4. Chennai Express
Coorg. Kodagu. Madikeri. Such a beauty.
Maya had been plastered to the window of their car since the moment they had driven up the plateaus from Mysore. It was all lush, dark green, inviting everybody to just run into the thick tropical forests and sing ‘Kashmir main, tu Kanyakumari!”
Ok, not everybody. Aarya was busy vibing to music beside her and Gautam was on his phone in the front seat. They had landed early in the morning, driven the almost three hours to their hotel, dropped their stuff and were now driving up to the silk mill. It was one of the oldest silk mills of Karnataka and Gautam vouched for its quality. He wasn’t too sure about customisation though. And that is why they were here. To run test pieces and ensure that they got exactly what they wanted.
“Right here,” Gautam pointed, glancing up from his phone.
“This is the old mill, you don’t want to go to the new mill?” Their driver asked.
“No. This one.”
“Have you driven around here before?” Maya asked. His shoulder stiffened.
“Yes.”
She took the cue and zipped up. She wouldn’t have mentioned his truck-driving days, but he didn’t have to act so defensive. It was a feat that he had grown to this place from that. He should have been proud of himself, advertised to everybody and their mother that the mills he drove trucks to now were his suppliers and partners.
Their car wove through fresh tea plantations glinting with the rain’s dew. A small waterfall burst out from the rock on the other side. Wow . “Can we walk around here later on?” She wondered aloud.
“Will it produce silk for us?” Gautam burned.
“If I collect silkworms then why not?” She burned back, looking for laughs. She found none. Aarya was still vibing to the music she had shared with him on the flight here. She kicked his leg. He glanced at her. Ha ha , she mimed. He smiled. Die , she mimed. And he grinned.
“If you are done chit-chatting, care to get out of the car?” Gautam’s curt voice startled her. And Maya looked up, only to find them parked. At the end of the road sat a small red-brick structure.
“Will this mill be able to produce to our scale?” Aarya asked, pulling the AirPods out of his ears.
Gautam just got out and tugged on his cuffs. He wore an olive bomber jacket over his uniform of white shirt and black slacks. His shoes, for a change, were weather-appropriate. Maya adjusted her white silk dupatta and got out. She had chosen a full white kasavu-inspired salwar-kameez, hoping to get a few photographs in the tea gardens. With the grump marching in front of her though, that did not seem possible. Unless she produced silkworms from tea bushes.
Aarya nudged his shoulder into hers — “What?”
“I dressed up and all, and I can’t even take a photo in this beautiful place,” she whispered.
He pulled his phone out and aimed it at her. As if on an unsaid cue, they slowed their steps, Maya slipping back towards the backdrop of tea plantations. She flipped her hair back to pose just when the grump turned. He didn’t even need to glare. His cold eyes were enough to chill even the chilled weather. Maya flicked her finger down her neck, squirming back to him — “Insects,” she winced. He turned and kept striding.
“That video is gold,” Aarya whispered in her ear. She elbowed him.
“Gautam avare,” a local in a checkered shirt and lungi greeted him. “Welcome. Ganeshan sir called you are coming.”
“Thank you. This is my team — Maya and Aarya.”
“Swagata, swagata,” the man folded his hands, leading them inside the mill.
“They have a bigger, more famous power loom mill in the town. But this is their old, lesser-known handloom facility,” Gautam informed. “The designs you want will be woven better here.”
Maya replaced her fun hat for work hat and got down to business. She knew what she wanted to see, she had pointed it out to Aarya too. So they separated from Gautam as he went with the manager to work out costs and logistics.
Beautiful threads of silk went through skilled hands and looms, only to emerge in the form of strong, durable fabric. Fabric that would become heirloom sarees to survive generations to come. Maya tested the fibres and fabrics, they were solid. The workers were skilled. She began opening some of their samples and directing the head there on what they wanted. She knew English and the process became smooth.
“Is this ok, Aarya?” She held her iPad out to him. He had been on call ever since they had entered the mill. Things didn’t look right with him.
Maya worked nonetheless, sitting beside one weaver herself and getting tiny samples assembled. She didn’t know where the time went. It was only when the people around her began to get up and stretch that she realised it was lunch time.
“Are you ready to leave?” Gautam came and stood behind her.
“Hey. Umm… we will need to come back again. They are breaking for lunch and the samples are still not ready.”
“We will have to come back tomorrow. They have a half day.”
“Oh… where is Aarya?”
“He had to leave.”
“Leave? Where?”
“Back to Mumbai.”
She got to her feet — “What happened?”
“Family emergency.”
“He didn’t even say goodbye…”
“Do you want to keep discussing Aarya’s departure or can we start moving?”
“Are you always this short with everyone or I am still the special someone?”
His eyes shut. He shook his head.
“Maya,” he addressed her. “I am hungry, and they need to shut the place. Now, are you ready to leave?”
She whirled around, feeling her hair hit his face. But now the move wouldn’t be dramatic if she turned to apologise. So she strutted out.
The beauty of the noon was enhanced by the weather. The sun was bright and it was raining. What a marvel! She stepped out to catch a few drops on her palm, tempted to run out. But she was also aware of her all-white ensemble. And she had learned her lesson on the first day of this job.
“Just one selfie…” she fought with herself. And logically, she had her dupatta to wrap around herself, worse situation. And they were heading straight to the hotel in a car.
“Eeeee…” she ran out into the rain, pointed her phone to herself and took infinite selfies with the sun shining behind her.
“Come back here!” Gautam thundered.
“What?” She scowled, venturing back under the mill’s roof. He was livid, his gaze going from her face to her chest to her feet. Maya glanced down. She wasn’t wearing red underthings today. And she had pulled her dupatta over her chest. But… Oops. Ok, didn’t work.
“What is wrong with you?” He swore, pulling off his jacket and wrapping it around her shoulders. The mill workers were exiting the space, their eyes on her, and him, as he covered her. Her hair was damp, not wet, and yet he pushed it into the turned-up collar of his jacket and tightened the lapels. “Now behave, and quietly get in the car.”
Their car rolled up and he opened the door for her. She shivered, sliding in.
“We are not nineteen anymore, M! What the hell?”
She froze. Their car wound down the slope. And realisation seemed to dawn on him.
He sat back — “We will only be able to come back tomorrow now. Since today is Saturday, take the rest of the day off.”
“G, I really thought I would be able to come out of the rain unharmed…”
“I have booked our flight out for tomorrow afternoon. We will collect the samples from here and directly go to the airport.”
“Stop ignoring me.”
He did not look at her again.
————————————————————
She did a solo tour of Coorg all afternoon, then came back and took a long bubble bath in her own personal tree house. GK Textiles did not cut costs when it came to employee accommodations. They all got the same type of treehouse rooms that were perched in the middle of massive trees.
It was after seven that she descended from her tree house for dinner. This was too beautiful a place to eat dinner inside her room. Even with all the sweeping views. So Maya changed into a pair of denim shorts and T-shirt and went on a stroll around the hotel property, absorbing the late-evening fog and the fresh, clean, green scent. Then she made her way to their famous mountain-view restaurant.
“Hello, welcome to Avanta. Would you like me to seat you?”
“Yes, please. A table for one,” Maya requested, then stopped short. There sat Gautam, on a table for two, alone, looking out of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. “Umm… actually, I see a friend. Let me see if we are dining together. If not, then I’ll take that table.”
“You took the window seat again,” she remarked, coming to stand beside him. His head turned. He looked relaxed, his shirt sleeves rolled up, the top two buttons open, his hair a little mussed, as if he had been lying on the bed before coming here.
“Maya?” He frowned.
“I was about to take a table for one when I saw you. It just felt weird to eat alone when we came here together. If you want me to, I can go.”
He looked conflicted for a second, then nodded at the chair opposite him. Maya sighed, as if she had managed to win a battle. She pulled the chair and sat down.
“No rehashing old times, but can I be friendly with you and expect you to not bite my head off?”
His eyes shut again. She was slowly discovering that this was his way of recalibrating, maybe rebooting his natural response. Which was to bite her head off.
Gautam opened his eyes, and his face softened. His eyes, for the first time since they had met again, were looking at her with something other than disdain.
“What would you like to eat?” He asked.
“What are you having?”
“I was planning to go for their dosa.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him if he would like it with extra ghee, but she bit it off. This was progress. She wouldn’t go back now.
“I think I will also have their benne dosa,” she wondered aloud instead. They placed their orders, with filter coffees on the side. It wasn’t a fine-dining kind of a meal that they had ordered, but this was them. They hadn’t adhered to rules all those years ago. Why would they now?
“How are your parents?” He asked. Maya drank down her surprise and let her answer flow, lest he stop interacting.
“Good. Retired now. They had a few acres of land in Dahanu, so they built a proper farmhouse there and have been enjoying the retired life.”
“Both of them together?”
She shrugged — “I don’t ask, they don’t tell. On paper though they are still together.”
“Hmm.”
“How is… Kumar bhai?”
A smiled formed on his flat mouth — “Living the life he always wanted. He opened a lassi corner in Amritsar and has stayed put. Although, I know he secretly still wants to move around. Maybe buy a truck of his own and just drive around the country.”
“Is he married?”
“No. He says it’s him and his lassi.”
“And what about you?”
“It’s me and my textiles.”
Maya chuckled. “I hope they keep you warm at night.”
“More than your average warm-blooded female.”
“Aaah, so you’ve tested both.”
“Kashmiri pashmina or a girl I picked up in SoBo? The former. Always the former,” he smirked.
Her mouth dropped open. “Gautam Kumar, you naughty boy. And here I thought you were this scowl machine good boy who would blush while even saying the word ‘female.’”
He snorted — “Words, Maya, words. Install a filter from here to here,” he pointed from his temple to his mouth.
“I did. It’s broken now.”
“Want me to have it serviced?”
“No thanks, My ex-husband tried and failed.”
That brought their conversation up short. But this time, it was he who picked up the slack and continued.
“I’m sorry.”
“He is divorced from me, not dead.”
“Still. How long were you married?”
“A few months.”
“That short?”
“It was an arranged-cum-love marriage. Or at least, that’s what I told myself then. We met up because our families wanted us to meet. I was 32, and of course the pressures were piling from everywhere. Most of my friends were married with babies, my relatives kept asking all the time. It was high time. And then we met, liked each other, dated in that ‘modern-arrange-marriage-dates’ way. Our castes, horoscopes, everything matched.”
“Evidently, not everything.”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “I realised we both wanted different things in life and we parted ways amicably.”
“Hmm. And your parents?”
“They didn’t like it. Still don’t. It’s been a month to my divorce and they are already trying to patch us up.”
“Do you want to?”
“No. Why would I take the pains to go through a divorce in the first place if I wanted to get back only a month later. I am not that fickle-minded.”
He gave her a look.
“ That ,” she stressed. “ That fickle minded.”
He laughed, making her feel like she had conquered some massive mountain of Coorg.
“Your benne dosai, ma’am,” the waiter set her platter in front of her with a flourish. It looked yummy. And huge. His dosa was set in front of him, and without even an eye contact, they dug in. The sambhar was the perfect blend of sweet and sour, while the chutney was so fresh. She sneaked a glance at him, and he seemed to be enjoying his chutney, just not drinking it down this time.
“It’s like they plucked a coconut just now and made this!” She held a spoonful of her white coconut chutney in front of her mouth and drooled. Then quickly pulled her phone and snapped a photo of their table set with dosas, condiments and steaming coffees.
“What are you doing?”
“Posting. My rain selfie was a big hit today. What’s your Instagram handle? I’ll add you…”
He grumbled.
“What? Don’t tell me you don’t have one.”
“Ok, I won’t.”
“You know, you have started to act human, humane and cute in just a matter of an hour with me. Please, don’t give me a heart attack by acting sweet in the next hour.”
“Ok, I won’t.”
“That’s it. I am making your Instagram account and posting things on your behalf now.”
“What? No.”
“Yes.”
“Maya.” He warned.
“What?” She glanced up from her account-making shenanigans.
“Eat.”
She glanced from his account credentials to her food. Ok, food was her priority.
“So,” she tore a piece from her massive dosa, folded it and popped it into her mouth. “What do you want your username to be?”
“What you are trying to do amounts to identity theft.”
“Identity theft that is a joke.”
“You are forgetting thousands of families suffer from it every year.”
She stilled. “Haaaaw! Oh my god!” She clutched her jaw in her hands. “You? The Office? Whaaaa?”
“Eat,” he smirked.
“Stop it, Gauti, stop it. I won’t survive the next burst of personality from you.”
“You didn’t think that before.”
“You had a personality back then. This time when I met you, it was like the dementors had sucked all the fun out of you. Were you in prison by any chance?”
“Spent my days worshipping at the altar of Prison Mike.”
“Sir, ma’am, would you like to try the next course?” Their waiter interrupted. Gautam looked at her.
“I am done, I think. I had a lot of junk snacks…”
“When?”
“When I was out sightseeing.”
“Can I interest you in our desserts? We have an array of South Indian, European and fusion desserts,” the waiter held out a dessert menu.
“Now, that I wouldn’t say no to…” she began, then back-pedalled. She had already eaten a massive bogie of sugar today. If the sugar police here knew that, he would think she was out to create a sugar crunch in the world.
“She’ll have a salted caramel and banana waffle, please,” Gautam ordered for her. “And can you repeat my filter coffee?”
“Right away.”
“I ate too much sugar today. Maybe more is not right for my state of mind.”
“What’s the worse you’ll do?”
“I don’t know… climb the trunk of your tree house and sing Channa Mereya?” She tried to scare him.
“Bring a mic. The rains may make it noisy.”
“What if I don’t like salted caramel?”
“You like everything salted caramel.”
Ok. She pursed her lips and gave him her best Maya Kotak eye roll.
Their dessert and coffee were delivered, and without an ounce of added guilt, she dug in. The waffles were the right amount of crispy and moist, the brown salted caramel syrup running generously down all its grooves. “Hmm…?” she held a forkful out to him.
“No, thanks.”
“It’s weekend,” she leaned in, pushing the bite into his mouth. And he begrudgingly chewed, looking amused but annoyed. “Good, no?”
“Good.”
“Want more…?” she began to lean in again when he plucked the fork from her hand and stuffed the bite into her mouth. It was lightning fast, that reaction, so quick that she didn’t see it coming. “Stop trying to make me more fat,” she gabbled with a mouthful.
“Who told you you are fat?”
“You.”
“When did I say that?”
“That day in your office… when Sia was all my waist this and my waist that. Didn’t you say that sugar makes my body slow and swollen?”
“It was a general observation, M. General. Learn to understand the difference.”
“Fine. Whatever,” she stabbed a slice of banana drenched in caramel sauce and tucked in.
“Who else called you fat?”
“Nobody,” she chewed.
“Somebody did.”
“Arey? How can you tell?”
“I can tell. Now I want to know who.”
“My ex-husband.”
“How…”
“But I never believed him,” she clarified. “I know I am curvy in the right places, and sometimes after a few months of ‘enjoy’ phase I do have a little paunchy belly but every girl does! No?”
“Maya?”
“Yes?”
A beat, he swallowed, then, “Nothing.”
A soft silence lingered between them. She ate her waffle and he sipped his coffee. When they were done, he signed the check and they got up to leave. Silent. Still silent. The camaraderie of ten minutes ago was suddenly chilled again. He was back to playing angry strangers.
“Do you want to come sightseeing with me?” She offered.
He glanced up at the dark rainy sky. Then back at her.
“This hotel has a waterfall just behind their property and apparently it is enclosed in a cave or something. I saw it on Instagram… they say in monsoons fireflies hide there and light up the whole place!”
“It’s dark. And late. Sleep. We have to wake up early tomorrow.”
“Fine. You sleep. I’m going.”
“Maya…”
“What?” She whirled, her hair this close to hitting his face again.
“Don’t go alone.”
“I’m taking you in my heart,” she sighed, “where am I alone?” She walked backwards, then turned and ran around the restaurant building. She had surveyed the place and figured the route earlier, so she knew where she was going. Mostly.
“Excuse me?” She called a staff member walking back from one of the treehouses.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is that waterfall-in-a-cave-thing this way?”
“Right this way. Today is full moon so it’ll be extra beautiful. Just be careful of where you step, it can be slippery in this season.”
Maya grinned at him and ran, her denim shorts leaving her legs bare to the wind and the drizzle, the cotton of her T-shirt sticking to her skin. The property fencing was broken with a small gate, and she breached it, slowing her steps as paved, even ground gave way to shrubbery and thick foliage. The path was lit with tiny lamps, courtesy the hotel, and she didn’t have any problems finding her way. In fact, there were signs erected at intervals to point her in the right direction until she stood in front of a massive cave-like opening. The inside looked dark. No lights.
She hesitated.
“3, 2, 1…” she finished counting, and still wanted to go. So she went, marching slowly into the rocky cave. The sounds of wind and rain receded as she ventured deeper, the silence suddenly feeling a little eery.
“I hope that staff member was a real staff member and not a ghost who lures beautiful women into this cave and kills them…” she muttered out loud, trying to adjust her eyes to the dimming light. No sound of any waterfall, no glow of fireflies… Shit, god, should I go back?
“Aaaahhh!” Her foot slipped, her lower muscles straining hard to hold steady but knowing that the ground was coming up fast to kiss her backside. Only, a hard arm kissed it first. Maya stabilised, holding onto the massive set of shoulders that had circled her.
“G!” She blinked. “You are not the ghost who has come in G’s form, right?”
“Only a fool would want to haunt you,” he taunted. And she relaxed. Ghosts didn’t burn like Gautam. She straightened, wincing at the sudden untwisting of her tight muscles. Seriously, 30s was not the time to do all this. And yet, when had age ever stopped her?
“You couldn’t miss the fun, could you?” She grinned.
“There is nothing in here. Let’s go.”
“Just a little more. If we can’t find it then we’ll go.”
“Maya…”
She turned and scampered ahead.
“Maya, I am returning.”
“Bye,” she waved, knowing him and his chivalry. He had been a naive boy but chivalrous even then. And that chivalry had lived on, she discovered as she heard his footsteps behind her.
“See? There’s nothing. Come on,” his drone sounded again.
“Just 50 more steps. 50… 49, 48, 47, 46, 45, 44, 43… Oh, oh, I think I can hear water. Can you…?” Maya broke into a sprint, her whole body ready to lurch up and into the waterfall if she found it. She turned the corner, and there it was. A waterfall, an enchanted pool, and fireflies that lit up the whole space. She stopped short.
“Wow…”
She felt him come up behind her, his body so close to her back, his breath warm against her shoulder. None of them said anything. None of them could. It was that beautiful. So beautiful that she didn’t even have the heart to pull up her phone and take a picture. It would break the sanctity of this place.
Hundreds of tiny fireflies were resting on the ceiling of the cave, one large hole there letting in the moon beams. The waterfall fell in a gush from the wall, while mild rain drizzled from the hole, everything collecting in the pool below.
“Isn’t it pretty?” She whispered, scared that anything louder would make this whole magic vanish.
“It is,” he said, just as soft.
Maya walked slowly to the edge of the pool, then lowered herself until she could slip inside.
“What are you doing…?”
“This is the kind of place you should become a part of. Come,” she held her hand out. He shook his head, his eyes rolling back in annoyance. “Come on, G. When again will you come to Coorg in monsoon, on a full moon night, when fireflies are hiding up here? Come on.”
“You said the same thing and buried me in Juhu Beach’s sand once.”
“I promise not to drown you here,” she chuckled, wiggling her fingers. And her throat dried. He reached up and began to unbutton his shirt, the lapels slowly giving away to fair, muscled skin. The fireflies above must be Gautam fans, because the way their light hit his body looked as if it was meant to highlight it. Maya couldn’t evade her eyes, not that she wanted to.
He pushed his shirt off and dropped it on the ground, then reached for his belt.
“Are you stripping all your clothes?” She whispered shouted.
“You got a problem with that?” He drawled.
“Umm… keep your underwear on at least.”
“Don’t worry, it’s not red.”
She splashed him, making his laugh echo through the cave. To his credit, he only pulled his belt off, deposited his wallet and phone on the ledge and slipped into the pool.
“Wooo, it’s cold.”
“I asked for heated pool but it’s closed for the night, Your Highness.”
He splashed her, the intensity a hundred times of what her little hands could produce. Maya moved away, dipping in a back flip and swimming back towards the waterfall.
“Wait, let me check how deep it is first…” his voice sounded from somewhere. But her eyes were all for the magical ceiling above — rocky outgrowths, fireflies hibernating in droves, and the large hole from where moonlight brought rain in. The moon on water created crystal-like reflections, glinting in her eyes. She sighed, floating, her ears submerged into the water. This was peace, bliss, a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long, long while. She breathed, feeling her heart thump, feeling every beat of her pulse, experiencing the vibrations of the waterfall gushing into the pool somewhere behind her. All of a sudden a hand cupped her head and pulled her straight. She collided right into his body as he manoeuvred her away.
“What…! I was enjo…”
“You would have cracked your skull open,” he turned her, keeping his arms still banded around her.
“Oooh,” Maya staggered back, her feet way above the pool floor but his body protective behind her. She had been about to crash into a rocky ledge. “Thanks, G.”
“When will you stop being a walking-talking liability, M?” He sighed. She turned, a grin on her mouth — “Maybe never.”
“Who took care of you all these years?”
“I take very good care of myself, thank you very much.”
“Sorry,” he smirked. “Who took care of the world around you all these years?”
She splashed him. Or tried to, because her hands and body were tied into his. He laughed, raising one hand to claw his hair back. They floated under the moonlight and Oh. My. God. What god had done his magic on her G to make him like himself? The reflections criss-crossed in his dark eyes, making them sparkle, the curt but amused curve to his lips more pronounced, his mouth looking fuller now that it wasn’t scowling. Water dripped down his stubbled jaw, the dewy drops in this heavenly light making her intentions impure. Maya glanced away, her heart suddenly beating fast.
“What other plan are you cooking?” He warned, his hands pulling her closer by the waist. That broke her reverie. She wore her fun hat again, then barred her teeth. His expression turned suspicious just before she whooped and dipped under water, escaping his hold.
“Maya!” He shot out. She just swiped away — “Let’s see if your swimming skills are as good as your scolding skills!” She retorted. “Catch me if you can before I take a full circuit of the pool! Winner decides tomorrow’s plan!”
“I left behind losing a long time ago, M,” came his ‘trash talk.’ Seriously, he needed a crash course in trash talk which she was happy to give. But for now, she squealed, diving underwater and sliding away. He laughed, she laughed, and they continued to create this symphony of echoes, the world outside forgotten.