MoonRiver 1: Taking Stock

The practical apathy of being seemed inescapable to her, as she walked along Colaba Causeway, towards Regal Cinema. Now, most people just called it Regal. Another moment of the ceaseless apathy that seemed to drive the city now. Suddenly, the realisation of walking in a direction opposite to that of the crowd pleased her. A young boy of perhaps eleven lounged against a pillar outside Café Leopold, escaping an irritable and moody sun, as he tried to sell his wares. Ceramic door knobs, only too small to be fitted on doors. She wondered if there were things such as drawer knobs, and if there were, what were they called.

In her rush to get out of her suburban home, she had forgotten to bring her book – the one she was reading. So she’d spent some time at Leopold, writing, before moving on. She wrote at times, just like she drew at times, and cooked, and painted. At times, when she was in the mood for it, and circumstances prevailed, she even did the occasional fixing up, like getting the aging television to work, or rewiring a lamp. In that sense, she liked to think, she was quite proficient. She didn’t know many who could rewire. She hardly knew that she herself could rewire. She walked on, past the myriad glimpses of colour – the bags, the clothes, the cheap over-priced jewellery and the pirated books and magazines, and various artefacts made of marble or wood or just coloured stones, of no particular value – arranged and touted in ways to trap apparently unsuspecting tourists. A t-shirt catches her eye, proclaiming a bold and proud I (Heart) India, under a caricature of the Taj Mahal. Next to it is one that replaces the Taj with a beach and two palm trees and India with Goa. An impulse buyer, as a magazine tagged her in one of its quizzes, she bargains with the seller until they are both blue in the face and manages to get the Taj Mahal t-shirt for Rs. 140. She got it on the grounds that the Taj Mahal doesn’t look nearly as ridiculous as this, and that had Shah Jehan been around, he would have slaughtered the seller for selling a caricature of his wife’s tomb.

The funny thing is that she has never been to the Taj Mahal.

High on purchase, she walks ahead to Ragal Cinema, muttering scusi’s and excusez moi’s as she struggles past a cacophony of Japanese tourists. She doesn’t really know why she muttered Italian and French, among the Japanese. Had she read somewhere they could speak those languages, if they were Japanese? A vibration in her pocket reminds her of her cell phone, an instrument that humans hang on to, as a last resort in escaping the distance and the apathy that floated about in the air, like the lead fumes, choking people. The text message on her phone says, CAUVERY WHR TH HEL R U? HV BN WAITNG TN MNTS. U R LATE. GT HR ASAP. KAVI. It always amazes her that everyone is relegated to the same old shite with mobile technology. The social leveller of the 21st century. Have mobile, will survive. Everyone speaks the same language. It doesn’t matter if your medium is a Samsung, an Ericsson or a Nokia with whatever number suffixed to it. Since she is almost there, she decides to let him stew. Quicker now she meanders through the lessening and then suddenly growing throng to reach Regal, where she stops, scans the crowd for her friend, and then, locating his blonde streaked head, moves in towards him with the precision of a commando. He is dialling on his cell (presumably her number), when she reaches up to him from the back, sticks both her index fingers into his sides and elicits a reflexive yelp.

“What on earth is the matter with you!!!! You’re fucking late. The movie’s about to begin, and the others have already gone inside”
“Kavi, you’ve just had ten minutes of waiting. Compare it to the nine months your mother waited, and the fact that all she got out of it was you. At least you have me,” she tells him. She isn’t inherently rude. It’s actually a cultivated rudeness that is now such a huge part of her, that it manifests itself over and over, and sometimes at the most inopportune moments. This is not one of them, unfortunately for the voyeuristic reader. Kavi grabs her arm and drags her inside, to watch Aishwarya Rai and other unmemorable characters acting in a Hindi movie. Only, they are speaking in English. Hold on. They are lip synching in English as well. She pinches Kavi.

“What?”
“Who’s idea was it to watch this shit?”
“Lalitha’s. Ash’s character shares her name.”
“I don’t care if Ash’s character shares her fucking genes. I want out of here.”
“Stop being a brat.” This is merely a mild understatement, said with the fondness of someone who has borne a person’s presence so long, it is difficult to imagine life without that person. In reality, Kavi has known her for exactly two years and eleven months.
“Brat my ass. I’ve been working like a horse, and on the one free day I get, you put me through this? What kind of friends are you?”
“The ones who bought you a ticket, out of sheer consideration. So if you don’t like it, stuff your mouth with pop corn, or better yet, go off to sleep. If you’ve been working, it directly implies you haven’t been sleeping.”
“Fine.”

The movie continues to explode on the screen, suffocating her with the garish colours and dialogues. The novel it is supposedly based on probably wishes it was never written. Her mind is falling asleep. Maybe she ought to take Kavi’s advice. She settles her head against Kavi’s shoulder and closes her eyes. Only, the minute she does, her mind goes into overload. Also her body. Sensory overload and the reflexive, intuitive awareness of Kavi. She can’t remember the last time she had sex. Was it a month ago? Or more? It was that hippie wannabe in Pune, with the wild hair and awesome butt. Fabian something or other. Polish or German. Blue eyed physical god. Oh well. Too much of a stoned fucker is bad for you. She burrows deeper into Kavi’s shoulder, and wonders, trying hard not to, what he is like in bed. She could ask Meera, his stand by chick, only it would indicate interest. And Meera is not someone she talks to in any case. By now, she is drifting in and out of a pleasant dream-like state, aided and abetted by Kavi’s presence and the theatre’s brilliant air-conditioning. She hears snatches of the movie, and tries to block them. There is the possibility of a day dream here, which those snatches are ruining.

Kavi, on the other hand, is trying not to fall asleep, so that he won’t miss the weight of her against his shoulder. The smell of her hair. The energy of her. All of which was too dangerous to his state of being safe if she were awake. Next to him, Rahul nudges him, and points to her, with a hissed “what’s up with her yaar! Is she sleeping?”
“Haan, yaar. Apparently, this is way too boring for her to awake.”
“Yeah well, main so gaya, toh madam here will kill me,” he says, with obvious reference to Lalitha, who has got them the tickets and is also Rahul’s long suffering girl friend. Or maybe vice a versa. Kavi couldn’t care less either ways, only, now he had to look for suitable wedding formals thanks to the pair of them.

“Will the two of you stop gossiping and let the rest of us watch?” This comes from Lalitha, who, in complete contrast to her overtly Indian name, is dressed in a hot pink tank top, white jacket and long flowing skirt. Her eyes are, as always rimmed with kajal, and there are numerous rings on her fingers, ears and nose. Her hair is growing, pulling her head out of its formerly bald state.

In the interval, Cauvery is still asleep on his shoulder, making him unable to move. And thus pushing his urge for pop corn and a Coke a few notches higher. “We’ll get it. Let her sleep, she needs it,” says the formerly irritated Lalitha. She floats out with Rahul, leaving Kavi alone with Sandhya, who has been sitting on Lalitha’s left, and therefore, been out of conversation. Kavi considers Sandhya very wise. If a tad prudish. She normally doesn’t go out with them, which makes him believe she must really like the movie. Sandhya is a teacher. Thereby alienating herself further from this bunch of people who work in the entertainment industry. Wise or not, Kavi has no clue as to what to say to a teacher. She innocuously reminds him of the various teachers he experienced in his schooling years. He knows, he too reminds her of her former fiancé, Ashok, chartered accountant extraordinaire and, unfortunately, his first cousin. Still, Kavi doesn’t know what to say to someone who has been cheated on by your cousin, a week before the wedding. Even if he does not like the cousin. So Kavi makes a production of looking for non-existent missed calls on his cell phone, all the while careful of not disturbing Cauvery.

“If you want to be with her, you should tell her, you know...”

For a minute, Kavi thinks Sandhya is speaking on her cell, but then he remembers she is one of the few people left in Bombay who don’t own one. He looks up at her, uncomfortable at having to look past Ashok, who has wedged his pompous CA arse in the two seats between them.

“Huh?”
“You should tell her. Make the effort. She won’t, you know”
“Tell her what? She won’t what?”
“Tell her you want to be with her. She won’t tell you first. She’s not the kind to.”
“She’ll do anything once. And she’ll do anything first. She’s competitive.”
“But what if she has done it once already?”
“What if...?”
“She might not want to repeat the experience.”
“Right.”
“That was a very Brit ‘right’.”
“Yeah well, um, right.”
“You’re uncomfortable.”
“Well, yes”
“Why should you be uncomfortable?”
“Um, for one, this entire conversation makes me feel like I’m being punished by my school marm, no offence.”
“None taken.”
“And, well, there’s this other thing, one about you and Ashok, that’s kinda, well...”
“I see.”
“No, see, I don’t really like Ashok much. And I don’t think he should have done what he did in any case, and I told him so, well, as soon as I heard. I don’t really like him, but that does not mean I have to, well, let him get away with, well, I’m, well, blabbering. Right. Sorry.”
“It’s alright. This could sound terribly clichéd, but in retrospect, I realised what a bastard he is, and that I wouldn’t want to have kids with him.”
“I think it should be made so that people pf his ilk shouldn’t be allowed to pass on their genes, except to the commode.”
Sandhya laughed at this. And Cauvery stirred. Got up, and blinked. Focussed and refocused. Stretched. And it occurred to Kavi how much like a cat she was. A bad mannered, ill tempered cat.
“What are you looking at? You’ve seen me wake up before.”
“Have I? Can’t remember...mustn’t have made that much of an impact.”
“Well. Hey Sandhya. Did he untie his tongue long enough to talk to you? Or is Ashok still knotting it up?”
“I think he can talk now.”
“Yes. He must have done a fair bit of ‘right...’ before he got around to it, eh? Chutiya saala.” That was as fond as she could get.
“This one time I am not going to reprimand you.”
“Yes teacher.”
“There’s Lalitha. Both of them,” said Kavi, breaking up the easy female bond that seemed to have sprung out of nowhere. He tried to concentrate on the movie now, and managed to give preoccupied answers to her mutterings and bitchings.

The remainder of the movie was a blur for both of them. Kavi, trying to not get drawn into her voice, her mood, her breath, and Cauvery, trying her best to draw him in. Both longing for a lazy morning with each other.