Recap: Mr Guru joins the Pandits for breakfast, but leaves in a hurry.

At 7:02 am

Saahil: YO. How are you holding up?

At 1:32 pm

Saahil: S I’m so sorry about everything that happened.

At 12:02 am

Seher: Me too

Saahil: Finally!

Seher: Pot-kettle-black-black-black.

Saahil: Hmmm.

Saahil: So you’re in Bandra now huh?

Seher: Yep

Saahil: Well at least it’s a great neighborhood

Seher: Yeah it’s pretty.

Saahil: We miss you like mad here.

Seher: Hmmm.

Seher: How’s Aparna aunty?

Saahil: She got your letter and is beside herself. Holed up in her room, crying, from the sound of it.

Seher: Oh no!! Can you get Ali saab to bring her a tray of fried eggs with ketchup for breakfast? And some hot ginger tea? It’s her favourite.

Saahil: Ah good idea.

Seher: I’m going to send a lady from the salon to help her bathe, file her nails, etc. Please let her in tom morning. Her name is Sandhya

Saahil: Aye Aye madam.

Saahil: Maasi’s furious with Azaan by the way.

Seher: Sigh

Seher: Well.

Seher: At least.

Seher: She won’t be for long. He is her son.

Saahil: You’re right.

Saahil: Mums and sons.

Saahil: It’s all so freaking complicated.

Seher: Is it

Saahil: You have no idea

Saahil: Mine is going nuts at the moment.

Seher: ?

Seher: Ah.

Seher: Because they basically called me a gold-digger in The Bollywood Reporter.

Saahil: I’m so sorry about all that S.

Seher: Me too.

Saahil: It’s made things even more difficult than before

Seher: Really?

Seher: I’m sorry my slander has inconvenienced you.

Saahil: That’s not what I meant. I’m just getting more crap from mom than usual now.

Saahil: You weren’t the only one ‘slandered’ in that article. Her sister was too.

Saahil: Occupational hazard of being associated with movie people I guess

Seher: Ah yes. Movie people. The villains of every piece.

Saahil: Seher man.

Seher: Was that code for I won’t be seeing you in Bandra anytime soon.

Saahil: Can I call you in an hour?

Seher: Your mum said you can’t be my friend huh?

Saahil: It’s a little more complicated than that.

Seher: You said that already

Saahil: Because it’s true.

Seher: Alright.

Saahil: I’m sorry I couldn’t be there today

Saahil: I’ll make it up to you.

Seher: Why? It’s not like you owe me anything.

Saahil: I feel like I do.

Seher: Don’t stress Saahil. Focus on your family. We’ll hang whenever it’s convenient.

Seher switched her phone onto airplane mode and pretended not to care.

***

The next morning, with their WhatsApp conversation still burning a hole in his pocket, Saahil unlocked the door to his apartment and loitered at the threshold for a moment, hesitant.

Then bracing himself he switched the lights on.

“Hi?’

There was no answer.

Saahil exhaled in immense relief.

Pest control had been an uncharitable way to put it perhaps, but he was glad to finally be left alone. He was itching to dial Seher and ask to drive her back to his apartment. Now that he’d told his mum to butt out, there was nothing stopping him. Well nothing but…

“Hey?”

Again no answer.

Saahil dropped his bag on the grey sofa, a little relieved. Seher, he knew, would chuckle at the upholstery and the matching grey curtains and call it sparse and so very Saahil. But he was glad it looked that way now. Glad that the hot pink mug had been taken off his coffee table. The pastel cushions had disappeared from his couch. Ikigai and #Girlboss had vanished from his bookshelf.

So had War and Peace, he thought with a smile as he put Seher’s copy of Anna Karenina on the flat slab of oakwood. She was always foisting some romantic classic on him to no avail. He had read a little bit of Pride and Prejudice when she’d brought it with her to Kent, her first year after college, but only because she’d been sobbing while reading it and comparing that douchebag professor of hers to Mr Darcy. Well Saahil had read Austen and he had met Christopher. And that pasty-faced professor neither had the looks nor the confidence of Darcy. He was just a tall, insecure British man who preyed on his young MA candidates by stripping them of their confidence so that they would later strip for him. Even now, Saahil would have liked to rip him apart. He nearly did then, when Seher had shown up at his apartment red-eyed and sniffling from having her pristine illusions of ‘educators’ shattered. It was the first and last time he’d seen her devastated. But it wasn’t the last time she turned up at his flat in Kent, with barely any notice and two train tickets in hand.

He’d stock up on the blueberry bubblegum and the Jordanian dates she loved before each visit and she’d make sure to have Mint Oreos in her bag before a trip. They snacked as they travelled the world by road, leaving cities and people behind in the dust of biscuit crumbs and discarded chewing gum.

“How do we look to other people?”

He had nearly stumbled and knocked over some masterpiece sculpture in the Uffizi. They were in Florence. She had dragged them to the museum to gaze at the marvel of the Botticelli Venus. Well, she’d been gazing at the marvel. He’d been examining the barcode scanner right next to the artwork and wondering if he could code it better, so it started magically whispering information about the piece in your ear the minute you waved your hand in front of it.

Her question, however, stopped him short.

How did they look to other people?

Two 20-somethings visiting museums together, chatting, laughing, talking about dreams and plans and popping chestnuts as they sort-of looked at art? Well, they looked like they were in love.

But he wouldn’t dare say that to her. Not since that asshole Christopher. Not since all the other times she’d shown up at his flat, not shattered — but quiet. Refusing to give him a name or a reason for this particular trip ‘round the continent’. And to her credit, she never asked either, about the various rose-scented shampoos and bathrobes that made it in and out of his bathroom through the years.

Sometimes he wished she’d ask. That she’d care enough to ask.

She straightened the strap of her blue Dior backpack a little self-consciously under his gaze. As if she had suddenly realised that her question could be misinterpreted as sentimental and not just generally curious, as it had been intended.

He hated that look. That sudden veil dropped on her grey eyes, shrouding him out. There was only one way to get rid of the opaqueness.

He grinned with good humour. “We look like brats,” he said, “Rich kids bumming about Europe, trying desperately to soak in some culture as a substitute for any real purpose.”

Her eyes opened right back up and twinkled. She whacked him with the museum brochure.

“I have purpose,” she’d announced. A little louder than normal. Probably hoping the other Venus viewers would hear and remedy their opinion of her.

“Yes yes. Change the world one confident kid at a time.” He rummaged through her bag and found his Oreos. “Wouldn’t be so bad to be the other thing though.”

“What? Brats?”

“Sure.”

“I’d like to see you do stuff just for the sake of it.”

“How do you know that’s not what I do on a daily basis?” He shrugged. “It’s not like we talk every day.”

She looked at him, suddenly a little guilty. He bit into the Oreo so he didn’t look like he wanted to bite his tongue.

“You can’t build your own smart media software, patent it and sell it to Adobe at 21 without spending every minute wired into what you want to do with your life.”

She looked at the barcode he’d been investigating then. “Bet you were trying to make that more seamless too, weren’t you?”

He felt himself redden, took another Oreo. “It shouldn’t be a three-step process,” he shook his head, “not in 2015.”

“And every cab in Florence should have a driver rating system. And Google Translate should be way more efficient so that you should be able to speak into the phone and have your meaning spoken in whatever foreign language you’re encountering.”

“Oh shut up,” he took an Oreo and shoved it in her mouth.

She laughed, chewing. Getting crumbs all over her lips.

“I’m not making fun of you, idiot.”

“You’re saying I whine.”

“No, brats whine. You see improvement. And then you actually improve.” She swallowed her biscuit and looked at him, proud. “I’m impressed as hell every time I use the auto cut-out feature on Photoshop.”

He snorted, ‘It’s hardly like I built the whole interface or anything.”

“Baby steps,” she shrugged, “even though this isn’t one. It’s a giant leap from replicating GitHub code in your room.”

“Yeah,” he snorted. “Now other people replicate my code on GitHub.”

She started humming Disney’s Circle of Life.

“Alright,” he sighed. “We can watch Lion King when we get back.”

She snatched the brochure from him and sped ahead.

“Only if you promise to Mofasa.”

He groaned in dramatic agony, but sped up, pausing only to buy a little overpriced something at the souvenir shop as he had on all their trips.

‘I heart Firenze’ grinned back at him from his fridge. Right next to ‘I heart London’, a little Eiffel Tower and three different magnets from Rome. (Seher had kept dragging them back to fully experience the history of it. He didn’t mind. He got to fully experience the spaghetti Bolognese.)

Now maybe they’d have a couple of magnets from India, he thought idly as he opened the fridge and drank straight from the jar of cold milk. He’d always wanted to visit Jaipur. And Coorg. And...

Wait a minute. The milk tasted fine. Better than fine. It was perfectly cool. Perfectly fresh. Even though he hadn’t been home in three weeks.

Milk still in hand, Saahil hurried to the bedroom. He thought he’d been clear enough. He thought staying away for this long would have done it. He opened the closet and held his breath — the clothes were all gone. Just as he’d asked. But he didn’t exhale just yet. He knew her too well.

He opened the first drawer. And there it was. One lacy maroon thong. Hinting at possibilities. Staking its claim. And like clockwork at 11pm, the door opened.

Ambika was home.

(To be continued)

This is the 18th episode of Riva Razdan’s serialised novel Nonsense and Respectability, published every Sunday

Riva Razdan is a New York University graduate and currently working as a screenwriter and author based in Mumbai. Her debut novel Arzu was published by Hachette India in 2021