Nikhil and Riya Read online

  To Nikhil and Riya. Thank you for coming alive.

  Contents

  Part 1

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  Part 2

  45

  46

  47

  48

  Part 3

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  Part 4

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  Acknowledgements

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ‘Never say goodbye, because saying goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting’ – J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

  ‘Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with their heart and soul there is no such thing as separation’ – Rumi

  ‘Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you … This turning towards what you deeply love saves you’ – Rumi

  ALWAYS

  You were you,

  And I was I

  We were two

  Before our time

  I was yours

  Before I knew

  And you have always

  Been mine too

  –Anonymous

  Part 1

  1

  ‘SPECS, YOUR SUM is wrong.’

  ‘My name is Nikhil,’ I replied. ‘The sum is right, your answer is not. And I can’t understand your handwriting.’

  ‘You’re crazy, Specs! My handwriting is fine. You just need to get your eyes checked.’

  I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at her. ‘You know that I'm doing you a favour by teaching you, right?’

  ‘You’re a teacher’s pet, aren’t you, Specs?’ she teases, balancing on one leg, pulling up her white sock.

  Sometimes I had to remind her who was in charge. ‘No, Riya, I’m just trying to help you out. Rao Ma’am sometimes asks me to help weak students out.’

  ‘I’m not a weak student,’ she says proudly, standing still now, hands on her tiny waist.

  ‘You got a two in your last maths exam. Out of hundred.’

  That seems to shut her up. She sits down on the bench, picks up her pen and locks her eyes with mine. They are humorous and compassionate and so alive that I can’t help but stare…

  Suddenly my eyes open wide and my gaze goes straight to the clock on my bedside.

  10.00 a.m.

  10.00 a.m.!

  I throw off the sheets and scramble to my feet.

  ‘Damn it, Meeta! Why didn’t you wake me up?’ Even though I am half-asleep, I know I am unnecessarily harsh.

  My heavily pregnant wife waddles in and stands by the bedroom door, alarmed. ‘You were sleeping so soundly. Plus, you came home so late last night.’

  I ignore her and rush to the bathroom, slamming the door shut.

  Minutes later, my hair still dripping wet, I sit down at the breakfast table and stare at my toast. There is no point in hurrying now; I have missed the meeting by a long shot. I read the papers and glance around the apartment, a pinnacle of corporate success – German fittings, Japanese toilets, the best pincode in town. These trappings usually make me happy, but today they don’t help.

  I notice the remains of my son’s breakfast. He has already left for school and I realize with a pang that it’s been three days since I saw my little boy. I remind myself that this was to be expected, especially after my promotion to partner, the youngest in the history of the bank.

  I think of the meeting again and immediately feel a sense of dread.

  ‘Can you still make it to the meeting?’ asks Meeta, bringing me a cup of tea.

  ‘It’s too late now.’

  ‘Was it important?’ she asks, concerned.

  ‘Very,’ I say, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. But she, my wife, never misses a beat.

  ‘It can’t be that important to put you in such a bad mood,’ she teases.

  ‘You couldn’t possibly understand how much that meeting was worth.’

  The words are sharper than I mean. Meeta, pouring my tea, says nothing. Why do I always do this? Why do I try to make her feel like she is a silly housewife when we both know that she is not? An apology crawls to the tip of my tongue, but I quickly swallow it back.

  Instead, I make an effort to mend my mistake: ‘When is the doctor’s next appointment?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Time?’ I realize that I have missed seven out of the last ten appointments. Guilt scalds me. For the hundredth time, the thousandth time, I know that I am a bad husband.

  ‘I’ll check,’ she says, scrambling to her feet, relieved to see my mood lift.

  ‘No worries. Just text me or send me a Google invite.’

  ‘Google invite?’ she says, confused.

  ‘Never mind. Just tell someone at the office, they’ll punch it in.’

  I get up, brushing the crumbs off my freshly pressed shirt. Meeta, ever dutiful, picks up my dirty plate.

  As I am about to leave, something in the newspaper catches my eye. For a second, I can’t believe it. I stare and then blink very hard, reaching for the newspaper, dropping the glass I am drinking from. I sputter and choke on the water that I have quickly gulped down, my eyes fixed on an obituary with an unmistakable picture underneath.

  2

  THE FAMILIARITY OF his face takes my breath away and suddenly all those years seem to melt away. I had pushed these memories into the deepest recesses of my mind, but now they are back and it feels like nails being drilled into a wall. I feel a pain in my left leg so sharp that I have to sit down, and suddenly it is as if I am fifteen again. I am back there and the smoke is rising like a plume into the sky. I keep reaching out to catch it, but it is too far away and disappears into the clouds. Memories flash: the wind, a bird, cracked glasses, frozen leg.

  My wife rushes in, concern flooding her face as she looks at the shards of glass covering the floor.

  ‘What is it?’ she asks in a whisper.

  ‘Nothing,’ I mumble, tearing my mind away from the past.

  ‘I see,’ she says, unconvinced. She looks at me, waiting for an answer. I know I cannot avoid this.

  ‘Someone I knew. He died,
’ I finally say, clearing my throat, trying to regain composure, pointing to the paper in front of me.

  ‘Who?’ she cautiously asks.

  ‘An old teacher of mine.’

  She comes and puts her arm on my shoulder. I stiffen at her touch. It is the last thing that could have helped.

  ‘From Stephen’s?’

  ‘No. From school.’

  ‘You never talk about school,’ she says, looking at me with her large, kind eyes.

  I want to close the newspaper and simply walk away, but I am frozen and in excruciating pain. I know without a doubt that I cannot ignore this, like I have done everything about Residency School for seventeen long years. It is B.P.’s funeral and I simply have to go.

  ‘Meeta,’ I slowly say, thoughts in my brain exploding like cannonballs. ‘Can you please pack me a bag?’

  3

  THEY STAND THERE waiting to bid me farewell, his little hand in her large one, him a replica of her, them a complete family of two. It occurs to me that they do not need me, nor that they really know me. He is sleepy – this is his naptime – and she is very concerned. She is used to my calculated, balanced ways. And now, I am suddenly running off for the funeral of an old school teacher, when she has never heard me even speak about school.

  I kiss her gruffly. ‘Let me know what the doc says?’ I smile an exaggerated smile – like a cheery buffoon – for my son. And then I depart.

  On the outside, I am the picture of authority and calm, a look and demeanour I have perfected through years of corporate life. On the inside, I am feeling so much that I am almost numb. I haven’t been back to Residency School since the day I left seventeen years ago. Now it is all coming back to me in a nauseating wave – B.P.’s calm and patient smile, the sounds of small feet and big bells, the smell of notebooks and ink, the red sand from the track hitting my face like sea spray, the mountains that rose like sharp teeth, the constellations like needles in the sky, and always, in every moment, in every memory, there is her.

  Before I reach the highway, I stop at a small temple by the roadside. I get out of my car and stand in front of the idols and stare at the flames. Engulfed by the smell of flowers, milk and grime, I close my eyes. People stream in and out, but I am lost in a prayer, until the pundit touches my forehead and I open my eyes in surprise. He looks at me, greedy and imploring, and I give him the notes I clutch in my hand.

  I get back into the car and drive, the road now clear, the traffic far behind. The landscape changes fast: from the dense urban settlements, I am now coming upon large tracts of lifeless sulphur yellow land lined with fading trees. And suddenly it is 1989 and I am a five-year-old orphan with a crippled leg, and it is time now to take the journey I never thought I would have the courage for.

  4

  I REALIZE THAT my head is pounding and my stomach is churning. I haven’t eaten all day. I drive for a while longer and then stop at the same rest stop that I have stopped at on every journey up the hills for fifteen years. I’m mildly surprised by how much it has changed. Back then it was an outdoor dhaba serving steaming chai in flimsy plastic cups that melted in our hands as we drank sitting on string cots. Now it is all cement and plastic and neon and glass.

  This is a popular road, and the rest stop is crowded with boarding school students, shivering with the excitement of a new session about to begin. I am surprised at the number of girls I see. Back then, most boarding schools were all boys. But now, girls are everywhere, giggling in the way only schoolgirls do, and I think to myself that although their thick, broadcloth skirts have got distinctly shorter, everything else about them remains very much the same: the chatter, the long hair braided with ribbons, the coltish legs, the shy glances they throw at the boys.

  Amidst the eager young crowds, I manage to get a seat in a corner where I can sit for a few minutes with my lunch. Once, this greasy burger oozing fluorescent ketchup would have been a treat, but today I eat it out of compulsion, and I am annoyed at Meeta for not packing my protein shake and sandwiches. I remind myself that she is heavily pregnant, with a three-year-old to raise. I scold myself for being so unfair. Sometimes I don’t understand why I always blame her for everything.

  I sit uncomfortably close to a young couple so in love that they hardly notice me. They hold hands underneath the table, feeding each other bits of a muffin, smiling bashfully.

  ‘When did you first fall in love with me?’ the girl asks the boy.

  ‘The moment I saw you, of course.’

  ‘Oh, shut up! You did not. You didn’t even notice me.’

  ‘Of course I did,’ he protests.

  ‘What was I wearing?’ she contests with puckered lips.

  ‘That nice pink salwar kameez of yours.’

  ‘Liar. Just because I like pink! It was my blue chikan kurta, and I had flowers in my hair!’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘That was the second time I saw you. The first time I saw you was in your Facebook pic, and you were wearing pink.’

  Kids these days, I think, rolling my eyes as I stand up to leave.

  5

  I COULD NEVER forget the first time I saw her, no matter how hard I ever tried.

  Tenth standard, Prem Ma’am’s second period history class.

  The class, as usual, was chaotic. Under Prem Ma’am’s weak authority, even the most disciplined girls misbehaved. At the back of the class, the boys, led by Vikram, tried to squash a little green lizard that had snuck up the wall.

  This was a strain as I sat at the back of the musty, echoing classroom, struggling to hear Prem Ma’am’s lousy dictations, desperately making notes in not just my notebook, but in Vikram’s too, the splintered wooden desk, at least a hundred years old, wobbling as I scribbled in haste. The class was getting wilder by the minute as Prem Ma’am stood sputtering in the front of the room, her white bra visible through her thin muslin blouse.

  And then, suddenly, the class went silent, probably more silent than it had ever been in the history of Prem Ma’am’s history period. I was relieved to take this time to complete the dictation, the wobbles of my desk the loudest sound in the room.

  ‘Prem Ma’am?’ said a voice at the door.

  ‘Yes?’ said Prem Ma’am, turning around, pallu falling off her neck, her hands full of chalk dust. Ordinarily this would have induced laughter. Not today. The newcomer walked in and handed Prem Ma’am a note which she hastily read, her glasses slipping down her nose.

  ‘Riya. Riya Pratap. Welcome to Residency School.’

  Then she turned towards the class.

  ‘Children, it’s her first day on campus, please say hello.’

  ‘Heeellooo, Riyaaa,’ chimed the class, the boys grinning, the girls giggling. None of them had welcomed a student like this since the second standard.

  This was when I, finally, looked up. And this was also when my whole life changed.

  She stood in front of the chalk-streaked blackboard, her hair tied at the nape of her neck, spilling down her back in a messy ponytail. Her blue skirt was too short. Her white shirt was transparent, and she wasn’t wearing a slip underneath. Her white socks fell far below the knee, where they were required to be.

  The girl standing at the front of the class was different from anyone or anything that I had ever seen in my life. The sight of her was so striking that I dropped my pen. And stared and stared and stared.

  Then I felt a slap on my back, and snapped out of my reverie.

  ‘Oi, what are you looking at?’ Vikram whispered in my ear, a crooked smile on his lips.

  I mumbled something and pretended to go back to my notebook. Then I used every ounce of my self-control to try not to look at her. But I failed; I simply could not tear my eyes away. She stood haughty and nervous in front of the class, straight as an arrow, her chin up in the air, her eyes the darkest shade of brown, her lips the deepest shade of red. She had long brown legs and thighs so strong that they were visible even under her thick pleated skirt. I remember thinking, She can probably run we
ll. I was wrong. She ran like the wind.

  6

  IT SEEMS APPROPRIATE to start her story, our story, with my own. My parents died in a car crash when I was four years old. My memories of them consist entirely of the three fuzzy pictures enclosed in a glass cupboard in my grandparents’ house. Them, at their wedding; them, on holiday; them, with baby Nikhil, everyone beaming. Otherwise, I simply do not remember the two people who gave me life – the father whose heart-shaped face I had inherited and the mother whose doe eyes everyone said I had.

  After the accident I lived with my father’s parents, my only surviving grandparents, who were so ancient and dotty that they couldn’t cope with both their grief and their five-year-old grandson simultaneously. And so it was me they chose to get rid of, packing me off to boarding school a year after I had arrived.

  The lingering memory that I have of my first few years at Residency School is of gentle, melancholic sadness. I was a quiet boy of five, prone to high fevers, crying and hiding in dark corners. The kind junior school matron dried my tears, held me close and dragged me out from under the bed. She gave me hard-boiled candies so sweet they made my head spin and whispered that I would be fine, that here I would have many mothers, many fathers, and many brothers who would be with me till the end of my life.

  I believed her, I really did. I was only a sickly child who sucked his thumb and occasionally wet his bed. But I never did find any of the things that she had promised – not once in the thirteen years I spent at this school. The teachers never became my mothers or my fathers, and the boys never became my brothers. But later on, none of it mattered, because I had her and she became everything that I ever needed and that I had never known.

  I too had been in the accident with my parents. They had died and I had been left with a battered left leg and a heavy limp. My grandparents, in their grief, had missed the crucial fact that they were sending their crippled grandson to a school where life revolved around sports that I would never be able to play. But I never blamed them; in fact, I would only later find out that it had taken the entirety of my dead father’s pension to send me to Residency School.

  7

  RESIDENCY SCHOOL WAS a product of its time, established in 1867 by the resident governor of the erstwhile British Raj to educate the children of the Indian princely states. After Independence, keeping with the ethos of a free India, the board of governors of Residency School opened the school to one and all, envisioning an educational institution that would be entirely secular for boys from all sections of society and from every state, who would then go on to serve a free and democratic India. Residency School was a rock, a bulwark, a steady hand. Our motto was ‘Unchanging, Unending, Unflinching’.