chapter 23

23   On the day of Nat’s party, I headed to Cara’s as promised. But as I neared her building, and pulled into the parking lot, something kept gnawing at me. I couldn’t get out of the car, and just sat there, listening to music.I needed time to think. I had to think about what I was doing . . . here, now. Leading parallel lives with two women. I was obsessed with Cara. And it was the sex. We did little else together, yet it was easy for me to spend time with her. She was a sleeper, and by that I mean she liked to sleep. A lot. She could spend hours lying in bed, reading, listening to music, drifting in and out of sleep, while I sat in the living room overlooking the golf course, and read or edited my pictures. It had seemed like we were slowly drifting into a relationship until the New York trip with Nat and then the week in Goa with her and Rhea.In Goa, almost everything had been about sex. Rhea had left for the US soon after and Cara and I had gone back to life as we knew it. Cara never mentioned or made much ofthe fact that the man she was with, me, had had sex with her best friend both independently and together with Cara. It seemed like we had all done something quite natural. I remembered one morning in Goa when Rhea and I were sitting by the pool and watching Cara in the water.‘She’s an awesome babe,’ Rhea had said. ‘Been there, done “that”,’ I replied, smiling.‘Been there and been asked to do “that” many times,’ she retorted, and we were in splits.Cara smiled from the water, indulgently.I think that was the moment that changed the way I viewed this relationship. Not that I had had a lot of it, but at that point I shrugged off any feelings of possessiveness about Cara. I could have gone on like this I suppose, enjoying the sex and the easy companionship, but Nat happened. And now I had to sit down and face the facts. A, I was falling in love with Nat. B, she was married and I still hadn’t told her about Cara (so who was doing the cheating then? Could it even be called that?). The situation was potentially volatile and very fragile. And C, I knew in my heart that I didn’t handle love well. I had been in love once before and it had left a deep scar.Krishna Ananthaswamy. Kay. The first time I noticed her was when I accepted an assignment to cover a classical music and dance festival in Chennai. She was an amazing Bharatanatyam dancer and the magazine had shortlisted her for the cover of the next edition. She had that rare combination of incredible beauty, phenomenal talent and extreme discipline. To top it off she wore these attributesvery lightly. Until that day I hadn’t shot another artist who could pose as professionally and patiently, giving me the time I needed, and still flit about on the set, laughing easily. The portfolio I got was great. I was hooked but the magazine had to go to print soon so I left without having a proper conversation, hoping that, if I gave them the name, someone in the magazine would help me find her later.Serendipitously, we bumped into each other the following week at a movie theatre where she was with friends. I walked up to her and told her that I thought she was a fantastic dancer and asked her if she had liked the magazine feature. She ignored my ogling and thanked me graciously. As luck would have it there weren’t enough tickets available, so one of her friends dropped out, and Kay said she wasn’t going to watch either. I asked her out for coffee instead and she agreed; we hit it off instantly.At first we just messaged each other often, then one thing led to another and we began going to the movies together. Eventually we made a pact to eat at every new restaurant that opened. Whenever Kay insisted on paying I’d bully her into letting me pay, and she, in turn, would demand that we decide our next meal so that she could pay then. This ritual repeated itself every time we had dinner together. We talked on the phone endlessly. Hanging up was a game, and invariably we kept putting it off until one of us felt so sleepy that we had to. We loved to read and talk about books, and sit on the beach watching the waves without so much as a word. We even planned a trip to a wildlife reserve on a campingholiday. It was early monsoon, the weather was beautiful, and the campsite along the river was straight out of a picture book. One morning both of us dropped out of a hike in the hills, and made love. Unspoken. One minute we were looking at a herd of elephants in the distance and smiling at each other in shared delight, and the next I was leading her by the hand into the tent. The fact that she was shy made it all the more special.But saying ‘I love you’ was a delicate and scary step in a new relationship; I was taking my time, and so was she. On the rare occasion when I said things like ‘I love spending time with you,’ she’d say, ‘It’s great’ or change the subject. The last thing I wanted to discover was that she didn’t think of me ‘that way’. And then one day she asked if I’d like to have dinner at her house and said that she’d cook me a meal. I was thrilled and in my naiveté took that as her reciprocation.Even after all these years I remembered every detail of that evening vividly. I wasn’t sure if I was going to meet her parents, or if this was a party where there would be other guests or if it would be just the two of us. She called and I went happily. This girl, who otherwise wore jeans and t-shirts, opened the door for me looking resplendent in a Kanjivaram sari. Normally when we met she greeted me with a very warm hug but not this time. I assumed she didn’t want to risk crushing her sari, or something. The house was quiet and I realized when we walked into the living room that we were alone.I had brought with me a bottle of wine which I gave to her.‘I’ve opened a red already; I like to drink while I cook. Will you have some?’ she asked. I nodded and she poured me a glass. ‘I have to finish something,’ she continued, and walked towards the open-plan kitchen.The formality in her body language and her reserved manner began to make me slightly uncomfortable, yet I followed her. She started mixing something on the kitchen counter, standing with her back towards me. Just as I was contemplating putting my glass down and surprising her with a hug, she turned with a start.‘What are you doing here?’ she asked smiling.Somehow I felt as if I’d been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. ‘Nothing,’ I mumbled and took a step back. ‘Why don’t you sit in the hall?’ she suggested, making itsound more like an instruction.That surprised me a bit, but I walked back to the living room, sat on the sofa and began to flip through a magazine lying there. It felt like I had just been slapped for misbehaving. I was miserable.She emerged from the kitchen after about ten minutes and asked, ‘Should we eat?’The table was beautifully laid out with crystal and porcelain, a couple of candles and some flowers.Well, all is not lost yet, I thought to myself.She sat by my side and began to serve the food which smelled delicious. We ate quietly for most part, speakingonly when she responded to my compliments, and occasionally glancing at each other and smiling. When she got up in between to refill the wine, I caught a glimpse of her bare midriff and navel. Desire began to build. ‘Coffee?’ she asked when we were through with the meal.‘Yes,’ I replied.She made wonderful filter coffee for us and suggested that we go up to the terrace with it. Midway through the coffee and a discussion on how beautiful Chennai looked from up there, Kay blurted out, ‘I am going to the US to study.’‘Huh?’ I asked, confused.‘I’ve got a scholarship to study law at Yale,’ she replied. ‘W . . . wow!’ I stuttered. ‘Congratulations! That is socool!’‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘I am going next week.’ I spilled my coffee.‘I know it is kind of sudden,’ she continued. ‘I’m leaving next week. College starts next month, I’ll be staying with my aunt until then. She wanted me to come earlier so she can take me around, show me the ropes. She won’t be able to take leave later. You know how these things work.’I didn’t but nodded anyway.We stood in silence until she realized that she had finished her coffee. ‘Should we go downstairs?’ she asked, staring at her cup.I nodded again and followed her like a lamb. On the way down I noticed that it was almost eleven and figured that I should probably leave. When we got out of the lift andneared the door to the apartment, she took the cup from my hand and said, ‘Let me put this away and I’ll walk you to your car.’The evening was going no further.‘Great,’ I replied, and added, ‘my camera is on the sofa.’ ‘I’ll get it for you,’ she said and went inside.We walked down to my car; she gave me a hug and said, ‘As soon as I settle down, I will get in touch with you.’Which meant this was the last time I was seeing her. Everything that evening seemed really odd and I was desperate for answers. Driving away, my head in a tizzy and my heart torn apart, I pulled over, parked the car and called her. There was no answer but my phone rang a minute later and she said, ‘Hi, you called?’I suddenly felt like an idiot, because I didn’t know what I was going to say to her.‘Thank you, that was lovely,’ I said lamely. ‘You hardly ate anything,’ she replied.‘It wasn’t just about the food.’‘It was. You think I go around cooking for everybody?’ ‘Okay, it was about the food too, but you know I am nota big eater. So thank you, it was all delicious.’ ‘Good,’ she replied, ‘I had to do this.’ ‘What do you mean “had to”?’‘You have been so nice to me,’ she replied.It felt like I had been slapped, hard. That statement, I thought, pretty much illustrated her position: It was great while it lasted, I had a good time and I know you did too.‘You are a very nice person,’ I replied and, after some more small talk, hung up.I hadn’t spoken to or heard from her since. I hadn’t tried to reach out to her either. I could have if I had asked around. She was on Facebook and occasionally I looked her up while ignoring suggestions that I might be her ‘friend’. In the years that had transpired since Kay, I had learned to be guarded about my emotions despite the occasional date with someone or the other.Now, sitting in the car, this morning, I wondered what I was doing with Nat and Cara, with no logical conclusion in mind, drifting, meddling with feelings in a sexual relationship. The last lines of the Pink Floyd song that was playing filtered into my thoughts— I took a heavenly ride through our silence I knew the moment had arrivedFor killing the past and coming back to life I took a heavenly ride through our silence I knew the waiting had begunAnd I headed straight . . . into the shining sun