Familiar Strangers Read online

  ‘Help me clear up?’

  * * *

  Chirag had envisaged a life with Kanika the minute their lips had first touched. His dreams of the future always had a place for her in them.

  Sometime after his twenty-third birthday he started hinting at marriage.

  ‘We’ll go to Maldives for our honeymoon,’ he would say.

  ‘We should have a home theatre in our room,’ he would say.

  Even though Chirag said the things in passing, Kanika started to feel suffocated. From the very beginning he had been ahead of her in their relationship. She had a hard time catching up.

  Her parents adored Chirag. When she turned twenty-four, they asked about her plans of marriage. She made a decision.

  They were dining at an Indian restaurant. Chirag had had a tiring day in college. He was in the first year of his MBA.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about something,’ she told him, blowing on hot tomato soup.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, fishing for the croutons.

  ‘What would you say if I said I wanted to study further?’

  ‘Hmm? I would say, “Go ahead”.’

  They stopped eating at the same time. Kanika put her spoon down.

  ‘What would you say if I said I wanted to go abroad to study further?’

  * * *

  Chirag sulked for a week but eventually came around and supported her.

  About a month and a half before Kanika’s departure, he had an idea.

  They left for the airport in her car. Her father was driving, her mother sat beside him in the front seat. He was sitting in the backseat with Kanika—nervous, sad and excited at once. He felt his pocket to ensure it was still there. She had no idea.

  Two carloads of friends were on their way. She had no idea.

  His parents were coming. She had no idea.

  He went down on one knee amidst a variety of people—crying relatives and excited friends. Bored businessmen and eager tourists turned to look at him.

  Everyone waited for her answer with bated breath. Their eyes bored into her. Her face reddened, but in anger. He had no idea. Her eyes watered, but in helplessness. He had no idea. She said yes but only because she could not say no. He had no idea.

  She wore the ring. She said goodbye.

  As soon as she got on the plane, she took off the ring. She had said goodbye.

  11

  A little after six in the evening, Chirag turned on his laptop. Kanika had occupied his mind a lot recently, and he couldn’t fight his curiosity any longer. Priya seemed too busy to come into the room anytime soon. And even if she did, she would not be able to see what he was doing unless she came right up to his side of the bed.

  He went on Facebook. He typed her name.

  * * *

  Kanika took her time to let Chirag know it was over, that she didn’t see herself with him the way he did. For the first few months after she moved nothing major happened—some routine arguments, a few complaints about her not having time.

  They were on the phone with each other one evening. It was morning for Kanika, evening for Chirag.

  ‘So how was it?’ he asked, about her trip to Miami with her friends.

  ‘Oh my god, Chirag! It was the best. I have so much to tell you. God, I love this place.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said, trying hard to feign enthusiasm for her sake. There was a happiness in her voice, a happiness she found so easy to achieve without him. They had fought before she left New York for the weekend. She didn’t even seem to remember.

  Splitting up was hard on him. Deleting her image from his thoughts about the future, the vision he had of them in Maldives, of them watching a movie on their home theatre. It shattered him.

  The end of their relationship shocked their friends and families. Her parents were particularly disappointed. They felt she had lost out.

  * * *

  One morning, while gulping spoonfuls of milky cereal, Kanika found an email from Karan in her inbox. They had not been in touch for at least two years.

  ‘Hey Kanika,’ it said.

  ‘How are you? Heard you’re studying in the US. Sounds fantastic. Met Aniket the other day at Veena Maasi’s house. We were talking about that time when we went for a picnic to Mahabaleshwar and he cried because you defeated him at chess. We used to be so stupid. He actually cried!

  Anyway, just thought I’ll say hi. It’s been a while.

  Take care.

  See you when you’re back, I guess?

  Karan.

  P.S. sorry about you and Chirag ☹

  Karan had spent an hour debating the addition of the last sentence. Adding it, then deleting it. Then adding it again and deleting it again. The e-mail was not about Aniket or how Kanika was. It was about that last sentence, hiding subtly behind the P.S.

  She wrote back that night.

  Karan! It’s been ages, hasn’t it?

  Oh, yes, I heard about Veena Chachi’s birthday. God, I don’t remember the last time I met Aniket. How is he? And ya! He actually cried. What a loser he was!

  I’ve been good ya. It’s a bit too cold here right now but it’s amazing. Any plans to visit the US?

  How is your mom? Tell her I said hi.

  Keep in touch.

  Lots of love,

  Kanika.

  P.S. don’t be sorry. Shit happens ☺

  * * *

  The final semester of Chirag’s MBA was upon him. He had done well in the campus placements, securing two job offers. He didn’t socialize much these days. His focus was only on his studies and career. Sometimes he met Param for a game of squash, but other than that there was nothing.

  He didn’t respond with enthusiasm when Karan made attempts to get back in touch. On the other hand, Kanika and Karan started talking regularly. Karan’s mother noticed a change in his sleeping pattern—he spent his nights typing on his computer or talking softly on the phone; his mornings were rushed as he tried to make it to work on time. He had joined his father in the family business. They manufactured paper billing rolls.

  ‘Whom do you talk to so late at night these days?’ she asked him at breakfast one morning. His father was not around.

  ‘No one,’ Karan said. ‘And are you spying on me?’

  ‘We live in the same house, you know.’

  ‘It’s no one,’ he said and left for work.

  * * *

  ‘Dinner’s ready,’ Priya said from the kitchen.

  Chirag’s heart jumped on hearing a sudden voice in the silence. Immediately, he signed out of Facebook and turned off his laptop.

  ‘Go and get Aryan home,’ Priya shouted out.

  ‘Okay,’ Chirag shouted back, then put on his slippers and headed downstairs to fetch Aryan. He was playing with his friends in the compound garden.

  * * *

  They spoke about anything and everything—Karan and Kanika. The weather, their days, their relatives, their childhood memories. He spoke about his mother, his work. She spoke about her MA, her friends. She knew he didn’t enjoy his job. He knew she had dated an Indo-American for a brief while a few months ago. Kanika liked talking to Karan. She found him funny. She had never really tried to get to know him well enough to really know him.

  ‘It’s Kanika, isn’t it? It’s her you’re talking to these days?’ Karan’s mother brought it up again at breakfast. She had a hunch about it.

  She had always known about the little crush her son nursed for Kanika. He never told her and yet she somehow knew. She knew it the way she knew that he was afraid of spiders, the way she knew that he was conscious of his height.

  Karan admitted it.

  ‘Should I speak to Nita, then?’ his mother asked, hopeful. Nita was Kanika’s mother.

  ‘No, not yet. We haven’t spoken about anything yet.’

  ‘So when do you plan to do that?’

  Karan thought about it. He had thought a lot about it. Kanika was coming back in three months, in December. He planned to talk to her then.


  * * *

  Taking her son’s refusal lightly, Karan’s mother mentioned Karan and Kanika’s resurfacing friendship to Nita at the next family gathering. The same night Nita obliquely inquired about the alleged closeness from her daughter.

  ‘Heard you’ve been in touch with Karan,’ she said over the long-distance call.

  ‘Oh yes, we talk sometimes. He’s really sweet, Mummy. Keeps me updated on all your parties. By the way, I heard about Veena Chachi’s fall. How is she?’

  ‘Nothing major. You know how she likes to be dramatic,’ Kanika’s mother replied.

  Over the course of the next two months, the mothers formed an understanding of a probable marriage between their children. It was just a quiet matter between them, a knowing of what was going on over long-distance phone calls. But over many short-distance phone calls between Kanika’s mother and her relatives, between Karan’s mother and her relatives, between Kanika’s mother’s relatives and Karan’s mother relatives, it snowballed into a thing of absolute certainty.

  * * *

  They met at a coffee shop—Chirag and Karan. Karan had insisted they catch up over quite a few phone calls.

  It was a casual meeting to start with, two college friends, not in college any more. Pretentious cigarettes replaced by pretentious pens; pronounced semicircles under their eyes. It was a casual meeting until Karan said, ‘I’ve been in touch with Kanika.’

  The mention of her, even after a year of their split, was painful for Chirag, like someone scratching a wound that had just begun to scab. It threatened to push him back into the dark corners from where he had just managed to emerge—into social circles and family gatherings, into movie theatres and dinner parties.

  ‘Oh, how is she?’ he said, even though he was okay not knowing.

  ‘Good, good. We’ve been talking a lot,’ Karan said. He wanted to do the right thing. If indeed something was going to happen between them, he wanted Chirag to know about it from him.

  ‘In fact,’ Karan said, unsure of how to proceed, ‘we’re close now. Pretty close. I would say, more than casual friends.’

  Are you fucking kidding me? Chirag wanted to say. ‘Is it?’ he said instead.

  Over the years, he had understood that Karan and Kanika weren’t really cousins, but the idea of them as ‘more than casual friends’ was preposterous on one level and heartbreaking on another. It was a lot to take in.

  ‘Yeah,’ Karan said, looking at his untouched chocolate-chip muffin.

  ‘I . . . I . . . don’t know what to say.’

  ‘I know. I know. This is awkward, but I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else. I hope there are no hard feelings, man.’

  Chirag swigged his hot coffee. It burnt his tongue. Then he sighed.

  ‘No hard feelings, man. She could not have found a better guy than you.’

  12

  When Chirag finally brought Aryan home after dismissing several ‘only ten minutes more’s and ‘but please papa’s, Priya was sitting at the dining table, holding a kitchen cloth against her right eye. A sense of déjà vu gripped him. Immediately, in the way that emergencies tend to bring otherwise distant people together, he rushed to her.

  ‘What happened? Is everything okay?’

  Priya nodded.

  ‘Then why are you sitting like that? Did you get hurt?’

  Aryan observed his parents, standing in the treacherous space between childish sulking and adult worry.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Priya said and got up to resume her dinner prep.

  ‘Oh god, show it to me, Priya.’ Chirag followed her and tried to pry her hand away from her face.

  She pulled away from him, making him back off.

  ‘Just leave it alone, Chirag, I can handle it. Some chilli went into it, that’s all,’ she said and went into the bathroom.

  * * *

  A month after Chirag’s meeting with Karan, Kanika returned to Mumbai. A small gathering was organized at her house a few days after her arrival. Karan would be meeting her after three years, and for the first time since they had become ‘more than casual friends.’

  Kanika’s house was pretty much the way he remembered it—smelling of kitchen masalas and dotted with feng shui artefacts. His parents went to greet her parents. He walked up to her.

  She was wearing a purple dress and looked slimmer than before. Her smile was more alluring than he remembered it to be. He had brought her flowers—a bouquet of lilies.

  ‘You look so . . . fresh,’ he said, a little rusty in his pursuit of a woman.

  ‘Karan!’ she said, accepting the flowers and offering a warm hug in return. ‘Thanks for these. It’s so good to see you.’

  Lots of hands shook, lots of ‘hi, how have you been’s sounded. Aniket could not make it. Three of Kanika’s friends from the States mingled awkwardly with the other guests, trying to grasp the culture of a foreign world, trying to decode the ‘arrey yaar’s and ‘haanji’s punctuating otherwise English sentences. They had come to India to visit Goa and Rishikesh. But had decided to stop in Mumbai for two nights. They were staying at a guest house nearby.

  The men held on to their whisky glasses, the women to their orthodoxy. A few eyebrows shot up on seeing the wine glass in Kanika’s hand. Platefuls of paneer tikka and tandoori aloo were passed around. When she had drained her second glass of wine, Kanika gathered everyone’s attention to the centre of the room.

  ‘Thank you all for coming,’ she said, clearing her throat as if to give a speech. A hush descended over the room, stifling conversations in every corner. She continued, ‘The past year has been an amazing experience for me. And I have great news to share with all of you.’

  Karan looked at her in awe. His parents looked at her with future-in-laws eyes. Her parents, however, seemed to grow nervous all of a sudden. They knew well she had an appetite for doing the unpredictable.

  Thirty seconds later, Nita dug her nails into her husband’s arm as Kanika introduced an Indo-American, Neil, as her fiancé.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, the mood of the house was normal again. Priya, Chirag and Aryan sat around the dining table and inaugurated the enchiladas Priya had made.

  ‘This is really good,’ Chirag said, avoiding Priya’s eyes.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, not looking back at him.

  She served Aryan first, and then herself. He was on the verge of his end-of-the-week crankiness; the looming threat of Monday too heavy for his droopy shoulders. He liked the taste of what his mother had made but he could not let it be known. He was angry. Why did he have to go to school? Why did he have to stop playing? Why were his parents like this? So parent-like. Any minute after dinner his mother would ask him to pack his school bag. And then ask him to go to bed. After brushing his teeth. Childhood was too hard.

  ‘I don’t want to eat this,’ he said, pushing his plate away. Priya was not in the mood to mother him. She ignored his comment and continued to eat. Chirag had to step in.

  ‘It’s so tasty, Aryan. See there’s so much yummy cheese,’ he said, lifting a forkful of semi-liquid mozzarella.

  ‘No,’ Aryan said, too tired to present any facts to support his argument.

  ‘Aryan.’ Just one word. Priya’s voice was perfectly calm, and that was the scary part.

  The boy mumbled unhappily as he shoved forkfuls in his mouth. Any second now the grumpy dance of his elbows would begin.

  ‘Can I have Coke?’ he asked with puppy-dog eyes, his legs now swinging.

  Chirag was looking at Priya for an answer. He dared not interfere in such a grave matter.

  She looked at Aryan with an expression he knew well. It said, ‘You know you shouldn’t be asking such a question.’

  But in the way that sometimes people are rewarded for taking big risks, Priya gave him the permission.

  * * *

  When Kanika introduced her fiancé at the party, she had no idea about the furore she was about to create. The twenty-odd people who we
re listening to her were jolted alert as if they had been asleep all this while. Eyes widened, arms nudged each other, lips pursed. Four parents were outraged. And one heart was broken. Again.

  People congratulated her quietly. Tomorrow this would be fodder for their dinner-table conversations but for now they did what was expected of them.

  Kanika’s parents hid their anger behind dinner plates and dessert napkins. Karan and his parents left within thirty minutes of discovering Kanika’s unavailability.

  ‘I never want to speak of this, this matter and this girl again,’ his mother said in the car.

  Karan wanted to protest, wanted to defend Kanika. She never said she would marry me. She never said she loved me. But for a moment he allowed himself to feel his mother’s fury. If he couldn’t be loved, he could at least be angry about it.

  His father said nothing, always complying with his mother’s instructions.

  * * *

  Kanika rang him the next day amidst heated arguments with her parents at home. For her, the idea of marrying Karan was risible. She had actually laughed when it was first mentioned but had grown quiet because of how her parents looked at her. They stomped around the living room in anger. Ambushing them with an engagement like this? To a foreigner? In front of so many guests who were their relatives? It was the stuff of middle-class nightmares.

  ‘Hey, Kanika! How are you?’ Karan said on the line. His mother was pleading with him in vehement actions to bang the phone down. He took the cordless and retreated to the privacy of his room.

  ‘Karan . . .’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I . . . I don’t know what to say.’

  He closed his eyes at being exposed. At having his feelings spread out in front of her. He didn’t know what to say either.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here,’ he said. ‘Look, it was all just a big misunderstanding. I told my mother there was nothing like that. They just made a big deal out of it. I don’t . . . You don’t . . .’ There was no point trying to cover it up. Trying to show he didn’t care only made it more obvious how much he did.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

  He wished she hadn’t called. It was nice of her, he knew. She was misunderstood, he knew. In the next couple of months things would be drastically different, he didn’t know. She would be married to Neil, he engaged to Sakshi, he didn’t know. Their parents would make up over copious amounts of tea and his mother would dismiss the matter as if it never happened. ‘Offers are pouring in for Karan every day. One girl better than the other,’ she would say.