Chapter 7
— RITU —
She felt like a teenager, lying to her parents and sneaking off to an outing.
And she hadn’t done those things even as a teenager!
Maya and Gautam had happily waved her off, thinking she was flying to Patan to meet an old friend who was married and settled there.
She was an adult and did not need permission.
Then why was she scared and thrilled at the same time that she had succeeded in fooling Maya?
Ritu pushed all those thoughts aside as her Uber glided into the Kalina Private Airport atrium.
She was on time, and he, as she had discovered, was before time.
Standing at the entry gate with nothing in his hand, not even a duffel bag, he exuded charisma.
He wasn’t the usual business-formals-wearing man today.
Even his shirt made heads turn — white, button-up, but Mandarin collar, tucked into simple but stately black pants.
The security was looking at him, probably wondering where they had seen him.
Or, if he had already opened his big, mean mouth, then plotting to detain him.
He had that air about him — like he owned the air that you were breathing.
When he was in his NiP zone, that aura multiplied a few dozen times and made him so obnoxious.
She noted his gaze catch her in the Uber, and he began to descend the steps. Five people behind him scampered. That’s when she noticed it. They held bags and handbags and outfit bags. Four out of five were laden with things.
The Uber came to a halt, and her door was opened.
“Ok,” Ritu muttered, knowing who it was that had opened her door, as she started paying the Uber driver. “What is this for?”
“You are my girlfriend.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?!”
“Quiet,” he whispered, bending down to her ear level. “You are not officially coming as my doctor.”
“This is not a third-grade romcom,” she paused in her bid to hand over the money. “I am turning back if this is your game.”
“It’s not a game,” he panicked. “Ok. Friend. I haven’t told them anything except that I am expecting a friend. A friend. Ok?”
Her nostrils flared, and his gaze dropped there.
“Sorry, Doctor.”
“Stop calling me that if you want them to believe you,” Ritu handed over the money and received confirmation on her phone. She pushed out and he made space for her.
“Allow me,” he began to round the car to the dickey when she got out with her one and only duffel.
“I’m good,” she held it up.
“That’s it?” He asked.
“One day. How much do you think I need for one day?”
He opened his mouth.
“Scratch that, how much do you think anyone needs?”
He smirked. And after the momentary shock of the moment, Ritu found her mouth tipping too.
“You look very…” she paused, “normal.”
“I wore all my jewellery, then ditched it for the check-in.”
She sputtered. Then glanced up. His staff was gaping at them like they were aliens.
“Why are they looking at us like that, Mr. Patel?”
“Nilay.”
“Huh?”
“I do have my friends call me Mr. Patel but only in chosen fantasies.”
“Yuck!” She scoffed, and his smirk widened into a laugh that he tried but couldn’t stop.
“Can I carry your bag?”
“It’s not that heavy.”
“I still insist.”
She passed it. And then realised that she had. When had a man offered to carry her bag before this? She began to reach out and pull it back when he shifted it to his other hand. “I am allowed to carry weight, aren’t I?”
“That’s not even weight,” she bit back a scoff. “It’s a change of clothes.”
“Ooof,” he pretended to huff.
“Where is your bag?”
He pointed with his chin at his staff, as she had guessed. A line of trolleys.
“Come here, Doctor,” he pressed his hand on the small of her back and guided her out of the Uber’s way.
“Ritu.”
“Right. Come.”
They ascended the steps to the same wide pairs of eyes.
“NiP,” one of them squeaked. “Uhh… we will need your friend’s ID to check in.”
“Ritu?”
She reached inside her bag and held out her passport. The man — a young, dandy, good-looking man, strode to the security desk outside the airport.
“Guys, meet Ritu Kapadia, my friend. Ritu, this is my team.”
That’s it. He did not introduce them all by name. Head nods and smiles later, they began to stride towards security check.
“Would you like me to have your coffee ready in the flight at boarding or after take-off, NiP?”
“NiP has switched over from coffee.”
“When?”
“Would you like some green tea then?”
Ritu gaped at the entitled snobbish boss called ‘NiP’ who didn’t even grace them with his eyes or words. Just a curt shake of his head.
“Your ID, NiP.”
He just accepted it and pushed it into his pocket.
“Hello, Diva, you should be the PVR show,” Ritu couldn't help but remark quietly to him.
His mouth curled on one side.
One of his people got off a call in a panic. “NiP! The permission to bring heavy shooting equipment inside the well was denied!”
“Whose job is to make sure it comes through?”
“Alisha is there, but…”
“Make it happen.”
“What if we…”
“Have I worked on what-ifs?”
Silence.
“No, NiP.”
He nodded, and began to move.
“Nilay.”
He slowed. “Yes?”
“Chill out,” Ritu caught up with him.
“I am not worked up.”
“I am not talking about you. Your people are worked up.”
“It’s their daily SOP. They get worked up, come to me panicking, I issue ultimatums and they solve it on their own. When you push them to the right place and by the right amount, you’d be surprised how well people can function.”
Ritu went through the formalities behind him, his entire team fallen behind them.
The small private plane idled on the tarmac and he pushed open the glass door, holding it for her.
She noticed he held her bag while his were held by his people.
In all her time knowing this man, she had heard and seen enough.
She had heard all about his fashion, his empire, his creativity, his genius, his acumen.
She had seen all of his snobbery and entitled barbs.
Never had she thought about how they were all interrelated, and maybe none of them defined him.
Ritu glanced at the back of his head — perfectly trimmed hair, a sliver of his fair neck, the collar of his shirt, sloping down to broad shoulders.
From where she saw, at this point, he looked like a man scared of his heart failing him, scared of the world witnessing that spectacle.
He was, at his core, a man insecure of letting go.
She had never broken people down in her head.
Her head had always been a busy place of more constructive pursuits.
With him, as he started to climb the stairs to the plane and turned around to make sure she did, Ritu didn’t know why she couldn't stop making, breaking, then again making him up in her head.
————————————————————
She had never been to Patan, or anywhere in north Gujarat.
It was beautiful. The December wind was cold, nipping her skin red as it blew over the open stepwell where Nilay’s team was camped.
The stepwell itself was a marvel. She had seen some photos, but up close, it was a literal legend.
The stones were as old as a millennium, the pillars carved for a queen who had lived a thousand years ago, with the reservoir still filling with water that the locals believed was from the nearby dried stream of the River Saraswati.
Ritu wasn’t interested in history or lore anymore. And yet, sitting here in a folding chair, as she eyed Nilay addressing the models on the heritage of this place where they were about to begin shooting, she found herself swirling again into the mysteries of history.
“This is an inverted temple,” he turned a forefinger around them. “Each of these carvings — literature. Stories that haven’t died even after the erosion of a thousand years. Water has filled, water has flowed, invaders have come, invaders have gone. But art, and a queen’s ode to it, has survived.”
She found herself intrigued by how well he told a story. Without a hero, without a heroine, he told the story of a well and made it… intriguing.
“You are telling a story of that art, wrapped in the silk of this land that refuses to turn into dust. The Patola that you will be donning soon are the heritage of this land. They have lived in local families for generations. And now, they have been revived, re-imagined, and re-stitched to signal a new voice, bellowing out with that same old story — of art, that refuses to die.”
The models, mostly women, with a few men, were all still in robes, hair and makeup in place. Ritu didn’t know what they would wear — sarees or ghaghras. But now she knew his shoot was about Patola.
“Chin up, eyes to the sky, show the world that you are draped in a weave that was indestructible when the rest of them were still wearing leaves.”
Some chuckles, and a round of applause broke the pregnant pause after his last words had left their echo.
Ritu found her hands coming together too, quietly applauding him from afar.
He got busy then, as he had been ever since they had boarded the plane.
He called one of his assistants and murmured something before turning to the racks of outfits.
And Ritu gaped as the assistant came straight to her.
“Ma’am, NiP asks that you sit under the shade here.”
“It’s not a problem, the sun feels good in this cold.”
“Ummm… he asked specifically to transfer you under the shade.”
“Tell him I will transfer when I want to.”
His eyes widened. Ritu nodded. Then saw him trace the path straight back to his boss, this time on hesitant steps.
He pushed to Nilay’s ear to relay her message, she hoped word for word.
And the obnoxious man had the gall to laugh.
Ritu didn’t fuel his fire as he turned over his shoulder and caught her eyes.
She stared pointedly, and he stared back.