed quickly. Anjali was in a dr
eamlike state. The mirror became her favourite object whenever she was alone at home. Would he like her? Did she look skinny or just slim?

  She slid the kurta off her left shoulder and looked fondly at the black mole that stood out prominently against her dusky skin. It would show up if she wore her deep-cut magenta blouse. The blue chiffon sari with embroidered magenta border should be perfect for the day.

  Would she be able to chat with him as freely as she did on the Internet? Would she still feel as strongly for him once he stood before her? She felt nervous.

  .

  7

  CHAPTER

  Rendezvous

  Siddharth sat on the sea wall that ran along the coast at the Marine Drive and watched Anjali step out of the taxi. She almost tripped, distracted, as a breeze tugged at the sari from her shoulder.

  She did not look around for him among the tourists wandering near the archway. That was strange, though perhaps not for someone as moody as Anjali.

  Anjali walked to the left side of the Gateway and disappeared into the crowd at the quay. Siddharth hastened after her.

  They were no strangers; having shared their thoughts about almost everything under the sun on the Internet over the past few months. She called up once in a while, though he preferred emails. He loved her voice. It was like the wind rushing through the reeds. Still, it was risky to let her call up on an impulse, more so when he was at home with Chandni. Though his wife never doubted his fidelity, why give her the chance?

  Chandni was exceptionally fair and turned pink when excited. He was lucky to have her as his wife. The spark had been missing for the past few years, though. Siddharth shook his head, chasing away irrelevant thoughts.

  “Hi Anjali,” he called out her name, annoyed with his racing heart.

  She swung around, startled. He was standing behind her, gazing at her with a smile.

  Anjali was a head shorter than him, and slender. She was a shade lighter than he was, but still fell into the category of dusky.