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‘Dreaming of something?’ Nikhil asked teasingly.
Her eyes whipped back to him. She shook her head, trying to stop thinking of what a passionate reconciliation with him would be like.
‘Look, are you really keen on watching the show? It’d be nice to catch up, but I’m leaving tomorrow morning. Want to sneak off with me somewhere?’
Oh, yes, she did want to sneak off with him. Put like that, it sounded deliciously wanton—also, no one had ever suggested sneaking off with her before.
Shweta tried not to look over-eager. ‘I can slip away. I’m not terribly keen on the Bollywood dancers anyway.’
‘Maybe you should tell Siddhant you’re leaving,’ Nikhil suggested.
But Shweta had decided to spend at least one evening free of his petty tyranny. ‘He’s not even my boss,’ she said. ‘I’ll message Priya so that she doesn’t get worried.’
It was only once they were in the black SUV that Nikhil had hired for the day that it occurred to Shweta to ask where they were going.
‘It’s a place where the locals hang out,’ he said. ‘Good music, and the food’s to die for. Not too swanky. But we can go to one of the five-star hotels around here if you’d prefer that?’
‘Yes—like I’d choose the five-star hotel after that introduction,’ Shweta said. ‘And you should know I’m not the swanky restaurant type.’
‘You might have changed,’ Nikhil said. ‘You don’t look the same—for all I know you might have turned into a wine-sipping socialite, scorning us lesser mortals...’
Shweta punched him in the arm and he laughed. ‘Still violent, I see,’ he said, but his tone was more tender than mocking. She felt her heart do an obedient little flip-flop in response. At least now her reactions to him weren’t coming as a surprise. All she had to do was work harder at concealing them.
They were on the outskirts of the city now, and driving down a narrow lane flanked by fields and coconut trees.
‘OK if I roll down the window?’ Nikhil asked.
When she nodded, he switched off the air-conditioning and got the windows down.
‘We’re lucky it’s not raining,’ he said. ‘Kerala gets most of its rains in winter...’
‘I know. I used to pay attention in Geography,’ Shweta said pertly. ‘Unlike you.’
Nikhil gave her a mocking smile. ‘You were such a gooooood little girl,’ he said, dragging his words out. ‘Of course you paid attention.’
Shweta carefully controlled an urge to hit him on the head with a high-heeled shoe. ‘And you were such a baaad boy.’ She copied his tone as closely as she could. ‘Of course you paid attention to no one and were good for nothing.’
‘Bad boys are good at some things,’ he murmured suggestively.
Shweta flushed as all the things he was probably very, very good at sprang to mind. God, was he doing it on purpose? Probably he thought it was fun, getting her all hot and bothered. There was no way he could be actually flirting with her—or was he?
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ she asked in her best auditor voice—the one that Priya swore made entire finance departments quake in their shoes.
Nikhil nodded. ‘Almost there.’
The road had developed some rather alarming twists and turns, and he was concentrating on his driving. In Shweta’s opinion he was going too fast, but she’d boil her favourite shoes in oil before she said anything—there was no point giving him an opportunity to make remarks about fraidy-cat accountants. She fixed her eyes on Nikhil instead, hoping the man would take her mind off his driving. It worked. The moonlight illuminated his rather stern profile perfectly, throwing the planes and angles of his face into relief.
He was really quite remarkably good-looking, Shweta thought. It was a wonder she hadn’t noticed it in school, but she had an explanation. In those days she’d been completely obsessed by a rather chocolate-faced movie star, and had unconsciously compared everyone she saw with him. Nikhil was the complete opposite of chocolate-faced—even at fourteen his features had been uncompromisingly male. Her eyes drifted towards his shoulders and upper body, and then to his hands on the steering wheel. He had rather nice hands, she thought, strong with square-tipped fingers. Unbidden, she started to wonder how those hands would feel on her body, and she blushed for probably the twelfth time that evening.
The car negotiated a final hairpin bend, after which the road seemed to shake itself out and lose steam. It went on for a couple of hundred metres through a rather dense copse of coconut trees and ended abruptly on a beach.
‘Are you lost?’ she enquired. He shook his head. ‘Come on,’ he said, opening his door and leaping down lightly.
He was at her door and handing her down before she could protest. Locking the car with a click of the remote, he put an arm around her shoulders and started walking her to the beach.
Their destination was a small, brightly lit shack thatched with palm fronds. There were small tables laid out in front, some of which were occupied by locals. Nikhil chose a table with a view of the beach. The moon had risen now, and the sea had a picture-postcard quality to it. A motherly-looking woman in her fifties bustled out, beaming in delight when she saw Nikhil. She greeted him in a flood of Malayalam which Shweta didn’t even bother trying to follow. She wasn’t particularly good at languages, and Malayalam was nothing like Hindi or any other language she knew.
‘Meet Mariamma,’ Nikhil said. ‘She’s known me since I was a kid.’
Shweta smiled and Mariamma switched to heavily accented English. ‘Am always happy to meet Nikhil’s friends,’ she said, dispelling any notion that this was the first time Nikhil had brought someone here with him. ‘Miss Shweta, do sit down. I’ll get you a menu.’
‘I thought you didn’t have one?’ Nikhil murmured.
Mariamma said chidingly, ‘You haven’t been in touch for a long while. We got a menu printed—Jossy designed it on his laptop.’
‘I’d love to see it, but I know what I want to order,’ Nikhil said. ‘Shweta, any preferences?’
‘If you could order for me...’ Shweta said, and Nikhil promptly switched back into Malayalam and reeled off a list of stuff that sounded as if it would be enough to feed the entire state for a week.
Mariamma beamed at both of them and headed back to the kitchen, her cotton sari rustling as she left.
‘You come here often?’
‘I used to—when I was a child. My grandparents lived quite near here, and Mariamma was one of my aunt’s closest friends.’
‘Your grandparents...?’
‘Died when I was in college.’
Nikhil was frowning, and Shweta wished she hadn’t asked.
‘Are you in touch with anyone from our class in school?’ she asked hastily.
He began to laugh. ‘You need to be more subtle when you’re changing the topic,’ he said. ‘No. I e-mail some of my old crowd on and off, but I haven’t met up with anyone for a long while. Ajay and Wilson are in the States now, and Vineet’s building a hotel in Dehra Dun. How about you?’
‘I’m not building a hotel in Dehra Dun,’ Shweta said, and made a face. ‘I’m in touch with Vineet too. He’s difficult to avoid. And a couple of other people as well.’
‘Have they got used to your new avatar?’ He was still finding it difficult to reconcile Shweta who looked like a million bucks but sounded like the old tomboyish Shweta he’d known for most of his adolescent years.
Shweta frowned at him. ‘What avatar?’
‘I remember you as a serious, pigtailed little thing, very grim and earnest all the time—except when you were climbing trees and challenging me to cycling races.’
‘And now?’
‘And now...’ He smiled and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well, you’ve chosen a grim and serious profession, all right, but in spite of that...something’s changed. You’ve been rebelling, haven’t you? You look different, of course, but that’s just the contact lenses and the new hairstyle.’
A little piqued at his dismissal of the change in her looks, she said firmly, ‘Well, I haven’t been rebelling.’
‘Sure?’ he asked teasingly. ‘You came away with me instead of staying back with that extremely eligible, extremely boring young man.’
‘I haven’t seen you for fifteen years,’ she pointed out. ‘I see Siddhant every day.’
‘And your shoes...’
She looked down at them defensively. They were rather lovely shoes—high-heeled green pumps that struck a bright note against her sombre black trousers and top. She was wearing a silver hand-crafted necklace studded with peridots—the stones perfectly matched the shoes. In spite of having read a dozen articles that condemned matching accessories as the height of un-cool, she found it difficult to stop herself, especially when it came to shoes. Speaking of which...
‘What’s wrong with my shoes?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, looking amused. ‘They’re...very striking, that’s all. But otherwise you’re very conservatively dressed.’ Before she could protest, he said, ‘Sorry, I’ve been reading too many articles on pop psychology. But I stick by what I say—it’s a slow rebellion, but you’re rebelling all the same. I always thought your father was way too strict with you.’
‘I’ve been living away from home for over seven years,’ Shweta said indignantly. ‘All my rebelling is long over and done with. And he’s changed. He’s not the way he used to be.’ Her father had been a bit of a terror when she was younger, and most of her classmates had given him a wide berth. It had taken Shweta herself years to muster up the courage to stand up to him.
‘If you say so.’ Somehow seeing Shweta again had brought out the old desire in Nikhil to wind her up, watch her struggle to control her temper—except she was now all grown up, and instead of wanting to tug her pigtails and trip her over during PE class he wanted to reach out and touch her, to run his hands over her smooth skin and tangle them in her silken hair...
Realising that his thoughts were wandering a bit too far, he picked up the menu and started leafing through it. A thought struck him. ‘You haven’t turned vegetarian, have you?’
He looked relieved when Shweta shook her head. ‘Thank heavens. I’ve ordered mutton stew and appams and prawn curry—I just assumed you’d be OK with all of it.’
‘Of course I am. I’ve always loved prawn curry. Your mom used to cook it really well, I remember.’
‘Which mom?’ he asked, his mouth twisting into a wry smile.
Shweta felt like kicking herself. Nikhil was illegitimate, and had always been touchy about his family. His father had taken a mistress after ten years of a childless marriage, scandalising everyone who knew him, and Nikhil was his mistress’s son. Perhaps it would have been less scandalous if he’d tried to keep the affair secret, but when he’d found out that Ranjini was pregnant he’d brought her to live in the same house as his wife. Until he was four Nikhil had thought having two mothers was a perfectly normal arrangement—it was only when he joined school that he realised he lived in a very peculiar household.
‘Veena Aunty,’ Shweta said.
Veena was Nikhil’s father’s wife. If they’d been Muslims Nikhil’s father could have taken a second wife, but as a Hindu he would have been committing bigamy if he’d married Ranjini. Veena had taken the whole thing surprisingly well. People had expected her to resent Ranjini terribly, even if she couldn’t do anything about having to share a house with her, but Veena appeared to be on quite good terms with her. And she adored Nikhil, which perhaps wasn’t so surprising given that she didn’t have children of her own. In his teen years at least Nikhil had been equally attached to her—all his sullenness and resentment had been directed towards his parents.
‘How’re they doing?’ Shweta asked. ‘Your parents, I mean.’ She’d met them only a few times—her father had made sure that she didn’t have much to do with Nikhil.
Nikhil shrugged. ‘OK, I guess. I haven’t seen them for over four years.’
Shweta’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Aren’t they still in Pune, then?’
‘Dad has some property in Trivandrum. They moved there when Dad retired. They’re still there—though now Amma is pretending to be a cousin and Mom tells everyone that she’s married to Dad.’
The words came out easily enough, but Shweta could see his jaw tense up and was very tempted to lean across the table and take his hand, smooth away the frown lines. He’d always called his own mother Mom, while his father’s wife went by the more affectionate Amma.
‘I guess it’s easier that way,’ Shweta said. ‘Rather than having to explain everything to a whole new set of people.’
‘Pity they didn’t think of it when it really mattered.’ His voice was tight, almost brittle. ‘I don’t know why Amma is letting them do this.’
‘I’m sure she has her reasons. Maybe you could visit them now that you’re already in Kerala?’ Shweta believed strongly in women standing up for themselves—in her view Veena was quite as responsible for the situation as Nikhil’s parents.
‘Not enough time—I’ve got to be back in Mumbai for another gig. Plus I’m not on the best of terms right now with my father.’ He was still frowning, but after a few seconds he made a visible effort to smile. ‘While we’re on the subject of parents, how’re your dad and aunt?’
‘He’s retired, so now he bosses the gardener and the cleaners around instead of his patients,’ Shweta said, and Nikhil laughed.
Shweta’s father had been a doctor in a fairly well-known hospital in Pune, and he’d inspired a healthy respect in everyone who knew him. Shweta’s mother had died quite suddenly of a heart attack when Shweta was three, and her father’s unmarried older sister had moved in to help bring up Shweta.
‘And your aunt?’
‘She’s still keeping house for him. Though she grumbles about him to whoever’s willing to listen—wonders how my mother put up with him for so many years.’
A lot of people had wondered that, but Nikhil didn’t say so. He’d met Shweta’s father several times—he’d been on their school board, and had chaired the disciplinary hearing that had led to his final expulsion from the school. Nikhil didn’t hold that against him. He’d been on a short wicket in any case, given that the smoking incident had followed hard upon his having ‘borrowed’ their Hindi teacher’s motorbike and taken his best buddies out for a spin on it. But he had resented Dr Mathur telling Shweta not to have anything to do with him.
The food arrived and Mariamma came across to ladle generous portions onto their plates. ‘Eat well, now,’ she admonished Shweta. ‘You’re so thin—you girls nowadays are always on some diet or the other.’
‘I can’t diet to save my life,’ Shweta said. ‘I’m thin because I swim a lot.’
Mariamma sniffed disapprovingly, but Nikhil found it refreshing, being with a woman who wasn’t obsessed with her figure. His job brought him into contact with models and actresses, all of whom seemed to be afraid to breathe in case the air contained calories. In his view Shweta had a better figure than all of them—she was slim, but not stick-thin, and her body curved nicely in all the right places.
‘Like the food?’ he asked, watching her as she dipped an appam into the curry and ate it with evident enjoyment. For a few seconds he couldn’t take his eyes off her lush mouth as she ran her tongue over her bottom lip—the gesture was so innocently sexy.
‘It’s good,’ she pronounced.
He dragged his eyes away from her face to concentrate on his own untouched plate before she could catch him staring.
‘Everything’s cooked in coconut oil, isn’t it? It adds an interesting flavour to the food.’
Nikhil thought back to the last time he’d taken a girl on a date to a restaurant in Mumbai that served authentic Kerala cuisine. She’d hardly eaten anything, insisting that the food smelt like hair oil. She’d been annoying in many other ways as well, he remembered. Rude to waiters and refusing to walk even a few metres to the car because the pavement looked ‘mucky’. Not for the first time he wondered why he chose to waste his time with empty-headed women like her rather than someone like Shweta. He didn’t want to delve too deeply into the reasons, though—self-analysis wasn’t one of his passions.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Shweta said as she polished off her last appam. ‘Why were you out to get me in school? We used to be good friends when we were really little—till you began hanging out only with the boys and ignored me completely. And when we were twelve or something you started being really horrible. You used to be rude about my clothes and my hairstyle—pretty much everything.’
‘Was I that bad?’ Nikhil looked genuinely puzzled. ‘I remember teasing you a little, but it was light-hearted stuff. I didn’t mean to upset you. Maybe it was because you were such a good little girl—listening to what the teacher said, doing your homework on time, never playing truant... It was stressful, studying with you. You set such high standards...’
He ducked as Shweta swatted at him with a ladle. ‘Careful,’ he said, his voice brimming over with laughter as drops of curry sprayed around. ‘I don’t want to go back looking like I’ve been in a food fight.’
‘Oh, God—and your clothes probably cost a bomb, didn’t they.’ Conscience-stricken, Shweta put the ladle down. ‘Did I get any on you?’
Nikhil shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. If I find any stains I’ll send you the dry-cleaning bill.’
She looked up swiftly, wondering whether he was being serious, but the lurking smile in his eyes betrayed him. ‘Oh, you wretch,’ she scolded. ‘I’ve a good mind to throw the entire dish at you.’
‘Mariamma will be really offended,’ he said gravely. ‘And if you throw things at me I won’t buy you dessert.’
‘Oh, well that settles it, then. I’ll be nice to you.’ He hadn’t really answered her question, but she didn’t want to destroy the light-hearted atmosphere by pressing too hard. ‘But only till we’re done with dessert.’
TWO
‘Aren’t you going to wear something under that? A churidaar or leggings?’
‘It’s a dress, Siddhant,’ Shweta explained patiently. ‘It’s supposed to be worn like this.’ Dresses had come back into fashion a couple of years ago, but evidently no one had informed Siddhant.
‘I like you better in salwar kameez,’ he said. ‘Or even jeans. You look—I don’t know—sort of weird in this. And the shoes...’
Shweta surveyed herself in the huge mirror in the hotel foyer. The simple pale yellow cotton dress set off her golden-brown skin and lovely black eyes to perfection. And the shoes were her favourite ones—flat open-toed white sandals with huge yellow cloth flowers on the straps. The flowers were even of the same genus/sub-species as the white printed ones on her dress, and until she’d come downstairs she’d been pretty happy with the overall effect.
During her childhood she’d been forced to wear truly horrible clothes—her aunt had had absolutely no sense of colour or style, and had usually bought Shweta’s clothes at discount stores or got them made up by the local tailor. It didn’t help that the tailor was the same one who’d made Dr Mathur’s shirts. All her clothes had ended up with boxy cuts and mannish collars. She’d tried complaining to her father, but he’d told her she shouldn’t be bothering about something as frivolous as clothes, and she’d been too much in awe of him to protest. It had only been when she was in college that she’d started choosing her own clothes and, while she knew her taste wasn’t perfect, she hated anyone criticising what she wore.
‘They’re very nice shoes,’ she told Siddhant firmly. ‘Actually, all in all, I think I look pretty good.’
‘I agree,’ a voice said behind her.
She spun around to meet Nikhil’s smiling eyes. Brilliant—now he probably thought she was needy and totally hungry for reassurance.
‘I wasn’t intending to criticise your clothes,’ Siddhant said, after nodding stiffly to Nikhil. ‘I just thought that jeans might be more practical, given that we’re going sightseeing.’
He himself was dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp white short-sleeved shirt. Somehow, though, he managed to look a little stiff-necked and conservative next to Nikhil’s rugged good looks.
Nikhil gave him an easy smile. ‘We’re driving to the backwaters and we’ll spend the next few hours on a boat. It’s hardly a Himalayan trek. Shweta—I came to ask you... You said you wanted to pick up some spices for your aunt, right? I’ve decided to stay back for another day, and I’ll be taking the SUV out again—you can ride with me. We’ll stop at a spice garden I know—you’ll get much better stuff there than you do in the stores.’
Shweta nodded happily. The alternative was to ride in a bus with the rest of the office crowd. Siddhant would be with the other partners in a specially rented van. Not that they were trying to be elitist, as he’d hastily clarified, but they had some urgent business to discuss, which was confidential, and it would be a pity to waste the travel time when all of them were together anyway.
He didn’t look at all happy about Shweta going off with Nikhil, but there was little he could do about it. ‘I’ll see you at the boats, then,’ he said.
‘Yes, we should be there in a couple of hours,’ Nikhil said. ‘Come on, Shweta, we should leave now. See you in a bit, Siddhant. I was taking a look at the video of yesterday’s dance, by the way—not bad at all. I wish I could have made it back in time for the actual performance.’
‘Don’t make fun of him,’ Shweta said in an undertone as they waited for the car. ‘He was pretty uncomfortable with this whole dance thing, but it was his boss’s idea and he couldn’t wriggle out of it.’
There was genuine surprise on Nikhil’s face as he replied. ‘I wasn’t. OK, he isn’t India’s answer to Michael Jackson, but he did a good job. Must have practised a lot.’
‘He’s a bit of a perfectionist,’ Shweta muttered.
She still hadn’t figured Nikhil out. Maybe he’d been telling the truth the night before—he’d only been teasing her back then in school and she’d overreacted. An incipient persecution complex—that was what her father would call it.
‘So is it serious, then?’ Nikhil asked after a pause.
‘With Siddhant? I don’t know—we’ve not talked about it. We’ve been dating for a while, so I guess there’s a good chance of us ending up together.’
‘Are you in love with him?’
Startled, she felt her gaze fly up to his face. ‘With Siddhant?’ she asked again, stupidly.
He smiled. ‘No, with that traffic policeman over there. Of course with Siddhant, you dimwit.’
‘No,’ she said, and then bit her lip. Impulsive frankness was all very well, but sometimes she wished she had more control over her tongue. ‘I mean, I’m very fond of him, but it’s a little too early. We’ve not actually...’ Her voice trailed off as he began to smile. She must be sounding like an utter idiot to him. He’d already made it pretty clear that he didn’t have a very high opinion of Siddhant, and her dithering was probably amusing him no end. Rapidly she moved the battle into enemy territory. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Are you in love with...well, whoever people might think you’re in love with?’
‘No, I’m not,’ he said, his lips twitching.
A valet brought his black SUV around and Nikhil helped her in before heading around to the driver’s side. The powerful engine purred to life as he turned the key in the ignition, but to her surprise he didn’t start driving right away. Instead he was looking at her, his expression unfathomable.
‘How keen are you on this spice-buying thing?’
‘It’s one of the must-dos if you’re in Kerala, isn’t it? Why? Is there a problem?’
‘Well, the proper spice gardens are up in the hills,’ he said. ‘It’s just that we had a good time yesterday—or at least I did—and I thought it would be good to hang out for a while without the rest of your group.’
Shweta took a few seconds to digest this. On the one hand there was something incredibly flattering about Nikhil wanting to spend more time with her. On the other the thought of slipping away for a clandestine rendezvous was a little unsettling. She hadn’t got over her crush on Nikhil. If anything it was worse today—her stomach was going quivery just from her looking at him. Telling her stomach firmly to behave itself, she frowned at Nikhil.