Chapter 4: Jab We Met, Part 2

Growing up, apart from penning poetry, Kavita excelled in little else. An average student, she just about managed to scrape through school each year. With abysmal skills in cooking and household work, her mother worried Kavita would never amount to much. "Good for nothing," she called her, each time Kavita showed her Pass with second division report card. "Who'll marry you?"

Kavita wasn't unduly concerned about her looks or marriage prospects. When she looked in the mirror, she saw a girl who bordered on beautiful. Long black hair framed an attractive face. Black oval eyes with thick eyelashes, a nose a touch too long but it gave the face character and lips just right neither too thin nor too full. She was fair skinned, in a country where fairness was and still is at a premium. The matrimonial columns would describe girls with her proportions healthy. By today's standards, she would've been called overweight. But those were generous times a few extra kilos were no big deal.

Her father Sher Singh Chauhan was a poet. Albeit, not a successful one. His looks (six feet plus, muscular frame and handlebar moustaches that curled up at the ends), his work (he owned a neighborhood grocery store in sector thirty one of Chandigarh) and his ferocious name all kind of stacked against his being taken seriously as a poet. So he named his firstborn, Kavita. A poem.

Kavita lived up to her name and wrote her first poem at five. About dreams turning into reality, bits of paper into rabbits and frogs into flowers that got published in the school magazine. Sher Singh, the proud father, had copies at home and the store. Whenever a customer stepped in for bread and eggs, Sher Singh managed to slip it under the person's nose. It got to the point that people in the neighborhood started to avoid him for fear of being subjected to that piece of juvenile poetry yet again.

When older, she got published in local newspapers, recited at college and community functions. Her favorite was Byron. The despondence and the intense self-analysis in his poetry moved her.

In the growing up years, her poetry dutifully took romantic hues and spoke of unrequited love and longing.

When the pain of loneliness nibbles at me

When the melancholy of solitude nudges me by the elbow

And I am afraid to turn around

To stare it full in the face

It's then

That I dream of you.

Chandigarh was her muse. Le Corbusier's Chandigarh. The city beautiful. Wide streets, elegant homes with lawns, the lake, the gardens. But there was more to the city than cleanliness and planning. There was zest for life, an appreciation for good things, and pride in their abode that knit its warm-hearted dwellers together.

When in college, she began helping out at the store in the afternoons siesta time for her parents. She sat behind the counter and read; few customers came at that time of the day. She liked being at the store. The familiar sweet soapy smell reminded her of her childhood, the time spent there basking in the attention of her father. Of Uncle Chipps masala potato wafers and Kwality cassata ice cream.

On a lazy summer afternoon, she sat cross legged on a chair behind the counter, sleepy with heat and boredom, listening to the gentle hum of the refrigeration. A cherry red motorbike stopped outside the store. A young man walked in, helmet in hand. Without looking directly at her, he asked for a sachet of shampoo.

"Which one?" she asked, pointing to the colorful strings hanging on the wall.

"Koi bhi, he replied softly.

"Arey, bolo kaun sa, It was too hot to be playing guessing games.

"Black."

She asked for a rupee. As if embarrassed at the diminutive payment, he added a pack of Glucose biscuits. He still didn't look at her, though while reaching for the shampoo above the shelves crammed with Maggi noodles and Haldi Ram namkeens, she had felt his eyes on her. The next day he returned for another sachet of Sunsilk Black and a pack of Britannia Glucose D.

And then again, the following day. Odd.

He was tall and thin, with too long hair and delicate hands. A pleasant face with a cleft chin and a serious expression. She wondered if he ever smiled. It was now obvious he came for her and she liked the attention.

Since he didn't seem to progress beyond his daily purchase, she decided to make the first move. She had shampoo and biscuits ready for his visit. Even before he could ask, she slid the things over the sunmica counter. He looked at her and smiled a tentative, retractable smile the kind that can be taken back if it offends. She smiled back.

He still made no effort to talk to her. He came every day, they had their transaction and he left.

One day, as he paid, he lingered for a moment. She looked at him, waiting, when a neighborhood kid barged in and looked at the two of them.

"Kya chahiye?" she asked the boy, her forehead creased, impatient for him to leave.

"Didi, two Cadbury éclairs."

She took the candy with the brown and orange wrapping out of the jar and slapped it on the counter. By that time, the young man was gone. She sighed at the lost opportunity.

The next day, he didn't come.

When he didn't show up the following day, she began to worry. Had she put him off? Was he sick? There could have been a road accident. She didn't even know his name, where he lived. When he came the next day, the weight lifted off her shoulders. Smiling shyly, she asked, "What? You didn't shower for two days?"

He smiled. She noticed he had a lop sided smile. As if the right side of his face was resisting despite the urging of the left. It gave his serious face a roguish charm though. "Amritsar gaya tha. Wedding."

"Yours?"

"No, no." He looked at her in trepidation.

She laughed. Taking out two ice cold bottles from the refrigerator behind her, she asked, "Limca or Coke?"

His name was Sameer. He was in his final year of MBA. He lived in Sector twenty six. Good. If he didn't come again, I know where to look.

She began to look forward to her afternoons. He never said much, nor stayed too long. But she liked the way he spoke to her, the way he looked at her.

She wanted to show him off. Nandita, her best friend at the time, was the obvious choice. Nandita and Kavita had met a year ago when they both joined DAV College, but had become friends quickly in their shared distaste for college lectures and preference for tea and samosas in the canteen instead. Nandita was new in the city. Her family had moved in from Amritsar that year. And Kavita had lost most of her school friends to different courses or different colleges.

Over a shared plate of chaat paapdi (khatta zyada, mirchi kum) at Gopal Sweets in sector eight, she told Nandita. The next day, Nandita joined her in the store, partially hidden by the counter and the candy jars on top of it. At the usual time, Sameer arrived. He parked his motorcycle and climbed up the three steps to the shop, with the lop sided smile Kavita had come to find charming. However, the smile evaporated the instant he saw a third person.

Kavita introduced them quickly, eager to get over the awkwardness of the situation. But it was soon apparent that this wasn't an ordinary awkwardness. Both looked at each other bewildered.

Nandita spoke first. "What are you doing here?"

"What are you doing here?"

"Kavita is my friend."

"I wanted shampoo."

"And you couldn't find another shop in all of Chandigarh!"

Kavita looked from one to the other in confusion.

"You know him?" She finally asked Nandita,as neither of them seemed to think it necessary to fill her in.

"I wish I didn't." Nandita shook her head as she stared hard at Sameer. "He's my brother."

Now it wasn't as bad as Kavita had started to fear. He was her brother. Not her boyfriend or fiancé. Her love story hadn't turned into one of those movies of the sixties where the heroine doesn't have a choice but to sacrifice her love for her best friend.

Nandita stared at her brother. "You knew she was my friend. You saw her with me and you followed her here."

"No."

"Don't lie. You suck at it."

He did.

"Dad's going to love this." She rushed out to her scooty and was gone. Sameer looked at Kavita, saw the disappointment in her face, and followed.

Kavita's love story had crumbled in an unexpected way.At college the next day, Kavita realized Nandita expected her to join in the righteous anger Kavita didn't quite feel. That he had pursued her after seeing her with Nandita didn't change anything for her. In the empty afternoons at the store, she missed the cherry red bike and its rider. She missed his shy smile, his gentle voice. Kavita wanted to reach out to him.

"You what?" Nandita raised her hands to her head when Kavita told her, "You like him? Him?"

Kavita squeezed her friend's hand.

"I can't believe it." Nandita shook her head with pity. Kavita asked her to pass a note to Sameer. A poem.

I wish you were a rose

A half-blossomed dew kissed silky red rose

I would have admired you smiling in my garden

A little look at you would have made my day

Would have showered all my affections on you

Caressed you, kissed you and adored you all my life

And when it were your turn to wither away,

Would have carefully gathered your soft petals to my heart till death

If only

You were a rose.

Sameer's unimaginative response to her poem was to ask her to meet him at the rose garden the next day.

It was a cool spring evening. The roses were in full bloom. Both dressed for the occasion. He in navy-blue shirt and grey trousers which he thought made him look debonair and her in a deep maroon salwar kameez which she thought brought out her fair skin and hid some of the excess weight.

She had been to the rose garden many times before, but this was different. Walking by his side, along a bed of orange speckled yellow roses (Damask Rose, species of Old Garden roses, the sign announced), painfully conscious of people around them, their hands almost touching, the garden seemed more picturesque, more fragrant than ever. There was no other place she wanted to be then. They sat down on the grass as the sun slowly set over the Shivalik range, not talking, each lost in the magic of the moment.

Before he dropped her home, he gave her a gift-wrapped box. She opened it later to find twenty-eight packets of Britannia Glucose D biscuits. Sameer had a wheat allergy. She smiled. He was no poet, but he was funny.

They held hands for the first time in Hot Millions, the most happening place in Sector seventeen market. Their first physical contact of any kind, a good three months after their first date. They kissed for the first time in the rock garden, a month later, as Nek Ram's statues dressed up in broken bangles and ceramic tiles looked the other way. It was an apology of a kiss. Their lips meeting fleetingly. But it felt special. Her first kiss.

She loved his earnestness. His way of approaching her may have been bizarre, but he cared for her. It showed in the small gestures of everyday, the way he held out his hand for her ice cream wrapper, the way he looked behind on the motorbike before he drove, the way he held her hand crossing the road.

Being in love was enchanting reminiscing about the last encounter and dreaming of the next. Dreams, he had too. And she loved hearing him talk about them. It pleased her that his dreams for the future had space for her. He had dreams of conquering the world, crisscrossing the globe and she dreamt of being his companion in whatever he did, wherever he went.

The day he passed his final MBA exam, they decided it was time for their parents to know. Mrs and Mr Chadha were taken aback. They hadn't seen it coming.

"Not them. Odd family. The man barely spoke the one time we went over to their house for dinner," said Mr Chadha.

"Par mujhe toh Kavita se shaadi karni hai na, not with her dad." Sameer shuddered at the thought. "I love her."

"Oye, chup! Love da bacha."

They came around, as the shock of Sameer choosing his own bride wore off.

At the Chauhan household, however, there was a major yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti moment. Sher Singh put his foot down. There was no way he would allow his daughter to be married to a non-Rajput. He had been scouting the matrimonial columns; certain he would strike a status Rajput family sooner or later.

Kavita's mother stepped in to calm things down. The pragmatic wife of a failed poet, she realized her good-for-nothing daughter couldn't do better than Sameer. So another foot went down and the feminine foot won in the end. Kavita and Sameer married a little over six months later. With band, baaja and baraat.

Kavita Chauhan became Kavita Chadha.