Chapter 4
I scrolled through the breaking news stories on social media.
An actor was getting married. She was wearing an ornate diadem because her name rhymed with ‘tiara’.
A batter had scored runs and a bowler had taken wickets.
Somebody was making pickles and elsewhere people were raising funds for world peace.
Social media took care of my anxiety on days I didn’t run.
From the far corner of the table, a photograph of my mother was smiling at me. My lips twitched.
My landline blared, cutting into my calm like a motorist on steroids.
Who could that be? This wasn’t an internal call. I cast a glance around me. The editorial was moving at a glacial pace. The office was empty when I arrived a little before 10 a.m., but there had been a considerable spill of people since.
‘Hello,’ I said. I was breathing heavily.
‘Are you okay?’ It was Ravi. He sounded worried. I reached for my mobile instinctively. I had three missed calls. All from my boyfriend. My phone was on silent and inside my tote.
‘Where have you been?’
I’m not a fan of that question. Only my mother was allowed to pin me down like that, but even she didn’t get an answer. It was an unfair tackle. Ravi’s tone, as always, was sweet concern.
‘My phone was on silent.’
‘Where are you?’
‘You are calling my landline.’
Ravi laughed, and I joined him.
‘Welcome back!’ Ravi had been travelling on work the last couple of weeks.
‘I’m around your office. Are you up for a coffee?’
I had been ready for coffee ever since I parked my bum on my seat an hour ago, but I was too lazy to get up and make it happen. Reasons to get that first shot of espresso in you before the day surges ahead. Crimes can be committed.
‘Good,’ I said, standing up immediately.
Ravi wasn’t big on the chain outlets scattered around Morning Herald Towers.
He had joined me once at my favourite coffee shop, Perky Grace.
It was located at the helm of Church Street, some 800 metres from my office.
It was semi-outdoor, the tables were nicely spaced, and stone benches and star jasmine vines gave it a garden party vibe.
The brewers are sturdy, and the servers are gentle.
The bakery will make it to my crime series one day.
Let’s just say Ravi liked the coffee and not the cup. Too public, he called their space. He preferred his five-star privacy. Every time, thereafter, he drove me to the coffee shop of a luxury hotel some five minutes from my office.
As I walked out of my cabin, I heard my name being called. I winced.
It was white-tee day today; no blue or hoodie of any other hue, I gathered.
‘I was coming around to your cabin,’ Andrew said, walking up to me. I wished he would sit down and not walk.
I nodded. This was bad timing. Not the coffee but his wanting to come around to my cabin.
‘Work?’ I asked, grinding my feet to the ground. What else could it be: Myra? Your dating plans?
Andrew laughed.
‘Where are you going?’ Andrew asked.
Boundaries. I blinked to buy time.
I was going to get a coffee but not really just get a coffee. Andrew was not my boss. He may have been in a super senior position, but we were not in college.
‘I’m going to get a coffee.’
‘You’ve only just got to work.’
He was questioning me. And because I hadn’t logged in, he was assuming I had just arrived at my workstation.
My gaze shifted from the 6’4” tower of dubiety before me to the brightly lit floor around us. We had the interest of the business bay, which we now faced. There were seven men and two women. Fingers on keypads and eyes on the white tee. Sudha was in her cabin, hammering away.
‘So?’ I asked, turning on my heels.
I did a flip-flop as soon as I sat down. I suddenly wanted to do a takeaway.
‘Why?’ Ravi asked. He looked so forlorn that I changed my mind again and said we could do a quick coffee. ‘Very quick,’ I added, just as he started to smile.
‘I know you’re a busy lady,’ he said, keeping the smile, meaning nothing more than what was articulated.
That run-in with Andrew had unsettled me.
‘Andrew Brown has joined the paper,’ I said. I don’t know why, but it felt like dropping the joker from an already disconnected hand in a game of rummy.
I had mentioned Andrew to Ravi when we started dating.
I had lauded the man’s brilliance, even introduced him to Andrew’s blog.
I had also said we were close friends who dated briefly before going back to being friends.
The mood was light and the fractional disclosure somewhat flippant.
Ravi didn’t pose Andrew Brown questions that day or any other time.
‘You are reunited with your friend!’
Friend? I laughed. It was a hollow sound.
Ravi was the most uncomplicated person I knew. It might have something to do with him being an on-the-surface kind of creature. Not in a frivolous way, only that it is his core. He didn’t feel too deeply. He didn’t bleed, at least where people and relationships were concerned. My antithesis.
Hari Rao, Karnataka’s longest-serving chief minister, who walked away from politics after three successive terms, is Ravi’s ‘grandfather’.
Hari Rao lost his son, daughter-in-law and two grandkids in an air crash towards the end of his third term in office.
Ravi was rumoured to be Rao’s wife Kamini’s nephew.
He was adopted a couple of years before the horrific accident.
The family referred to him as the grandson, presumably because of the age difference between him and Rao’s progeny.
That Kamini was an only child further fuelled the parentage debate.
There was some talk that Ravi was a distant younger relative’s son.
He had Kamini’s eyes and nose (I downloaded a picture of the former CM’s late wife and held it against Ravi’s profile picture).
They had the same square build, were of middling height and were remarkably broad-boned.
Ravi had told me that he was Hari Rao’s grandson shortly after we became friends; that was enough of a personal introduction.
He had gone to medical school only because his grandfather wanted him to.
The Raos owned a chain of multi-speciality hospitals around the state, which also catered to the economically challenged sections of society.
I put down Ravi’s on-the-surface personality to his early life.
Just as well, actually, that he wasn’t the touchy-feely sort.
To be adopted, and so publicly at that, with his grandparents ostensibly being the only parents he knew.
Then to have those second set of parents lose their only child.
I didn’t broach the subject of his biological parents after the first time I had involuntarily asked who they were.
Not quite a do-you-prefer-cheese-or-whipped cream-frosting question.
It was the third or fourth time I had met him. He repeated that he was Hari Rao’s grandson and sat there smiling like some sort of a phantom.
Yeah, but what do your parents do? The question had almost slipped out of my mouth. I’m slow sometimes.
Hari Rao had all but thrown in the towel after the death of his son.
Barely living. As heavy as that loss was, I’ve often wondered how Ravi didn’t ask, What about me?
Was Ravi inconsequential? Didn’t he want more?
Quite the opposite, he’s superbly adjusted.
There are pictures of him breaking down after he lit Kamini’s funeral pyre (googled that, too; it makes my world go around).
‘Yeah,’ I said, taking a sip of my coffee. ‘I’m reunited with my friend, except that he’s more boss than friend.’ The caffeine trickled down my pharynx. The heat of the beverage warmed my spirit, calmed my nerves.
‘How is that?’
I explained Andrew’s hiring to Ravi, adding that he could take over as the executive editor of the newspaper soon. I had repeated all of this so often in the last few weeks, I was simply reciting it now. As if it were a poem that didn’t rhyme.
‘You guys were classmates, right?’ Ravi asked.
‘Schoolmates.’
Ravi came into my life the day Andrew exited it.
It wasn’t easy allowing him in. Not just because of what I had shared with Andrew, but for about a year, I had harboured hopes that Andrew would call or message. How could he not? I swallowed the question with another sip of the brew.
Looking at Ravi leaning back on a library chair, I thought this friendship wouldn’t have been possible with anyone other than Ravi.
We are antonyms; if we were typefaces, we’d be Bold and Light.
I could get lost in a book; he hadn’t read anything long form beyond a college textbook.
Movies were not his expression, and I relied on them to get me on my feet on a bad day, feeling them in my step.
He had no interest in politics; I was in the business of news.
He never had a job. Not the 9-to-5 variety or even the 11-to-9 kind – his MBBS degree was never really put to use.
But I always yearned for financial independence.
I knew I needed a job the moment we laid my mother to rest.
It was his personality, however, that allowed me to take the chance.
About a year or so after we started dating, Ravi told me that it wasn’t easy for him to trust because he wasn’t sure what women – or in an arranged set-up, the families – were after: his inheritance or him.
I didn’t ask, but I figured he had been let down in a few relationships.
That day, as he dropped me home in his car, he reached across and kissed me on the cheek. He gave me a ring the following year.
I never wore the ring, and he didn’t ask me why. Not once. It is ornate, and I’m sure there are people who think it gorgeous, but it wasn’t my style or size.
‘How come you were around my office today?’ I asked lamely. I wanted to get off the topic of Andrew.
‘I wasn’t really around. I wanted to meet you today. I got ready early, and that’s when I started calling you.’
Ravi met me for coffee once a week. We usually met in the first half of the week, when I was breathing a little easier. And it was always at the start of my working day.
Our time together was pleasant. Ravi wasn’t much of a talker, but he had a measured opinion about most things. He was equally adept at losing himself in thought, and we would drift into our own worlds. A parallel space.
It was one of those times when we were drifting, some six months ago, at this luxury hotel, sitting in this exact same spot, that he had proposed.
He drummed his fingers on the table and asked, ‘How about we get married?’ It was asked in much the same tone he used to ask me if I wanted another coffee.
I hadn’t thought about marriage, even though he had been hinting for a while.
‘Of course,’ I said, not knowing what the hell I was saying, except that I knew that I didn’t want to break this lovely man’s heart. ‘But we should talk about it another time. You know, give it a real thought.’
‘Of course,’ he said. His smile didn’t dim.
‘You should come home,’ I told him.
‘I would love that,’ he said, his eyes brightening.
He gave me the ring anyway. A second ring I couldn’t wear. Hopelessly loose.
Looking at his mauve shirt, full-sleeved and of superior weave, and his perfectly fit form, I realized that Ravi didn’t complete me.
He balanced me. She of the boyfriend jeans and thigh-length shackets.
He was the perfect antidote to the whirlpool of emotions churning inside me.
The grieving daughter, the slighted girlfriend. The woman who wanted to be.
All that he is. All that I’m not. An equation that balanced. How I longed to be a mathematical sum.