Becoming Mrs Kumar, page 20
‘Are you always this pleased to hear from people?’
‘Er, who’s this?’
‘This is Vikrant, Vicky. Your director and creator of the shampoo masterpiece that has brought fame and glory on your agency.’ I could hear the laughter in his voice as I almost dropped my coffee in surprise.
‘Oh, hi Vicky, I’m so sorry…I didn’t recognize the number…I thought it was a spam call. Anyway, how are you? Are you calling about the film? I’m sure you heard that the client loved it.’ I was aware that I was babbling like an idiot, but I’d been caught completely unawares.
‘No, I’m actually calling to see if you’d like to meet for a coffee or maybe lunch if you’re free. I’m in Mumbai for a couple of days and thought it would be fun to hang out and carry on that conversation.’
I could feel myself blushing dark red and was thankful that I was alone at home. ‘Er, sure, why not?’ I answered, trying to recover my composure.
‘Great. So save my number and I’ll buzz you when I arrive. Let’s tentatively say coffee on Saturday afternoon, after my meeting gets done.’
‘OK, sounds great,’ I said weakly. As he cut the call I found myself wondering why on earth he’d called in the first place but strangely excited that he had. I wondered whether he was interested in me, or whether he just had some time to kill and thought it might be fun to meet. Trying not to think too much into things, I put Vicky, Saturday, coffee into my electronic diary and started to wonder what to wear.
He called again on Friday afternoon and we arranged to meet for a late afternoon coffee at The Taj Lands End hotel in Bandra, the sister concern of the Taj Mahal Hotel, which had seen the horrific terrorist attack a few years earlier. The Taj hotels were a little grander than my usual hangouts but he was here for meetings with another agency team and was being put up at their expense, presumably they were trying to woo him to direct an ad for them—an expensive hotel was considered a suitably appropriate means of helping snag a highly sought after director.
I dressed carefully in what I hoped was the right balance of casual and cool, and set out to meet him, my palms strangely clammy and hoping that we’d find something to talk about without any awkward silences. He was already waiting for me in the busy bar area, and was looking even more attractive than I’d remembered. I couldn’t put my finger on what I found so interesting about him, looks-wise. All that long, slightly unruly hair gave him a wild, creative look which appealed, and there was something about his face that made me feel like confiding in him. I wasn’t sure whether it was his eyes, which had a gentle look about them suggesting hidden depth, the not quite chiseled look of his cheekbones, or the fact that it was all thrown together and just seemed to work. I’d sneaked the odd cheeky look at the rest of him when he hadn’t been looking, and had noted that he had a good body, slim but not skinny and with no sign of the paunchy belly that I’d come to associate with many Indian men.
I couldn’t help but think that he was out of my league.Though I’d been told I was cute looking, I thought that my looks were pretty average, certainly when I compared myself to all the exotic beauties I seemed to come across in Mumbai. He greeted me with the European double kiss and we sat down.
‘How are you?’ he asked. ‘I hope you don’t mind me calling on you like this?’
‘Not at all,’ I replied, wondering if he had a specific agenda in mind for our meeting, or whether it was genuinely a casual catch-up. ‘It’s nice to see you again.’
‘So, what have you been up to?’ he asked. I played along, wondering if he would eventually turn to the reason for our meeting.
‘Not a lot actually,’ I said. ‘Pretty busy with work, but of course the fact that your film was such a success has made things a little easier all round. We’re busy planning for next year’s activity and you know how these clients like to endlessly make schedules and budgets, which invariably end up changing, but which keep us on our toes.’
‘So how long have you been in advertising?’ he asked.
‘About nine years now,’ I answered. ‘Long enough to start wondering if I’ll get stuck doing this forever but not long enough to have got bored of it yet.’
‘And what made you come out to India to work?’ he asked. I trotted out the usual spiel about being offered a job here. ‘I felt like I’d hit an early mid-life crisis, somehow. I mean I was happy enough, and life was pretty good by most people’s standards, but something was missing. I don’t know what it was, and I still don’t really know, but I do know that I’ve come closer here to being happy and fulfilled than I was in London.’
‘So you’re not completely happy here then?’ he asked. I hesitated, not wanting to come across as moany or as a stereotypically whinging foreigner.
‘Well, I love it here. I’ve made some good friends and I think Mumbai is the most incredible city. But somehow, I just feel that it might be time to think about moving back. I guess I’m missing my friends and family back home.’
I left it there, not wanting to go into the details of my deeper loneliness or my feelings that I was missing out on finding love and settling down. I didn’t want to make him think that I was lonely or desperate, preferring instead to paint a picture of myself as a curious world traveller who wanted to return home for a while.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said, with what I thought was a touch of regret in his voice. ‘Mumbai needs more sorted people, and I love the international feel that is being created by all the foreigners who are coming here to work. India certainly isn’t for everyone but it’s great if you can manage to find your way here.’
‘That’s true. Anyway I haven’t made up my mind completely but I have a couple of weeks to decide. So what about you, have you travelled much?’
‘Well, like all good Indian parents, mine wanted to send me abroad to study. My father is in the army so I was a bit of an army brat, dragged all over the country, so I was very used to moving around. I graduated from Delhi University and then went to New York to study film at NYU. My parents wanted me to be a doctor or an engineer of course, but I desperately wanted to get into filmmaking, so after a bit of a fight, and a few tears from my Mum, they agreed to let me pursue my dream. I took a loan from them to study and I paid them back in five years.’
I knew how hard Indian parents pushed their children to study ‘traditional’ courses and pursue safe careers, and I was impressed that he’d followed his dream, and that he had obviously made a success of what he’d done so far.
‘So how was it coming back to India after you finished studying?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you want to stay in New York? Most Indians seem to want to leave India.’
‘Not really,’ he answered. ‘I could always see the potential in India, and things were starting to really change here a decade ago. There was, and still is, energy and an incredible entrepreneurial spirit as well as a can-do attitude here. I love Europe and some parts of the US but I just find things easier and more comfortable here, which is ironic really.’
‘I know exactly how you feel,’ I said excitedly. ‘ It’s like you can do anything if you put your mind to it. And the usual things that would faze people back home, like a bit of dirt, a lot of poverty and the absence of systems, seem to be minor impediments here.’
I realized that I was sounding a bit like a spoiled expat, so I added, ‘Of course these are things that do cause misery to millions. But somehow, despite all that, there’s a just get on with it kind of attitude. There’s no time to moan about hardship, people don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for themselves, and so they just get on with things, turning negatives into positives. At least that’s the way I see things.’
‘Interesting. So you still want to leave, despite feeling like that?’
I was aware that I was sounding like a bit of a hypocrite but I wasn’t willing to share my real reasons for wanting to leave.
‘Yes, I think so,’ I told him. ‘At least for a while, anyway. And then, let’s see what happens.’
We carried on talking for another couple of hours, the conversation was flowing and there were few silences. The backdrop was gorgeous—the hotel looked right out over the sea and the sun was beginning to set, casting a romantic hue across the room. Vicky told me that his parents were strict but caring, traditional yet modern in some ways, that they were Hindus but not terribly devout, and that he had a younger brother and sister as well an older sister. His sister Aparna was married with two children and his brother Ashwin was meandering through a series of jobs, while his youngest sister Sangeeta was still at college. As we talked, I was aware of the fact that he genuinely seemed to want to share some of the details of his life with me, and he also seemed interested in me and my background. I wondered whether he was another Indian guy who wanted a trophy white girl, an international notch on his bedpost, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. There was something that seemed quite genuine about him, although, as I thought wistfully, I’d thought the same thing about Krishna when we’d first met, and look how that had ended.
Eventually, after a couple of cups of coffee each, he said, ‘I have to get going, I have a couple of meetings this evening. I’m in town for a week, though, would you like to get together again, perhaps for dinner this time? I really enjoyed talking to you.’
I found his polite, slightly formal approach almost endearing, and the fact that he didn’t seem to want to play games was a refreshing change. I was still persisting in the belief that he just wanted to be friends, but something inside me was telling me that it was more than that. And although I wanted to believe it, I was thinking about my plans to leave and how this was absolutely the wrong time to meet anyone new. I told myself that worst case, I’d have one last fling before leaving Mumbai, that I wouldn’t anyway have the time or inclination to get into anything serious, and that worst case I’d spend an interesting evening or two with someone who I could talk to.
‘Sure,’ I said, ‘let me know when. I’m pretty free this week.’ Just as I wasn’t going to delude myself into thinking that this was going to turn into some great romance, neither was I going to be bothered to play the usual games and feign indifference or invent a packed diary to make myself seem more interesting. We parted with another kiss on the cheeks and this time a hug, and I spent the rest of the weekend feeling unaccountably happy and excited at the prospect of seeing him again.
23
I was sufficiently curious to do a little bit of research into Vicky’s background, and probed Vanita for details about him, without giving away my reasons for doing so. Vanita wasn’t the gossipy type, and coolly told me, when I dropped the topic into conversation, that Vicky was a serious kind of guy, he’d dated a pretty well-known model for a few years but they had recently broken up and she got the feeling that he was licking his wounds a little bit.
‘I did wonder,’ I told her, as we sat in the agency canteen drinking chai. ‘I mean, it’s none of my business but we spent a fair bit of time talking and I got the impression that he’s quite sad inside somehow. He’s certainly not the flamboyant, bossy type that I’ve come to expect, most of these directors are arrogant idiots.’
I quickly changed the subject and googled him when I got home. Indeed he had dated a particularly stunning model from Delhi for a few years, and I read various accounts of his long love affair, written mainly by the entertainment and gossip columns, which took great delight in revealing the eventual downfall of his relationship. I felt sorry for him; though he wasn’t a celebrity by any means, he was well known enough for his personal life to have been written about, or perhaps she was the more famous one of the two and had merited those column inches. She certainly seemed to be everywhere, and though she was gorgeous to look at, there was something flinty and hard in her eyes. I couldn’t imagine that he would possibly be interested in me after dating such an incredibly hot woman, and I figured that possibly he was looking for rebound sex, which I definitely wasn’t up for.
When he called me in the middle of the week, however, my heart jumped and I felt the familiar butterflies in the pit of my stomach.
‘Hey, how are you?’ he asked me.
‘I’m good thanks. Another busy week, but nothing I can’t handle.’
‘So do you fancy meeting for dinner?’ he asked. ‘I’m starved of company here, and most of my friends seem to be out of town.’
I felt slightly put out at the implication that I was a last resort, but I didn’t think that he meant that he was literally scraping the barrel. We arranged to meet at Busaba, a quietish and unpretentious bar located in one of the recently-developed midtown mills. Bars and restaurants were springing up in these areas, which had been grabbed by eager property developers following the closure of the old textile mills. I arrived a little early and made my way upstairs to the table he’d thoughtfully booked. For some reason, my nerves had disappeared. I wasn’t reading anything into this dinner. Since finding out that he’d recently come out of a long term, serious relationship, I guessed that he was just looking for a bit of fun, and I’d decided to enjoy the attention, though I told myself to be strong and not give in if he suggested we spend the night together. I was used to fending off amorous desires, and though this one, if it happened, would be more difficult to resist, I didn’t want to end up as a trophy shag, or worse, a sympathy shag.
‘Hi, you look lovely,’ he smiled as he sat down, admiring my freshly blow dried, shiny hair and my new top, which I hoped said sexy but not slutty. I felt confident and in control, the butterflies that had kept appearing earlier now banished by my resolve. Dinner was delicious, and we ordered extensively from the Asian menu.
‘I’m glad you’re not a vegetarian,’ he grinned, as I tucked into my barbecued pork ribs.
‘Far from it,’ I replied. ‘I eat everything, although I’m a bit sick of curry frankly.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ he said. ‘Where I’m from, the diet gets pretty boring after a while, it’s all tandoori meat, rich gravies and naan. And daal of course. The food up north is really heavy and gives me terrible indigestion.’
‘So which do you prefer, Delhi or Mumbai?’ I asked.
‘Well, Delhi has been home for a while, but I prefer the buzz here. People in the north tend to be more aggressive, and people say it’s not a very friendly place, particularly for outsiders.’
‘Yes I’ve heard that.’ I said, recalling stories I’d heard from expat friends who had lived in Delhi. ‘I’ve never been, but I suppose I should make a trip there some time. In fact, I need to visit a whole load of places before I leave India.’
‘So you’re really serious about leaving then?’ he asked.
‘I think so,’ I replied, before deciding to open up about my reasons for leaving. ‘To be honest I’m in a bit of a dilemma,’ I said. I wasn’t trying to impress him, and so I figured that being honest about my desire to meet a man wouldn’t make any difference.
‘I’ve been on my own here, pretty much since I arrived. And while I love my freedom, and the fact that I can do whatever I want, when I want to, I suppose I’m a little bit lonely and I’d love to meet someone and settle down, so I don’t think I have much of a choice but to go home.’
‘You don’t think you’ll meet anyone here then?’ he asked, genuinely interested.
‘Well, I haven’t done so far, and I’ve been here for getting on for three years. I mean, I have dated but it’s all been a bit disastrous and I just kind of get the feeling that I’m chasing something that just isn’t meant to be. And although being in a relationship isn’t the be all and end all, it’s something I miss and I think I need now.’
I stopped, hoping that I hadn’t made him feel bad about his recent breakup, or come across as sad, lonely or desperate. I made a joke to ease my own self-consciousness. ‘I suppose alternatively I could always go off in search of enlightenment or fulfillment with some yogi in the hills. That seems to be a particularly popular choice for us lost westerners.’
He laughed, ‘Yes I know a few people like that. But you don’t strike me as that type. You seem to have your feet firmly on the ground, and I can’t see you being seduced by the promise of Nirvana.’ I took that as a compliment.
‘So, what about you? Are you religious?’ I asked.
‘Not really. I mean I was raised Hindu but my family aren’t that strict, and I’ve never been able to work out what it all means. I guess I do believe in God in a way, but Hinduism seems fairly forgiving so I don’t worry about it too much. I think my parents are secretly hoping that I marry a nice Hindu girl, but I think they’ve given up on me now. Luckily, I have an older sister who’s given them a couple of grandchildren, so I’m off the hook, although there’s a lot of pressure for the sons to produce heirs for the family. Hopefully my brother will be the one to do that eventually.’
‘So you don’t want kids?’ I asked, hoping my question sounded as innocuous as I intended it to be.
‘I do, definitely,’ he said. ‘One day. All depends on meeting the right person I suppose, and that is the most important thing.’ His tone was far from flirtatious, and I liked the fact that he was confiding in me.
‘Me, too. I mean, I’ve never wanted kids. To be honest, I think I’m terrified of the responsibility, but you never know. I just want to meet someone who I feel comfortable with, and who I can build a life with, and then I’ll take it from there.’
I felt strangely liberated by our conversation, as though we had abandoned any pretence of flirtation and were just connecting as friends, potentially good friends. At the end of the evening, after he’d paid the bill, he turned to me and said, slightly nervously, ‘Listen, I really want to talk to you about something. Can you come back to my hotel for a drink, and I promise this is not as sleazy as it sounds.’
‘Well I don’t mind having another drink,’ I said, intrigued by his tone and somehow trusting him completely. We grabbed a taxi and headed to his hotel and made our way to the bar. I had hoped that he wouldn’t suggest that we go to his room for drinks, and he didn’t. We ordered our drinks, beer for him and wine for me, and after the waiter had finished fussing around us, he turned to me, looking slightly bashful.
