Chapter 20 #2
Andrew returned the case to his cargoes and crossed his hands across his chest. ‘Ravi was adopted; I wasn’t accepted.’ He shrugged.
I wanted to reach across the table of untouched food but picked up my coffee instead. ‘Why?’ I mouthed. I was a journalist; there had to be a question.
Andrew shook his head.
‘No!’ was all I could manage. I had meant yes, but not that it mattered. Yes, what? I had no idea.
So, Noelene’s lover was Hari Rao. The doe-eyed Noelene, frail but not fragile.
Not a strand of grey in that fall of brown that touched her waist on the rare occasions she let her hair down.
They had a child, a daughter, who died when giving birth to a baby boy, who was now the man sitting across the table from me.
Andrew Brown was Hari Rao’s grandson. By blood.
Andrew looked a lot like his grandmother. He definitely had her eyes. His grandfather’s mark wasn’t as distinct. Like with Ravi.
Andrew was on his feet. ‘I’m going back to the office,’ he said.
To lose himself in his work, I thought.
I leaned back in my chair and watched him disappear into the evening crowd that was swarming all over Church Street.
There was the odd horn that blared, the sound of motorbikes coming to a screeching halt. The road was an ill-tempered space.
There was a general buzz in the air, but you rarely heard words or caught a conversation from the next table. Perky Grace was that kind of a place.
And Bengaluru was that kind of a city – where grace and disgrace were hard to separate.
I wondered if Hari Rao had lured Noelene with the promise of marriage and then backtracked on it.
Would Noelene have a yen for someone so above her station and have his child without some kind of exchange?
Why was Andrew chasing Hari Rao for an interview?
Were his reasons professional or personal?
Is this why Andrew left the life he had made for himself in the US and returned home?
What did he want from the man?
The Browns had clearly lost more than they had gained in this business of love. They had tasted it, embraced it and lost it. Lost at it. They’d been pursued. Catherine Brown.
My mind went back to those notes; it kept going back to the notes. It was a puzzle I needed to fix. Five thousand strains of grey.
In the end, Catherine had to pay, perhaps just like Bhumika. As did Noelene.
Maybe more than they had bargained for.
I thought of Andrew. To carry that burden, your family’s history, and yet walk so lightly, as if nothing was weighing you down, was quite something. I might’ve checked into an asylum.
Later that evening, I messaged Ravi, telling him I wanted to meet him. He asked about my trip with Andrew, adding that people had asked him what his girl was doing with Andrew Brown. He wanted to know if my story was coming out tomorrow. It was scheduled for later in the month.
That piece of information was met with a question mark I ignored.
We decided to meet at our usual coffee shop at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Morning Herald’s weekend meeting had been pushed back to 5 p.m. Ravi wanted to pick me up, but I told him I’d see him there.
After the logistics were taken care of, I slipped my phone into my bag and got to my feet. I decided to walk home.
I thought about Ravi and what we shared. We had done well to build a relationship on barely existing common ground, coexisting with our differences. We were mindful never to cross lines, the both of us. Never ask questions the answers to which you had a right to know as a couple.
The details of our lives were lost on each other, and curiously, that was where the balance came from. The blank pages. Together, yet alone.
It was late in the afternoon; the office was a relaxed space. Almost the weekend, even though that didn’t really apply to us. Cut that smirk, remember the Sunday morning paper.
I caught one of the photographers yawning as I walked over to Andrew’s cabin.
I stopped mid-stride. Andrew was on his feet talking to Sudha. The door was closed. I swivelled around and almost bumped into Soor.
‘Andrew is busy, eh,’ he said, waving a freshly minted page at me.
I yawned.
Andrew was moving his hands animatedly. His black tee was crumpled, but his proclamation was crisp. I could tell from his expression.
It was an impressive turnaround from a couple of days ago. Our eyes met. Andrew lowered his gaze and disappeared from my vision.
I returned to my cabin and settled heavily into my seat. There was so much on my mind, it felt like a sumo wrestler’s torso.
I pulled my hair back, and along with it, those thoughts that I didn’t want to deal with. I preferred instead to dwell on Andrew Brown’s family tree.
I opened a new mail and typed his address in.
Hey. Too casual.
Hello. Too formal.
Hi. Third-grader.
Brown, I want to read Bhumika’s notes. Thanks in advance.
I read my 10-word email admiringly, revelling in its precision, before hitting the send button. I was so absorbed in my genius that I hadn’t considered what Andrew’s reaction might be. Two minutes later, I got a reply, and shortly after, a WhatsApp notification.
Check your WhatsApp, Myra, was the reply.
I opened my phone and saved the images of the notes he had sent me.
I read them carefully, one by one. I read them again; it was quite an exercise.
I only had one question to ask Andrew. What were the similarities in Bhumika Velu and Catherine Brown’s life stories?
He needed to put that down on paper. Black ink on white paper.
I closed my eyes and rested my hand on my knuckles.
Ravi and Andrew, cousins? If there was another in that blend, I’d marry that one maybe. Those with the bashful backstories.
Karnataka’s former chief minister and his biological grandson, a crack-shot political analyst, who was perhaps the only one betting that Hari Rao would pull off this ambitious gambit.
The more I looked at the two men, the more I could see the physical resemblance. It’s not obvious. They had narrow foreheads and stubby fingers. It was the gait, the upright fashion in which they carried themselves. Shoulders square, back straight, an animal-like edge to their stride.
Ravi was nothing like his grandfather, not even in manner. I sighed. I didn’t want to, but I was arriving at a decision. We couldn’t continue.
I could taste the tears.
I wish I had restricted our relationship to a friendship.
That was how it began. It should’ve stayed that way.
An easy alliance, a seamless coalition, neither making demands on the other.
I should’ve paused, dwelt on the emotions and seen it for what it was instead of just coasting. It was my call to make.
Our first kiss should’ve alerted me. Vanilla had more to it.
Ravi had initiated it when he dropped me back from an evening out.
We had gone out for drinks with a few of his friends, and I was a little high by the time we were done.
Ravi had stopped at a Patiala peg, maybe because I was on a free run.
He parked his car and followed me into my apartment complex.
We were in the elevator, an old, rattling booth, when his lips met mine full.
I leaned against the controls for support.
My hand or back hit the pause button, suspending us somewhere between floors.
I was so chuffed that it was me who had stalled this cubicle that I wanted to explain it to the man who was all over me.
Whatever came out of my mouth sounded like moans and groans.
Suitably encouraged, Ravi’s hands were on my waist, stroking it. It was a long kiss. Too long.
So delighted was Ravi by my reaction that it became a reference point for him. To me, it was an invitation I hadn’t expected or accepted. I may have been present, but I wasn’t a participant.
All that I didn’t verbalize. When you express it, you wrestle with the words, and in doing so, deal with it, even if only at a surface level.
It wasn’t because I didn’t want to be alone. I’m an only child. Alone is me.
Another first followed, not long after. This one was a gift.
He’d got me a pair of gold earrings for my birthday. To say I was stunned was putting it mildly.
What was this? Our 25th wedding anniversary?
I put away the gift somewhere safe, I presume, and forgot all about it.
How else could I have lived with it? I have no recollection of what it looks like, except for thinking that it was too big and ornate for me.
In subsequent years, I got more of the yellow metal.
I accepted it, even if it annoyed me. I wasn’t even wearing the stuff.
Couldn’t he tell? Unless he was asking his PA to buy me gifts.
I finally told him I’d prefer a book or a library or his Netflix password.
Last year, he gave me a watch, I only take it off when I shower or sleep. I love it, but I never told him that. I didn’t need to. Which, in a way, was us: we never exchanged a rude word, we didn’t try to control or attempt to change the other.
I could see Andrew move across the editorial floor from my perch. My chin was resting on my right hand, and my eyes were following him. Quick, light steps. He was carrying some pages; maybe he was checking the edition. Wasn’t it too early for that?
When I spoke to Chhaya a couple of days ago about my feelings for Ravi, the lack of chemistry given that we were almost engaged, she asked, ‘What if Andrew hadn’t returned?’
The only reason Ravi was in my life was because Andrew had exited it. And it was because of him that I had refused to look at my relationship with Ravi. Andrew was always around – in a coffee cup, an inkless pen – even when we were living on different continents.
Chhaya and I had walked to our usual table at Perky Grace after picking up our steaming beverages when she posed the question. I almost poured the coffee on myself.
‘Maybe I’d have made this relationship work, continued to live in this disconnected fashion.’ I had practice.
Chhaya was quiet.
‘That’s not to say that I’m falling into Andrew’s arms.’
‘In a way you had stopped living because of Andrew, stopped feeling. You would’ve gone along with anything and everything.’
‘Ravi is not anything and everything; it is a nice friendship.’ That was not the point she was making, I knew that.
‘Nice, yeah, like a scenery.’
My heart was thudding, sticks on drumheads.
‘You were hiding behind Ravi.’
She was right. It was a safe place to hide, even if the space itself was a tad lonely.
‘I always had this feeling that you guys were tiptoeing around each other.’
It was the truth. Walls, hedges and a little light. Eight years ago, it was what I needed.
‘There were places in his life he didn’t want you to go, and you didn’t.’
And vice versa.
I walked over to Andrew’s cabin, shutting the door behind me.
I inhaled his scent.
Andrew nodded; his eyes were on me.
I let the silence envelop us. I felt the activity around the room. We were approaching 9 p.m.; it was edition time. That’s when the editorial floor came alive, like a Deepavali evening.
Andrew took a deep breath. ‘I have a feeling it didn’t end well between them. Hari Rao’s reaction to me has something to do with that,’ he said.
Had Noelene tried to blackmail Hari Rao, to maybe get him back in her life?
‘It is what it is. I can’t change what happened between the two of them. Two adults who brought a child into this world. One of them looked after that child, the other walked away. Still, both of them are to blame.’
I nodded. ‘Acceptance is revenge,’ Andrew said. He was smiling.
There was a new equilibrium to Andrew. His face wasn’t blank, it was calm. It must be liberating, I thought as I rose from the spare chair.
I wanted to ask him about Bhumika Velu and Catherine Brown, but that carefully phrased question walked out with me like an invisible clock I had draped around my arm.