One String Attached Read online

Shivam nodded, waiting for the neighbour to finish his task and leave.

  But life spins its own tale. Even as his Aaina sat waiting at the next table, Srivastav uncle droned on. ‘Seems like yesterday, you two boys were playing cricket in the gali fighting over every run . . . and today,’ his voice rose higher by a decibel, ‘he’s got a corporate job.’

  Shivam nodded.

  ‘You . . . you have not applied anywhere, have you? Still loitering around, I hear.’ Then, without waiting for the response, he shook his head with regret, ‘Mahantji must be a worried father. Don’t do this to him. You are a grown-up young man. You need to help him out now.’

  Shivam was beginning to get uncomfortable when the man’s order arrived and he had to pay the bill. With his hands full of packets, he departed with a loud but distant goodbye.

  Shivam returned to his Aaina, irritated at the interruption.

  Her eyes were smiling, tickled by his exasperation. ‘So, you loiter?’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘I chase my dream!’ he said assertively.

  ‘And that is . . . ’

  ‘First you show, then I’ll tell.’

  He was playing her game now. Teasing.

  ‘I . . . I can’t . . . ’

  Suddenly three boys entered the shop.

  ‘Shivam Bhaiya!’ one of them called out and the trio made their way to his table.

  They were Shivam’s juniors from college.

  ‘Abbey, guys, what’s up?’

  ‘Bhaiya, you don’t come to play now,’ chimed one.

  ‘A little busy these days. What’s with you guys?’

  ‘This tournament is on, Bhaiya . . . with the Govardhan colony,’ one of them said excitedly. ‘For the past three days, we are winning hundred rupees every day.’

  ‘And you’re blowing it on samosa only . . . or . . . ’ Shivam implies alcohol.

  ‘Arrey, Bhaiya, you know . . . even if it’s Bisleri, full Ayodhya finds out.’ The junior’s pathetic expression had them all in splits.

  The trio moved to a corner table and Shivam turned to Aaina’s seat.

  It was empty.

  ‘Shit!’ he swore under his breath. He walked over to where she was sitting . . . to breathe in the warmth of the space . . . He found a tissue folded and tucked under the tissue stand, bearing a message and a smiley on it. She had left it there for him. He picked it up, unfolded it and read it:

  Saturday, 4 p.m. Mahila Mahavidyalaya lawn.

  The boat glided past the Mahavidyalaya grounds. Before their boat docked at the ghat, the boys could see it stretching out beyond the verdant forest greens.

  8

  It would be evening soon. The Sarayu glinted golden as their boat bobbed up and down.

  The boys were on a recce mission for the Saturday rendezvous. Their eyes scanned the school playground for an opening from where they could sneak in.

  ‘Yaar, I can’t see how we’ll get in,’ said Shivam sceptically.

  ‘We’ll figure something,’ Babloo said confidently.

  Shivam was still unsure.

  ‘She’s called us na this time . . . so she only has to get us in.’

  ‘Us?’ Shivam whacked his friend on his head. ‘Don’t forget she’s your bhabhi!’

  ‘Relax! I’ve got my music . . . there no place for girls in my life.’

  ‘What if she can’t?’ Shivam returned to the issue.

  ‘We’ll stand gawking outside then . . . like before.’

  ‘Yes, that we do best,’ agreed Shivam, hugging his friend.

  Babloo pushed him off. But Shivam slid up to him again, unable to contain his joy for tomorrow. They would find a way.

  ‘Babloo, I feel like kissing you . . . you make me so happy.’

  ‘You’ve got a girl. Still it’s me you want to kiss!’ said Babloo, jumping aside in disgust.

  Shivam lunged to catch him. The boat rocked as the boys rolled over laughing. The mood changed.

  Soon after, they docked the boat, tying it up before bouncing up the steps of the bathing ghat to their cycles, each pedalling onwards to his own destination.

  * * *

  There was a song in her step as she walked home that day. Her black-and-white world had suddenly gone technicolor for she has dared to reach out to life, listened to the flutter in her heart, and spent time with someone she wanted to spend time with, instead of hanging around for someone unknown to be thrust upon her as the right choice. All of this meant breaking the rules. And she had broken them, with a certain joy.

  ‘You’ve got to follow the rules if you want to get anywhere in life,’ Abbu was talking to someone over the phone—mouthing his life’s dictum.

  His words jolted the seventeen-year-old back into her jaded reality.

  She hurried in, not wanting to dampen her mood and exuberance.

  But there was Ammi to contend with. ‘Salma’s nikah has got fixed,’ she informed her. ‘It’s coming Monday. Just one week to go. How will we manage!’

  Aaina swallowed this. That explained why Abbu was home at this time of day. She looked around. It was as if some typhoon had struck their house this noon. The rectangular aluminium trunk box, which was stored under Ammi’s bed, now cluttered the living room floor, its heavy concave lid thrown open and the contents spilling out. After sharing the good news, Ammi returned to the trunk. She sat on her haunches and went through the myriad ceremonial knick-knacks—embellished jugs and brass vase. Dry fruit packets lay on the sofa beside colourful velvet pouches in which they would be filled next. Naved was flitting in and out of the house, running errands for Abbu, while the older man conferred with the Imam and relatives on the nitty-gritty.

  Salma was Aaina’s cousin, her Mamu’s daughter. Mamu was the only surviving brother Ammi had. All the arrangements for this nikah would have to be made at their house, Aaina knew.

  ‘I want you to help sort the trunk with me first . . . then Naved’s almirah . . . then . . . ’

  Abbu interrupted her. ‘No more going to school now.’

  ‘But Abbu . . . exams are close, I got . . . ’

  He cut her mid-sentence. ‘You heard me. Till this nikah business is over, no going anywhere.’

  Aaina looked from Abbu to Ammi. Ammi would understand but didn’t have the courage to contradict him.

  A full week to nikah. She would miss so many classes. And Shivam! How would she meet him on Saturday now? And how would she let him know she can’t meet him. She felt trapped. Life is about spreading your wings, her mind screams. And she will, she promised herself with a determined shake of her head. Yes, I will fly.

  ‘Don’t daydream, there is lots to do,’ Ammi prodded her.

  Aaina joined her mother in emptying the trunk. Her hands did their task, her feet moved her along as she fetched, carried and placed stuff, and her ears listened to her Ammi’s instructions but her mind remained lost. For someone lurked in it. Someone who watched her on the playground as she played . . . and when she made her way back home. Someone who . . .

  ‘Fold those scarves properly!’ Ammi snapped her out of her mental meandering.

  Silk scarves, silver coins, sweets, jewellery, perfume, cosmetics . . . Abbu is listing out all the things that have to be arranged, after crossing out on the list what is already there.

  Shivam had to go. It wouldn’t do for him to clog her mind, when hundreds of nikah tasks loomed ahead. Aaina pushed out all that was exciting her and got busy with Mamu and Salma’s things.

  9

  Noon, Tuesday, the December sun lessened the growing chill in the air somewhat. Shivam entered his courtyard, humming a soulful Sufi number and stepped on potato wafers laid out on sheets for sunning.

  ‘Watch out!’

  Ma left whatever she was grinding with her mortar-pestle and shuffled out from the kitchen to save her chips from her son, who was home for lunch.

  But he kept goofing around with the half-dry, yellow slices. Balancing some on his head and a few more on his palms, he executed random da
nce moves, singing along happily.

  His mother, however, was not amused. She pulled his ear and boxed it.

  ‘You want to be a filmi hero now, do you?’

  ‘Ma!’ he shrieked and wriggled to free his ear.

  Before she could shout at him, he pulled her into a tight hug.

  Her anger dissipated in seconds. This boy of hers did everything wrong but knew the way to her heart.

  Some mushy moments later, they disengage. ‘Do you have to go again?’ she asked him.

  ‘Yes, Ma. Masterji told me to hurry back. This is peak time, he says. Orders for wedding clothes are coming in.’

  His mother stopped herself from saying something disparaging. She made her way back to the kitchen, asking him to hurry and freshen up. ‘I’ll serve your lunch right away.’

  But later, when she found him there and yet not there, she lost it. Sitting cross-legged, tearing a piece of the crisp, fluffy roti she had just made, he dipped it into the potato-pumpkin curry but instead of putting it in his mouth, he kept fiddling with it on the plate.

  ‘What’s wrong with you, Shivam?’ she cried. ‘You don’t want to help Baba and now you don’t want to eat also?’ Food was an issue with her.

  It made him snap back to the moment. Vignettes of the day before had been playing on his mind. At work, he had put a padlock on his thoughts. Murshid Mia, the master tailor and designer, was a hard taskmaster who expected his apprentice to give everything he had to master the craft. And Shivam did. Back home for lunch, he was free of work constraints and it had come gushing back. His heart broke into song and he broke into dance in the courtyard. Just one scene played on his mind now. The kitchen, the plate and the bite in hand, all of it receded into the background. Except her, everything was out-of-focus. He could see only Aaina—on the table next to him, looking at him, a bit excited, a bit nervous, but also playful, her words soothing him, her eyes bewitching him.

  In the middle of this intoxicating memory, Ma started crying. She had been shouting at him earlier and he had ignored that. Her tears, he could not. So he blotted out every Aaina image flitting through his mind and slid up closer to his mother, dragging his steel plate alongside. With the back of his right hand, he wiped the tears off her cheeks.

  ‘Shoo, now! Else I will be forced to rub my fingers sticky with food all over your face.’

  The bluff worked. She dabbed her face dry with the free end of her saree and considered him morosely.

  ‘Babuji called up,’ she said, watching her son scoop a mouthful. ‘Too much happening around the mandir today . . . more police has come.’

  ‘Hmm . . . ’

  ‘Full place they have gheraoed . . . all are sitting in a ring.’

  ‘Hmm . . . ’

  ‘What hmm?’ She was annoyed again. ‘Can’t you go see him once? He is all alone there. Even some ministers have come.’

  ‘Ma, Babuji is the head priest. No one can touch him. Relax.’

  ‘How can you not worry,’ she retorted. ‘You are his flesh and blood.’

  ‘Ma, with all that police out there guarding him . . . my going there will be useless.’

  ‘You won’t, then?’

  ‘Arrey, ma, I will . . . I definitely will, if he needs me. But he does not. Not right now.’

  ‘He needs you in the temple . . . you going there and doing what he has always done,’ she argued.

  ‘Now stop singing that old tune. I’m not going to be a priest. I’m telling you one final time, bas . . . I don’t like it.’

  ‘What do you like? Mussalmani work! . . . And those . . . those Mussalmani gaane that you keep singing!’

  Shivam nodded, eating slowly, staring into his plate. He did not see the anger rising in his mother’s eyes.

  ‘I like . . . ’ he said, looking vacant once more, ‘blue eyes . . . the deepest blue . . . alluring . . . haunting blue.’

  ‘You have gone mad.’

  ‘Ma, you like blue eyes?’

  ‘What?’ This confounded her.

  ‘Yes, blue,’ he continued, lost again, ‘like the sea . . . like an ocean . . . depths you can drown in.’

  ‘Blue, blue . . . keep doing blue blue! Don’t stitch that orange cut-piece Babuji gave you for Sita Ma. No, even the goddess doesn’t matter to you now.’

  ‘I will, Ma. I will,’ he promised, getting up to keep his plate out for washing. ‘But I got to rush now.’

  He scrambles out of the kitchen after giving her a quick hug. She followed him out, asking him to be extra careful.

  ‘The town is flooded with outsiders,’ she warned him. ‘Something bad is in the air.’

  ‘Bad? I see no bad . . . only blue eyes.’

  ‘Blue eyes?’

  He pedalled away, leaving her confused and worried.

  * * *

  It was clear to Ammi that some djinn had gotten into her daughter. For she worked and yet not. Just four days to the wedding and things were getting maddening. The old woman had asked Aaina to gift-wrap clothes meant for the bridegroom’s family and had handed the suits, gift boxes, ribbons and the wrapping paper to her. The girl had promptly completed the task, wrapping neatly, winding the shiny ribbon around each box, fashioning its golden ends into tiny bows that sat on the top, and stacking the colourful boxes neatly on the living room table. Only, as an aunt pointed out, Aaina had failed to fill the boxes! The clothes were still lying outside.

  With relatives trickling in—some to visit and advise, others with bag and baggage and minds made up to stay until the nikah—Ammi somehow managed to find a quiet corner for a court martial with her daughter.

  ‘Are you unwell?’ she started on a polite note although she was seething.

  ‘I don’t know how the stuff came out,’ Aaina replied. ‘I am sure I had packed them.’

  Ammi itched to whack her but too many eyes were on them and she didn’t want a spectacle.

  ‘Remember, we’re doing all this for Mamu. And Salma is no less than you for me. There can be no mistake . . . in anything.’ Ammi’s eyes bored into her, brooking no argument . . . and no excuse.

  Aaina could only nod in agreement.

  ‘Now, will you go to the kitchen, make that rose sherbet and see that the drink is served to all the children?’

  Aaina rushed off to do her bidding.

  Naved, the ogre that he was, had been eavesdropping from behind the curtain.

  He followed her into the kitchen and kept an eye on her as she went about her chores. He watched her mix the sherbet and pour it into glasses, which she then lined up on a tray. But why was she smiling?

  Fortunately, Naved could not access what was in her head . . . for this head was stuck in Shivamland.

  So he plays cricket . . . she said to herself, smiling. And plays well. Those boys in the sweet shop said they missed him in the team. Well, he looked fit.

  ‘Will you move or keep standing here only.’

  Aaina jumped, knocking down a glass of sherbet.

  She had not seen Naved and his sudden comment startled her. She bent to pick up the shards of glass from the floor. A jagged edge cut her finger, making it bleed.

  That sent Naved running to Ammi again.

  Aaina was hunched on the kitchen floor, getting mad at the blood oozing down the side of her right palm. More than pain, she felt irritation. That idiot brother of hers would not be done bleating to Ammi only. He would escalate it to Abbu too.

  She washed her hand and cleared up the mess, not waiting to call the maid. Minutes later, as she walked out with the tray, Ammi accosted her in the hall.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she asked, taking the tray and calling out to a cousin to serve it around.

  Before Aaina can answer, Ammi had lifted her hand to inspect it. There was a gash where the shard had grazed the skin and droplets still oozed crimson. Ammi took the girl into the room.

  As she cleaned the wound with Dettol and fixed a Band-Aid on it, Ammi searched her daughter’s face. ‘What’s wrong with you,’ she ask
ed. ‘Tell me what’s bothering you.’

  ‘Nothing, Ammi . . . I . . . I was just thinking about what I could wear for the walima when this happened.’

  Aaina knew Ammi would sense something else was up unless she gave her something legitimate.

  ‘Ya Allah!’ Ammi held her head. ‘I forgot about your dresses totally in all this . . . come . . . come.’

  Ammi nearly emptied out Aaina’s cupboard on the bed. For the next twenty minutes, they mulled over which gharara she could wear for the mehndi ceremony, and whether a pink dupatta or the silver grey one would go well with the blue bismillah suit for the nikah.

  ‘You are right,’ declared Ammi, after rummaging through it all. ‘You’ve got nothing for the walima.’

  ‘It is okay, Ammi. I’ll choose something out of all this.’ Aaina did not want to bother her mother. She had brought up the dress only to avoid close questioning.

  ‘No. You do need to get a kurta stitched. These won’t do. Everyone will be looking at you.’

  Aaina made a face. She did not want anyone looking at her. Except . . .

  ‘Let me get those trunks put away first. Then . . . I’ll take you.’

  She tried convincing Ammi that she would manage with what she had but her mother was in no mood to listen. ‘We’ll go in a couple of hours, buy the fabric and give it for stitching.’ Ammi left Aaina with a bed overflowing with her clothes and a nearly empty cupboard and just over an hour to put it all back together. There were too many aunts about the house for her to delaying this. She did not have the strength for another inquisition.

  Although Aaina managed to rearrange her cupboard, clean up her room, and help make turmeric paste, Ammi was unable to go through the trunks. She was stuck with the jeweller; Abbu had called him to get the ornaments sorted, polished and checked.

  ‘I can’t go with you,’ she told Aaina. ‘All my fault, shouldn’t have left your things for the last minute.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Aaina reassured her. ‘I will manage.’

  ‘Take Naved with you,’ Ammi called out as she was about to leave. ‘Too many ruffians are roaming the town these days.’

  ‘No, Ammi.’ Aaina rejected this option firmly. ‘If he goes, I won’t go.’