Recap: As Boro Jethu wonders what the protocol is to deal with an ex-jamai, who has turned up uninvited to an ashirbad-cum-ring ceremony, Aarjoe Choudhury, the ex-, makes his way to Lata and indulges in small talk till she feels compelled to ask why he’s at the wedding.

from: pixieandscone@gmail.com

to: lataghosh@gmail.com

date: 11 December 2017

subject: regrets

Dear L,

We got the card for your cousin’s wedding and your letter (to me) a few days ago by courier. The card had got lost because you had sent it to Baba’s office and Baba’s office is a maze and no one knows him yet and also because Baba’s original office building is being torn down and he has been given a temporary glass cubicle until January. Unfortunately, Mama-Baba have said that no one has any leave now, especially because Baba’s job is new, and because my school is super strict they cannot take me to Calcutta for the wedding. On top of this, Posto has a cold.

I was quite depressed about this because if we went to Calcutta for your cousin’s wedding, we would have met my Dadu too, and so to cheer me up Baba opened this email account for me (Mama disapproves of it) to send our “regrets”. But I don’t want to send you regrets, I want to send you a magical unicorn that can be your pet. I think you should have a pet, and unicorns make the best pets. Anyway, at least you will come soon.

Do you think you can bring me some books from Calcutta? I am getting along by re-reading my old books and borrowing one or two from classmates (they are, overall, quite stupid, the classmates) but a few new books might be nice. Our stuff from London has also not arrived yet. So, I don’t even have my copy of Ballet Shoes to comfort me. Mama says our stuff has to remain in storage until the new old-house is ready and the new old-house is so dilapidated god knows how long it’ll take to be ready for Human Habitation. (Don’t tell Mama I said that about the house but ya it is very dilapidated).

TBH Jampot is stupid and I would have been devastated if it were not for Scone. But I will not tell you more on this subject on email and keep Scone as a surprise. (It’s a big surprise.)

How are you? How is your Mama and Nimki? I want to meet Nimki. Does she make good nimkis? My Thammi makes amaaaayzing nimkis. Mama says too many nimkis are bad for my tummy but I don’t agree. Josh had an Enid Blyton-themed birthday party which wasn’t awful because the food was what the Famous Five eat: tuna sandwiches, jam tarts, potatoes with butter and parsley, a salad with really crunchy lettuce, scones (nothing to do with Scone) with a kind of strawberry jam and cream, cold chicken sandwich, a kind of cheesy pie, macaroons and a nice large cherry cake. There was also ginger beer and some of Josh’s stupid friends were squealing, “Ooh, it’s real beer, real beer.” Josh’s parrots are nice. He continues to be quite idiotic.

Lots of love

Pixie

***

It was the day after Molly and AJ’s sangeet. Lata’s feet were aching from all that dancing in high heels. She hobbled away from the Uber, even though she’d borrowed Manjulika’s flats before stepping out this morning. She’d had no energy to conceal the dark circles around her eyes, acquired from all the revelry that had gone on till the wee hours, and at the last second, she’d stuck a pair of dark glasses on her nose even though she felt more than a little ridiculous about it all. She wished she could have slept in today though, then spent the morning rubbing her feet with lavender oil and gossiping with Aaduri on the phone. It was that kind of a post-party day.

Disloyal though it might sound, the Jaiswals’ sangeet had ended up being far more fun than the engagement-cum-ring-ceremony at Ghosh Mansion. For one, it was at a brand-new banquet hall with no sense of history. So, there was no ancestral baggage overshadowing the joy. For another, after the general performances of the groom’s and the bride’s coteries — the Germans gave good competition to AJ’s cousins — and a cheerful, if unexceptionable dinner, the uncles and aunts and parents and their parents all left, and the real party began. (Bobby’s brother had apparently sponsored this part of the evening and the alcohol was not half-bad.) But, most vitally, Lata so enjoyed last evening, letting her hair down and sweetly accepting wine after wine from the dewy-eyed friends of AJ — all hatchlings really — chiefly because none of her exes had turned up.

It was a good party.

“And the upshot of that,” Lata now muttered under her breath, limping over the pavement, “This splitting headache.”

Then, there was the strangeness of this place — what was this place?

New Town, Rajarhat. Completely unfamiliar territory to her, the glass-fronted buildings catching the cold winter sun and casting giant shadows upon manicured lawns. And Aarjoe was nowhere in sight. He had said 10.00, hadn’t he?

Lata stood patiently by the guard’s cabin outside the gates of “The Eiffel”. How they’d laughed at the name all those years ago, when New Town in general and The Eiffel in particular were mere blueprints and brochures, or, at best, clay models within spiffy glass boxes that architects had placed decorously in their offices. They’d embraced the pretentious name with good humour as they’d embraced many other things then, in the first flush of their happiness, which gilded the surfaces of things such that the banal became beautiful, the funny, cute.

Now, standing right next to the exaggerated ‘E’ spelt out in hedges, Lata observed the retinue of maids, young and old, sari-wearing and jeans-clad, swinging jaunty bags and flashing smartphones, make their way busily into the gated community, after getting their IDs checked by the security guards. Perhaps outside the Eiffel, the guards and the maids were friends or lovers or relatives; now, here, divided by the authority the uniform conferred, the security guards were agents of the State — or, really, the Eiffel’s management — and they scanned the IDs the women proffered, with eagle eyes.

The sun in her hair, her red shawl flamed onto her white kurta, Lata began to wonder about the kind of lives that were lived in these apartments. What were the couples who lived here like? Did they return home to freshly made beds, clean kitchen counters and fragrant laundry folded in cupboards? What would a couple’s relationship be like if they returned home and neither had to start dinner or wait for the other to return so consensual takeout could be ordered?

A black limousine rolled up. “Sorry,” said Aarjoe, disembarking in a hurry, “I am late.” He thrust a bunch of flowers at her face.

Lata frowned. The limo was signature Aarjoe — and, in her youth, she had found his flamboyance stylish. But the flowers? Where did these come from? (Also, how inconvenient to be clutching a bouquet at the entry of The Eiffel.) “Shall we keep these in the car then?” Aarjoe asked her, as though reading her mind, whisking the flowers back from her and handing them to the uniformed chauffeur who nodded at Lata and glided the car away discreetly.

“This way,” Aarjoe said.

***

The lobby was marbled in pale green. The lifts seemed straight out of a techno-thriller. And when they entered, the flat on the sixteenth floor they’d bought from a sketch in a brochure 15 years ago, with its all-glass western wall, engulfed them in such a conspiracy of gold light and blue skies, that, for a moment, Lata was stunned, dazzled, silenced. Aarjoe stood next to her, quiet too, though his eyes were not on the skies but on the garden below, to the left, a distant riot of colours, and the perfect, tear-shaped pool on the right where tiny humans swam lengths up and down.

“We had forgotten about The Eiffel, hadn’t we?”

Lata nodded. She certainly had, until Aarjoe had reminded her the other day. “Though we’d divided up the other assets when we...”

“Divorced. Say it,” said Lata.

Aarjoe smiled sadly, “This one had slipped through the net.”

Net of grief, it had been for her, though Lata kept that bit to herself.

“My CA reminded me earlier this year. He’d kept paying the EMI, of course, from my India portfolio. He collected the keys. I thought when we found a buyer, we could flog it off, you’d need to be here too. Then I met Molly and she told me you’d be in Calcutta.”

“Have you got a buyer?” Lata asked, now wandering into what was presumably the dining space, and then through that, into one of the bedrooms.

Instead of answering her, Aarjoe said, “Charulata Ghosh, do you ever wonder what would happen if we’d met now, when life has taught us all these lessons, instead of in 2002? If we’d met for the first time at Molly’s engagement-cum-ashirbad? Say, I was her Berlin boss and had been invited to the ceremonies like the others?”

(To be continued)