Chapter 13 Vedveer - Talking Down Walls
Vedveer
Talking Down Walls
I follow Aaditha to the terrace after dinner. Her hair cascades down her back like a silk curtain caught in a gentle breeze, until her hand snakes back and sweeps it over her shoulder.
It is just us. The families – immediate and extended – have all retired for the night.
I look around the sun deck. My eyes linger on the bar, the carefully scattered tables and chairs, the lone sofa and the stretch of bonsais.
I like to think of this space as my benefaction to Ranibagh.
This is where I spent long hours as a boy, my eyes transfixed on the Aravallis, which from this position are at eye level, or so it seems. Like a peer, almost.
Aaditha asks for a cup of coffee. She wants to make it two, but I’m not done with my vintage yet.
She rolls her eyes in response. I like that she still thinks I’m a coffee drinker. I have that edge over her; I know exactly how she likes her coffee.
‘Apologies about the staff,’ I say, referring to the fiasco earlier in the day.
I spoke to them before her arrival and made sure to underline her sensitivities, but their over-enthusiastic attempts to help her settle in ended up ruining it for her.
Aaditha’s eyes are on my wrist. I’m holding a goblet.
‘You notice them?’ Aaditha asks about the staff on the terrace, her eyes darting to the corners. ‘They try to be invisible, speaking softly and merging into the walls. I don’t mean that in a feudal way.’
I laugh. What other way could it be?
‘They all appear to be happy and very much at home here at Ranibagh. A bit bossy, too, especially the help at the chambers,’ she says, her eyes dancing in the light. ‘Again, they’re not rude. It’s just that I’m not used to so many people around me.’
Aaditha smiles and lets her shoulders drop before she turns to pick up her double-shot bone-dry cappuccino from Sagar, the server.
She waits for a couple of minutes, letting the staff settle into their spaces, which is a fair distance from where we are positioned.
‘Do you want them to leave?’ I ask.
‘Not unless you want them to,’ she comes back with a smile.
Aaditha’s fitted calf-length skirt outlines her petite frame; her cropped V-neck vest reveals a sliver of her waist. Her dark hair sits on one shoulder; an errant silky strand falls over a cheek. I’m tempted to pick it up and tuck it behind her ears.
‘When they reached for my bag of intimates, I kinda lost it,’ she says. ‘What next, I’m thinking. That’s when I told them I can manage on my own.’
I apologize again.
She shrugs. Some of her hair slides from its perch and falls over her breast.
She takes deep breaths, and I try to regulate my breathing.
‘Nothing to apologize for, Yuvrajji,’ she teases. ‘All is fair on the palace grounds.’
Aaditha’s lips lift just a touch, like they had on a January evening, and for a moment, my mind goes back to that kiss. The one she has no recollection of, because of which I’m consigned to the heap of average kissers. There’s no insult crueller than mediocre.
‘Tell me,’ she says, eyeing the place beside her, motioning for me to join her there.
‘I would love to draw my legs up and sip my coffee,’ she says, breaking from the train of the conversation. She does that sometimes, without missing a beat, then jumping right back to what she was saying earlier, dragging you back and forth like a yo-yo.
‘Go ahead,’ I say.
Aaditha shakes her head.
‘My skirt is too tight.’ She throws her head back and laughs. ‘The thing about these fancy clothes is that they’re not functional. They’re not designed for multitasking working women like me.’
‘Bourgeoisie, are we?’ I ask, my gaze sweeping across her length.
‘Are you checking me out, Your Highness!’
I can’t help a sloppy smile.
‘I was thinking, no, wishing, I could wear my favourite denims, which I’ve packed, by the way, for dinner! Maybe I should have! I would’ve embarrassed Mr Unflappable!’
She’s laughing gayly at her own joke.
‘You think me unflappable?’ Is that how I come across to her?
She dismisses the question with a flick of her wrist. ‘Is that what I said?’ she asks.
‘You should’ve given the denims a shot for dinner.’
‘Threat or dare?’ she asks, pushing out her chin, her eyes locking with mine. I sit back on the two-seater. It’s all I can do to stay where I am.
My brows shift in a quiet motion.
‘What I wanted to ask you earlier is that does someone actually pack your clothes for you when you travel?’
Guilty as charged. I nod.
‘But how would they know what you’d want to wear on a particular day?’ she asks, pointing her cup at my shirt. ‘I mean, I get it. For men, what are your options – blue shirt or white shirt? Dress shirt or not so dressy or whatever descriptor you use for these clothes?’
She shakes her head dramatically, discombobulated by the nuances of fashion.
‘What about your mother, or your sister?’ she asks. ‘Imagine landing in Mumbai or Dubai with the wrong pair of jeans in your suitcase! It would drive me crazy.’
‘Navya packs her own bags. I’m not sure about Mother, though. I could ask her if you want. Aaditha is interested to know.’
I offer a small prayer every time I say her name. It’s the phonetic roulette. There’s thunder in her eyes each time I go over with the ‘H’.
We sit quietly for a while, enjoying the breeze and the charged air that fills the silence. I refill my glass, but she’s done with coffee for the night.
‘I don’t want to be walking up your palace walls!’ she says.
I’m hunched over my knees, wine glass in hand, watching the colour of the night deepen.
‘Is marriage something you have given a thought to?’ I ask as a stiff wind tousles her hair.
Aaditha opens her mouth and then closes it before she speaks. ‘Marriage in general?’ she asks.
I nod.
‘It’s not something I want to think about,’ she says after a while, her gaze meeting mine.
I’m not a man of a dozen questions, and in this case, I’m not even sure if it’s okay to ask why, but I do.
‘I didn’t really have reason to,’ she says.
I wonder about Arjun Mahesh, the dude from the TittleTattle posts, the sender of red roses.
‘My parents’ marriage is functional; nothing wrong with it. I don’t think they have ever discussed divorce, but it’s not something I would go to any length to replicate for myself,’ she says.
The hollow of her neck sinks as she speaks. ‘And Alia’s marriage of eleven years will end in a divorce. It’s only a matter of time.’
I had no idea about her sister’s marriage. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ she says. ‘She’s better off single than being unhappily attached. Maybe the same for her husband.’
‘I don’t have great examples of happy marriages in my life, so yeah, it’s not something that enthuses me. It makes me very nervous, actually.’
Aaditha’s eyes are almost the colour of her hair.
‘I don’t mean to crib. Life has been good to me,’ she says, ‘but society, its views and opinions on women are so skewed, especially in the matter of marriage.’
Aaditha shakes her head like she wants to knock off a thought and preferably lose it.
‘Look at the way I’m trolled for what I wear or what I don’t wear, the way I look or walk. There’s a national debate on stuff that is basically personal choice,’ she says, ‘but you, everything you wear is great. It’s a different metric for a man, especially when he’s as good-looking as you are…’
I’m caught between her point – something I had not really considered in the depth at which she articulates – and a casual compliment she slides my way. A point that didn’t make her pros list.
‘Life has not been so kind to me on that count,’ she says.
I nod.
‘Tell me about America?’ I ask.
What I really want to know is about the chap she went to college with, who keeps cropping up on social media.
‘I had a dream, Vedveer,’ she says. ‘I was always massively trolled because I’m my father’s daughter. It isn’t the same for Alia, and thank god for that, maybe because she got married and moved to the US about the time Appa gained political prominence or because she is an IT professional.’
She exhales, and I feel her breath fan my face. She is sitting back on the sofa, her right elbow on the armrest.
‘I went to a not-so-popular college so that I could get lost. I didn’t want to be tracked down.’
‘I wondered about that,’ I say.
‘I spent most of my time in college by myself, except for when I got into an unfortunate relationship not much before I abandoned my studies,’ she says.
‘What happened?’ I want to know everything about her, what makes her tick, what she does every minute of the day.
‘A guy, a vile gaslighter,’ she says with a laugh. ‘His name is Arjun Mahesh. TittleTattle had a picture of us having coffee the day you and I met in my office.’
Hmm… Why does she still meet him?
‘Arjun thought I was just another Indian student trying to make it work in the United States,’ she says.
I hold her gaze and say nothing.
‘He must have figured otherwise much later, after COFFEE Before Books & Bras had taken off.’
I let her speak because she clearly wants to speak.
‘He’s probably the one providing TittleTattle photographs of me from my Ohio days. Arjun is the only other person who could have had those photos,’ she says.
‘Only other?’
‘I’m the other, and I don’t have any,’ she shrugs.
I nod.
‘I ended that relationship by throwing the remnants of a tepid cup of coffee on his face,’ she says, her smile bright.
My eyes settle on the wine on the side table, and we both laugh out loud.
I lean back on the sofa after a while. We are sitting so close, it kills me to not be able to pull her into a rough embrace.
‘Lavanya came into my life the day I ended things with Arjun, and she hasn’t left.’
I hear her breathe.
‘Good things also happened to me in America. Lavanya, and somewhere between running away from trolls and considering society’s opinion of me, I became my own person,’ she says, sitting up and squaring her shoulders.
Aaditha reaches for the wine glass in my hand, then pauses, fingertips grazing mine. She’s undecided. I offer it to her. She takes it slowly, her lips brushing the rim as she sips, leaving a trace of lipstick behind.
‘The idea of COFFEE Before Books & Bras was born on that campus in Ohio.’
COFFEE Before Books & Bras is her story. I let that sink in as I study the wine glass. Do I sip from the spot her lips just touched or turn it, pretend I didn’t notice?
‘My coffee is really good, no?’ Aaditha’s eyes light up. She’s not asking a question.
‘It’s great,’ I say and lift the glass to my mouth. My lips on her lipstick.
Aaditha’s cheeks colour. The shade of her lipstick.
After a while, we move from our seats and stand by the parapet, from where we look down at the now-empty courtyard. We watch as the bonfire settles into the earth, whispering embers disappearing into the night.
A stiff breeze draws a shiver.
‘My god, this view!’ she says, turning to me. ‘It’s like I’m making eye contact with the Aravalli. Looking up at it from the courtyard is brilliant – brown, green, bold – but this is a whole different level of awe… It’s like you can converse with it.’
‘Why, hello, my friend!’
She stops talking and turns to me.
‘Your friend for life,’ I say.
She nods.
This balcony is my getaway in Ranibagh. It could be Aaditha’s, too, if she wants it.