Very politely I told her, ‘Khushi ki koi galti nahi hai is mein. Ye saara plan mera tha. And you can punish me for that.’ (And I said to myself, ‘Please do it fast, I have to catch my plane in a few hours.’)
Standing at the door, both the sisters looked at me. I don’t know what they thought. Was I brave or stupid? I did not want Khushi to keep answering her mother’s questions after my departure so I tried to sort things out, as far as possible, while I was present. I did what I felt would safeguard her.
The next moment, Mumma helped me get up and said, ‘Ise itna pyaar karti hu naa, isliye itni chinta hoti hai iski. Thodey dino mein chale jaana hai isne yahaa se aapke ghar …’ She melted inside, thinking about her beloved daughter. All mothers are so emotional, even mine was.
She further said that we could have told her the truth and then left in the evening. She wouldn’t have said no. (‘Of course, she would not have said no for Munnabhai, but what about Delhi?’ I was still talking to myself.)
Well, that’s how I handled the situation back at her place. When I checked my watch next, it was midnight and I had to leave for Delhi, crossing the same pool of water, the same brawls and the same border, in the same watery car. Time was still running out and, if everything went well, I would be at Indira Gandhi International Airport in another five hours.
The atmosphere at her place was much better now. I walked down to the bathroom, badly needing to pee. Of course, being in those wet jeans for almost two hours and surrounded by water and more water, it was only natural.
A little later, back at the main gate, all the three ladies waved me goodbye. But I waved to the one standing ahead of everybody. I felt so different again. I was waving to the girl with whom I spent the longest day of my life, the girl with whom I enjoyed the best hour of my life. And I kept looking at her till my rickshaw took a left turn and she slipped out of my field of vision and I from hers.
In a short while, I was back in the cab. The water level on road had gone down and the conditions were better now. We didn’t have too many problems going back. The traffic was negligible by then, though I still saw a few dead vehicles on either side of the road.
Every fifteen–twenty minutes, Khushi kept calling me on my mobile to check if everything was fine. She told me she was out of her wet attire and was lying in her cute night dress on her cosy bed. I loved it when she said that. It felt like being with her again. We couldn’t talk too long though, as my cellphone’s battery was dying.
I asked the driver to switch on the radio, wanting to celebrate the victory of the day or, probably, one of the memorable victories of my life. Sitting beside the driver I pulled back my seat to stretch my aching, wet legs. Tapping my feet (and the injured toe) gently to the music. I looked in the rearview mirror, on my left and I saw a reflection …
A reflection of the lights, of those vehicles struggling in the water, a reflection of the moment when she was resting her head on my shoulder in the rickshaw, a reflection of the time I was pushing the cab, of the calls from her home which we were too scared to pick up. A reflection of that perfect kiss in Room No. 301, that evening.
And, watching those reflections, I smiled and closed my eyes.
‘Oh! Mumma … Sheisso perfect!’
I was at the airport, the last person in the long queue heading towards the British Airways terminal. I was struggling with the laptop hanging on my shoulder, pushing the trolley with the same hand and talking to my mom and dad on my cell. Outside, it was still dawn. The sun would rise in a few minutes. And I was damn sleepy. But the cold shower in the hotel helped me wake up. And to push me into the shower was Khushi, who woke me up at 4 a.m. sharp.
Back in my hometown, mom and dad were anxious to know what happened. Dad seemed to be enjoying my anecdotes much better than his morning news, otherwise he’d never ask mom to put my call on the speaker while he had his morning tea. How is her family? How is her Mumma? What did everyone say? What is their house like? And the craziest question was my mom’s: What did you have for lunch there?
(God! Lunch?)
‘Her family is really nice. I met her mother, her elder sister Ami di and Ami di’s husband Pushkar. Her younger sister Neeru was also there. Her mom is just like you. I liked each one of them. Khushi is a very nice girl, Mumma … And I am very happy,’ I said after which Mumma said, ‘If you are happy, we are happy.’
And the happier they were, the more they questioned me. It took me almost half an hour to answer all their queries before I bade them goodbye and they wished me a happy journey.
After a little while, I felt like calling her. Though I knew she would be sleeping. While I slept in peace for three hours in my hotel room, she was checking her cell’s clock every now and then so that she could wake me up on time. Now it was her turn to sleep in peace. Still, I dialed her number. Because in another couple of hours, I wouldn’t be able to call her up.
I heard her complete ring, but did not get to hear her voice.
Disappointed, I slipped my phone back in my pocket and moved ahead. People were shoving their trolleys with one hand, their passport and tickets in the other. Some were enjoying the music flowing out of their iPods. Indian faces, non-Indian faces. The white kids stood silently in the queue, holding their parents’ hands. The rest of the little ones running here and there, shouting, playing, were all Indian.
I was at the X-ray scanner, waiting for my baggage to slide out, when I heard my cell ringing. It was her.
‘Uth gaya mela baby …?’
‘Hmm …’ And in her warm, sleepy, heavy voice she was kissing me, probably with her eyes half-open, still tired. Hearing the sweetness of her voice, I imagined waking up next to her, on the same bed, some morning.
Clearing her throat, she then started talking to me.
My queue kept moving and we kept talking.
At the baggage check-in section, she was still with me.
At the immigration desk, she was still with me.
At the security check gateway, the officials separated her from me. They asked me to switch off the cellphone before the check. But the moment I was through with it, she was with me again. I badly wanted to talk to her, I badly needed her and I wanted to run away from the airport straight back to her. Actually, I felt like marrying her then and there. I was so much with her for those one and half hours that I didn’t even notice the third and final announcement, meant for me. The last words were:
‘… Boarding Flight No. BA182 to New York, please report at gate no. 2.’
I know my next statement will be hard to believe, but this is true. Miles away from me, lying on her bed in a different city, she heard my name being announced (which I had missed, though the speaker box was right above me), through my cellphone. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
‘Shona, I think it’s for you,’ she panicked.
‘What?’
‘That announcement. I think it’s for you,’ she shouted in haste.
‘Just a second.’
I patted the back of a white-skinned man in front of me. He had a US flag on his T-shirt. ‘Wudgyaa mind tellin me whom they were caallin for?’ I don’t know why but talking to goras tends to change my accent.
‘Oh, you mean the last call?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Some Ravin to New York. For fuck’s sake, why are people not on time at the airport?’
And I kept looking into his eyes with anger but didn’t say anything. Of course, the fault was mine.
‘That’s me,’ I said firmly, getting closer to his face. ‘But you know, hey … Thanks for letting me know that it was me.’
His face was something to be seen. Pale. Maybe, for a second, he remembered that he wasn’t on his land but mine. But before he could start apologizing, I rushed to gate no. 2.
On the call, Khushi was still waiting for my response.
But, what happened next at the gate was surprising.
‘Khushi, I’ll call you back in a while,’ I said and disconnected the call
still trying to understand what happened.
The security lady at the door had taken my boarding pass, swiped it through a gadget which punched a single word, in bold red letters, on it. INVALID. She then returned it to me with a smile on her face. I looked at the pass and then at her face and wondered—Now what the hell was this? Then, she snatched it back from me and tore it into two pieces, stylishly, and dropped them into the dustbin beside her desk.
I was completely puzzled. Did they find some drugs in my baggage? Or some smuggled diamonds? Or may be a hand-grenade? Jesus! I don’t even know what grenades look like.
Seeing the restlessness on my face the lady finally revealed what was going on.
‘Congratulations, sir! You are our lucky passenger. You won’t be traveling in Economy, but in the Business class.’
With a smile, she handed me a Business class boarding-pass and asked me to move ahead to the plane. The rest of the population, the poor economy class one’s who were made to wait just because of me, were then allowed to follow.
What a surprise!
Moments later, I was in the plane and Khushi was with me again. I told her about my good luck and she promptly said, ‘Because I’m in your life, only good things will happen to you.’
While talking to her I saw the same passenger passing by—the one with the US flag on his T-shirt. I waved to him sarcastically and he moved ahead to economy class as if he hadn’t seen me. But I knew he had.
Thirty minutes later, the plane was good to take off. By then, one of the air-hostesses had already told me, twice, to switch off my mobile. But I was like, ‘Who cares?’ I was still busy with my romance on the phone.
When the plane was on the runway, the air hostess pleaded with me again to switch off my cell. I am sure she must have wondered who allowed me into the Business Class. I was behaving like a school kid whom teachers tend to compare to a dog’s tail—no matter how you try, it can never be straight.
This time, though, I gestured her to come closer and asked her, ‘Have you ever fallen in love?’ I whispered in her ears.
‘What?’ She took a step back.
‘On the other end is my girlfriend, whom I will marry some day. I won’t be seeing her for a long time and these are the few, final moments before I leave this country. And in these moments she wants to be with me. Shall I tell her that a beautiful air hostess is commanding me not to talk to her?’
She smiled at me and went away. And in a few seconds she returned with a tall glass of juice and some cookies. Helping me with the blanket, especially covering my mobile and the hands-free wires, she whispered, ‘Enjoy your moments with these.’
And of course I enjoyed my moments with Khushi. She kept kissing me and I was bidding her goodbye before the network got disconnected.
The plane took off.
Away from Her
Shelton, Connecticut
Day One
I remember well. It was Saturday evening, around 7.30 p.m., when I checked into my hotel. At the reception, while making the payment with a few travelers’ cheques, I made sure my room had an Internet connection.
The bellboy helped me up to my room on the first floor. I handed over a dollar bill to him, then entered my room, leaving my baggage at the door itself, and rushed to open my laptop bag and go online at once. I logged into Yahoo! messenger. Yes, that was the very first thing I did.
It was early morning in India and I knew she would be waiting for me.
And she really was.
We’d decided earlier that this was the time we would be on chat. Though, because I’d expected a shorter journey, I was somewhat late. And after the eight hour journey from Delhi to Heathrow, the three hours in transit, the eight hours from Heathrow to New York and the two hours, by cab, from New York to Shelton, I was severely jet-lagged.
But those twenty four hours of not being able to talk to her overrode everything else.
She was delighted to see me online. And so was I. But her delight was greater which is why she wrote so many messages in a fraction of second:
Heyyy …. Shona … you dere.
How r u … wen did u reach.
How was your journey?
Where are you now? You dere?
BUZZ
And I didn’t reply, just asked her, ‘Did u miss me?’
‘Soooooo much dear. And You …?’
‘Hmmm … I will let you know but first switch on your speakers and accept the voice chat request.’
I told her everything about my journey—the flights, the transit, the passengers and how I missed her amid everything. She told me how she spent her entire day without talking to me. Even her family realized how much she was missing me. Hearing each other’s voice after an entire day was so … touching. This had never happened in the past six months. We kept talking for a long time and it was only when the electricity went off in Faridabad and her UPS, too, gave up that we finally bade goodbye.
Which was when I realized that I should take off my shoes (which I was wearing since the day before), should bring my luggage (which was still in the gallery) into my room and that, in the haste to talk to her, I had left my wallet at the reception.
Day Three
It was a Monday (OGIM—Oh God, it’s Monday!). My first day at my client’s office.
In the office, I first met with all my colleagues from Infosys who’d arrived onsite before me—some old faces and some new. In foreign lands, we Indians always tend to look for fellow Indians first. And I am, proudly, one such Indian.
In the next few hours, my project manager introduced me to our client and vice versa. More than their faces, I was trying to remember the way to the cafeteria, to the conference rooms and, of course, to the restrooms.
Very soon, I was occupied with my work. My weekdays passed in the office, working along with my client, meeting with different stakeholders, offshore calls and enjoying different lunches in the cafeteria. In the evenings, I used to go back to my hotel and study for the CAT. Often, I used to cook my dinner too. (To be honest, there was nothing to cook. I just heated the frozen eatables.)
But, no matter what I did, she was always on my mind.
I missed her in my US days and she missed me in her Indian nights. She missed me in her Indian days and I missed her in my US nights. Life wasn’t too easy. We couldn’t call each other whenever we wished. Twice a day, we were on chat: my mornings, after I woke up and before she went to bed; my nights, before I slept and after she woke up.
Day Seven
We were on chat, just like any other day, and she asked me to do something special for her.
‘Shona, I want you to write me an email every day, before you sleep.
They will be with me and I will read them over and over, whenever I miss you.’
But, breaking her sweet expectation I replied, ‘Hmm … I will try. But I don’t know if I can do it after such hectic days. Office, CAT, chats, dinner … there is so much, you know.’
I said that not because I didn’t want to write the emails, but because I wanted to give her a beautiful surprise.
I wrote a diary for her.
Somehow, I believed that handwritten words carry much more meaning and much more feeling in them. They have a special something that can’t be conveyed in sterile, electronic mails. I didn’t tell her about it, but at the end of every day, I started writing my feelings for her in a diary. Each and every page described how I missed her, what all I wanted to do had she been with me, wrote small verses for her. And her half-sketched picture which I drew while thinking of her, but left incomplete when I realized I was a poor artist.
Day Twelve
It was a Friday (TGIF—Thank God, it’s Friday!). In the West, this day of the week is a goofy day. Officially it is a working day but, unofficially, it’s anything but a working day. Though, because we were our client’s vendor, our weekends started only from Friday evenings.
Enjoying these evenings, we used to hang out in bunches at the discotheques, pub
s, eating joints and bowling alleys. Or we would drive down to the nearest city hosting a desi movie show. And Munnabhai was running in the US theaters too, making me recall that troubled and tender night.
Weekends, onsite, were always fun. But there was something different this time—I had to face this question from people with whom I enjoyed my weekends during my past trips.
‘But you used to booze, right? So what happened now?’
I wanted to tell them the truth but didn’t. The reason being, in my earlier life (I mean, before I fell in love) I used to give them gyaan, telling them guys should not change themselves for girls. How could I tell them that I’d left my occasional liquor for a girl? So I had to give them fake reasons.
And I’ll tell you what. It’s hard to give fake reasons, for two reasons. First, there’s tremendous pressure from friends, especially when they are totally drunk and start swearing on each other’s name to make you drink. And second, my own willingness to booze.
But I didn’t.
And I was happy that I kept my promise to her.
Day Thirty
One morning—it was probably 9 o’clock—I was in my office and signed into my messenger. As usual, she had left a voice message to make my day. By now, I had a plenty of them in my voice message list. They were all so sweet that I never felt like deleting any of them. But then, when the message box got full, I had to take up the difficult task of choosing which one to delete. There was one which I could never delete, though, for it was the cutest of all. In it, she was childishly angry at me because I didn’t come online one day and was yelling at me despite having a cold.
I was taking an offshore call, talking to my project team back in India, when I saw that she had come online.
‘I have to show you something,’ she messaged.