The Benefit Season (7 page)

I have everything here that I wanted- all
the trappings of a ritualistic wooing- the silks, the candelabras,
music and the magic. I dig the box out and slip on her slim finger
the golden band with a tiny solitaire. It looks small on her long
finger; but will have to do for the moment.

‘
It’s my mother’s. She so
wanted you to have it. She said I could buy you all the rings I
ever wanted later, but this one had to be the first- welcoming you
into our family.’

‘
It’s so beautiful’. She
rises and hugs me briefly, leaving some of her sheen on
me.

‘
I mean to buy you the
most…’ she leans across and places a finger on my lips.

‘
It’s all I ever wanted’,
she whispers.

I relax and lean back and ask after her
father. ‘ I wonder how the old dog will react when he finds his pet
peeve asking for his pet daughter’s hand in marriage’.

‘
Tell me when you plan on
doing that- I’ll hide all his guns…and his spectacles’.

I could imagine the frantic old man running
a hazy figure out of his house with an ornate umbrella, of which he
had a proud collection, nipping his shins on the furniture and
mouthing his choicest profanities.

‘
He’s going to do none of
that’, she says, rubbing my shin with a toe, as if she can pinpoint
the crazy idea in my head. Next time a naughty thought crosses my
mind, I’ll have to remember that I am transparent as glass and I
have a mind reader in front of me.

‘
I know what you are
thinking,’ she says, ‘naughty boy’, as the toe wiggles on the
inside of my thighs. I close my legs tight, catching her foot.
‘Ooh’, she smiles, tilts the chin and raises the eyebrows at my
impunity. She tries to pull her foot away but I have it locked in
my grasp. As we playfully tug at each other under the table, a tall
lady appears behind Aarti.

‘
Look what we have here’,
Monal exclaims. She is dressed in an elegant navy gown with bold,
white hemming and buttons. I half rise to my feet; but Aarti pushes
her foot against my leg and I come clumsily crashing back on my
hump.

‘
Don’t you get up’, Monal
says, resting a hand on my shoulder, and casting a glance upon
Aarti, who, with her foot still wedged between my thighs, is still
very amused with my discomfort.

‘
And this must be Aarti’,
she says, smiling broadly, offering a limp hand.

‘
Hi’, Aarti says, briefly
brushing a hand against her fingers. ‘And this must be…?’ she asks
me, cocking a thumb up at my boss.

I try to rise again but
Aarti is not going to let go this night. ‘She is my boss, Mrs.
Monal Nagrath’. I stretch the
Mrs.
part a wee bit too much, I realize. ‘ I…I work
under her…’ Luckily the last word of my unfinished sentence-
“influence”- doesn’t pop out.

‘
Under her what,’ Aarti,
who with the sixth sense of the betrothed always knows, asks,
removing the foot.

I shrug and smile.

‘
Under my spell, silly’,
Monal says, joining Aarti in the fun.

‘
You are as pretty as I
thought you would be, for a man like Arjun here’, she tells Aarti,
softly weaving her hands through my hair like I am some puppy. I
wonder whatever happened to the Mr. Pasrichas or the Mr. Arjuns,
and where all this sudden niceness is coming from.

Aarti smiles, crosses her arms across the
chest the way a proud ancestor several centuries ago might have
done while looking a charging bull sternly in the eye, with a
wooden mallet dangling carelessly from the hunting hand. ‘A man
like Arjun, ahem’, she says, pinning me like a fly between the
narrowed brows, and swinging that mallet slowly now.

‘
Come, how was the band’,
Monal asks her.

Aarti looks up, surprised, the mallet
slipping from her grasp. Then she looks at me and says, ‘ was it
her idea’?

‘
No no, it was mine. But
where do you expect I will find a school band ready to turn out in
full trim to beat a tune for little known me on an airport in full
public view? Without her help I couldn’t have swung it. We should
be thanking her for it’, I protest. I am hurt. I didn’t expect my
grand spectacle to be scrutinized like this. I had hoped it would
become the stuff legends are made of.

‘
Thank you Mrs. Nagrath’,
Aarti says, looking up at the towering Monal.

‘
You are so welcome dear.
Anything for you, or Arjun here.’ Monal ignores the sarcasm and
notices the ring on Aarti’s finger. She grasps her hand and looks
at the ring closely, while my heart thuds against my chest;
suddenly afraid like a school kid awaiting judgment of his Art
& Crafts teacher frowning over a drawing.

‘
It’s…what to say, quite a
classic’, she says, waving her hand away. She summons the maître d’
and says, ‘look after these kids’- and she’s barely a couple of
years elder to us. ‘It’s a special occasion. And put it on my
tab’.

‘
No no, absolutely not’, I
protest. ’I totally can’t let you do that. It’s my affair, please-
let us be. Do it on any day, but not this’. I turn and wave a
resolute finger at the detached maître d’.

‘
Allow the company to take
care of it silly; we’re all family now. I won’t hear another word.’
She tugs at the maître d’s sleeve and struts away, leaving the food
lifeless in my plate.

I throw my napkin on the table and look past
Aarti. Her hand slowly creeps across the table to mine, and
squeezes.

‘
I am sorry, ‘ I plead. ‘I
didn’t mean it to be like this. I thought this was the best day of
my life, and I‘d done quite okay. Then this happens. You must think
I’m not even allowed some privacy when I’m writing our destiny
here. Can’t I even bring my girl out on this day without some
accountant poring over my bills?’

She sees my hurting and her annoyance melts.
‘ How did she know we would be here? I am sure this is not the only
place in town’, she asks softly.

Probably the company chauffer sneaked our
plans to her. But then she could have simply asked.

‘
She wouldn’t have been
able to come here if she’d asked you, would she?’ Aarti says,
uncannily right.

‘
I guess we’ll have to
just think it happened by chance’, I say, ordering the chocolate
sherbet to calm her mind. And mine. But Monal has stolen the sugar
from my pudding, and the tingle from my tongue as I swirl the now
flat wine on it. I wish this evening hadn’t been stolen from us. It
was a needless intrusion without which the sunshine would still
have prevailed.

ϖ

I cannot put Monal out of
my mind. Nor, worse, can Aarti. Many questions linger at her lips,
but she will ask them later. But as usual, I’m wrong and I am
a
see-through
.

‘
Did you see the rocks
that woman was wearing?’ Aarti says as we drive home. She
carelessly places a hand on my thigh, and taps on it impatiently.
Raising the other hand she peers at the ring to see if the tiny
stone is still there. She hasn’t stopped staring at it all
evening.

‘
Umm…’ I think hard- men
are clumsy at noticing those kinds of things on a woman. Our
attention is always elsewhere.

‘
I bet you were looking
somewhere else. They must pay you pretty well to be able to afford
rocks that big’, she observes.

I have felt that too. I am not a sucker for
brand names but I am well-read enough to understand a Luis Vuitton,
a Mont Blanc, a Ferrari and among others, an Arabian Sea-facing
duplex at the marquee Sagar Mahal at Worli where apartments can go
upwards of Rs. 1.5 Lacs a bloody square foot. ‘ The cream must be
getting skimmed at the surface, because for low lives like us,
hardly anything is left’.

‘
Don’t worry, you’ll get
there one day too’, she says, and dreamily shifts the reassuring
hand a tad higher on my thigh, giving me the
heebie-jeebies.

She’s been touching me a lot lately. We’ve
never touched each other inappropriately before. She tends to get
physical when high-strung, but a sock in the sides or a pinch on
the cheeks mostly doesn’t mean anything. I keep my hands to myself,
since I have fixed ideas about preserving the novelty of her flesh
till I get to know it on the day I am legitimately allowed to. On
the other hand, no such inhibitions restrain the wild flights my
fancy takes when I am next to the dangerously addictive Monal, who
it seems arches out to me in restless ache and yearning.

‘
How come you never told
me about her?’ She asks as if she knows I am thinking of
Monal.

‘
There was nothing to
tell. She doesn’t matter. I haven’t, for that matter, told you
about her husband, or Tom, or other people at work
either’.

‘
She’s lethal- those
looks, the glint in those eyes, that killing figure, the face-cut.
What’s she- a model?’

‘
Yeah, she’s a model
corporate boss- interfering, ruthless and calculating. We get along
fine; she demands, I deliver. It’s a happy equation. You will find
something similar anywhere you go’.

‘
You mean I’ll have a
devastatingly handsome boss who will sneak in on us when we’re
having the most important moment of our life and rub his hands
greedily down and up my nape and shoulders and you’ll be okay with
that?’

I look at the streaking lights flitting
across her pretty face- now clinched like a fist, and see that she
is covetous. I like it. I notice the creamy chest tapering down to
a heaving bosom and I see a storm rising. Her cleavage beckons; oh,
how I hate to put it like that; like a carnal body form whereas it
really is holy flesh carried in the fold of her garment,
consecrating all that bury in it their unsaved eye, nose or tongue.
If at that moment I sip at her founts, for sure the driver will
report to Monal, who I am certain will rise in the front seat to
chastise me with her whips and hot displeasure. Easing Monal out of
my mind, I lean down and brush my lips in the hollow of Aarti’s
pearly neck and deeply inhale her body smells intermingled with
Chanel No 5. She sighs and tilts her head on mine, her peachy
breath quickens and her hand tightens its grip on my thigh. My
tongue forks to the forbidden chasm between her swelling orbs-
sipping of their warm dew. Aarti whispers fiercely in my ears,
‘he’s watching’, and plucks my face out of her chest. She adjusts
her blouse and smiles at me, surprised at my growing insolence.
Having a rock on the third finger has its advantages- it gives you
conjugal rights to the property concerned. No wonder, Indian women,
even the best of them like our Aarti here; all prim and proper one
minute, are ready to fling the locks of their chastity belts open
the moment the first man walks along with the sweet sense of
promise of matrimony. But I intend to take no such advantage of my
girl. I promise not with a finger to flick open the forbidding
blouse to set another eye, nose, or mouth upon the creamy pudding
that reposes within. I shall not steal from myself. I shall covet
not what is already mine. I shall not be caught again with my hand
inside my own till. I…Aarti grabs me by my hair and pulls my face
towards her and plants her lips on mine, kissing me furiously,
before I foreswear any further the knowledge of her flesh. I taste
her cool mouth, the warm juices that break at the tip of my tongue
and the honeyed breath that drapes over my face. She grabs my hand
and places it gently over a taut breast, with a nipple hard and
pointy as a marble- or is it really a sequined embellishment- I
can’t say for sure. As the cab slows to a halt she plucks my tongue
out of her mouth, a vanity mirror out of her purse, a scented
tissue paper out of the vanity box and starts to dab at her face
with it. We have reached her aunt’s place. Her aunt is the younger
sibling to Mr. Khosla. Aarti removes the ring and drops it into her
bra, where it nestles warmly between the two cozies. ‘Break it to
them gently’, she explains. I’m okay with that.

I rush to get her door, but the cabbie makes
it before me. It’s a nice, sea-facing, little cottage with a small
patch of a neat garden; tucked out of sight at the end of a narrow
road. In the darkness I can’t see what she’s grown, but the smell
of damp earth, almost candy-sweet fragrance of Night Phloxes, and
the spicy aromas of bougainvillea’s on the small wall tells me
she’s a keen gardener, like my mom, and I need to take a closer
look during the day sometime. Only plants that grow in freshwater
swamps and lagoons can survive the onslaught of the coastal
monsoons, and I can smell that she has chosen her florae well.

I hug Aarti and move to leave. She clutches
my hand and says, ‘where do you think you are going Mr. Pasricha?
Have you forgotten your manners? I am not one of those girls you
can drop home past midnight and leave without so much as bidding
goodnight to my family’.

‘
Oh, she’ll be awake will
she?’

‘
You bet. Com’on let’s say
hi to auntie’.

Auntie is regal, fair and erect. Give her
the elder sibling’s handlebar moustaches, the bushy eyebrows, and
the permanent frown with a foul mouth, and lo and behold, there you
have another vile father in law. But other than the physical
similarities, or rather the lack of them, she is more like pleasant
Aarti, than her belligerent elder brother; the glint in the eye is
replaced by a merry twinkle, there are permanent lines around a
mouth which is prone to breaking into a wide smile rather than an
ugly scowl, and she has a tight hug, not a hurting word for
everybody. She is slightly plump, exceedingly jovial and like a
typical Punjabi auntie is always on the lookout for a nightcap,
which is what she offers me now, as I begin to protest and ask for
a glass of milk instead. I need two chickens, three liters of full
cream milk and a dozen eggs everyday to keep the fires inside
going. Instead, this corporate culture is teaching me to douse out
the fires with a tot here and a shot there; I live to run and I’m
certainly not at my brightest best when I wake each morning for the
10k.