The Benefit Season Read online

  Aarti, looking resplendent in a white dress, her mane tied in a neat bun, struggling with her trolley, out of which keep toppling her clumsily loaded bags, soon arrives at the gate opposite the school band. She looks around and then peers a little closely at the name on the brass stand- it’s hers! She halts and looks quizzically at the band. Curious onlookers have gathered around and the arrived passengers form a little circle around her, as the conductor flourishes his baton above his head, and the band strikes up- “The Perfect Lover”. Aarti is blushing when after the perfect rendition the airport breaks into applause and cheering, and waits to see what will happen next to the svelte girl in plain white waiting in a small circle of people. Somewhere the large LCD screens mounted on the walls are showing the scene of the band as a hush falls upon the airport.

  I remove my white conductor’s cap with the golden rim, replace my baton on my music stand, turn and go down on one knee.

  Aarti cups her mouth in shock as I hold her hand and ask her to marry me. The crowds wait with baited breath, when after a few agonizing moments for me, with tears running down her fair cheeks, she says “yes”! I have never heard such a thunder before, either it’s my hammering heart or the crowd going berserk or the band striking up “the air that I breathe”, or all of these things. She sinks to the floor beside me and we hug and I whisper ‘thank you’ in her ears. Then I grab her trolley, and after thanking the band Monal had arranged as the favor I’d asked of her earlier that morning, we walk to our waiting cab.

  ϖ

  I leave the office cab with Aarti and proceed to Levo by a taxi. Aarti will need time with her aunt - it would be rude to pull the two girls apart without letting them indulge in a wee bit of family natter on the scene at Delhi. And one Khosla is already quite a handful for me without bunging the sister in as well on the crowded seascape.

  Levo is dimly lit- to allow guests intimacy and anonymity; it is done in an elderly beige and brown. A pale Naga hostess with muscular calves ushers me to my table in the corner, at the far end from their clumsy and already drunk jazz band that is playing a cover tune from Michael Bolton or some such musician with similar leanings towards the trumpet. The Maître D’ greets me with a plastic smile and asks if I need help with the wines. I want to ask him for milk, since I am already heady with love and would rather stay that way- without any artificial stimulants. But I figure it will look pretty odd sitting alone nursing a glass of unsweetened milk in a faintly lit corner of a public dwelling, so I decide to go along with convention and ask for the house pick-me-up prescription list. A sommelier appears silently and proceeds to launch an elaborate panegyric on the house white and red flavors, aromas and vintages that, to a man largely innocent of fine dining or wining, seem like cuckoo verses from a strange fable. When he has finished I ask him if he has anything clear and bubbly with a low alcoholic content. That seems to stop him dead in his tracks. After he has tucked in the half-dropped jaw he bows and slinks away, not remembering to smile like everyone else in this place.

  I am brought the bubbly in a bucket clinking with ice, and the server pops the bottle and leaves me with the empty evening and the filled flute. I sip and wait.

  An hour later the warm sunshine parts the overhung clouds, the bursting sails empty of the gusty winds and the tempest settles of the upheaving. Time stops, the music blanks out as a glowy fairy in white floats across the hall to find my table. I forget to get her chair as she folds an elbow, plants a dainty chin on it, and smiles. I tap my pocket for the reassuring bump of a small box with a humble ring. The shades metamorphose into a server who adds the sparkle and fizz to her glass. We say cheers and lose ourselves in each other. She talks while I smile, digging into the Napoli pomodori secchi with warm artichokes and stale goat cheese. She digs the sous chefs’ recommendation- the asparagus shepherd pie- a veggie bastardisation of the classic meaty original actually; cleansing herself of the diet of the nomads that ran over the grain eating Indians, she says.

  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 becom
e 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 le
ave 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.

  Auntie has poured two stiff Jack Daniels, finished hers, refilled it quickly and turns to me and says,’ happiness!’

  We drink to that; Aarti toasts with a glass of water.

  Auntie walks over to the window, throws it open, leans against the wall and digs out a pack of cigarettes from deep within her gown and lights up. ‘You don’t look like you smoke’, she says, blowing the smoke out the window. ’Or drink’.

  I hold up the shot and gulp it down, grimacing as it scorches down.

  ‘What a fine couple you two make’, auntie says, ’fine, healthy, beautiful kids with no bad habits. Your parents have done fine by you. How’s your mom doing?’

  ‘She’s well. A bit lonely.’

  Khosla, auntie, and my mom, all of them are alone now: a gaggle of widowers and widows. I wonder how come she knows this much about me.