Cobalt Blue (10 page)

I woke up way past noon. Aai and Maushi were in a huddle over some curtains that needed cleaning. I wandered about the house, and as I went upstairs, Maushi said, ‘Anuja, what a lot of weight you've put on. Time to start exercising again.' Aai went off to get us some tea. It was a cloudy day; the terrace floor was cool. We drank our tea in companionable silence. Then it began to rain. Aai and Maushi hopped up, suddenly as animated as schoolgirls, and ran about, to rescue the curtains they had hung out to dry.

The phone rang. Anil Kaka's ship had docked in Sydney. Maushi and he chatted for a long time; she asked about his health, whether he was eating properly. Then she gave me the phone.

Anil Kaka suggested that I come and live with them. He reminded me that they had once wanted to adopt me. He had gone on to the Negro spirituals CD he had bought me when the line was cut. I sat there, saying, ‘Hello, hello' into the phone until Sharayu Maushi came and took it from my hand. Then she led me to the bathroom. I turned on the shower and sat on the pot, watching the steam rise.

I began to feel a touch of cabin fever. Perhaps I should go out? Pop in at the Green Earth office? I had a year on my hands before I went back to college. I ought to find some work. Whether he came back or not, I had to occupy myself. It was as if a light had been turned on inside my head.

The day after my twelfth standard board exams, I took up my place again, outside the art gallery, Green Earth forms in hand. I looked for Sunderabai, but the paanwalla said that she had gone back to her village, somewhere near Buldhana, because her daughter was about to deliver. In the middle of the pavement artists gallery, a young man sat on a stool, sketching people for a fee. I enjoyed my work but I also enjoyed watching the passing show. A bunch of Japanese students, a Parsi octogenarian, a famous newspaper columnist: all came out of the gallery.

I'd try to nab each one, give him or her a form, talk about Green Earth. As the columnist filled up the form, a press photographer took a picture of us.

By the afternoon, I was tired. I went to ask the paanwalla for some water. When I returned he was coming slowly down the stairs, one step at a time, as if in a trance. I went up to him.

‘Excuse me sir, may I have a minute?'

‘Cut to the chase. I don't have much time right now.'

So I gave him the spiel I'd give any other stranger.

‘Do you know what just happened? They've given us dates for our student show. Oh yes, we have dates. After one year. And you're rabbitting on about the environment?'

I said, ‘And what about the social responsibility of the artist?'

‘Let us become artists first; then we'll see. But I can see my way to buying you a coffee,' he said.

‘On one condition,' I replied. ‘I pay for my own coffee. I cannot accept so much as a glass of water from someone who doesn't care about the environment.'

He laughed and shrugged.

I dropped my bag at a table in a corner and went to the counter to place my order. Behind the counter, I saw Shamim, an arts student. I must have looked surprised because he said, ‘Summer job' as if in explanation. When I came back, he had picked up the guitar that the coffee shop had hanging on a wall and was playing. As always, I found myself staring at him. If someone stares into one's eyes for a long time, it makes one uncomfortable. So I tried to distract myself with the traffic, with the old lady, reading her book and drinking cold coffee. Halfway through playing the chords of ‘Hotel California' he began to sing along. He had a nice throaty voice. Soon, he seemed lost in the song. And then my order was called out, my name attached. He stopped abruptly. Muttering, I went to get my order.

‘You sing well,' I said when I got back to the table. ‘Did you take lessons?'

‘What a lot of questions you ask,' he said.

‘I do, don't I?'

‘Why?' he asked.

‘I'm always curious about guys who can cook and play the guitar and have hairy chests and beautiful eyes,' I said.

I couldn't swear to it but I think he blushed.

The next day, I appeared in the newspapers with the columnist. I looked like a PT teacher. Overnight, I had become a star. Green Earth called to thank me. Other people called too. Anubhav came over with a cake. Aai marched into the kitchen and made shira.

‘Have you all gone mad?' I asked. ‘I just happened to be in the way.'

I went to take up my post outside the gallery. He came out of the gate of the arts school.

I could see the newspaper sticking out of his bag. He came up and chatted about something else. He didn't mention the photograph.

‘What are your plans for lunch? I thought I'd go to Baghdadi for a kheema pao,' he said. I left the forms with the paanwalla and went with him. I waited until we had eaten and were on the paan course. Wiping my reddened fingers on his shirt, I said, ‘Saw the paper?'

‘Which one?'

‘The one in your bag.'

‘Yes. Your photo's in the supplement. Have you seen it?'

I was startled, then angry. But he had already started talking about art school politics. That's when I realized he was different. And that I liked him.

The next morning, I was cleaning my toenails. Then I cleaned my ears. Tanay's cupboard had all sorts of interesting stuff . . . ear buds, deodorants, cream with orange peel in it. I studied each one of the bottles and the pictures on them and then closed the door quickly. As I did so, I saw myself in the mirror. I took four steps back and looked again, carefully this time. There didn't seem to be much wrong but I thought: I must take care of myself. Tanay was out. So I opened his cupboard again. I took out some of the bottles and tubes but this was rocket science. I couldn't figure out what could be applied and where, how it was to be applied and to which part of the body, so I put everything back and shut the cupboard again. Never mind. I'm not that bad. I have what it takes in the proportions required. That will have to do.

I decided that I wasn't coming home for lunch; I'd eat with him. The only problem was that his school closed in a fortnight or so. He wouldn't turn up at the gallery then. It didn't work out quite like that. One day, he turned up at the gallery with four or five boys, all of whom also seemed to be bumbling about in a trance. His classmates, he said, and introduced me. Strange names they had: Vishwang, Orayan, Bahaar, Sahadev. Sahadev got to the point: ‘We need a model to pose for us. Figure work. Would you?'

‘Nude?' I asked.

‘No, no,' Orayan said. ‘We just like something in your face, something about your spirit.'

I thought about the face I had examined in the mirror earlier that day. Spirit, eh? Why not?

‘What do I have to do?'

I'd just have to sit there. My shift at Green Earth ended at three o' clock. I agreed to sit for them between three and six.

‘We can't pay you. Do you mind?'

I hadn't even thought there'd be money involved.

While this was going on, he was looking at one of the pictures of the pavement artists. ‘In return, lunch will be on me,' he said. ‘My company thrown in free.'

I began to laugh. I realized that I was overreacting when even the doped out types began to look puzzled. I controlled myself and threw in a demand.

‘And guitar lessons. You were going to teach me, remember?'

Today, I woke up early as usual. At seven o'clock, Sakhubai, who does the floors, was dragging a rusty table along the floor. The ugly sound brought on the goosebumps and total wakefulness.

I ran into the passage and shouted, ‘Can't you lift that damned thing?'

Her face fell and I felt ashamed. I took one end of the table and helped her lift it.

Aai and Maushi came back from their morning walk. When Aai goes visiting, she wears only salwar kameez. Maushi's kameez flapped around Aai like a tent. She was wearing Maushi's canvas shoes too but still, the effect was rather pleasing. To top it all, she had a big fat kunku and a shiny mangalsutra on.

I got dressed and left and then was forced to return. I had no money. I hadn't needed any for a while. Aai took out some money and said, ‘On your way back, can you get some shengdaana and sabudaana? It's Tuesday tomorrow and this Sharayu has nothing I can eat. Here's three hundred more. You don't have anything left, do you?'

It took me nearly an hour to get to the city. I walked around with no purpose, no intention, no direction. The shops were only just beginning to open. The chaiwalla was surrounded by college students. Traffic began to increase. Old men, sweaty from badminton, were chatting with their friends as they kick-started their recalcitrant bikes. My feet took me to the gallery. I thought I shouldn't linger, it might set me back. But then I felt: I'm tired of this fear. Let's see what happens.

I stopped at the chowk and looked around.

Within a few minutes, a young man arrived, wearing the familiar green T-shirt and cap of the Green Earth volunteers. He pulled out his forms and began to arrange them.

My stomach hollowed out. Only my life was on hold. Everyone else was going about their business. The honking of the cars started to worry me. I wanted to go home. He was gone. I turned quickly towards the terminal from where a bus could take me back to Sharayu Maushi's home. Every spot on the road began to remind me of him. The traffic roared past. The exhaust made me feel dizzy. I began to rush along, pushing past women shopping from the roadside vendors. I got into a bus that was as hot as a stove and returned home. I rushed to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water, again and again, as if that would cool the heat inside my head.

When Aai came to call me for lunch, I was outside, watching the summer rain. I know now that I'm still not well. I should have listened to Aai. I asked her to cancel my afternoon appointment with Dr Khanvilkar.

In the middle of all this, Anubhav called. He had seen me that morning, walking past the tennis courts. He couldn't believe his eyes. Then he was upset that I hadn't gone to visit him. What could I say? He said, ‘If you're coming into the city, just tell me. Why bump around in a bus?' This is the boy I taught how to ride a motorcycle. Has he forgotten that? Have I? I don't understand anything. This town seems like a big city sometimes and sometimes it's a village. You step out and bump into a dozen people you know.

I have started to feel that the friends you make in school, the ones you've known forever, begin to turn into fossils. They merge into their families, losing all identity. You don't know the new ones as much as you should. They can fool you.

Why can't Anubhav walk into my life as a new friend?

Orayan's father had a riverside bungalow. It was empty and it stood in for a studio through the vacations. It had glass windows six feet high. Evening light streamed slantwise through these windows. The walls were painted in different colours, courtesy Orayan. The floor was wood; it echoed under your feet if you had shoes on.

My twelfth standard holidays were spent in this room. Now, I didn't mind being banned from the upstairs room; after all, I was meeting him every day.

In the middle of the room, I sat on a variety of objects: on chairs, on stools, on paatis, on the floor and once on a ladder laid on its side. Around me, the trance team worked on their easels. He was right in front of me, all the time. His eyes swung from me to the canvas and back, barely resting for seconds before shifting again. No one let me peek. Nor could I get up in between. After lunch, I would sometimes begin to drowse. I would fall asleep sometimes, quick catnaps, but since I didn't drop out of the pose, no one stopped working. I would wait for four to strike.

That was a break for tea, brewed on an electric stove. There was a coal stove outside. Sahadev would cook corn on the cob, spicing them and salting them and we would devour those too. Twenty minutes later, everyone would get back to work because they knew that on the dot, at six, I would be up and out of there.

At the end of the first week, they looked at each other's work. (They had decided this before starting.) I could not recognize myself in any of their paintings, except in Bahaar's. I told Bahaar, ‘You're the only painter here. That looks like a photograph of me.' Wrong thing to say apparently. Bahaar's face fell and Sahadev started to smile but tried to cover it up. Then they started talking shop, the gobbledygook of art students.

The next day, I said, ‘What's all this, sitting in a room and painting? Go out, enjoy nature, paint some trees and flowers and stuff.' The next Sunday, I was to take the children of the Zilla Parishad school on a river clean-up. At least, we'd clear up the banks of plastic. I told them, ‘Take your boards and let's go. Draw me as I clear up the river.' And right enough, they all appeared on the banks of the river with their paraphernalia. They sketched for a bit and then began to help too.

By the time the vacation had ended, the trance bunch could have had an exhibition of portraits of me. I don't know what they learned or what they got out of it. They were practising.

I never saw those paintings again.

By the end of the holidays, I knew I was in love with him. It wasn't just a body thing. I'm not a halfway person. Either I love or I detest. Him, I loved. I loved his quietness, his understated way with words, his independence, his ability to respect your space. I had not fallen in love before so I couldn't even be sure that this was the real thing. As the vacations drew to a close, I began to think about this. Finally, I decided that there was nothing to be gained by putting a name to what I was feeling. Instead, I'd just get to know him better in my own way.

I asked him out to the movies a few times. But he said he didn't like the way Hollywood seemed hung up on a few themes: alien attacks, dinosaurs, violence, marriage. I didn't want to see Hindi or Marathi movies and that put paid to that.