Chapter 23 #2
The furniture was teakwood, chunky in design, no-fuss pieces, no carvings, few intricacies, perfectly functional. The bar counter was massive, with no particular design element to it save for the space it stood on.
He’d have needed a crane to shift this stuff.
In his bedroom, I noticed the original movie poster of Invictus; it had been framed but not mounted. Beside it was a blown-up autographed photograph of Lionel Messi on the move.
‘I had gone to Camp Nou with a friend, and I got it autographed,’ Andrew, who was standing a little behind me, said. ‘He looks much bigger on television. It’s the way he plays maybe. You tend to look up at the skill rather than the physical specimen, but it’s different when you are face to face.’
I nodded.
It was possible that Andrew would decorate the walls in time with a piece or two he had picked up during his travels.
I was sure he would put up some pictures of his family, maybe arrange them on a table in an intimate nook of the house.
In his bedroom, perhaps, away from the prying eyes of every guest who walked through the door. Not to shroud but to save in memory.
Slowly, he would turn the place around from house to home, not just for him, but for all the Browns before him. A place where love lived. And died.
Bhumika Velu. Catherine Brown. Those names crossed my mind for the first time in a few days. Their stories. An analogy.
There was an antique showcase in a corner of the sitting area.
I wasn’t 100 per cent sure, but this piece may have been there in the old bungalow.
Refurbished and brought up to date perhaps.
Its four shelves now had little knick-knacks arranged on them – spoons, snow globes, plates, stuff he had collected from different parts of the world, besides certificates and awards.
There was a hardbound copy of his first book, which he had co-authored – India: She’ll Unmask You – on the bottom shelf.
I was standing beside my father, scanning the stuff, when my eyes touched on a spoon that I had seen in a sugar pot not far from where I was standing. There was a ruby-coloured stone attached to the thread. I turned to my father, meeting his moist eyes.
My mother had given Andrew the spoon; it was a silver spoon used in the sugar pot.
Every time Andrew was home, he’d insist on using it to stir the sugar in his coffee.
If Mummy changed the spoon for whatever reason, he’d go looking for it.
So much so that she stopped keeping a spoon on the saucer for him; he’d take the one from the pot anyway.
No one knew why he was so attached to the spoon.
It was beautiful, but so were a few others that Mummy had.
We joked at his obsession, which he shrugged off with, ‘It’s sweet.
’ Finally, my mother gifted him the spoon.
My father walked away, joining a couple of older men who were talking cricket. I watched him nod and laugh even though he had little interest in cricket. I turned to join him when I felt Andrew’s arm on my shoulder. I hadn’t noticed that Ashish was also standing by the showcase.
‘My oldest and dearest friend,’ Andrew said.
‘We were in school together,’ I said.
‘I know of you, Myra Rai,’ Ashish said, his smile exploding at his dimples. ‘My brother here used to empty bottles of Davidoff on himself when he’d leave the campus to meet you. My mother wondered if I was drinking perfume.’
Andrew laughed.
‘Andrew was telling us about your crime column. Bloody is how I like my steak, eh?’
I smiled. What else had he told them about me?
‘Did you live in the US, too?’ Ashish asked.
Was he confusing me with Meena?
Just then, the doorbell went off. I turned to look at Andrew, who was excusing himself again. Our eyes met and we held the gaze for a few seconds before he signalled to me that the food had arrived.
He collected a gigantic hot box of mutton biryani and another modest-sized container of capsicum rice and headed to the kitchen, where Ashish and I joined him.
‘You don’t cook these days, bro?’ Ashish asked, telling me that Andrew made the best vindaloo he had ever eaten. He was a regular in the kitchen in college apparently.
‘Only occasionally. I have a lady coming in most evenings for the daily stuff,’ he said. ‘The hours in journalism are not very different from law, but they are more definite in the second half of the day, so I’d rather she’s here when I’m not.’
‘No one to cook for?’ Ashish asked, winking at me.
‘He’s really good,’ Neha said, joining us. ‘I’ve eaten plenty of his cooking,’ she continued, pointing at her generous frame.
Neha had settled herself on the counter and was filling her plate with the biryani. ‘Just checking to see if everything is pukka,’ she said, winking at her friend.
I headed to the dining room with table mats, leaving the friends to their banter.
My father was on the balcony with one of the older men. It was 11.30 p.m., well past his bedtime, and though he may not have been particularly hungry, it was better he ate something sooner than later.
The view from the seventh floor was exhilarating, the better part of Bengaluru at a time when she flowed easily. The skies, like the roads, had cleared. I could see my office even.
I stayed there for a few minutes after my father walked back to the party, promising to eat. When I turned to check if he had helped himself, I saw him on the sofa with a sparsely filled plate. Neha had joined him.
Andrew walked across the long, rectangular room to me. ‘Do you like it?’ he asked. His eyes were bright with hope.
‘Like home,’ I said.
The old place, even in that shabby state, had possessed a living, breathing quality.
A sagacity that comes with having seen life.
It was dented, not bowed. Maybe it was the showcase or the bare walls or the trees on the grounds that hadn’t been uprooted.
Andrew had managed to dispel the darkness but retain the essential character of the house he was born in.
‘I love it, too,’ he said.
We were both looking out, watching the gentle ebb and flow of a rain-soaked Bengaluru.
‘I had asked for the gulmohars to be retained,’ he said. We had spent many a Saturday afternoon on its fiery orange carpet. Not playing chess.
I nodded.
My father was walking towards us; we spotted him together.
‘It was a mistake,’ Andrew said. ‘My life’s biggest regret.’ Even in the dullness of the lighting, I could read the regret on that beautiful face. It was etched on the just-forming lines.
‘Andrew,’ my father said, patting him on his back. Andrew’s arms went around my father’s shoulders, it was halfway to a hug.
It was then that the question popped into my head. What exactly did Andrew Brown regret? His affair with Meena for what it had done to him or what it had cost us?