1
There are no coincidences, only unseen chains of consequence.'
The line I had scrawled on the last page of a notebook caught my eye. I was in the bedroom, searching for the visiting card a carpenter had given me the previous day, but finding just about everything else. Actually, my half-hearted rummaging hardly amounted to searching. It was like this whenever I tried to find something - I would dig up everything I had preserved over the years and lose myself. If I came upon an old, folded newspaper, I would go through the whole thing trying to recall why I had kept it. I'd find a group photo from a long-ago training workshop and muse about how my appearance had changed over the years. When I found investment forms I had never got around to filling, I immediately set about calculating what the missed opportunity had cost.
Years ago, I used to write down lines that I could quote when the occasion presented itself. These still surfaced from time to time on scraps of paper or in dusty writing pads. Now that I had found this gem, I went to the kitchen to read it out to Viji.
It was around seven on a Saturday evening. Viji, almost done with cooking, was wiping the counter with one eye on the rasam boiling on the stove. I entered the kitchen and said, 'Listen to this.'
'Later. First, give me a hand here,' she said. There was an unmistakable weariness in her tone that seemed to say, 'You and your quotations.'
I ignored her, raised the notebook theatrically and said, 'Okay, listen carefully now.' It wouldn't have escaped her that I was forcing her to pay attention.
Before she could retaliate, there was the sound of knocking at the front door. I was surprised - who knocks when there is a bell to ring? I put the notebook down on the kitchen counter and went to the door. First, I cast a quick eye over the hall to see how it might appear to a visitor. I straightened a chair, gathered the strewn sheets of a newspaper and, wondering how it had got there, picked up a used napkin lying on the sofa. I hurriedly looked for a place to hide it but none suggested itself. With my foot I slid aside all the footwear left at the entrance and opened the door halfway, concealing the napkin behind it in my left hand.
Two young men in jeans stood outside. One of them, wearing a white T-shirt, seemed to be around twenty. His hair glistened with the gel he had used to shape it to a crest. The other looked a little older. He had coarse, somewhat tousled hair and was wearing a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Their manner was tentative, as if they wanted to say something but did not know how to begin. Since they resembled the people Viji called to fix our forever clogged kitchen sink, I motioned to them to wait and was heading back to the kitchen when one of them called out: 'Sir . . . sir!'
The boy in the blue shirt said, 'We are Rekha's friends.'
My expression must have changed on hearing my daughter's name. The two attempted to summon deferential smiles. I came to the door again. 'She is not at home,' I said.
'Oh. Where is she?'
'She's gone to the village.'
'When will she be back?'
'No idea.'
'Can we come in?'
'What is this about?'
'We wanted to talk for a couple of minutes.'
'Yes, tell me.'
'Just two minutes.'
I opened the door fully and stepped back. 'Come in,' I said, trying not to let my annoyance show.
They entered and sat down next to each other on the ebony sofa. I took the chair opposite. On the glass-top table between us lay the day's English paper, which I had just folded. On its lower shelf was a small stack of newspapers going back a week.
Blue-shirt seemed to be doing the talking. He asked, 'Can we reach Rekha by phone?'
'Our house there has no landline or mobile signal,' I said. 'The only way to talk to her is if she calls from the town. Now, tell me who you are.'
My answer appeared to reassure them for some reason. Blue-shirt said, 'That's what we thought. Her phone is switched off, and she isn't replying to messages either. This is her friend. They're classmates. BA final year. I'm their senior.'
I worked out that if he was senior to final-year students, he must no longer be in college.
'It's to discuss next term's project work. How can we reach her?'
'I told you. It's she who has to call. When she does, I'll tell her.'
'Actually it's a bit urgent.'
'As I said, son, it is she who has to call. What is your name?' I asked the question in a tone that betrayed my irritation.
He pointed to the boy sitting next to him. 'This is Manjuprakash. His friends call him MP3, so that's the name you'll have to use. Please ask her to call him. She has his number. I'm Rajkumar - RK. It's enough to mention his name.'
'All right, I'll tell her,' I said, without enthusiasm.
MP3 had a bewildered air about him. All this while he had neither made eye contact nor spoken. Now, as if he had heard nothing that had been said so far, he blurted out: 'When is she returning?'
'Not anytime soon.' This was getting on my nerves. I tossed the napkin in my hand on to the empty chair next to me.
The two of them didn't seem to have anything more to say. My eyes drifted towards the books in the recessed cabinet next to the door. They ranged from Learn C++ to books on kick-starting your career, setting your life on the right path in a single day and gaining valuable experience from the mistakes of others. Assorted knick-knacks took up space in between the books. In front of the cabinet were stacked two plastic chairs that we used to sit out on the balcony. An old cloth bag that we hung on the door for milk lay bunched up on the upper chair.
RK must have noticed my attention wander. 'We'll take your leave now, sir,' he said and stood up. MP3 followed him to the door.
As I was about to close the door, I thought I might have been needlessly stern with them. I sent them off with an amiable 'I'll definitely tell Rekha if she calls'. They took the stairs without waiting for the lift.
When I went to give my report to Viji, it turned out she had overheard the entire conversation. She said, stirring the rasam, 'How could you not realize? No way these boys want to talk about a project. They're obviously infatuated with her. Now the monkeys have found her phone switched off and come all the way here. It's the madness of boys that age. And you were telling them stories about the village.'
What she said made sense. I was annoyed with myself for not grasping the situation correctly. How could I have forgotten what my guru, Tiwari, had once whispered in my ear: 'Never say more than what is asked.'
Viji's face had the hint of a smile on it. 'Just don't give them the village address or the phone number of anyone there,' she said. 'Those idiots might jump on a motorcycle and set off.' She did not seem overly concerned, which reassured me somewhat.
Even so, I was no longer in the mood to force quotations on Viji. I picked up the notebook from the corner of the kitchen counter and went to the balcony to watch the boys leave.
Our third-floor flat's balcony is at the other end of the hall from the front door. The apartment building's gate and the road outside can be seen below to the right. I squinted into the fading light and saw ten to twelve boys passing through the gate. MP3 and RK must have been part of this larger group and had come up while their gang waited below. Now they all left together, walking with a stupid swagger.
I cannot stand such groups of boys. They roam around aimlessly instead of studying and waste their parents' money. They have no respect for elders or for rules and are a menace to society. The sight of them always sets off a small fury within me: the defiant way they carry themselves, those T-shirts and pointy hairstyles, their apathetic expressions. But when I try and put a finger on why I should feel that way, I cannot come up with a definite reason and it leaves me flustered.
I thought for a moment if I should tell Viji about the group. I called out to her from the balcony: 'Come here and look at this, Viji.' She was busy tempering, and by the time she came the boys were out of sight.
'It wasn't just the two of them. There was a big gang.'
'That's how boys come. Nothing to be afraid of.' She went back inside.
I followed her. 'I'm not afraid. So many boys have come home ever since she was in school, but no one has behaved like these two. They were hiding something. You should have seen them.'
'Oh, schoolboys are different, college boys are different. My college had boys like this too. It feels like nothing has changed in all these years except their clothes.'
'I don't know, I thought they were planning something. Now they know our house, they know she's away and they know me by face,' I said. RK's exaggerated politeness and MP3's shiftiness had made me suspicious. Viji entered the kitchen without saying anything.
Viji had once told me, 'Your true nature...
