Chapter 6 #2
Ritu glanced at him, his profile now anything but stone. His cheekbones were relaxed, his jaw still sharp under that beard but softened as if in repose. The tittering of his eyelashes in the wind was the only movement on that face and she wondered if he also modelled for his own couture?
“Very, very long,” he said quietly.
“This is what I ask my patients all the time. Most heart problems aren’t only the result of eating habits or excess drinking or smoking. They stem from lives that have felt too long. Do you know, there is a pattern I have discovered?”
His face turned towards her, eyebrows raised.
“The younger folks always say life has felt long. But the older ones… who have seen probably double, triple the problems of the younger ones… they always say life has felt short. Just goes to show that the more you age, the more you understand that even the long days, long weeks, the most difficult of months — are just blips on the map. And that at the tail end, you only remember the short days, the best days, the ones that passed too quickly to hold on.”
“How long has life been for you, Doctor?”
“39 years,” she answered reflexively.
“How long has it felt?”
Ritu blinked at him, stunned. Nobody had ever asked her that. In that moment, she realised that she had asked everybody, and nobody had asked her. And she had never minded it. Until… now.
“Hmm?” His head cocked to one side, not playing a game of tug-of-war but genuinely curious.
She glanced down at her feet, sand between her toes, nails painted peach and now looking a horror-stricken brown, water washing over them to take it all away before more silt pushed in.
Maybe an age would come for her, too, when the bad would begin to look good in hindsight, when the long would feel short.
Or maybe it was already here. The dreaded 40. She was getting old.
“Pot unable to answer the kettle?”
She burst out laughing. The wind whipped her hair half out of her ponytail, and the locks were flying across her face. She laughed, whipping her face against the wind to dislodge her hair. She began to raise her hand to tuck them when she realised it was still in his. He immediately let go.
Ritu glanced up at Nilay. He was staring at her again, like he didn’t have any plans to look away.
“There’s another PVR in Juhu running night shows for you to stare.”
His mouth pulled up on one side. “Is my doctor propositioning me for a date?”
She smirked back — “Not my type of movies running.”
His head cocked to the side. “What are your type of movies?”
“The ones that are not watched with you.”
His eyes darkened.
“Oh, take that middle-school humour away!” She scoffed, looking away at the dark sky kissing the horizon.
Something was happening to her stomach. She was a 39-year-old woman, had seen life, closely, too closely, understood biology — even more closely.
And yet her stomach was hellbent on riding a merry-go-round.
Dopamine. Serotonin. Adrenaline. She knew the hormones, knew where they were squirting and making her feel all this.
But why with only a few words? And a look? And why from him out of all people?
“If not your type of movies,” he broke the roaring silence. “Then your kind of food. It’s seven-thirty. Are you hungry?”
Ritu looked between them — “We don’t seem dressed for your kind of places.”
“What are my kind of places?”
“Five stars.”
“You are a world-class doctor, don’t tell me you don’t dine at such places too.”
“I do, but they are not places I would go to if I had to go for myself.”
“Then where would you go?”
She shook her head. “Let’s head home. I have to eat dinner with Maya and family.”
“Mmm…” he stepped back from her, walking backwards towards the beach. “Maybe I can afford a guess.”
“What guess?”
“If you are so opposed to ‘my’ kind of places as you put it, maybe I know what you like.”
“What do I like?”
“I show, I don’t tell.”
“My buttons are not pushed like that.”
His mouth split into a grin.
“Dinner with Maya will happen, but what about a snack?”
Ritu hated that he was close to that button. That is why she rallied harder — “Where?”
“Not far from here.”
“How far?”
“Walking distance.”
“Our clothes?”
“Not exactly feasible but they will let us in.”
“How?”
“My face.”
“So obnoxious,” she muttered under her breath, following him. He continued to walk backwards, his balance perfect. Ritu observed it medically, and was happy to pronounce that he was already in far better shape than she had found him in.
————————————————————
The place that would allow them inside, dressed like they were, turned out to be a sandwich stall, and the man who saw Nilay Patel’s face and allowed them entry on his thin, broken wooden counter, was the sandwich seller. Raju Sandwichwala.
“You cannot eat this!” Ritu whispered to him.
“Why? Salad is healthy, bread is… almost healthy.”
“But butter is not. And this chutney is floating in salt and oil.”
His face fell.
“Dost, roz wala?[3]” The sandwich seller asked. He looked big and scary, with an ear pierced, dark skin stubbled on his muscled face. But his eyes looked bored and harmless.
“You eat this every day?” Ritu turned to Nilay.
“Not since… the last month.”
She sighed.
“Ok, I won’t have it. But you absolutely must. His sandwich is the real deal. The original Bombay Sandwich. Dost, ek veg sandwich.”
Ritu held back her smile at that switch from polished English to pedestrian Mumbaiya Hindi. The man dove into making the sandwich.
“Butter nahi, Bhaiya[4],” she directed him, arresting his hand that had already scooped up a mountain of butter on his knife.
“Pakka?[5]” He asked, eyeing the knife in his hand.
“Pakka. Aur, chutney ekdum kam. Ek hi side pe.[6]”
He glanced at Nilay like she was crazy, but continued making it.
“Aur kam[7],” Ritu peeped into his stall just as he lathered a generous amount of green chutney on one slice.
“Ab laga diya, Madam.[8]”
“Waapis nikalo, waapis nikalo,[9]” she pointed. And like she was making him commit a crime, he scraped most of the chutney off the bread until it was a light minty green.
“Salaad sab daaloon?[10]” He asked sarcastically. Nilay’s vendor, Nilay’s tone.
“Sab, sab, extra salad.[11]”
He started slicing fresh veggies. A whole cucumber; he sliced it on the bread and laid it in a thick bed.
Then followed it up with one whole tomato.
Ritu’s mouth watered. Then the boiled potato.
He sliced a beet and an onion to top of the mountain and it looked like another slice of bread wouldn’t manage to keep it all inside the sandwich.
But Ritu didn’t doubt it. She had eaten enough Bombay sandwiches to know that it would all tuck in nicely.
He reached for the sprinkler of masala and she stopped him again — “Masala ekdum kam![12]”
His face contorted. He stared at her — “Taste hi nahi aayega.[13]”
“Chalega. Ekdum kam… bus, bus…[14]”
He dusted the sandwich masala over the mountain of salad and covered it with a plain slice of bread. Then pressed. A perfect square, with all the layers locked tightly inside. Ritu glanced at the man standing silently beside her. His eyes were on her, amused.
“You scared of getting a Delhi belly, Doctor?”
“I have gotten it multiple times this month already.”
The paper plate with a fat sandwich was pushed on the counter in front of her. Cut up into nine pieces — 3X3. Her favourite. Small pieces that became the perfect bites!
“Here,” she held the plate up between them. Nilay’s eyes widened.
“Wait, you got him to make it without chutney, butter and masala for me?”
She nodded, reached for a piece and separated it from its perfect family. It broke away to a whole rainbow between perfect white breads. Green, red, yellow, purple.
“White bread is not something I would recommend eating every day for now, but occasionally it’s fine if eaten with lots of fibre. Eat.”
“Ritu, you don’t have to eat this,” he began to pull the plate from her hand. “Madam ke liye ek sada, teekha sandwich…[15]”
She had already bitten into the piece and held her other hand underneath it to catch the falling vegetables.
“Wow.” She glanced up at Nilay and grinned, her cheeks full.
At one time, she wouldn’t have been caught dead with her cheeks round in front of him.
Now, she didn’t care. Neither did he, it seemed, as he guiltily broke a piece and popped it whole into his mouth. His eyes fell closed.
“Thank you,” he said, already chewed through his piece while hers was still half-held in her hand. She was a slow eater. The slowest.
“What kind of sad food have you been eating every day?” She asked.
“Very sad. Rajiv has taken everything off the table.” He reached for another piece, gesturing his man to make a second round.
“Maybe you can get a sourdough loaf and have your cook make this same sandwich at home. Eat it with this kind of a mountain of salad. Get your chutney made with minimal salt and oil.”
“Hmm…” he was busy eating. “Can I eat the sauce?” He eyed the red bottle with the white nozzle. This was another barrel of heart agony. Kaddu sauce, made out of pumpkin, palm oil, salt and tons of sugar.
“Only a taste.” Ritu reached for the bottle and squirted a pea-sized amount on one piece. He picked it up and popped it into his mouth. And his eyes closed for a whole other reason. She bit her lip. He looked… so good.
His eyes popped open, and she was caught. Deer in the headlights.
She couldn’t even look away now. So, Ritu smirked at him — “Couturier and designer caught hogging roadside sandwich?”
“I’ve got a better headline for you — Couturier and designer caught orgasming to a roadside sandwich.”
She rolled her eyes. At that moment, the sandwich seller pushed another paper plate of sandwich their way and he picked it up in his hand.
“Come here, Doctor.”
Ritu gaped at the butter swiped on top, and the chutney and kaddu sauce squeezed on the side.
“Butter kyu dala, Bhaiya?![16]” She started but was cut off as Nilay popped a piece of that new sandwich into her mouth. “Oh my go…!” Her eyes widened. She had to cover her mouth to chew as she glared at Nilay — “Don’t eat that.”
“All yours.” he swapped their plates. And then, Ritu enjoyed every bite of her sada sandwich. Buttery bread, chutney singing in her mouth like the best orchestra, masala turning to magic between the salad and butter.
“What are you doing this weekend, Doctor?”
“Not sure. Why do you ask?”
“Will you fly with me to Patan?”
The bite she was about to fill in her mouth stumbled. “Excuse me?”
“As my doctor,” he clarified.
“As your doctor? Are you the President or something? Why would a doctor fly with you? You are not in any danger. Relax. Nothing will happen to you. I asked you to inform one of your team members for safety’s sake…”
“Yes, but what if a doctor accompanies me instead? It might be a fun day for you. We will leave Saturday early morning, return by Sunday afternoon. All expenses paid, of course. A day of shoot at Rani ni Vav. It’s an iconic stepwell in Patan. The weather will be good too.”
Ritu set the piece of her sandwich down. “You do not need care like that. Trust me, everything is fine. You are fine.”
He nodded. But his face was back to that neutral territory, where nothing was visible behind his bored, entitled mouth.
“Patan is where they make Patola sarees?” She asked. His face lit up. But he held his own, nodding, finishing his last bite and folding the paper plate into a small crumble.
“What time will we be back on Sunday?”
“You mean you want to come?”
“I am considering it.”
“There are no PVRs there.”
“Ok, you pushed me to the other side.”
He laughed. Really laughed. And Ritu finished her sandwich, hating that she couldn't look at him a little more.