She shrugged. ‘That’s how it’s always been done. The only other option you have is to fall in love with a girl, get to know her and then tell your parents about her …’
Hari grimaced. ‘If I ever do that, my parents will come up with a hundred good reasons why she isn’t suitable.’
‘In that case, you should marry the girl they pick for you. Thousands of people do it everyday and still manage to be happy together.’
Akhila’s day suddenly had a bright spot. Hari. Every
evening, they reached the station a few minutes before the train came in. He introduced a ritual to the time they spent together. Hari and she would walk to the railway vegetarian cafeteria on the platform and buy a plate of samosa and coffee in plastic cups. They would stand there side by side on the platform thronged with people and share a plate that was dotted with mint and tamarind chutney. Hari moistened his samosas in the chutneys. Akhila preferred hers dry. They would bite into their samosas and sip their coffee. Spice and heat. Flaky crust and liquid prayers.
He talked to her; of his colleagues, the frustration he felt in his job, a visiting aunt who kept thrusting a friend’s niece at him, a movie he had seen the night before … And in turn, he drew her out. So that when her stop arrived, she got off the train reluctantly. But there was the consolation that he would be there the next day. That was enough, Akhila thought.
Slowly he began to fill Akhila’s every thought and waking moment. She would pause in the middle of what she was doing, reminded of a silly joke he had made, and giggle. A hoarding would make her think of a phrase he had used once. She would watch her mother crack her knuckles and think of how that was the first thing he did after he sat down in his seat. She would flick through a magazine and a model’s expression would remind her of him. A stranger’s smile would remind her of how his eyes crinkled when he smiled …
The rare occasions when he missed the train and she had to travel alone would put a blight on her day. In the evening, he was usually there before she was and when she saw him, she would begin to feel a golden warmth creep around her.
Akhila told herself that she was being silly. He was much younger than her. And she should also remember that he probably saw her as an older sister and nothing more. Someone he could jolly around without worrying that she would pounce on him and claim him for her own.
One evening, most of the seats were empty in the compartment. They chatted for a few minutes and then Hari grew silent, which was completely unlike him.
‘What is wrong?’ Akhila asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘No, I know something is the matter. Can’t you tell me?’
‘Akhila,’ he said, ‘you must stop treating me like I’m your younger brother.’
‘You are younger than me,’ she said.
‘That’s true. But that doesn’t make me any less a man. How long can we go on like this?’
‘What are you saying?’ Akhila asked and she could hear the shrill note of panic in her voice.
‘That you should start seeing me as a man. As a man who is interested in you and in love with you,’ Hari said, speaking under his breath so that no one but she could hear him.
She should have been happy. This was what her fantasies had been all about.
Instead she heard herself say in a fierce voice, ‘Stop it, Hari. Don’t say anything more, you’ll ruin everything.’
‘Ruin what?’ he demanded.
‘Hari,’ Akhila said quietly. ‘Do you realize what you are saying?’ From the corner of her eye, she could see the station approaching. ‘Let us forget we had this conversation.’
‘I can’t,’ he said and the bleakness in his voice made her want to cry.
When Akhila got off, he called out to her, ‘Just think about it. That is all I ask.’
His voice rang through the platform, startling everyone. Akhila pretended not to hear him and walked away as fast as she could.
The next morning, when she stepped out to go to work, the kerosene man stopped and hollered to her from across the road, ‘Are you going to work this morning? Haven’t you heard the news?’
‘Haven’t I heard what?’ Akhila asked, suddenly struck by how silent the roads were even for this time of the day.
‘Puraichi Thalaivar is dead. He died this morning. There is going to be trouble so you’d better stock up on provisions. I’m sure you don’t remember this but when Anna Durai died, the city went mad. This is going to be as bad or perhaps worse. Buy whatever you can and go home quickly. I must be on my way too.’ The kerosene man lifted the handles of his cart and moved on.
Akhila stood on the road unsure about what she should do. How could a man who wore a fur cap and a pair of dark glasses indoors, change the course of her life, she thought. Puraichi Thalaivar. The Revolutionary Leader. Chief Minister. He could be dead but she had to go to work. She had to see Hari. She had to tell him that he shouldn’t see her as a woman; that she was a friend and no more.
A milk vendor wheeling his bicycle came into the street. He saw Akhila walking towards the station and called out, ‘Don’t go to work, madam. You’ll be stranded in the city. Thousands of people will pour into the city by afternoon and there will be trouble.’
The rock-salt seller added his bit. ‘Everyone knew he was dying but no one ever thought it would happen. Poor people like us have lost our only protector. There will never be another man like him.’ Tears filled his eyes. He put his sack of salt down and sat on his haunches. He stared into the distance as if collecting all his sorrow and then began to weep openly. ‘What is left for us in life? Thalaivar is dead. We have lost our father and guardian.’
The milk vendor, a young man who was studying at the polytechnic institute to be a refrigeration engineer, met her eye. The message was clear: This is what you will encounter this morning and for many more days. A frenzied grief that will soon go out of control. Do you want to be stuck in the middle of it? Go home. Close the doors and wait for all this to pass.
Akhila walked back home and on the way bought some
extra provisions and vegetables. Groups of men stood huddled on street corners and some of them were brandishing sticks. Who are all these men? Where did they come from? she wondered. Suddenly Akhila thought of Hari. Would Hari take a chance and get on the train? Would Hari wait for her in the train? Would Hari wonder what had happened to her? At times like these buried hates spring to the surface. Would the mob look at him and know he was a north Indian? Would they slash his face and beat him up?
Millions grieved for the dead man. A grief that soon turned into violence. Shops were broken into and looted. The opposition party members skulked, afraid the mob anger would soon turn towards them. A few people killed themselves, unable to bear the thought that their Thalaivar was dead.
The newspaper was full of reports on violence and arson. The radio played songs from the films Thalaivar had acted in. Only then he had been called Makkal Thilagam. The people’s icon. It wasn’t as if Akhila had admired him as an actor or a politician but the grief encroached into her life and entwined with her feelings for Hari so that she didn’t know if she was crying for the dead man or for the living one. Was he safe? Was he alright? Akhila worried. Why had she never thought of asking him for his address or for the telephone number of his uncle who lived next door to him and owned a textile shop? How was she going to get through these days till she saw her Hari again?
The year crumbled to an end. The days of grief passed, and her resolve diminished. Akhila wanted to see Hari, be with him. And nothing was more important than that.
A week after Thalaivar’s death, life came back to what it used to be and Akhila rushed through her morning chores, wanting to be at the station well ahead of time. When the train came in, she rushed to the first-class compartment. She searched its insides and there he was. When he saw her, he
stood up with a broad grin and she had to stop herself from rushing into his arms.
Akhila walked towards him slowly. Her heart beat faster and all that she had meant to say jumbled into a heap of meaningless words on her tongue. So she did the only thing she could think of. Instead of sitting opposite him like she always did, she went to sit beside him.
‘Does this mean you have changed your mind?’ he asked.
Akhila nodded, still unwilling to put into words what she felt for him.
‘So where do we go from here?’ His breath fanned her ear.
Akhila looked at him. She had no answers to any of his questions. She really had no idea what they were going to do or where they were heading. His gaze met hers and held. That was enough, she thought. She had seen in his eyes everything a woman dared hope for from a man.
They sat there together in silence, the line of his body touching hers, their thoughts whirling around each other. A cloud of fireflies bound together by invisible threads.
Their relationship had moved on to another plane. Here silences weighed with unspoken feelings crushed them. A casual glance was striped with many meanings and even a mere brushing of hands ignited raging fires. Arousing and throwing little sparks that burnt all reason: touch me, hold me, make love to me …
Every evening he would come to her office and they would walk down Sterling Road. Slowly she let him take her hand in his. One evening, Hari had his arm around her waist as they strolled. She could feel the line of his body against hers; the pressure of his fingers on her skin. She wanted to turn towards him and press herself against him, to be aware of only him, everything else a haze. As they turned a corner, a policeman rode past them on his bicycle. He stopped and eyed them suspiciously. He crooked a finger and beckoned. ‘Who is this?’ he asked Hari.
Even in the darkness, Akhila could see Hari’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. ‘My wife,’ he said.
The policeman peered at her. Akhila saw his eyes fall on the black bead and gold chain she wore. It could pass for a thali. For a long time that had been her defence; although it wasn’t the traditional thali, it did stop people from speculating if she was married or not.
‘She is your wife?’
Akhila heard the disbelief in the policeman’s voice, the mockery in his eyes, and cringed. Why couldn’t Hari have said she was his elder sister, his aunt, his neighbour.
‘Well …’ the policeman said, ‘if you are husband and wife, then you should be doing what you were doing in the privacy of your home and not on the streets where people are.’
For a few days, they reverted to sitting pressed against each other in the electric train. But soon Hari and Akhila began to look for places they could be together without law and the world censuring them.
Like many others in Madras, they sought the beach and tucked-away parks for their rendezvous. In the shadows of the evening, hushed by the boom of the waves, cradled by sand, hindered by clothing, they became lovers. Except that unlike their friendship, this was an uneasy relationship fraught with darkness.
Loving him came naturally and when he turned to her with longing, her body was there to please and delight. And in his rapture, Akhila revelled, knowing that even if she was older than him, her body was still firm and young and that she pleased him.
At first, it was enough. The slow forays, the tentative unearthings, but soon they wanted more and when they parted to return to their homes, it was always with a sense of having left something unfinished. Throwing a dark stain of purple on those stolen twilights, a dissatisfaction that made them even more frantic when they met the next morning.
Sometimes Akhila wished they could go away and spend a night together. She would have liked to sleep in his arms and wake up feeling his stubble scratch her cheek. There was so much she didn’t know about him: Did he sleep favouring his right side or left? Did he brush his teeth before he bathed or after? How many spoons of sugar did he like in his coffee? Did he read the newspaper from back to front? Did he go to sleep as soon as he lay down or did sleep come to him after much deliberation?
They planned to marry one day but Hari said he would have to wait till his younger sister was married. She had just a few months left for graduation and they already looked for grooms for her. Akhila could understand that. She knew how at the very breath of a scandal, prospective grooms would shy away. And yet.
‘Are you sure? Are you sure?’ Akhila would cry and then she would forget when his mouth and hands found ways to still the restless demons.
A week before Hari’s twenty-ninth birthday, they were sitting in a quiet corner of Marina Beach Park. The sun had almost set and a stiff breeze blew, lifting the ends of her sari.
Before they became lovers, their conversation had known no pauses. She had spoken all her thoughts. But now, she chose her words carefully. She worried that if she trod unwarily, she would stumble upon loss.
A few times Akhila tried to tell him what he meant to her; what the import of this love was. But Hari looked at her without comprehending. People fell in love; people got married; people lived together. His love was an uncomplicated feeling that needed no explanations nor reasoning. It was only Akhila who tried to dissect this feeling again and again and came up with no definite conclusions.