The best thing about Pune was coming back to it. For her, the city wasn't just a land with confines or space with crowding cloth vendors. It was life in worn out corners of the posters stuck up on the walls of smallĀ galisĀ ; it was the endless malls all gathered in one place and the random talkative strangers walking up to you in a shop and striking up a conversation. Half torn down ancient houses abandoned around every cornerā hauntingly beautiful and they owned their abandonmentā serving as a hub of activity for aloof youngsters or as shelter toĀ chowkidaarsĀ on a rainy night.
And the rain.
Crap, the rain.
She hadn't realized that in her euphoric trance of being back in her city, she had been standing motionless staring at the arch of her favorite place while it drizzled. The Ola that her dropped her off had sped away (his wife had made it very clear that she needed tomatoes if he wanted to be let into the house).
She huddled through the doors of Vishal Mart, her leather briefcase set atop her head for the drops to splatter onto it.
The security guardā an old man with a brown toothed smile and a shining guard cap gave her a colloquial salute.
"Hello Roopa ji,Ā bhelcome bhack!"Ā
His greeting (though sprinkled with old man's English) was what made Roopa wave back with a smile back. She wiped a few stray droplets of the sky's tears off her wrist and briefcase, making her way up to the transparent glass enclosed elevators.
The elevators in this mart, actually as old as the archaic building itself, were always full of people. Some of them held the syntax red basket, and most of them just carried their groceries and clothes in their hands. Roopa struggled to look sideways as the ground grew farther with every second. The crowded box smelled of cigarettes, stale Center Fresh and plastic.
The aroma of middle-class shopping marts.
A young womanālooked her ageā stood beside her, dark hair curling out as tufts. She had a dimple on the side facing Roopa, a little dot not far from her light lips.
Now, why she noticed her and her dimples was a story worth telling, or at least I think so.
Roopa was stuffed inside that elevator in a small crowd for barely one minute, but the first few seconds after looking out the transparent walls of the lift were followed by her eyes wandering like an idle pendulum: from the girl beside her, to the dotted display of the floor number that took forever to flicker from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 2, to outside the glass once again.
The funny thing with elevators was that no one dared speak freely, look freely or even breathe freely. Every movement felt deliberate even if it wasn't and the wait made you seem like an imposter with no one to imitate.
Maybe awkwardness of breached personal space was the reason forĀ it.
Her smile.
A little shy, polite and unsure. It stretched like a crescent moon, with a fuller lower lip and a smashed flat upper lip. Not bad.
Roopa smiled back, her lips only lifting higher without her permission. A reflex of being polite to a fault.
But her smile only threatened to grow wider when she took a moment to see her eyelashes.
People have eyelashes like they're competing against camels, Roopa was reminded Simmi's usual lament in a corner of her mind.
Simran was one of those girls you'd never expect such an oddly put statement from. But in her defense, she was drunk when she'd said that.
Roopa had directed her smile to her sandals this time, shaking her head slightly at the chuckle that threatened to burst out.
Some people got off the first floor, their place immediately replaced by twice the amount of bodies. Her back was smushed against the glass, Roopa balanced herself on the heels of her feet. She looked at the lack of pressure from her left side.
Miss Dimples was trying very hard to not move at the onslaught of the influx. Her torso buckled backward towards her in an unspoken protest for space while her legs stayed rooted.
Just when she was beginning to think she might strike up a conversation with the girl, an abrupt groan interrupted all her thoughts.
"Oh right there!" a husky feminine voice said from somewhere. A spank of skin on skin echoed sharply through the closed space.
Everyone in the elevator stood ramrod straight, ranging from an old woman the age of herĀ naniĀ to the 12-ish years innocent old girl (probably just started out with some light reading of scandals like Fifty Shades of Grey) whose ears were already being covered by her disapproving mother.
When the sounds didn't stop, Roopa felt secondhand embarrassment shoot up her spine.
More smacks, a husky voice groaned. The high pitched moans got quicker and more desperate.
Miss Dimples was just another co-passenger in a usually short-lived lift ride. But after a moment of everyone looking at her incriminatingly, she panicked. She was definitely not making those noises, but they were emanating somewhere near her.
She urgently thumped the pockets of her cargo shorts and fished out a glowing phone ringing, the ringtone extending into another flurry of slapping and lustful groans.
Maybe Roopa was miffed, horrified even at the odd spectacle, and surely thrown off by the sudden turn of events like air turbulence, but her first emotion was feel confused for Miss Dimples.
Porn audio as a ringtone? Even Jakku wasn't as adventurous (read: stupidĀ ).
The elevator doors opened like a reprieve from God and people flooded out just as quickly as they came in.
Miss Dimplesā turned into Sex Noises Girlā ran out before half the lift could be emptied. Roopa was still left click-clacking out of the hanging glass box, confused and wordless at the whole fiasco.
The last she saw of her , all she could make out was the image of his back escaping into a hoard of people who took the stairs to go down.
ā¢Ā Ā Ā ā¢Ā Ā Ā ā¢
Roopa hadn't found the people she was looking for in a short while. It was after a brief call and a following message that they showed up to the stationary articles section. And it was beside stacks of freshly minted addictive piles of Classmate books that Roopa hugged the life out of her brother.
"Oh I missed you," she groaned into the familiar embrace.
Arun had grown tall in the past year, still in his growth spurt phase but at least she reached him now. Roopa ruffled the tufts of dark hair, tucking them behind his ears. It reminded him of something ammaĀ would do, he had said. So she never stopped doing it.
"I missed you too,"
"God that conference took years." she murmured into the embrace.
"You were gone for aĀ day," another voice piped up.
Roopa rolled her eyes over her brother's shoulder.
Madhav.
The smile on her face threatened to linger. One of her best friends and he brought just the right dose of begrudging acceptance.
"Did this big bad man take care of you Arun?" she frowned mockingly.
"Of course I did." Madhav replied. He took such things seriously. "Any decent human with testicles is welcome to become my friend."
Living with three women couldn't be that bad. The conversation was swell.
"It's not our problem that men are the weaker race"Ā
Madhav's faux grumpiness faded away into smile. He extended his hand for a high-five, promptly delivered by Roopa as they all walked beside each other. They waited out by the watchman's cabin, making old conversation as they waited to stuff her brother into a cab home.
Roopa hugged Arun one last time for the evening, ignoring his laments about missing the party.
"Why can't I come too? I know you guys deal drugs anyway, you guys aren't protecting me from anything," Arun gave a haphazard laugh as he got into the car.
Roopa rolled her eyes. "Don't say that to yourĀ naanna, he might actually believe you. And I'm sending you home for your sake only. You have those choir tryouts tomorrow. Don't think I forgot Rockstar."
Madhav gently pulled her back from falling through the window. He slapped the roof of the Uber and gave Arun a firm handshake. Some murmurs of musical advice followed and the car joined the rest of the bumbling Big Bazaar traffic.
She walked beside Madhav, almost hand in hand until they reached their car. The rain had subsided to a casual Pune evening drizzle and for that, Roopa was thankful.
The house Madhav and she shared with Simmi and Jakku wasn't far. They had click-clacked into the cluttered apartment right as the last rays of the sun disappeared beyond the horizon through the clear view of the balcony. The walls were half decorated, yellow balloons mounted with cheap tape and reused ribbons hanging from the ceiling.
"I'm going to change into something more comfortable. By then you can put that height of yours to good use and hang some more balloons."
Madhav popped the second button of his button down. He looked like he could use a coffee. Well, who didn't. A half hour later, tucking the balled upĀ palluĀ of her sari at her waist, Roopa felt like she came out as a new version of her. Now she was ready, she could tackle all the party preparation andā
Madhav cursed from the hall.
...and one clumsy man-baby.
By muscle memory, she sat in front of him on the cold floor with the first aid kit. Working with the curling the ribbons, he had ended up with a shallow cut across his left thumb.
"Did I mention how glad I am that you're home?"
Roopa smiled at that. She knew what he was trying to do. While sadness and anger were second nature to mankind, flirting was second nature to Madhav.
"You need toā"
Their front door was thrown open by boisterous voices. And they didn't seem happy.
Ā Jakku. Janvi Kumar. As loud as she was short, as panicked as she was hungry.
Roopa was used to the quick boom of aura that followed Janvi's entrance and the meek presence of their fourth horsemanā Simranā who trailed behind with all the bags or waves of calm. But this was different.
Because she was pretty sure she heard the words "We're being thrown out of our house!Ā " kept tumbling out of their mouths like the continuous waterfalls in the store-display Buddha dolls.
(1762 words)
b a a t e i n k a r o (author's note)
.....so? has anyone barfed yet? š
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