“Vinay is feeling horny!”
David was holding out the crisp ten rupee note to Rohini. She looked
down in confusion at the untidy scribble on the paper money. Vinay and horny?
How could that be? It was their driver honking away in the messy Dhaula Kuan
traffic! Vinay was sitting on the left front. She did wonder why he was wearing
a smirk but he was nowhere near the horn.
Riding a cab was a luxury she could ill afford. The client meeting at
Khan Market had ended well and the Company directors were dropping their
advertising executive home. A recent college graduate, Rohini was several years
younger and slightly out of their worldly wise league. She sat in a
self-conscious cloud of their musk cologne.
David’s aura of power overwhelmed her. He was very self-assured, blue
chip in every way, travel as he did in a faint wisp of expensive cigar smoke.
“Yes, right there, opposite the G Block market, you can stop here,” she leaned
forward to direct the driver to her home. Alighting from the car to see her
off, David addressed her, “Tomorrow? Over lunch! My place?” Her face flushed at
his parting words and she got off the white Ambassador in a fluster. The giddy
alloy of shame and excitement balled in her belly, evaporating a little at the
smell of her Mom’s dinner wafting over the front gate. She was late and
grateful her parent was not positioned at her usual look out post.
The night was spent agonizing over his invite, resolving eventually with
this line of self-talk, “Would she be true to herself to pass up a genuine, once-in-a-lifetime
potential to connect out of fear of something as fickle as social sanctions?” And
it did not occur to her trusting parents to ask what the office was doing
working on a Sunday. Rohini was soon enough dodging cycling children, scurrying
maids and lounging security guards that lazy summer afternoon, on way to his
upscale apartment.
His home felt cool and padded for sound. Several bowls of covered food
lay on the dark wood table. David walked her from the front door and up the
carpeted stairs to his living room where his suitcase lay open, ties and socks
neatly ranked. She lowered herself onto the floor. “A business trip has come
up. I will call you from the airport, all right? Here, you can give me a hand
with the handkerchiefs," he resumed packing.
The doorbell rattled their easy silence. David rose with a furrowed brow
to peer through the first floor curtains. He drew back as though stung. It was
his boss and the lady wife. Drawing back quickly, he fumbled with embarrassment
as he pushed Rohini out of his room towards the far end of his house in the
direction of his laundry room, “I am sorry about this but just stay quiet for a
while here, will you. It is the Sahnis and I can't have them catch you here. We
would both be in real trouble?” The door clicked softly behind him. The woman
sat there in hiding, feeling guilty and mortified and somehow unclean amidst
the crisp linen.
Her agency head was nodding thoughtfully at his young employee the next morning, “I do not wish to service the Company anymore" her voice was resolute.
No comments:
Post a Comment