Talking Shadows

She looked at his silhouette in the moonlight, the black curve of his Adam’s apple against the dark blue of the sky behind, the way those two almost blended when he moved a little. They both were drunk; on the terrace where they stood, came the sounds of the living room below. The others were not quite done yet, and sudden shrieks and shouts could be heard from time to time, breaking the silence of the cold December air.

‘Do you know how difficult it is? Do you know how hard it is for me to just let it all slip, to forget it all and move on…’, he seemed to be saying, the frustration seeping into his voice.

‘Hmmm’, she replied, and there were another few moments of quiet. She wanted him to stop speaking, she wanted them to sit together like this and look at the sky together, everything drunk and hazy. But she didn’t have the courage or the heart to tell him so.

So she listened.

‘I called her a million times last month….and on the phone, everything is alright….when we meet with everyone around, everything is alright….but a moment alone, and nothing is alright anymore….I’m sick of it!’

The vodka was making him speak more, and louder.

‘I…I…’

The sound of breaking glass broke his dialogue in the middle. For a moment, everything was silent again; and then, the shrieks and laughs came with even greater intensity. He started to move towards the staircase.

‘Where are you going?’, she asked.

‘Down. God knows what’s happening there!’, he said, glancing down.

‘It’s OK. They probably dropped the bottle or something’, she replied, and then, pointing towards where he had been sitting, said, ‘Sit.’

That’s all the invitation he needed. He didn’t want to go really. Sit and don’t talk, was what she had wanted to say. But the words didn’t come out.

‘Am I talking too loud?’, he asked nervously, in an unnecessarily low volume.

‘Na. Its OK. But don’t talk so much.’

She had finally mustered the strength to say it, half scared that it might hurt him, or worse – put him off.

‘No….no…let me talk…please’

And then he started again. In the limited light the moon provided, she couldn’t see his face, and so, she imagined. She imagined his cheek bones getting stretched in anguish, the nerves on his forehead coming out, the anger making his nose twitch. He looked majestic, like an actor on stage delivering his ultimate performance.

And it was only his silhouette talking.

‘Are we machines or something? No, tell me. That you press a button and wow, it’s all gone? What am I supposed to do? The effort has to come from both sides. This way, nothing will happen. And its killing me….totally…do you….do you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Yes…yes I do!’

This time, the anguish was in her voice, not his. It made him look up.

And in the near darkness of this cold winter night, their eyes met for the first time.

Flat 608

He pulled up near her house, in that familiar jam-packed parking lot, uncanny in its crowded resemblance to all other parking lots in Vasant Kunj. Nothing about the place had changed, as he had half-expected to – the flats with their illegal balconies jutting out, the parking with every car from 800 to Tavera on show, the sheer cave-like look of the place. After all, it was only two years before that he was here last, walking up to the 3^rd floor of the apartment and ringing the bell for flat 608.

He did the same again today, but with an inexplicable urgency, as if he wanted to start or end with something very quickly. The servant answered and when he took her name, the man quickly disappeared into the house, no hint of emotion on his face, as he was expecting him already.

Then she came, walking up to the door, trying to get a glance of who it was through the netting. She finally did recognize him, and with the faintest of smiles, she said, ‘Is that you?’

‘What does it look like?’, he replied.

She through the door open, and looked at him carefully, as if to check whether he was really what he sounded like, what he looked like, what he claimed he was.

‘Hello’, she said, after she was convinced that it was indeed so.

‘Hi’, he said quickly, not wanting to say it.

Both stared at each other for a moment, not knowing what to say, afraid that one word might spoil everything, just trying to let the moment sink in, examining each other’s faces as if they expected to see sagging wrinkles, white hair or deep hollows below the eyes, as if it had been not only two years but eternity since they had last set eyes on each other.

‘Come in!’, she finally exclaimed, first conscious to the un-reality of the moment. This woke him up from his trance too, and he nervously shifted his feet.

‘Can we go out for a cup of coffee?’

‘You know I don’t like coffee.’

‘Yes. Tea then?’

‘That’ll be good. Give me a minute.’

She rushed in again, leaving him at the door. He was confused. It was almost as if he had been sure that his invitation would be refused, as if he had expected or even wanted her to say ‘Oh yeah?’ and slam the door on his face. But she hadn’t. This was what he had come here for, this was what he had feared. He suddenly found himself wanting to run down, get into his car, and drive away as if nothing had happened.

But he didn’t.

Then, she reappeared. She hadn’t changed anything really, she was her casual self – a blue worn-out top, dark blue jeans, a black hair band - failing miserably to fulfill its purpose, and dark green Puma floaters. On her way out, she murmured something to the servant, and rushed down the stairs, leaving him behind, as if it was not he but she who had invited him for the outing.

As it has always been, he thought, trying to catch up with her, and failing as usual. When he finally got down, she was already alongside his car in the parking, her hands on the door handle, waiting for him to unlock it. He smiled weakly when he saw her, and she smiled back.

Tea was had at a roadside ‘settlement’ near the Central Market. Five rupees. Full with sugar and milk. Like he liked it. And she.

They walked around the place for a while, flipping through the magazines on sale, gazing mindlessly at the passing traffic, she pausing to ask the man at the music store for a cassette he knew she would never buy.

‘How’s college?’, she finally asked him, casually, in a tone more suitable for asking someone whether he liked strawberry ice-cream.

‘Good, good’, is all he could say in return.

‘Found good friends?’

‘Ya. Was a bit lonely in the beginning but its getting better slowly. Found a nice group of people.’

He was not sure whether this was the most correct thing to say, whether this was what she wanted to hear, whether she even wanted to hear something in particular.

‘What about you?’, he asked, trying to be polite, trying to keep up his end of the conversation.

‘Ah I’m still trying to adjust. I had expected an engineering college to be this way. And it has surely lived up to my expectations!’, she said, laughing with sad eyes.

Desultory conversation followed, straying to the courses they had studied, how and where aunts and uncles were, how and where old school friends were. It never got too personal, how-are-you-s and why-don’t-you-s where spared - things both wished passionately they could say or ask, but none having the final required courage to do so.

And then slowly, it was dark. They headed for the car without saying anything, as if the time to leave had been fixed by prior understanding.

When they reached the parking lot near her house, she got down slowly. Then, having closed the door, she bent down and looked at him in the eye through the window.

‘When am I going to see you next?’, she asked. It was the first remotely intimate question of the evening from either of them.

‘Soon. I’ll be here again in the summer.’

She nodded, and said ‘Don’t say Bye this time.’

And in an instant, she turned, ran and sprinted up the stairs of her apartment, not looking back. He was a little surprised with the abruptness of it all, but he thought he understood, and tried to smile to himself. Then, he backed his car, and left the parking lot, longing already, in a very strange way, to visit it again.

Sums & Differences

‘Sum me up’, she said, excited and afraid at the same time.

Amir looked at her, as if for the first time, trying to find meaning in her face, her hands, her hair.

And then he spoke.

‘You see it’s impossible for me to do that. Everything that I would say about you can never be more than half of what I really mean. And if I really think about it, it’s not for me to say what you really are, because what I think I know about you might just be 0.0000000000000001 % of what you actually are. Of what you actually are.’

Silence. 11 seconds. Of the uneasy type.

‘So I might as well say nothing. Nothing – that’s 0.0000000000000000 %. You see it doesn’t matter if you have 1 or 0 at the end, if you have 20 0’s preceding it. After the decimal point, I mean. I hope you see that.’

Silence. 9 seconds. Of the uneasy type.

‘Do you?’

She didn’t.

She didn’t answer. Nevertheless, Amir had successfully negotiated the challenge.

A Game Of Mutual Favours

They finally decided on a game of Mutual Favours.

It was the final resort after about one month of general dingling-dangling. Nothing else seemed to have worked so far. Conversations still ended abruptly, arguments ensued over petty issues, and tension loomed large over the entire household, like an albatross. The apparent misunderstanding and distrust in each other had reached such huge proportions that one hardly felt comfortable in asking the other for even ordinary help. So much so, that He didn’t even ask her for a glass of water when he had a headache last Friday. He preferred walking over the kitchen himself and fetching it even while She was in the adjoining room, only a shout away.

This, as expected, made living under the same roof very difficult and uncomfortable. It was as if for all practical purposes, each was living alone with the other’s ghost. And having observed all attempts to better the existing situation fail miserably, She was the one who ultimately suggested this particular game to him.

The rules of the game were as follows:

1. Each was to ask the other for every help they needed, big or small.
2. If the other had agreed to help, his or her doing so would count as a favour to the other person.
3. Each favour one did the other on that particular day would be recorded on the white board hung on the kitchen door. There would be two columns made, one for favours done by He and one for favours done by She.
4. Before going to sleep every night, the number of favours done by each for the other was to be totalled and written below the corresponding column.
5. If the Favour Count for the day for both wasn’t equal, then the one who had done less favours had to compensate for it on the following day.
6. Each Favour Deficit would be carried on to the coming days, as backlog.
7. Even actions which helped both like bringing the vegetables for dinner or paying the electricity bill would count as favours.

The rules of the game agreed upon, He and She decided to start playing from the next day. On the first morning, He asked her to make tea for him. She made it for herself too but as per the rules, that counted as a favour. Nor did she forget that; she was quick enough to make an entry, inaugurating the white board. She, in turn, asked him to fetch the newspaper from the main door and He was happy enough to have one entry to his credit too. Nothing else happened the rest of the morning. Each made their own breakfast, corn flakes, milk and sugar, not requiring any help from the other.

Evening arrived. Both reached home within fifteen minutes of each other, completely exhausted. He asked her to make tea again for him, to which she solemnly agreed. He, meanwhile got the Marie Gold biscuits and namkeen out to have along with the tea. 1-1 so far. Once it was decided that paneer was to be had for dinner, he brought it from the Mother Dairy store close by. She, on the other hand made dinner for both of them. At night, He prepared the bed, folded the removed bed sheets and put them in the closet. And finally, before going to bed, each tallied their list of favours. For the record, He had beaten She 4-3 on the first day.

Days passed, the white board wiped every morning to give space for a new list of favours. Backlogs also took place for both at times, were brought to zero by heightened effort, and then finally turned to backlogs for the other. That is, on days when the backlog for one was quite a lot, he or she acted doubly kind than he or she actually was, helping the other with almost everything, eager to bring things to zero again. On those days, the other would have a wonderful time, with absolutely no useful work to do, only to find himself or herself in debt by the end of the day.

But after about ten or twelve days of playing this game, both found making entries on the board a very boring and inconvenient exercise. Walking over to the kitchen, just to make an entry in your column was quite effort-taking in itself. So by consensus, they decided that serving the other with drinks, making the bed and other such small tasks could be avoided mention. Now, entries would only be made and favours would only be counted if the work was substantial enough, either in terms of time or effort.

Also, with the passage of time, the entire game started looking rather silly and childish. The thought of playing Mutual Favours between themselves seemed idiotic more than anything else, when one considered that they were still Husband and Wife. The prime example of such a feeling was when She fetched him a glass of water in the middle of the night once, when He had suddenly got up holding his head, wincing in pain. He never asked for it but She brought him the water and Crocin anyway. When He asked her to update her table with this latest favour, She just stroked his chin and said that it was hardly necessary.

So as one is bound to expect, one thing led to another. With every passing day, more and more activities ceased to be seen as favours, seen now only as duties a man and a woman must perform quietly to keep the house running. The day came when entries were forgotten and many favours were done out of goodwill and affection. Slowly and steadily, the board ceased to be of any use at all. But none of them dared to move it from its position on the kitchen door. Conversations might still have ended abruptly, arguments might still have ensued over petty issues and tension still might not have left the household, but the board reminded each of the fact that all the above was no excuse to stop caring for each other, to stop loving, to stop existing as Husband and Wife.

Therefore, the game of Mutual Favours was a draw. It was a draw, such in which both sides had triumphed.

The author drew inspiration for this short piece from A Temporary Matter, one of the short stories in Jhumpa Lahiri's debut book, The Interpreter Of Maladies. He uses the word 'inspiration' and the reader is expected to take it as that only.