VII. Train Dreams #4
Ruhee was in the middle of putting a cassette in the stereo and she didn’t answer.
I observed with discomfort, how comfortable she was with handling things in Ganesh’s car.
The familiarity bothered me. I didn’t ask again and sat back quietly.
Ganesh, with one hand on the steering wheel and another on the back of Ruhee’s seat, looked in the rear windshield and expertly U-turned the car.
He didn’t even meet my eyes, as if his presence at my home this morning had never happened.
Who did he think he was? This imported car with the rear spoiler belonged to his parents who were not his parents.
Who was he? Adopted, sold, bought, soon going to be married to a servant girl.
After we got on the main road, we stopped at the kirana shop.
Ganesh lowered the window on the passenger side, leaned over Ruhee and asked the shop boy to come over.
He told him to get three packets of chips and three Coca-Colas.
Cans not bottles. Chilled. From behind the counter in the shop, I made out the expression on Sugunakar Rao’s face.
Pure astonishment. I thought it irresponsible of Ganesh to let Ruhee be sighted in a car with boys, wearing jean shorts and listening to music, asking for chips and Coca-Cola with the window lowered; it was the worst place in the neighborhood to be seen, the kirana shop.
What a terrible gossip that man was, it was why my mother hated him.
We got back on the main road and again stopped at the petrol bunk.
When Ganesh got out, Ruhee turned and smiled at me and took a deep, loud breath as if looking at me for the first time.
Her smile was so sweet, her cheeks dimpling like that.
She said she’d missed me, and said how many days had it been; but she kept starting her sentences with “it feels like…” Before I could repeat my question on where we were going she said, “We’re going to the Exhibition.
” That she’d heard me before but was answering me only now felt much worse than if she’d never answered me at all.
I could have pretended she hadn’t heard me.
I glanced out of the window and saw Ganesh take out his wallet, hand a hundred-rupee note to the petrol bunk attendant.
He watched the meter click and turn as the petrol sloshed into the tank.
Suddenly I had the sense of how Ganesh would look like as an adult.
From their conversation after we got back on the road, I gathered that they’d been to a movie together.
Dil Se. They talked about the train song Chaiyya Chaiyya.
They talked about the tragic ending. I realized that, in the past weeks, they’d been meeting without me.
They’d even gone to a movie. Why didn’t they ask me?
And they weren’t even trying to hide it from me; if they did, it would’ve meant I was a person.
We arrived at the Exhibition grounds and went straight to the place with the carousels and the giant wheel.
There was a long queue at the giant wheel so we joined it first. Though I hadn’t eaten a meal since the morning, because of the chips and the Coca-Cola I wasn’t hungry.
Ganesh and I were standing beside each other, Ruhee was between us; resting her elbows on each of our shoulders she was laughing so much, with so much lightness about her, telling us about the gardener they used to have, who loved their plants so much he drowned them in water all the time until all the plants died.
Then the gardener had to leave because he didn’t have a job anymore and they only kept a small lawn with a few rosebushes.
I remember this part because this conversation was immediately preceding a commotion at the front of the queue, some argument about cutting the line, as people are wont to do, and as expected everyone else wanted to see what was going on.
There was some pushing and jostling and after everyone settled down again, Ruhee grew very quiet and asked if she could stand ahead of me.
I moved to make room and glanced at the group of boys standing directly behind us, guffawing amongst themselves. Ganesh noticed nothing.
When the giant wheel cart went up, I held Ruhee’s hand. She returned the pressure, her lips stretched over the shape of her mouth, but she was no longer smiling.
After we came back down, Ruhee stayed close to me. Ganesh wanted to join the queue again, have another go on the giant wheel. Ruhee said no, and Ganesh looked annoyed. “Fine,” he said, as if Ruhee was an inconvenience.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he said.
no.
“Popcorn?”
no.
“Cotton candy?”
no.
“What’s the matter?” he said roughly.
Tears ran down Ruhee’s cheeks but she turned away, wiped her face against her sleeve. She said she wanted to go home.
There was a fuming, irritated silence all the way to the parking lot.
Ganesh didn’t want to go home, obviously, all that trouble, the stops, the petrol, the planning, the air-conditioned Lancer, all to arrive here and leave immediately; she was being difficult.
I didn’t say anything because it was Ruhee’s wish to say or not say.
But I sensed that whatever Ganesh was going to say in the car on the way home, whatever he might say later, was going to hurt Ruhee even more, and Ganesh would be ignorant of why she was being so difficult.