33: A Space Made Larger

5 September 2000

The war room was quieter now - not silent ... it never was. The fans hummed, the printer spat out sheets nobody had asked for, and a popular Lata Mangeshkar song floated from a radio at the far end of the room. The frenzy of the last days had bled out of the air. The fight wasn’t over, but for the first time it felt ... paused.

Satyu sat back and let the relative tranquility seep into him. Rekha’s blackmail stash was safe, the analysts buried in their work. Hema had left at dawn, bound for Chennai once he was certain no more fieldwork was needed. Satyu had only known the man a short while. However, he had seen enough to understand why people followed him so unquestioningly. Hema was the personification of the words calm and commanding.

Satyu saw what Priya and Hema meant to each other when they bade each other goodbye. The way Priya had broken, just for a moment, when she hugged her adoptive father. She had tried to hide it, of course. Priya always tried. Yet Satyu saw the tears glinting at the corner of her eyes when she returned from the airport. He saw how her pace slowed, how her shoulders seemed weighed down. Everyone else gawked at the sight of the indefatigable Priya worn thin. But he understood.

She had the love and respect of that impressive man - something Satyu guessed even his son Bharath only got sparingly.

Satyu breathed a huge sigh of relief when he recalled how Hema had looked at him once, long and measuring. In that look Satyu felt no condemnation. He believed that Hema had perhaps even given him a shadow of approval to pursue his beloved adoptive daughter. That was enough to give him courage, or at least a facsimile of it.

There she was ... sitting across the room, perched on a steel chair with her legs folded under her, chewing the cap of her pen while annotating a ledger. She had tied her hair up while a few strands brushed her cheek. She furrowed her brow the same way she had that day at the gallery opening when he first laid eyes on her. His warrior princess. She looked fierce and beautiful - all rolled up into one intimidating package.

Every time she looked up, his heart thudded like a runaway autorickshaw. He told himself he was just observing, just studying her focus, her methods. But the truth was more pathetic- he wanted to say something. Anything. However, every time he tried to do so, the words caught in his throat.

Will she ever look at me the way I dream about every night? What could she possibly see in a basket case like me - penniless, stubborn, scarred by my own failures? She deserved a man like Hema: brilliant, unshakable, larger than life. Not some half-broken idealist who lived out of notebooks and regret.

“Be a man, Roy,” he muttered under his breath. “Better to rip the bandage and be done with it than rot in silence.”

He stood. One step. Another. His palms were damp.

“Priya.”

She looked up, eyes quizzical.

God, she was beautiful. He froze. “N- Nothing,” he stammered, and spun toward the water cooler before he could humiliate himself further.

Coward

Behind him, he heard a small sound- soft, almost amused. When he glanced back, she was still bent over her work, but her lips curved, just slightly.

She’d heard him berating himself. And she found it ... adorable.

The hours crawled by after that. He lingered, stealing glances, trying to summon the courage he had already squandered. She barely acknowledged him except for the occasional instruction, her mind clearly elsewhere. He knew where it was - half a country away, in Amritsar, worrying over her brother. He was out of danger now, of course. Yet, Satyu knew that until she saw him again she would never stop worrying. He sighed as she stared at her glazed eyes, almost giving up hope.

Still, he hovered. Like a fool. Like a moth circling a flame it had already chosen.

It was late afternoon as the rain tapped a steady line along the window frame. The room had emptied for food; chairs pushed back, notes left in neat stacks, the printer asleep at last. It was just the two of them. Priya was busy as always, writing something as her pen moved without hesitation.

Now or never Roy. Be a man!

Satyu cleared his throat. “Priya.”

She didn’t look up. “Mmm?”

“Can I tell you something? About me.”

“If you want to.”

He waited for her eyes to look at him. They didn’t come. He sighed as he realized he had to do this the hard way. Still, she had given him space. He figured he could step into it or keep hiding. He decided on the latter and took a breath.

“I don’t know if I ever mentioned it before ... but I was married once,” he said.

Her pen slowed a little.

Encouraged that he had got her attention, he hurried along before he lost his nerve to continue.

“We met at a book launch on College Street. She arrived late and still managed to look like the reason the room had been waiting to start. She wore a red dress that made men speak more carefully. She tilted her head at one of my questions during the author Q&A, smirked once, and I was finished. Everyone warned me. They said she was out of my league. They said journalists don’t marry women like her. I decided they were snobs and cowards.”

Priya’s mouth tugged, the smallest reaction. “And you married quickly.”

“Within months,” I said. “She was too young, and I was too smitten. I didn’t have much but I thought love would be enough. I used to make her breakfast in bed. I left poems under the mirror. I slipped yellow roses into her handbag when she went to work.”

He paused as he glanced into the beautiful past - one that had always hurt to even think about before. He didn’t notice that Priya was looking at him now as he rambled on.

“I wrote angry drafts late into the night and believed I would change the city. She scrolled catalogues of things we couldn’t afford and planned a life in a different skyline. I saved for a second-hand Nikon. She saved for a Gucci clutch. I said I’d fix the leaky sink after deadline. She said she’d leave before monsoon if the fan wasn’t replaced. I bought her cotton sarees because I thought they were pretty. She said she looked like a maid in them. She wanted satin and things that shone. She once told me, ‘I want to feel like a billboard.’ And then she touched my cheek and said, ‘You make me feel like a pamphlet.’”

Priya’s pen stopped as she looked at him unblinking. “Did she say it like a joke?”

“No,” Satyu said. “She said it like a fact.”

The rain ticked steady. A line of water crawled down the pane and collected along the sill. Satyu didn’t rush. He wanted to be careful with the words, not dramatic; just true.

“One night I came home early,” he continued. “The door was ajar. There were men’s shoes at the entrance. Expensive. Not mine. I heard laughter down the hall. Her laugh. She had a beautiful laugh you know? But that wasn’t all. I also heard a rhythm against the wall that stopped my feet before my brain caught up.”

Satyu swallowed, “I went in anyway because it was my home. The bedroom was lit. Believe it or not, the first thing I noticed were the bedsheets. They were new and too shiny. It was only then that I saw her ... with another man ... in our bed. The one I used to take her breakfast to everyday”.