Love Across Borders (9 page)

‘
I am Pervez Iqbal from Karachi. Looking for
a long-lost friend Dilip Sharma in India. Have no idea where he is
now. His family has moved from their family home in Sahranpur. We
spent some wonderful days together in the US and he promised me
that he would invite me to India one day. I am waiting Dilip. Get
in touch with me. Your friend awaits you.’

Below these lines was a picture of the two of
them during their days in the US. An old, hazy picture, that
brought a flood of memories back to Dilip and a smile to his
face.

“Rohan, I’ve found him. Come quickly. This is my
friend,” Dilip shouted out, unable to contain his excitement.

Rohan came rushing out of his room.

“Is that him? Is that you in the picture with
him?
Dada-ji
, you look so handsome!” Rohan laughed.

“Yes, that’s us,” Dilip gently touched the
picture on the computer screen.

“What are you waiting for? Send him a message.
Invite him like you promised you would.”

Without wasting a moment, Dilip wrote a message
for his friend in the comments section.

‘
Dear Pervez, your long-lost friend has found
you and is going to fulfill his promise very soon. We
will
meet again and talk of old times. India and I are waiting for
you. See you soon, my dearest friend. Dilip.’

Six months later when Pervez visited India, he
didn’t need to look for a familiar name in a phone book. He had an
address and a place to stay that felt remarkably like his own.

∞

ABOUT
NIDHI
SHENDURNIKAR TERE

Nidhi Shendurnikar Tere has a
masters degree in journalism and communication studies (MCS) and a
bachelors degree in political science from the Maharaja Sayajirao
University of Baroda, Gujarat. She was
awarded the
Mohanlal Mehta Sopan
Gold Medal and Shri Goverdhandas Chunilal Shah Gold Medal for
Excellence for her masters degree.
Currently, she is a doctoral research fellow of the
University Grants Commission (UGC) with the department of political
science at M. S. U.

She is currently pursuing a Ph.D in the
‘Role of the Press and New Media in India-Pakistan Conflict
Mediation’.

Her publications and
presentations include research papers on gender and mainstream
Hindi cinema, new media and modern Indian democracy, to name a few.
She has also served as editor for ‘Souvenir’ – Yugaantar – National
Youth Conference on Youth for Socio-Political Changes in India. She
is a visiting lecturer for
political science and
communication research at M. S. U. This is her first fictional
short story.

***

What Kind of Book…

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Twelve Months

PERVIN SAKET

There are a hundred and forty eight
ways to woo a woman. Not one of them involves a monkey and a
banana.

And yet Shambu stood beside the
cage, nervously offering the yellow fruit through the bars, hissing
at her through his smile, “Click, click!”

He continued leaning as she
fidgeted with the camera. “Come on! The monkey doesn’t know where
the banana stops and my fingers begin!”

“This says don’t feed the animals.”
Munira looked around. “Stop it, they’ll see you.”

“I’m not feeding. This is just
offering.” But Shambu already felt foolish and flushed. If only she
would click once he could end this ridiculous charade. Click woman,
click. Blurred, shaky, out-of-focus, no flash, anything. Just end
it.

In his mind, the scene had been
heroic. He was supposed to be the poor but rakish youth, charming
in his disregard for rules, coaxing the older, upper-class widow to
leave behind her bland frowns and reach her bangle-less wrists
toward his sprightly, promising fingers.

She slipped the camera into her bag
and shuffled ahead. This was a bad sign. The woman usually fished
out her camera at the smallest pretence, capturing random images.
Had she decided that he was pushing too much? He dropped the banana
and followed, his Bollywood montage shattered. Maybe in Pakistani
films the widows were different.

This was Munira’s fifth visit
to India since she got married and her third since Salim died. She
did not have to come back really, since there wasn’t much waiting
for her here and her presence didn’t seem to matter to anyone else.
Salim’s parents had distanced themselves years ago on hearing their
son’s strange announcement
. Salim had
been happy to discard what he called ‘their middle class anxiety’
and set up house with her in Rawalpindi.

Yet, every summer break, once
she completed marking the undergraduate history papers, Munira
found her way back to Hyderabad, to the house where in the middle
of dinner, suddenly, shockingly, her husband had a heart attack.
She
was scheduled to join him in another
week; a teacher’s strike had postponed exams. Though she rushed to
Hyderabad, the family could not wait; they went ahead with the
burial, presenting her with a garlanded photograph
later.

She took back the photograph and
the plate in which he was supposed to have had his last meal,
embraced his mother at the airport, promising to return, not
knowing that it wasn’t really expected of her at all. So every May
when she called them with her arrival date and flight time, they
sent Shambu to receive her and planned sightseeing tours to
Golconda, Shamirpet Lake and Chowmahalla Palace, hoping the
overeager driver would compensate for their detached hospitality.
Munira didn’t really mind. As long as in the evenings, she could
sit in the kitchen, memorizing the walls Salim had known, inhaling
the aromas that had wafted around him, she really didn’t mind.

And now Shambu was walking
towards her holding cups of
chai
and pink
candyfloss.

She took the
chai
and
raised her eyebrows at the florescent sugar.

“Shambu, this is for children.”

“I’ll eat it.”

This was supposed to be endearing,
he thought. A grown man in sensible shoes with a sticky, sweet,
pink moustache. In his mind, the image was cute but she wasn’t
smiling. First the banana and now this candy; maybe she thought he
was weird with food.

“We should be like children
sometimes, you know,” he explained to redeem himself.

“Why are children always supposed
to be sweet and innocent? They can be cruel too.”

Shambu probably knew more about
this than her, what with the two adolescents whom he ferried to All
Saints High School every day, but he didn’t say anything. Once,
they had spent the ride home digging their heels into his backrest,
pushing to see if he would object. He hadn’t said a word. Another
time, just after he had cleaned the car and dropped them to school,
he found the backseat littered with peanut skins, all arranged to
make a smiley face.

But still he said, “They laugh. At
least they laugh. Maybe that is worth all the trouble they
cause.”

He wouldn’t have dared this kind of
familiarity with the rest of the family but he reasoned that since
Munira hardly seemed to register him, he couldn’t really offend
her. In the house, he sat on the floor or stood on the veranda if
he was offered tea. With her, he could dare to plonk on the same
wooden bench, his buttocks at the same level as hers, even daringly
close to hers.

A few hours earlier, driving out of
Himayat Sagar, they had completed the itinerary for the day. But
the trip had been shorter than expected and he did not want to her
return to the cold house and their curious stares. Hence this
strange detour to the zoo. He lied about the exotic animals so
passionately, that eventually she gave in and they stood behind a
line of schoolgirls to buy tickets.

He often told himself not to think
of the quietly bold woman, the educated, petite, pixie-like widow
who was left in his care once a year. After all, he had served the
woman’s husband. Shambu had been much younger then, a mere errand
boy, but the family had paid for his driving lessons and he soon
took over his aging father’s place at the wheel of the Honda Civic.
Now Shambu had a bride-to-be waiting in Lucknow; they were to be
married in December after which she would join him as nanny for the
child that the youngest daughter-in-law was expecting.

And yet, on the hard bench of the
zoo, Shambu found his gaze drawn towards Munira’s eyelashes. The
way she constantly adjusted her headscarf, the way her loneliness
spread around her like an aura, like a shield, refusing to allow
anyone access. Would she ever move on? But then she’d never return,
would she?

He shook away these conflicting
thoughts and focused on the tea. It was very hot.

“It’s very hot, no?”

She nodded and said, “Yes” and
gently blew on the tea before taking a tentative sip.

The sun emerged softly from behind
a cloud and lit up the bench. Munira looked so beautiful then, her
cheekbones highlighted, her earlobes translucent, her earrings
glinting, that Shambu had to look away. Though he had witnessed her
serene, easy dignity in the face of tragedy, he felt protective
towards her. Like her detached wisdom would enable her to negotiate
with the world but somehow she needed him to save her from
herself.

Of course, they were all daydreams.
He had a girl waiting for him, then maybe a couple of children.
They might even move into the quarters that were being constructed
at the back of the house. All the pieces of the equation were
arranged in perfect harmony, yet Shambu, restless Shambu,
starry-eyed Shambu, prying, inflamed Shambu, enchanted, impatient
Shambu was determined to shake them.

“You don’t want children?”

She looked away. “No”

“You know, you could marry
again.”

The stench of the birdcages wafted
up to them. She shook her head.

“Then I wouldn’t be able to come
again.”

“Here? India? Of course you
could.”

“Not India. To the house, that
kitchen, that veranda.”

Shambu looked up and saw her
staring intently at his face. She looked away. Maybe she had just
been looking through him. She seemed to do that often.

“They are nice people,” he said,
not willing to offer any specifics.

“I should have come here with him.
Let the exams be.”

“We all do what we can.” Shambu did
not really want to discuss Salim.

“Yes, and now I’m doing the only
thing that I can do,” she said, too casually to be casual.

Sambhu was suddenly impatient to
leave. “So you have enough photographs now?” He indicated her
camera bag.

“Only of monkeys! I don’t need a
zoo to find those!”

He did not return her smile. “There
are other places I could take you too.”

A few feet away, a baby lifted her
frock and squatted while her mother watched. A trail of urine
snaked slowly towards them.

“
How about my village? I
could show you the pond beside which I would sit like that.” He
pointed towards the little girl and immediately regretted it. It
sounded coarse even to his own ears; certainly not a topic that a
professor would want to discuss.

But Munira was smirking and then
giggling and then opened her mouth in full-throated laughter.

“Eeesh! Shambu! Eeesh!” Her body
shook as she brought one hand up to cover her mouth.

Shambu’s eyes sparkled in delighted
surprise. He reached out to take her cup, worried that she would
scald her thigh with the hot tea. She held out it towards him. But
when the tips of his fingers reached for her knuckles, she stopped
laughing.

Slowly, they walked back towards
the car. The schoolgirls were now at the tiger’s cage, their
fingers pointing, voices squealing and plaits shaking animatedly as
the tiger obliged with languid strolls.

They strolled along and the girls’
yelps were replaced by a hush. The tingling of their fingers was
still fresh. A silence descended upon them and in the quietness
Shambu offered, “We are all in our own cage also, aren’t we?”

She nodded. “Sometimes you can
break out of a cage and you think you are free. But you are just in
a larger cage. There’s one more door to open. And one more and one
more.”

He wasn’t sure he understood but
said cheerily. “At least I can open this door for you” as he held
open the passenger door.

The next day, after she was
given
salwar kameez
material and Hyderabadi spices to take back,
after she had hugged the family and vehemently denied the need for
anyone to accompany her, after Shambu had unloaded her luggage at
the airport, he offered her an apology wrapped in newspaper. A
diary.

“This is Salim babu’s. When he was
so small.” Shambu put his hand beside his waist to denote the child
Salim’s height. “I once found it while cleaning the loft.”

Munira passed her fingers
over the childish scrawls, over the caricature of a woman with an
exceptionally large
bindi
, over a poem about a robot.
For a minute she did not speak.

“
Thank you,” her voice came
out hoarse and she
cleared her throat.
“Thank you.”

Later, as Shambu drove back
in an oppressively empty car, Munira converted her currency and
passed through the security scanners, clutching the book close to
her. For this time, this was enough. She would wrap Salim’s words
around her, his simple, alive scribbles, his forgotten, resurrected
doodles, to be preserved with cloves and naphthalene balls, to be
recalled on rainy evenings, to celebrate with the fragrance of
the
champa
tree outside her window, to be stretched and pulled so they
may suffice another twelve months.