Red Meale, Boone Malley and The Night of Power

MoonRiver 3: Banalities.

2006-03-18T10:41:00.001-08:00

She watched herself in the mirror as she sucked on her cigarette. Then she realised what she was doing. Disgusted at staring at herself in the bakery’s mirrored wall, she looked away, only to see Ravi inhaling the biggest, messiest egg butty that ever was. Did he have to inhale it? Whatever happened to manners, she wondered.

Around the egg, chips, bread and mayo in his mouth, he managed to mumble, “Whatcha?”

Ah. Whatcha indeed. “Ravi, look at me carefully. Look at my mouth.” And she started, enunciating every word, so every syllable was pronounced out like in Entish. “Speak. In. Com-puh-leete. Sen-ten-ces. You got that? Or should I go slower?”

Anyone passing would figure her for a bitch, thought Ravi, as he gulped down the mouthful that he had been chewing. “You know Lalitha, it’s pointless.”

She raised an eyebrow, as enquiry.

Ravi looks at her with awe. Ravi wonders if she would ever think of being attracted to him. Ravi sometimes asks her so, if only while day dreaming into his watery coffee cup. Always, even in his day dreams, she starts laughing.

Ravi loves her.

Ravi has low self esteem.

Ravi annoys Lalitha.

Ravi adores her.

Ravi really does have low self esteem. Lalitha knows that. She isn’t above using that bit of information to her advantage.

Mr. Glasswala, who ran the quaint bakery near Horniman Circle, and was quite proud of his apple pie, only saw a woman, cold as marble, perhaps, and quite pretty too, despite her almost bald hair, smoking away, and possibly looking down upon this boy in his maroon t-shirt and blue-jeans. Mr. Glasswala thought of how these young women waste their lives like this. Mr. Glasswala thought how his wife, who he affectionately called Rosie, would call her a snotty bitch.

Lalitha had enough of Ravi. She turned to the nice man at the counter, and he went pink, and made a production on looking away. Lalitha sighed. This was most regular.

Lalitha gets up.

Lalitha straightens her skirt.

Lalitha pulls the Dior sunglasses off her head, keeps them on the table.

Mr. Glasswala, who was covertly looking at her while pretending to look away, is transfixed.

Lalitha turns toward him.

Lalitha starts moving toward him.

Mr. Glasswala wonders for a moment if she would have him.

Lalitha stops at the counter.

Mr. Glasswala wonders if Rosie will ever find out.

Lalitha looks at him, and Lalitha smiles.

Mr. Glasswala is convinced that an angel sent her there.

Lalitha looks at the man behind the counter, and he is blushing furiously.

She smiles, a smile designed to be friendly, affable, and to reach her eyes.

Ravi, having snapped out of his madness now that she had left the table, watches as she reels in another fish. He is, for most part, in awe of her.

She is speaking to Mr. Glasswala. Ravi has actually bothered to read the name of the restaurant, as he always reads everything. Especially t-shirts and papers in which he buys street food.

Ravi watches Mr. Glasswala nodding furiously, puffing up his chest, pointing to the display of the bakery. He is saying something. Stammering, for sure. Lalitha’s soft laughter wafts back toward him, mingling with the smell of freshly baked bread and to-die-for apple pie. Something in Ravi dies. Something in Ravi dies every time he hears his sister laugh.

Something in him dies, because it’s the laugh that always reminds him that she is his sister.

~~~~~~~~~

Cauvery grimaces as she hauls out another profile. She’s very annoyed she let that harami Kapil get the better of her when he said “Cauvery, this heavy lifting is not for women.” She should have whacked him on the head, and let him do it. But they were running out of time. And while everyone knew their jobs, she wondered when she signed on to do all of this herself.

Sweat trickled down her brow, and all she could think was, I love this. She did. There was enough life in the smells and sounds and colours of production work. There were enough greys to hide behind. There was enough insanity running around, left on a long leash. And she could shorten the leash any time she felt like. But mostly, there was enough adrenaline in the air, and it didn’t need her jumping head first off a bridge, with a rope tied to her leg.

“You want me to get that?”

She looked up to see Rahul, a picture of neatness in all the buzz that was around. Today, it was a light pink shirt, with a grey-silver tie and khaki pants. His hair was slightly mussed, and his glasses were perched just right on his slightly bumpy nose.
“And mess up your fancy clothing?” she asked.

“Aw, c’mon darlin’. You know I clean up better than this.”

“Sure you do. You can start with hauling those lights, ONE at a time, and gently placing them where I tell you.”

As she got him started, she turned to look for Divya, who was handling the talent. She sneered at the word talent. The ‘talent’ was required to waltz, and the director would only get a shot of their bodies. Or feet. Or something. But not the faces. And the tantrums were already beginning, by the look on Divya’s face. Well, she was new. It’d take her a couple of times before she stopped bursting into tears.

Looking around, she found things were running themselves. And because it wasn’t very long that they ran themselves for, she decided to go closer to the fan and have a smoke and some chai. Her phone rang just as she lit up.

“Cauvery.”

“It’ll help if you don’t snap at people like that. You’ll scare away potential boyfriends.”

“Funny, Lalitha. What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing. I finished working for now, so I figure I could do with some gossip.”

“Not today. Today’s been too blurry to notice anything special. However, I’ve put your hero to work, and I do mean manual labour.”

“Oh my. Maybe I should come over.”

“No you don’t. Be content with massaging his tired limbs later.”

“Meri kismet hi aisi hai. I met brother dear today. He had news from the folks. They won’t be coming down till a week after new year.”

“Oh joy. He still in love with you?”

“Of course. He needs help.”

“Maybe I should hit on him.”

“Maybe you should. Boost his ego a little. Sleep with him?”

“Ewww no! That’s… incestuous! But maybe we should set him up.”

“With a human being?”

“Stop that Litha. He isn’t that bad. Just a product of upbringing. As you are.”

“Oh whatever.” Lalitha’s good spirits were dashed.

Something crashed in the background.

“Listen, I’ll call you in a while. I am officially needed back now.”

Cauvery hung up.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kavi entered the bookstore. He didn’t have a shoot for a week now, so he was free to do as his heart wanted. And he felt his heart wanted a book. Or a chat with the cute owner of the shop, who’d leave her office on the mezzanine floor of the shop as soon as she knew he was there.

As he pushed open the glass door, the wind chime on the door tinkled merrily, and Kavi winced. Wind chimes annoyed him. And he wasn’t going out with anyone who liked wind chimes. Maybe that was shallow of him. But a point to consider was just what if she seemed right? They’d have wind chimes in the house and he’d never be happy again.

Thank the lord Cauvery doesn’t like them, he thought. A little hope was always good.

The boy at the counter, he watches as Pretty Boy enters.

The boy at the counter hates Pretty Boy.

Pretty Boy smiles his thousand watt smile as he enters.

The boy at the counter sneers at the eighteen year old customers who are preening.

The boy at the counter likes to believe that he has a life.

The boy at the counter wonders if the taller of the eighteen year olds will ever notice him.

Pretty Boy smiles at him.

The boy at the counter snarls back.

The boy at the counter is unhappy.

Pretty Boy couldn’t care less. He doesn’t really like people snarling at him.

Kavi doesn’t understand the boy at the counter’s problem. He knows it’s not possible to smile always. But there’s no real need to snarl, especially when he drops a bomb out of his wallet there every month. He hears some giggling, and he looks at the two girls. One is tall, with long straight bonded hair. The other is shorter, with glasses, and both are looking at a rack holding popular fiction. He feels a grimace coming on, and turns to the regular fiction rack. Just as he picks up Bono on Bono, he feels his phone buzzing. He considers not answering, but then, seeing that it was his aunt trying to call, answers out of duty.

“Masi. Kaise hain aap?”

“Oh stop that nonsense. I called to talk to you about Ashok.”

Not again, Kavi almost begs. He drops in one of the chairs that the bookshop has. He loves the bookshop because of the chairs. “What about Ashok, masi?”

“Beta, I was thinking, that maybe we should contact Sandhya again.”

Kavi feels himself tensing up a little. “Kyon? What’ll you achieve?”

“Don’t you think that after all this time, she might have gotten over that silly little incident? After all, a woman wants children, a husband, family, uska apna ghar. And you know Ashok can provide all that.”

“Masi, no offence. But the silly little incident was hardly little. He slept with that girl a week before the wedding masi. You think Sandhya wants to have kids with him? Have a family, a home with him? Hell, I wouldn’t want to marry him!”

“Kavi, no one’s akde you to marry him. So that opinion won’t be necessary. I know my son. I know he has made mistakes. But I also know Sandhya was a good girl, and the trash that hangs on his arm can’t compare.”

“I don’t know masi.”

“Kavi, I want you to talk to Sandhya. Run interference. Please, don’t say no, I won’t take it for an answer.”

“Masi, I – ”

His battery died. He suddenly felt so happy he could have kissed the boy at the counter.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rahul stumbled into Lalitha’s flat a little after 2 a.m. It had been a long day, and he was a tad irritated. He had no idea what he was doing making ad films. As he took off his shoes and socks, he wondered if it was too late for him to switch jobs, and go do something tame. Like banking. Then he grinned. Looking up, he saw lights flickering. Madam had gone off to sleep in front of the telly. Which did not bode well. She rarely watched TV into the night unless she was annoyed. He walked in, heading straight for the fridge. He should have gone home, but somehow, being here was more comforting. He went off for a shower. He thought of how amazing the hot water felt, sluicing down his back, easing up the knots. He walked out 10 minutes later, and pulled on some clothes from Lalitha’s cupboard. He remembered how one day, they realised he had an entire wardrobe stashed in her cupboard. They both had stared at each other wide-eyed, wondering when that had happened. Then they both ended up in a heap on her floor laughing like loons. He smiled at that, and padded out to the living room, and reached for his cell, which he had out of habit, left on the little squatting pig next to the living room entrance. Lalitha’s cat, Mac, was stretched out around his phone. He glanced up as Rahul reached for his phone, and Rahul obliged him with the customary scratch on his head.

Missed call. Check. Cauvery. Good, she was home. He dropped the phone on the sofa. Picked up Lalitha. She murmured nonsense, and snuggled to him. As he tucked her into bed, he was glad he hadn’t gone home.

MoonRiver 2: Colder

2004-12-07T06:27:00.000-08:00

The spill of cinema goers and the noise that was a mixture of reviews, songs and scene discussions churned around Regal Cinema, making it impossible to hear one’s thoughts unless they were hurled out of the mind with the force of a hundred waterfalls. Relieved of the multiple tortures that were the movie, Cauvery turned to Lalitha, who stood at the fringes of the spill, lighting a Benson. Sandhya stood beside her, in a short green kurta and jeans, with a stole wrapped around her shoulder, observing and contemplating the crowd. She wondered if Sandhya had actually moved on, and was entirely free of Ashok the bastard. Rahul came up behind Lalitha, bummed her smoke. Kavi was somewhere, attached to his cell phone. Upon his return, an unspoken agreement has them walking towards Leopold. The sounds and smells there are strangely familiar, and help them all settle into their own thoughts for a while.

Cauvery is lighting a cigarette, a Wills Classic Milds, when Lalitha says, “Do you think she should have married him in the end?”
“She didn’t. She just danced with him and the dholak,” said Cauvery.
“I think she meant Aishwarya’s sister,” said Kavi.
“Who gives a shit.”
“C’mon, Cauvery, you of all people should have something to say about it,” claims Rahul, looking a little disgruntled at her reply. Had she said it was a bad movie, he could have come up with a strong statement like I Hated The Movie. Cauvery tends to be technical at times like these, which is a comfort to Rahul.
Sandhya watches the ease with which they converse, all of them, and wonders if it is prudent to feel a little jealous. Not of the ease alone, but also of the freedom that Lalitha and Cauvery have given themselves. She looks at Rahul to find the devotional light in his eyes faintly repulsive. Should her thoughts shock her, she wonders. Its not too late, only about ten thirty, but she suddenly wants to go home.

Lalitha watches Sandhya as she swallows a long sip from her glass. Its water. She would never go so low as beer. She feels Sandhya’s restiveness making its way into her and wishes Sandhya would go. It would be cruel to feel that way, but she can’t stop her thoughts. What does one do, while over inane conversations at the dinner table, someone starts pinching at your peace of mind? She looks at Rahul and Kavi. They could be considered good looking, Rahul with his conservative hair and shaved face. His rimless glasses, that made him look a tad older. The shirts and the collars and the trousers. No one in their right mind would have expected Lalitha to fall for Rahul. Unless they knew better. And then there was Kavi. She looked at his long shaggy hair, contemplating whether she should bitch about the blonde highlights now. Perhaps later. She takes in his short multi coloured kurta – one she bought from Varanasi. His expensive little watch. The easy smile and the quick affection. Kavi made a wonderful brother. Even if they did not share parents.

Rahul feels it as well. The sudden lack of complacency in Sandhya. The sudden bursts of irritation and anger. A look at Lalitha confirms his doubt. Suddenly he wishes Sandhya were gone. And immediately feels guilt creeping in. he figures Lalitha and Cauvery feel the same, but without the free helping of guilt. He runs his fingers through his hair. And winces, remembering how he would do the same to Lalitha’s hair a while back. Oh well. Its hair. It grows.

Kavi is tired. Very tired of his mobile phone. And his job. There was a time he could take pictures forever. There was a time he loved his Nikons more than life. Now was not that time. Now was just about models, agencies, clothes, designers, media types, marketing assholes, ball talk and fucking all or one of them at any given point of time. Then he looks at Sandhya, so far off from all of this that makes his world, and thinks he cannot talk to her. He cannot talk to people who do not work like him. Who do not behave like him. Who do not bull shit. That’s why he can talk to Cauvery. Then, he gets scared. He cannot converse in the normal world. Suddenly Cauvery’s crankiness is justified yet annoying. Suddenly Lalitha’s quirkiness is pissing off. Suddenly Rahul’s pseudo MBA image is appealing to the point of wanting to try on that blue shirt and those rimless glasses. And Sandhya’s confusion is attractive. He rubs his hands over his face.

He rubs his hands over his face. A gesture she knows. A gesture she has come to dislike. It means Kavi is not at peace. Which would mean she will soon lose her peace. She wants, very desperately, for Sandhya to leave. She hates herself for wanting it. For being so cruel, for it is like kicking a puppy. Or slamming the door on the face of that boy from C.R.Y. who knocks to tell you 11.1 crore children are working in unbearable conditions. What a fucking piss off.

I have to leave. The thought takes root, grows into a tree and blossoms. It freezes. And like all things frozen, expands until it fills every space in Sandhya’s mind that is already not occupied. If this were a movie, the person playing Sandhya would have given a VO. Voice Over. It would go on and on and on and then suddenly, in real time, Sandhya would say, now, before she implodes with insecurities and wants:
“I have to go. Its getting late.”
“No its not!” says Lalitha. “Don’t go.”
Rahul nods in agreement. She feels even worse. Kavi suddenly looks grim and agitated, and Cauvery looks resigned.
“Sorry guys, I have to.” And she leaves.

Just another moment in life where something could have happened, but did not. All that happened was the remainder of the bunch went ahead and ordered their meals as Sandhya grabbed a cab off the street and made off homewards.

~~~~~~~~~~
This is not my house. That is the first thought that is in Sandhya’s head and it has now lodged itself there like a bullet evading the finest surgeons. Every time she walks into the house she had once shared with her mother, she thinks This Is Not My House. Sometimes, the entire thought is in capitals, and not just the first alphabets.

Sometimes its in Arial Black Bold Italics size 22.

Today is not one of those days. Today is just the day Sandhya will hate her mother again, just like most women do, and curse her for moving to Pune to live with her sister. Her mother, always wanting to live with like minded, like aged people. Why couldn’t she just live in her home, instead of living here in spirit, reminding Sandhya every single moment, that this was not Sandhya Mhatre’s home, but her mother, Gauri Mhatre’s house. Nothing was like Sandhya would have it. Not the couch, not the dining table, not the bedrooms. Everything belonged to Mom, who now lived in Pune. And a thought strikes her. So funny that the morbid slant of it can be ignored. If Mom dies, will she have to get the house cremated with her?

She hates the house. That much is obvious. She hates the fact that it does not belong to her and therefore its loyalties will never lie towards her. She can’t stop these thoughts, these sudden bursts of anger, even as she overfeeds her mothers Angel Fish. She never knows exactly how much to feed them anyways. It’s not the memories that she hates, mind you. She loves those. They are of Captain and Mrs. Mhatre and their little angel Sandhya, who was the perfectest, prettiest baby ever. She doesn’t even hate the events that took place in it, like her parents divorce. She didn’t really care about it. She was lying, but who cares, right? She had thought Ashok cared. He didn’t. Too bad, she managed. She had friends now, all the other teachers on the foyer where she taught. The women she met at the park where she went for her walks three days a week. Friends from college who she met over the occasional coffee, lunch or MSN chat.

Unfortunately, she thought as she lay on her bed hugging her pillow, they all had lives apart from this.

2004-11-26T04:12:00.000-08:00

Colder

MoonRiver 1: Taking Stock

2004-11-26T03:34:00.000-08:00

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.