Chapter 7

twerping

@twerping

Raman walked into the apartment and was met with the wondrous sight of his mother with a red dupatta tied around her head singing a song while Romi kept the beat by hitting on the table with a wooden ladle. Ruhi leaped with joy and joined Rinki who was doing thumkas as she made chai in the kitchen.

"Bhaiya, you want chai?" she called out as Raman sat down next to his father on the couch. Mr. Bhalla had been observing the proceedings while pretending to read his newspaper. He put the paper away now and beckoned to Ruhi. The little girl was in her grandfather's lap in a flash and the old man said, "Toshiji, this year your granddaughter will be here to help you with the Lohri preparations."

Toshiji didn't stop her song but walked towards where her eldest son and his child sat and did the gesture of casting away nazar.

Ruhi clapped her hands in glee. "Daadi, I want to sing as well!"

"Arrey, Ruhi, don't you worry! Your Romi Chachu will teach you all the songs!" said Romi and got up to dance with ladle in hand. As he waved the ladle in the air, doing bhangra steps, there was a faint sound of someone clearing her voice at the door. Raman had not bothered to shut the door behind him when he had entered and now there was Mrs. Iyer standing there, with Mihika and Ishita peeking out from behind her, clearly amused at the scene before them.

Toshiji beamed at her friend, as she quickly took off the dupatta. At the sight of Mihika, Romi threw away the ladle and sank into one of the sofas with an awkward smile as he attempted to assume an air of casual elegance. Seemanthani Iyer walked in with her daughter and daughter-in-law in tow. 

"Santoshi, I came to invite you to the puja we are holding at our place tomorrow morning. It is Pongal, so..." Mrs. Iyer paused in her invitation to beam at the Punjabi family assembled before her. 

"Arrey, Seemanthani, of course we'll come!" Toshiji was quick to assure her friend. "You'll are coming for the Lohri festivities later, no?"

While the two ladies chatted, Ruhi pranced around Ishita, trying to do the thumkas she had seen her Rinki bua do only a moment ago. "Ishita aunty! I'll be helping Daadi with the Lohri preparations," the little one announced as Ishita clapped her hands in time to Ruhi's prancing.

Raman found it difficult to take his eyes off the picture the two of them made and fully believed that it was simply his love for Ruhi that made him happy to see her bathing in the affection this stranger of a woman was showering on her.  

It was all too soon that Mrs. Iyer announced that she would have to push off now since she intended on visiting all the other families in the complex to invite them for the puja tomorrow.

As the three ladies left, Raman wondered why Mrs. Iyer felt it necessary to drag along her daughter-in-law who had just returned from work. In fact, he would have been more surprised had he seen that Mihika soon left her bhabi and mother to carry on with the invitations as she went home to get back to her 'studies' which she very studiously pursued over lengthy chats on the phone. Ishita having no such excuses accompanied her mother-in-law and was treated to one scornful look at least from each household. And not every family had a Ruhi Bhalla who showered her with so much love.

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'Mihir, get Bhatia to agree to the contract to the letter. If he wants to make changes in the terms we've set, tell him we shall find someone else to take our business to.' Raman spoke into his earpiece as he put on the blue kurta his mother had laid out for him.

There was to be a function in the society that evening before the next day's Lohri festival. Due to his mother's insistence, Raman had agreed to attend it. Truth be told, there was another reason behind his meek acceptance of his mother's demands. That afternoon he had visited Ruhi's school with the intention of getting to know Mrs. Ishita Iyer a little before he made his move. However, thanks to the unfortunate arrival of that nosy lady, all his plans had gone for a toss. He hoped, in the midst of the society function, he will find a way to talk to her alone.

He looked at himself in the mirror. The figure that looked back at him was a slightly more spruced up version of the Raman Bhalla he had been a few years back. But the changes in his external appearance were nothing to the changes that had happened within him. His family still believed that he was the Raman they had known all their lives, but they were wrong. He alone knew what he carried in the place of his heart. The only people he still felt anything for were his family and of course Ruhi. There was always Ruhi to remind him what he was before Shagun left him. But to the rest of the world, he was a man who was as cold as he was uncaring. He had learnt it the hard way but he had learnt his lesson well. Before the world used him, he was ready to use it and then move on without looking back. Love was an empty word for him now. Marriage was a burden that people were better off without. 

His success had ensured that there were plenty of women who were interested in sharing their lives and their bodies with him. And he had taken this attention with a detachment that had over time hardened into an armour. He had never allowed his affairs to interfere with either his work or his 'personal life'. His work was his 'wife', as Mihir loved to tell him often during their drinking sessions. His 'personal life' was his daughter and his immediate family. His entanglements with the women he fancied were always brief and purely physical. There was nothing more that he had to offer. And Ishita Iyer was most certainly not the type he generally went for. She seemed too soft, too vulnerable, too everything that Raman had himself once been. Wearing her heart on her sleeves, the woman had no defence mechanism, it seemed to him. And he would have left her alone in another time, in another life. 

But the woman had somehow infiltrated his mind, his desires and was interfering with his work. Raman Kumar Bhalla, careerist and business tycoon, most certainly wasn't one to waste time daydreaming about what he might do if he had a certain woman in his arms. And yet, he had been doing exactly that lately. This made her into a problem that needed a speedy and effective solution. Not thinking about her didn't work. So he simply had to spend some 'quality time' with her and if that didn't cure him of this strange desire, he wasn't Raman Kumar Bhalla.

This needed to end before it made a serious impact on his work. With Mihir beside him, Raman thought no one at work had till now noticed that their boss was a little off lately. Raman clearly wasn't aware of the rumours that were already doing the rounds on the possible reasons behind their boss acting less like an angry bull of late and more like a human being prone to absent-minded musings. 

As he passed the comb through his hair, Raman barely thought about the consequences of what he was about to do--pursue a woman who was married in front of her relations and his. If only the Bhalla family had seen what lay in his heart, they would have realised that the son of the family had died the moment Shagun walked out. In his place stood a man who had polished his selfishness into a weapon to strike at the world that he knew had betrayed him.

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Ishita had worn her hair in a braid and now tucked away the loose strands that had escaped behind her ear. Vandita had picked out her saree for her. Ishita wasn't too sure of the red colour but Vandu's excitement had filled Ishita with an odd happiness.  

As she looked at herself in the mirror, the door opened and Subbu stepped in. Barely glancing at her, he picked up the clothes she had laid out for him on the bed and began to change.

"Guess what happened today at work?" Ishita began, hoping to end the claustrophobic silence that stretched between them. Subbu looked at her without any interest but since he didn't show any signs of displeasure, Ishita took it as adequate encouragement to carry on.

"Pooja, my friend from Chennai, the one who got me this job, she's in Delhi. And she came to the clinic-"

Ishita was cut short by a knock on the door.

"Subbu! Come quickly!" Bala machandar's voice could be heard from the other side. By then Subbu had finished changing. He quickly brushed his hair and left without a backward glance.

Ishita didn't know why her cheeks hurt like she had just been slapped. Before darker thoughts could intrude however, Vandu stuck her head through the door and called out, "Ishu!  What are you daydreaming about here? Hurry up! It's time we went down!"