Chapter 16 #3
Nilay reached him and his mobile clattered to the floor.
He was trembling. His face was white. Tears burst out of his eyes.
He started to run from the opening and Nilay just turned and blocked it, opening the tap of the closest sink and washing his hands.
He tried to run from behind him and Nilay stepped back, flinging the water off and reaching for the handkerchief in his pocket to dry his hands.
“Just let me leave, please, please, I am begging you…” He burst into tears. “Please I am not interested. Please let me go, please…”
Nilay creased the folds of his handkerchief slowly and slipped it inside his pocket. He pulled the cuffs from under his suit hems, one by one, and looked at himself in the mirror.
“Please, please…” Jimmy fuva was sobbing, about to fall to his knees in the corner.
“So if somebody wants to learn all that you know about archeology, what are they supposed to do, Jimmy fuva?”
His eyes widened. And he fell to the floor howling — ‘I am sorry, I am sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“How does it feel?”
He kept crying.
“Five minutes of fear.” Nilay crouched down to his eye level.
He pushed himself farther into the corner, curling into a ball, broken hand clutched to his chest.
“When you do it to girls, the trip is nice, isn’t it?” Nilay smiled at him. “But, it doesn’t last for just five minutes for them, does it?”
He wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“How many?”
“Leave me, let me go.”
“How many?”
“Three. On…ly three.”
“Inside the family or outside?”
“Please…”
“Inside or outside?”
“In…side.”
“Do they all know archeology by now?”
He was shivering, shaking, his teeth chattering.
“Hmm?”
“Y…yyyes.”
“It’s 1.44 am on 21st December today,” Nilay checked on his watch. “Remember this moment every time you think about spreading your archeology knowledge. Or better yet, give me your number. I’ll remind you.”
“N…” he shook his head. “I’ll… I will… sorry. Sorry, sorry,” he sobbed.
Nilay rose to his feet. He ran a hand through his hair, checking his reflection one last time in the mirror — “Does your family know?”
“N.nnnoo.”
“Do your daughter’s in-laws know?”
“No!”
“Then stop crying. Run away from here.”
Like fire was lit behind him, Jimmy fuva shot up and ran.
“And Jimmy fuva, do not look at Ritu again. Where she is, I will be there.”
His final words fell on the back of the door as it bounced on its hinges.
————————————————————
“Hey!” Nilay opened his arms just as she came crashing into them. “What happened?”
“Where were you? I saw him run out of the bathroom crying.”
“Just had a chat with him.” Nilay slipped his arm around her, pulling her to himself. Ritu’s face was screwed, confused, worried.
“Doctor,” he caressed the lines between her brows. “Relax.”
“You promised you won’t create a scene.”
“And I haven’t.”
“Nilay.”
“Just spoke to him. Nothing more.”
“What did you speak to him about. Don’t hide anything.”
He looked away.
“Nilay.”
“You will not like it.”
“Tell me anyway.”
His eyes came back to her — “I want to clarify that I am not ashamed of what I just did.”
“O…kay…”
“I made him feel the same fear he made you feel once.”
Her face lost all colour.
“It was nothing but conversation. I swear, I did not do anything. Ritu, men like him, they need to be shown the space that a woman lives in when she is terrorised. I am not one to use a rumour as sensitive as mine like this. I respect the queer. But this man, any man like this, needs to be cornered at least once in his life to understand what happens when they strut through life terrorising any girl they deem fit for their sick…”
She threw herself into his chest. His arms instinctively went around her — “Ritu. Hey, Doctor…”
“Take me away from here before I start crying.”
He rubbed his hands up and down her bare arms. They broke out in goosebumps. “Shhh, I didn’t mean to scare you.” Fuck. Fuck. He had dredged up old memories. Fuck!
“I am not scared.” Her voice echoed in his chest. “I want to cry out of… it’s relief. Like liberation. I want to cry because something bad is being set free from inside me… Nilay, it’s getting out.”
“Come, come,” he pulled her away from his chest, took off his jacket and draped it around her. He took her down the kitchen exit and out to the alley, away from the music and the noise. She was silent, staring in front of them. The lift dinged open and he pressed for the 9th floor.
“Why are we going to the 9th floor?”
“Because I am not going to have you cry in my car.”
She let out a watery chuckle. “Scared for your seats?”
The doors slid open and he took her hand. striding to the reception, where the staff jumped to their feet. The manager from earlier wasn't around, but it seemed the entire hotel knew he was here.
“Good evening, Mr. Patel. How can I help you?”
“Book me your Presidential Suite. Formalities at checkout.”
He wondered how he had reached this place in life where his bidding was done without question. Then he looked at Ritu beside him, holding herself by a thread. And he was thankful for every ounce of work he had done to earn this because now it would serve her.
“Here are your cards, sir, this way.”
Nilay let the concierge lead them to the elevator. Then — “Thank you, we will manage from here.”
She hung back, waiting for them as the elevator doors fell closed. Ritu thumped her head on his arm — “They think we are…”
“But we are not.”
Her head fell back and she gaped at him.
“I know I am irresistible,” he smirked. “But show some self-control, Doctor.”
Her eyes filled up.
“Shhh. We are here.”
The elevator deposited them on the floor and he led her down the alley and into the suite. As soon as the doors closed behind them, he whirled her into his arms, folding them tight around her. She shook then, the sounds too low, the hiccups only vibrations on his chest.
“You don’t know what you are doing,” her words vibrated into his chest — shrill, broken, whispered.
“Shhh…”
“Why are you making me ok?” She sobbed. “Why are you hell bent on returning me to the girl I had forgotten?”
“Is that a bad thing?” He palmed the back of her head. She shrugged.
Nilay gently peeled her back from his chest and cupped her face in his palms. He thumbed her tears away — “The girl I met was pretty phenomenal. I am just uncovering more phenomenal sides of her.”
She laughed through that deluge of tears — “You weren’t this smooth when we first met. What happened now?”
“My heart has recovered.”
Her head fell on his shoulder again, this time vibrating with a different kind of energy. Happy energy.
“You want to change into something more comfortable?”
She nodded, pulling back. Her head turned, and she glanced around at the vast suite. The views from the window were all stunning, dark, Mumbai with the stars and lights blinking bright.
“You crazy, you booked a Presidential Suite to just chat?!”
“I don’t stay in rooms.”
“I can’t let you pay for this.”
“Then you pay for it.”
She glared at him — “We are both using it, why should only I pay for it?”
Nilay chuckled, reaching for his shirt and unbuttoning it. “Split it, then, Doctor. Here,” he shrugged out of his shirt and held it out.
“They have robes,” she sassed, but reached for it. Nilay crossed his arms across his chest as she slipped out of her heels and walked barefoot into the bedroom. In the dress he had bought, covered in his jacket, holding his shirt — she was the future he had never imagined he would beg for.
————————————————————
“I didn’t ever think I would want revenge,” she said, sitting on the sofa with her legs turned under her, gazing at the sky.
His shirt was flirting with her knees, and it was taking him everything to not think about flirting with them with his fingers.
The low, sad tone in her voice snapped him out.
“This was not revenge, Ritu.” He clarified. “Revenge would have been having him dragged out of that party by the Police in front of his daughter and her in-laws.”
She sighed, crossing her arms on the armrest and laying her chin on it. Her hair tumbled in waves down her back. She looked like a piece of art — turned away from him, in his shirt, eyes on the sky.
“You know, in my idle moments, when those thoughts came to me, I would imagine him dying a painful death. Then I would think I am spoiling my own karma by thinking it. I would talk myself out of his thoughts, then again return, sometimes months later, sometimes years later, imagining another scenario where he is disgraced, crying, begging, running for his life. Those thoughts were so dark but so satisfying, even when I had made peace with it all and moved on.”
Silence. He did not break it. And a few minutes later, more words tumbled out of her.
“I sometimes thought to myself I had overreacted…”
Nilay began to open his mouth but she was faster.
“That maybe he would have backed off if I had just hidden in that first year.”
“Ri…”
“But then I think about the terror I felt every time his call came on the house landline or when somebody said he was on his way to the house… just the mention of his name. The way he looked at me. I felt like I was naked.” Her head pushed further into her folded arms. “It was fear not of one moment but of… forever. That he will find me and ask the same thing again… or touch me again or worse. You know, there is a principle in psychology. When I studied it, I understood what had happened.”
She went quiet again. And again he let her be.
“The fear of anticipation,” she voiced after a long pause. Her deep breath was loud. Audible.
“The fear of anticipation feels far worse and is more prolonged than the actual fear of a negative event. He pushed me there.” Ritu’s voice thinned. “It would just not end. I thought it would never end. Fear turned into disdain, disdain into rage when I was continents away from him.”
Her head twisted over her shoulder, her eyes downcast, not meeting his.
“I don’t know why I am telling you all this…
maybe because you are the only person outside of my parents who knows this.
Maybe because you are the only man who heard me, believed me, understood me, stood with me, and…
now did this. Why is it so easy to tell you? ”
He did not answer. And she turned away again, shifting closer to the edge of the sofa, laying her head back on her arms. Nilay kept sitting on the other side.
He wanted to slide closer, touch her, wrap his arms around her.
But these were confessions that had come from her as an individual.
She deserved to exorcise them alone, win this battle on her own, just as she had fought it alone.
Strangely, the moment pulled out a similar bellow from his own chest.
“I am not scared of dying.” He heard his own voice. As if from a distance.
Her shoulders moving with her breaths stilled. Nilay continued talking, like words were gurgling out of him, squeezing through his body.
“When Rajiv told me it was a heart attack, and my reports were not looking good, my first thought wasn’t what if I die.
It was… what if I live? When he started talking about options, angiography, angioplasty, CABG, surgery, procedures, recoveries…
I didn’t want to be there with paid staff to take care of me.
Never in my life have I been at the mercy of somebody.
And I was so scared of being alone. At my assistants’, my neighbours’, my teams’ mercy.
I have been poked for weaknesses all my childhood.
I wasn’t weak, I realised that later in life.
But I was always called those things. I didn’t want to deal with it again, I didn’t want to be really weak this time. ”
“Nilay,” she turned. “You are not weak. A heart ailment is not weakness!”
He smiled — “You made me believe that.”
Her face softened. He opened his hand and she took it. Without him tugging her, she crawled closer and closer to him, until his arms had fallen open and she had settled into them. He wrapped them around her and her audible breaths became quiet. Vibrations on his chest.
“You did something today that I never expected of anyone in my life, Nilay.”
He caressed her hair. “I have not felt as strong as I do with you here, Ritu.”
Her breath hitched.
“I didn’t know I needed a future until I looked at you and couldn’t look away.”
Her head moved on his chest.
“I didn’t know I needed to cook for somebody other than myself until you ate my vagharelo rotlo and relished it.”
Her hand came to his naked chest, splayed firmly on his rapidly beating heart.
“I didn’t know I am dying for children until you crawled behind MM and squeezed her close to your chest.”
Her head popped up.
“This is not a proposal,” he sat up. “Please, don’t take my confessions as anything other than me telling you that this is where I am at, and this is where I am going.
Ritu, I am unable to stop looking at you and the future you bring along.
Take your time, get to know more of me. I am far from perfect. ”
A reluctant chuckle burst out of her mouth. He smiled.
“I can spend the rest of my life in front of you and our children laughing at me like that.”
Her smile faded.
“And that’s my cue to shut up.”
“Do you want to go to sleep?”
“Do you?”
She nodded.
“Then come.” He pushed to his feet with her and they walked to the bedroom.
He pulled the duvet, let her snuggle in, then slipped in behind her.
She turned away from him, pushing into his body as if they were used to sleeping like this for decades.
And Nilay pressed his palm to her eyes and folded her in. Because in his head, they were.