Hide and Seek - the First

Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.

Start building the walls again. It is the only way. Whispers of advice.

She asked herself why she was not listening. Hadn’t her stringent rules kept her happy all her life?

Well…maybe ‘happy’ was an overstatement. She shook herself back to reality. Ha! Overstatement? More like a complete and total fabrication. Farther from the truth than a hippie from the Lok Sabha. She smiled wryly at the comparison. They had reminded her of hippies the first time she saw them, with their loose kurtas and well-worn jeans. Open sandals. Their hair was short and clean though. Unlike the flower children.

She smiled again at the memory. More than anything else it was the air of utter acceptance that they wore. Que sera sera. Worn with the same ease with which her mother wore a sari morning, afternoon and evening, day after day, year after year.

They fit into the jigsaw puzzle. Like correct pieces. Blended in effortlessly with their surroundings. Like they belonged. It was a belonging she had craved for what seemed like forever.

She had been sitting on a chair in the balcony-porch, looking at the floor when they had arrived. Kurtas, careless aura and all. The caretaker opened the room next to hers and showed them in. they were carrying their own luggage. Rucksacks and duffel bags. They looked at her while the old caretaker ceremoniously fitted the key in the lock. She looked back at them- disapprovingly. The older man looked old enough to be her father! And the younger one was certainly at least her own age. Why pretend to be like a couple of teenagers hitchhiking around the country?? It was just not proper. Therefore it was only logical that she barely nodded her head when they smiled at her.

She remembered cursing her mother at that moment. It had been she who had insisted that her daughter go to the mountains. The phrase ‘well-deserved break’ had been repeated like a mantra for many months on end till finally her daughter decided that she might as well take a weekend off and be done with it. She booked herself into a little known guesthouse upon the recommendation of a colleague. “It’s a marvelous place! A wonderful view and all the privacy that we from the corporate world could desire.” he had told her enthusiastically. She did not care much for the view but the solitude sounded appealing. Her mother was disappointed. She had been thinking more along the lines of a luxury resort where her all-too-busy daughter would find time to take a swim in the heated pool and perhaps get one of those therapeutic face packs that everyone was talking about nowadays. If only she had known what an aversion her daughter had to other people handling her body! She just about managed a hair trim every now and then. Just about!! Anyhow, reservations had been made at the place her colleague had suggested. Luxury resorts were just not her thing. There were too many people looking to please you all the time. It was embarrassing and irritating. She preferred to just be left alone.

And now it looked as if he perfectly realistic expectations of that desire were going to be seriously obstructed by these seemingly outgoing new arrivals. She slotted them immediately in her brain. Either unemployed, or struggling artists or photographers. Or academics (professors at JNU perhaps). Probably frequented art galleries. Watched street theatre plays on weekends. Shunned branded clothes (unless the label was FabIndia of course). Considered themselves leftist liberals (probably could not spell Lenin’s first name, but what the hell), intellectuals and bohemians. She tried to determine their relationship. Friends perhaps. Or colleagues. Or gay companions. They did not seem like homosexuals though, she thought. Then she chided herself. Like anyone can tell. Some of the most apparently straight men turned out to be leaning the other way. Who would have guessed about Rock Hudson?

When they came over in the evening and sat themselves down at her table on the porch, she sought to satisfy her curiousity. They turned out to be father and son. She blinked for a second, thrown off balance. Of course. They even looked similar. The same intense eyes. She felt sheepish. How come she hadn’t thought of the most obvious answer?

Her quest completed, and her curiousity satisfied, she quickly finished her tea and retreated into her room under the pretext of wanting to have a bath. When she emerged after what she considered the safe interval of half an hour, they were still sitting there.

“Oh good, you’re fresh and ready. We thought you might want to join us. We’re going to walk down to the market to have dinner.” said the older man genially. She looked at him incredulously. She had seen the town’s excuse for a marketplace on the way to the guesthouse in the morning. It barely qualified as a place of commercial activity. A bunch a mouldy old shops- the regular dhaba, a paan shop and the like. Not that she was being a snob, she reassured herself. There was nothing wrong with the market but…dinner over there!

“Oh come on. It’ll be fun. I know what you’re thinking. Not exactly the kind of place HT City covers in their Eating Out column in Delhi. Well, you can do all the regular eating out back in the cities. You know, when in Rome…” the younger man said.

Hobnobbing with the locals? Definitely leftist, she thought. Nevertheless, she contemplated. Contrary to what he implied about her dining out in the city, she could not remember the last time she had gone to a restaurant. McDonald’s yes-if that could really qualify as ‘eating out’. It was more like eating just enough to sustain herself and then running home. And alone. Always alone. It was a policy of hers to never interact with co-workers outside of the office building (not that she interacted much with them inside the office building either). Boring, boring, boring- as her saucy secretary put it to her once during what she fancied to be a female bonding session.
So she contemplated the invitation. And decided to accept. “All right,” she said, “just let me get changed.”

The two men looked at her and started laughing. “It’s not exactly the Taj honey. What you’re wearing is just perfect.” the older man chuckled. Warning bells went off in her head. Was she really going to go for dinner with someone who called her ‘honey’ after talking to her for barely five minutes? With two unknown men whose last name she did not even know? They could be thieves, rapists, serial killers…

But the marketplace was barely a five-minute walk away. And it was not like she had anything else to do. Once the darkness fell she would not even be able to see the view (it was rather splendid as she had silently acknowledged upon arriving). She looked down at her jeans, threw caution to the brisk evening wind and said, “All right then. Let’s go.”

Dinner turned out to be pakoras and Maggi at the dhaba. The food took ages to arrive. The older man informed the other two that because of the high altitude and rare atmosphere, food took far longer to cook than in the plains. And stoves were slow to begin with anyway.

Conversation carried on pleasantly for a while. The three of them discussed the deplorable state of the road between the last major hill-station and this little village-town. She wondered aloud what they did in cases of medical emergencies. The nearest big hospital was more than a two-hour drive away-assuming it was a lucky day and there were no hold-ups on the way due to landslides or flooding from the river. “I suppose they leave it to Fate, huh? If you’re lucky you reach in time. If not…well, there’s not much you can do about it.” she said, answering her own query. And she silently cursed the red tape and the insensitive Central government and the corrupt government machinery that reduce the locals to this helplessness. Then she caught herself, surprised. When was the last time she had whined about the government? It was not really her style. She had always believed that people are responsible for themselves. A caretaker government was a crutch. The locals here were probable a lazy lot in any case. Even if funds had been granted to build roads they would have been wasted because of inadequate planning, and inefficiency. Inferior material would have been used and they would have been ruined as soon as the monsoon arrived. As for medical emergencies…superstitions probably forbade the people from consulting educated doctors anyway. There was bound to be a local Ayurvedic quack or some crazy Tantric medical man.

Then she looked at the smooth skinned face and the weather beaten hands of the young adolescent girl who was serving them their first helping of pakoras, and she was shocked at her own callousness.

Now she lay prostrate, trying to recall what it was they had talked about. Oh yes, they had debated about the identity of the leafy vegetable used to make some of the pakoras. She was pretty sure it was a variant of spinach, while the older man said it was a different plant altogether- ‘jimisa’ was the local term for it. The younger man grinned and said, “Shove it you two. Just eat the damn thing. It’s delicious. A leaf is just as delicious by any other name!” she remembered being momentarily shocked (‘Shove it’! To his father!) and then laughing and slurping the soupy Maggi.

They walked back after that. She excused herself as soon as they reached. Yet it was with a twinge of regret that she closed and locked her door. God! What was the matter with her? Shunning company was hardly a new habit; she was an expert! It was just the change of scene, she reassured herself (reassured? Was it really that unpleasant a change?). She would be herself again tomorrow- aloof and detached. She would stay in her room and read a book. Yes, that’s what she would do.

It was only once she was in bed that she realized that they had not discussed work even once. “I bet they’re professors…JNU for sure…” and she fell asleep.

Why had the come into her life? Ignited her curiousity? Made her want to meet them again? Why?

Where are we? What the hell is going on?
The dust has only just begun to form,
Crop circles in the carpet, sinking, feeling.