Chapter 31 #2
After a couple of drinks and that many plates of peanut masala and tandoori prawns cleaned out, I turned a question I had nursed for years at him.
‘Why did you leave the law?’
‘Journalism intrigued me, not necessarily news media, which is where I struck oil,’ he said. ‘I felt I could take everything I had learnt and put it in a place where I want to, say, make a difference, but maybe it is where I wanted to be at that point.’
I looked at him enquiringly.
‘This job we do, it can be done by anyone – a sculptor, a surgeon, a socialite with a soul – sifting intel you’ve picked up along the way. Tell the story, as you say. Unfortunately, it has too many idiots and too few informed people.’
Andrew was a restless character. Underneath that calm, almost still veneer, he was constantly searching. It was a mind that never slept.
‘The only person I thought of when people started appreciating what I put out there was you.’ He didn’t smile, but that light hadn’t dimmed.
I was studying journalism when we started dating.
Andrew’s eyes darkened, and I felt the full force of his gaze.
I took another generous gulp of his scent and steered the conversation to less tremulous ground. I wanted to just breathe easy.
I wanted to ask why he hadn’t messaged to let me know he was coming. We had exchanged a few messages after I returned; all of them were about how my father was doing.
‘Was Ravi around when Hari Rao spoke to you?’ Easy isn’t my style apparently.
‘Yeah.’
‘Did he say anything?’
‘No. He smiled when I left.’
Andrew would’ve returned the sunny disposition with his peerless steel. I could count on that.
‘Did he say anything about Noelene?’
‘He said I had come with great expectations as I was Noelene’s grandson after all.’
I attempted an eye-roll. The emoji does a way better job.
‘I think he wanted her to abort the child. I feel their issue was my mother.’
I looked up at him. He was looking away into the barely lit lane below us. Vendors were hawking street food on little carts.
After what seemed like an eternity, Andrew turned and faced me. He took a deep breath and put his hand on mine. I opened my hand, turning it upwards, and let his rest on my palm.
‘I’ve been seeing a therapist, baby.’
I felt my brows crease and my jaw drop at the same time. Therapist and baby. It had been a while. ‘Why?’ I asked and then, ‘when?’
‘For a few months now,’ he said.
I was looking at him more closely than I had done all evening. My eyes were on his neck. His face had coloured. Had he gained a couple of kilos?
‘She called it rumination.’
I googled it with my spare hand. Rumination in psychology. A form of perseverative cognition that focuses on negative content, generally past and present, and results in emotional distress.
‘It’s a negative thought process that plays on a loop in the head.’
I nodded. Like the news hour.
‘I became obsessed with my family, or the lack of one, in my case. I wanted to find out about them, every detail. I would dwell on it for months together. I wanted to restore them. I could go days without eating, just thinking about something.’
Yes, he had filled out.
‘I wanted to find them, dot their stories. It was like I wanted to set us Browns or Velus – whoever it is we are – free. For our stories to be out there, too, not hidden in some closet.’
What? I didn’t ask.
‘No, not sell Noelene’s story. That was her truth to tell, but I wanted to know it, and I wanted to be able to tell you if you asked me.’
I wanted to say something, but my head drew a blank.
‘It’s hard to tell, I know, because it’s all happening in someone’s head. And for the most part, I could pass off as a perfectly well-adjusted character. The dents are not really significant, or not yet so.’
I nodded.
‘When I found the signature on the piece of notepaper at the bottom of the watch box, I passed out…’
‘Andrew,’ I breathed.
‘After the Coonoor trip, I must’ve read Bhumika’s notes at least a hundred times. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen what you had.’
I was smiling. It was weak.
Andrew’s hand was patting mine. ‘That’s not on you, baby; it was me, what I was going through.’
I wrapped my hands around his.
‘It started with Auntie’s funeral…’ He was breathing heavily. ‘I had lost her, too…’
It was my mother. She.
Andrew smiled. He knew what I was thinking.
‘That’s as far back as I could take it at therapy.’
Now that he was spelling it out, it was true that Andrew 2.0 was more open to talking about his family, at least with me. More than he did when we were in college, which wasn’t saying much, but there was a substantial shift in posture.
‘When we lost her, your mother, there was a kind of dread that had set in me. It was instant. I felt it right then; I still do sometimes, but I didn’t know at the time.
’ He was speaking slowly, easily, but his face was changing colour.
‘Then, when you didn’t answer my calls or messages, I started panicking.
Meena was a panic reaction… I was so scared, so alone, I just needed something, someone familiar. ’
I could see where he was coming from.
‘I’m not making excuses. I’m taking responsibility,’ Andrew said.
His eyes were as clear as a running stream.
‘Then, when you found out about Meena, I couldn’t get why it was such a big deal to you.
In my head, it was all about me. It was I who had lost, I had no one, and this “grandfather”…
he didn’t want the woman he had a child with or the child herself…
Why would he want me? I just couldn’t get over my family, the choices they had made. ’
I wanted to ask him why he hadn’t told me about this in Bengaluru last month.
Neha had made it known to Andrew during telephone conversations that he had a problem. She thought he was slipping into depression, and Google was telling me his lawyer pal wasn’t wrong.
‘That phone call after Neha returned to London wasn’t the first time she had brought it up with me,’ Andrew said.
‘Once, in New York, I hadn’t eaten the whole day and I hadn’t realized until my body reacted violently, late the following day.
She said I had become a lot quieter than I was in college and that I would swing between checking out in the middle of conversations or make it all about myself.
I became conscious around her, tried not to speak about myself, hiding the symptoms. I let go when they visited in November.
Maybe it was that… you were to be engaged. ’
I smiled. It was an empty smile.
‘Distraught was the word she had used.’
I could taste my tears. ‘That’s a nice compliment.’
Andrew laughed. ‘I was on the edge all the time. It was exhausting.’
Andrew 2.0 was angrier; that I could tell now.
‘Neha fixed me with this elderly lady, Mrs Mathew. She’s the aunt of someone she knew. She lives a couple of buildings from me.’
‘Do you need medication?’
‘She considered it briefly, but I have been doing some writing and meditation, and that’s helping. She says we caught it very early.’
Thank god!
Andrew had started with weekly sessions. Now he saw Mrs Mathew whenever he needed to, which was down to once in two months.
‘I’m able to accept my past now, the choices my ancestors made, even Noelene not telling me stuff,’ Andrew said. ‘Mrs Mathew told me that returning home when I did was the best thing I did for myself.’
‘Wish you had told me when I was in Bengaluru six weeks ago.’
‘I wanted to. I came close to even, but you were so stressed about your dad’s health.’
Had he told Mrs Mathew about us?
‘Did you tell Neha how it went?’ I asked.
‘She was calling every day initially, but once she saw that I was on my way, we went back to messaging. I called her this morning though.’
Andrew’s gaze caressed my cheeks. My heart was skipping somewhere in the sunshine.
‘I want to get into politics,’ Andrew said.
My brows creased in question, but Andrew wasn’t looking at me.
‘Not right away but in time, in a few years maybe,’ Andrew said. ‘This is not a reaction to the rejection; it’s something I thought about a lot when I was in the US. It’s what I want to do.’
‘For revenge?’ For a woman in the business of words that was basic.
‘The Raos have nothing to do with the decision.’
Andrew had always been interested in politics.
Years ago, in his early teens, he had attended political rallies.
He found unconventional ways to get on campaign vehicles and tagged around grown men asking questions no one wanted to answer.
He had even been to the Raos’ family home, tagging along with volunteers, who at the time were trying to get Hari Rao back on the political saddle.
He was awestruck by the man’s command over what he thought was a considerable gathering.
The visit was before he had found out who Rao was to him, but remarkably, the discovery hadn’t tinged his opinion of the politician.
I watched him pick up his drink, and as he tipped the glass his way, our eyes met. Andrew hadn’t got much from Hari Rao, but he had his DNA.
‘Which party?’
‘Not his.’
I laughed.
Andrew stretched his arms across the table.
‘Baby?’ I asked.
‘You were always baby, only you. But you were engaged. I was not sure if it was okay to call you that.’
Now that I had the precise echocardiography, I exhaled.
Andrew’s eyes didn’t leave my face. I think I was colouring. His fingers were knotted in mine loosely.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for what I did, sorry for what my folly cost you, cost us.’
A tear rolled down my cheek.
‘I’m sorry that I put my shame above your pain.’
I was disengaging my fingers to wipe my tears, but Andrew was quicker.
‘When are you coming home?’ he asked, waiting for me to compose myself.
‘I was going to book my tickets today.’
‘For?’
I shrugged.
‘I’m back the day after at 6 p.m. Any time after is okay. I can drop you home. I’ve parked at the airport.’
I laughed. He was making plans for me, and I wasn’t offended.