Chapter 23
I had spent most of the first half of Monday running around bookshops in the CBD.
I don’t know if any city in the world (not that I had the stamps on my passport that would qualify me to make that comment) had a collection of bookstores like two parallel streets in the heart of Bengaluru did. The city’s intellectual compass.
There were the old names – Premier (Mummy’s favourite; she loved it so much, she took it with her perhaps.
It shut shop the year she passed away.), Gangarams, Sapna, Higginbothams. And then there were those that sprouted at the turn of the millennium – Blossom, Bookworm, and more recently, Bookhive. Therapy on rickety shelves.
I was looking for a rom-com to lift my mood, and I was at Blossom, not for the first time in the morning. I had settled on the floor and had a pile of pre-owned books on my lap when I knew Andrew was in the room. I felt him in the air.
I was between two racks of books that touched the ceiling; if the timber trembled, I’d be buried in this pile of romantic dialogue.
The lighting was dull, and when I looked up, I was looking at the CCTV camera beside which Andrew was standing.
He was wearing an uncertain smile, jeans that looked like they needed a washing machine cycle and an olive-green tee that had been perfectly ironed.
I always envied the way he ironed his tees… when he ironed them.
Andrew got down on his haunches. His back was slightly bent, and his shoulders had collapsed around him.
I inhaled his scent. His eyes were a storm. Had he followed me?
‘Hi,’ I said, with a dull wave that was an ache.
I’m not sure if he mentioned her name first or if he just started talking. ‘…was working in an art gallery in Boston; that’s where she went to college,’ Andrew said.
He was talking to my head now; I was looking at a book.
‘I went to the gallery a couple of times. I sought her out but as a friend.’
I felt a weight fall on my shoulders. Was it a book? Were the shelves collapsing?
The gallery was a 15-minute drive from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Andrew was stationed.
‘That’s why I went to see her,’ he said as my eyes met his. ‘All I wanted at the time was friendship.’ His eyes pleaded.
I understood. Even if I struggled to swallow it. ‘I want to talk to you; I’ve been trying to talk to you, Myraah.’
‘How did you know I was here?’
He shrugged. ‘I was looking through the old books, and then I strolled up here. I wanted to go to the children’s section.’
‘Why?’ I meant why children’s books.
He exhaled, rattled rhonchi. ‘Maybe I was looking for you.’
He turned his head, to fix his thoughts, perhaps.
‘Like you, she had it all – the comfort of home and family. I just wanted something, anyone. I was searching for the familiar.’
He was shaking his head.
‘You didn’t want anything to do with me… I called, I messaged.’ Andrew raised his hand, perhaps to stroke my cheek, but quickly pulled back.
I held his gaze.
‘Why didn’t you reply to my messages?’ he asked.
What was left to say?
Andrew’s eyes were moist. ‘Meena and I were friends. It was she who wanted more than friendship. Yes, I finally gave in, but that’s not why I had reached out to her.’
I laughed. The sound never left my mouth.
‘I had the hots for her in school.’
I was without air, I was suffocating.
After what seemed like an eternity, Andrew said, ‘Then I met you, and you were it.’
That’s where a good story ends, I thought.
‘I didn’t hear from you, but you were chatting with Meena.’
It was one, two or three, maybe four conversations at the most.
‘Why didn’t you respond to my messages or calls?’ Andrew asked again. He was looking down, his fingers locked in a tight clasp.
I did, eventually, I thought.
I heard whispers of conversations around us – people discussing books, what to take home.
‘No, wait, I know I was wrong to leave; I should’ve stayed.’ He was looking at me now.
Those were my words. I recognized them, but I had also admitted to being unreasonable. I’d told him to go, but I’d wanted him to stay. Just a tiny bit longer. Meena had obviously done some convenient editing before delivering my words to Andrew.
‘I was happy to have met her at first. I thought I had someone in my corner,’ Andrew said.
There were questions burning inside me, reducing my vocal cords to a cinder. I just couldn’t speak.
‘It was a physical thing.’
‘How long were you together?’ My tone was gruff.
He shrugged. ‘Not long.’
‘You didn’t want to call, get in touch? Afterwards.’
‘There were others.’
This was unravelling expressly, like substandard timber.
‘Nothing serious, nothing that meant anything.’
‘I wouldn’t have understood it even if it was love.’
‘It was just physical,’ he said.
There was a question in his eyes; I could read it.
‘I’m sorry.’
I stared at him; my face was a blank canvas.
Then he shrugged, an involuntary reaction, before getting back on his feet. He stood there for a moment longer, perhaps to get his balance back before walking away.
My head was spinning, and I desperately needed to focus on something or I would kill this man. I wanted to throw up on the pile of rom-coms sitting on my lap. The bitter aftertaste of a cancelled love story.
Our paths didn’t cross for most of the week following our bookshop meeting.
We were both in office. I knew he was around, and I’m sure he caught glimpses of me, too, but we hadn’t sought each other out.
I was stinging from the It was just physical, and I’m sure he was wondering when and how I had found out about Meena and him. He hadn’t run into Meena in Bengaluru.
It was Friday afternoon when he knocked on my cabin door.
‘May I?’ Andrew asked. His digits were hard on the doorknob.
I nodded. What now? Did he want to discuss rom-coms?
‘A couple of my National Law School mates are in town from London,’ Andrew said. ‘I’m having a get-together at my place tomorrow evening.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘It’s short notice, I know, but I just found out today.’
I nodded before running through my socially robust Saturday mentally. It was a blank page.
‘I would like you guys to finally meet.’
I laughed because I may have caught Chhaya’s laughing bug, but he read too much into it.
‘I would’ve extended the invite to Ravi Rao, too,’ he said, ‘but this is a really small crowd.’
Then I laughed because this was funny.
Andrew had caught on to the difference in the cadence, and he wasn’t smiling.
‘I’m getting a plus one.’
Andrew was on his feet and at the door.
‘Andrew,’ I said just as he was about to yank the door out of its hinges, ‘you haven’t met my father.’
He spun right around, and he was smiling that smile that he saves for Thanksgiving each year. ‘I haven’t,’ he said, knowing exactly what I meant by plus one.
Saturday was a particularly severe monsoon evening. Dad and I were the last to arrive. I was delayed by work first and then the Bengaluru traffic, which is difficult anyway but unravels into a cheerless safari when it rains.
As soon as we entered, I heard a voice in the mix say that the space sorely needed a woman’s touch.
My dad’s face lit up while my step slackened, and my eyes met Andrew’s.
It was all a little too much for me. It was not just my first time in Andrew’s apartment, but I hadn’t met his friends before, save for random introductions.
You’re Andrew’s friend now, Myra, I reminded myself. It’s okay to be walking into your friend’s apartment for the first time. There’s always a first.
Andrew had told me it was a four-bedroom unit, which he secured as part of a sizeable monetary deal when he signed off the property. This was seriously big, though; it had acres of space, twice the size of my place. Maybe it looked bigger than it was because of the walls; they were bare.
I thought of Meena. That was a girl who’d have made her mark on the decor, brought in shades of blues and browns, matching dainty lines with robust, earthy hues.
She’d have turned it into a multi-star retreat in the middle of town.
A perfect picture you might or might not want to own, depending on who you are.
I was not sure, though, if the place needed a woman at all. The walls may have been plain, but there was something intrinsically Andrew about it.
Andrew is essentially a social soul. He doesn’t gravitate towards any one person in his rather wide circle of friends but is there for everyone.
In school, he shared strong bonds with a lot of boys, different groups of people – the hockey players, student union mates, the science group and the debate and drama club.
It was the same in college; his social calendar was always full.
Ashish, Neha and Andrew were a trio in law school. Ashish was a barrister now, and Neha had done corporate law; she was working with a pharma company.
While Ashish’s folks lived in Bengaluru, Neha was back in the city for the first time since she graduated. Andrew had been in touch with her off and on over the years. A year ago, she had married a UK-based doctor.
I experienced a side of Andrew that I may have suspected but hadn’t seen. That of the charming host.
Andrew had apparently done a lot of entertaining in the United States. Neha would vouch for it, he said. She had stayed with him a few times when she was in New York, and he would have people over on the weekends for what he called ‘cocktails and crumbs’.
As I worked my way around, taking my father along with me, I saw that the interiors weren’t yet completed.
In two bedrooms, the wardrobes had been half-done – in one the polishing was yet to be completed, while in the other, the sliding doors had been lined up against the wall, waiting to be assembled.
The carpenter, an alcoholic pal of Andrew’s from school, had taken ill.
He was waiting for his friend to recover and complete the job.
That was Andrew. He could wait forever.