Stepping out on the platform, the Delhi chill makes our breath come out as shivery smoke. “Must have snowed in the hills, don’t you think?” I say, trying to breath out smoke rings. Channa doesn’t answer. She shakes her head, her teeth chattering as she concentrates on making it to the auto stand. The city always makes itself seem real to me once I start haggling about auto fares. Suddenly, the aggression of the “I’m not going to be duped” takes over the “lets see the other side of things” person that I try to be. I am just starting when Channa grabs my hand and pushes me into a standing auto, the driver already revving to go. “Save your ten rupees elsewhere – my marrow is freezing. Do you mind?”

We start off for home. Ten days in my parent’s home and this city seem so short and so long. Channa and I have already talked about this. “You just chill, light lena, no need to make that one last point!” her mouth a large grin. In return, I had glared back, but I know that as long as I don’t get into my usual weepy fights it’ll be ok.

The smog is clearing. A pale light is starting to show itself by the time we get home. I show her landmarks all through the journey. She tries to look interested. I am chattering needlessly, I know. But when she is quiet, I always feel I have to speak for both of us. The auto driver takes pity and engages me in a conversation about how the city has changed. As we enter our lane I’m feeling slightly bad for my grudging him his “over the meter” money.

In my mother’s house there is so much food, it’s hard to concentrate on any thing else. We eat greedily. She feeds us with admonishments of how much weight we’ve lost, of how big girls like us should be able to look after ourselves, and when she was our age she already had two children, “Just like all your other sensible friends.”

I reach for one more paratha, “It’s not that we don’t feed ourselves. It’s just that your food is different. And our house is pretty organized, you know. If only you would come and visit.”

The last sentence has an edge and it surprises me. I hadn’t realised I felt slighted that my mother spent months baby-sitting for my sister in the U.S. and never visited me. My mother looks at me a little sharply but for a different reason. She does it each time I use “ours”, while talking about home or cooking. I get a little conscious too and then, for a while, I use “mine” instead of “ours”. Like acknowledging a collective life, another family is a betrayal of the one I was born to.

In the kitchen, when I am alone with my mother, she tells me that I should settle down.

“I am settled”, I tell her.

She is making gajar ka halwa. I am putting all the leftover food in smaller dabbas. This is my favourite chore, clearing up, putting away the leftovers. I feel a sense of accomplishment each time everything fits into right-sized containers. My mother continues the conversation, “You and Channa will live together all your life or what?”

“Who knows? But it’s nice for now.” I could have left it at that, but no. I carry on, “It’s not about living with her forever, Mamma. It’s about me. I am happy and as settled as I want to be. I’ve been on my own for long now.”

On one hand I want my mother to acknowledge Channa’s special role in my life, on the other I don’t want her to attribute everything I do to my relationship with Channa. So, sometimes, I end up underplaying my relationship. Even if I was with a man I wouldn’t have married him, the relationship may not have been my anchor. With or without marriage, a relationship could be important without being everything. And what the hell – sometimes at that “completely, madly in love” time, it can be everything. But then, that time may be not everlasting… So many layers that I tend to get lost in what I want seen and recognised, and what I do not want over-emphasised, what acknowledged and what not. I let it be – for a while at least.

But my mother continues, “Yeah but that’s not a life.” She can’t read my thoughts. She has her own layers to deal with.

“Why not?”

She continues stirring the gajar simmering in milk, a pink frothy concoction. “This being strong and independent – now it’s okay, but later you’ll feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“The strain of being different and the loneliness…”

I want to ask her, “Why do you think I’m different?” It might just open up a door for more conversation. To speak of the obvious that we both will not speak of, in words. Then we can really have it out. But right at the beginning of the visit, I am not sure I want to. So I ask, “Why do you think I’ll be lonely?” She keeps quiet. I wait.

Then she says, “Because every one needs someone to take care of them. A family of their own. When all your friends get married, you’ll be alone.”

“What if some don’t… There are different ways of making a family.” How many times I have repeated this sentence, unable to express in words what can only be lived.

“Such things don’t work.”

“Why? Channa and I take care of each other well enough.” It’s out before I can stop myself.

Maybe this is it, she’ll ask or I’ll say.

My father walks in and the moment dissolves into nothing.

“How are you with money these days?”

“Okay,” I say. “Super.”

“Good then. You won’t need any of mine”

“Like you’ll give any!” We all smile. We like such conversations. Light and easy.

The newspapers were still full of reports about an actress being persecuted for her statements about premarital sex. A few days before we came to Delhi, we had a women’s group-discussion in our town about this. About protesting against such persecution. We were drafting a statement about censorship when Janaki said something about being confused about what premarital sex meant – when and pre- which marital? “Are we assuming,” she had asked, “that we will marry only once. Or are we saying that, once we are married, it doesn’t matter if we have sex between marriages? Is it only the first, the hymen-breaker that is the milestone?” Everyone had laughed. Channa had added, “And are we assuming that we will all get married. Lets make a new term – unmarital sex!”

“What about good sex!” That was Janaki.

“Thats my type,” Channa said.

“So can we just let sex be sex, what’s with the ‘pre’ and ‘post’!”

“Free sex from its fetters!” Channa really got going.

“Free sex!” Janaki will not be left behind.

“Well… How will some of us earn then!”

And we were rolling with laughter. At least some of us were. A few were disapproving. “Let’s not turn this whole discussion into a joke please!”

“Why? Aren’t we talking about sex here?” Janaki was a little belligerent, though still half-laughing.

“No. We are talking against censorship and for the individual right to free speech!”

“Free speech about what?” Janaki mutters, not laughing now. But the meeting is back on its path. And we sober up and come back to the serious topic of the day. Free speech and censorship.

We bitched about the meeting for bit when we came home, but soon Channa and I quit talking and practised unprefixed sex. Four hours of talk on the right to talk about sex and no action! We laugh under the quilt, half from love and getting our own back with the prudes, and half from the fact that we have only one quilt and its a little tough keeping ourselves covered. It moves with the shapes of our bodies. I wonder what shadows it throws on the walls. Elephant like? With due respect to Ismat aapa, I’d like it to be a little more delicate. Gazelles? Or maybe more robust – tigers frolicking?

The nights are cold in Delhi, but on our holiday we don’t mind. Bundled in warm woollen clothes, walking through the crowded market, hands interlocked, we are too involved in each other to take notice of the stares that come our way. Buying small useless presents for each other, our love shows itself. It’s nice, this heady foolish feeling.

Nights at my parents are spent in a warm room, with lots of food being passed around. Guests are accommodated near the blower with shawls to cover cold feet. We sit under a new shawl I’ve got as a present from a visiting aunt. She says she would have given me a Pashmina if I’d got married, but for now this warm woven shawl will have to do. To spite her cheapness, I put it to good use immediately. Channa and I play footsie under its protection.

My parents watch T.V all day – no soaps, only news. Flipping between news channels, Hindi, English, sometimes a language they don’t speak or understand. Murders, cat fights, weeping people, mobs beating cheating sadhus – and always a shirking anchor. Tonight, the channels are buzzing with news of cops beating couples in a park. In the house people tut-tut at the small-town women constable’s moral policing. A perky newscaster talks about how a big deal is being made about boys and girls going around, how the small-town police and people have to broaden their views. The hostility seems to be aimed at the constables. An official is on TV saying that the constables have been suspended. The drive was to rid the city of eve-teasing, not victimise women. The official speaks good English. He seems to not be getting the rap for what happened under his command. The rural language of the constable makes her an easy, narrow-minded, small-town enemy. After a while, even the others lose interest. Someone changes channels. I watch the flickering images, one to the other, waiting for the search to end.

When we go to bed, I latch the door, get into the quilt, and cuddle into Channa. The quilt is soft and big, bigger than we are used to. “Ah,” says Channa, lying under me. “Ah the joys of a comfortable bed and clean sheets.” I giggle, but when we kiss there is something between us that’s not us. When we make love, it is with a small shadow of something. I have half a feeling of looking over my shoulder, and half a feeling of not wanting to do it in their house. There is a kind of shame to our love-making tonight, a feeling completely absent between us at all other times. But here, on this bed, in my parent’s house, I feel like I’m taking advantage of their hospitality. Like I’m soiling my mother’s clean quilts with the juices and smell of our lovemaking. Something that she will put in for washing as soon as I leave. Something that will make her wrinkle her nose. I seem to never feel a sense of entitlement for this room, this bed, this house. The thought startles me. In one moment, it tells me that no matter how close I am to my parents, no matter how much I love them and they me, I can never be comfortable in their home till they censure a part of my life. As I wait for sleep, I see the light from a tasteful jute lampshade make patterns on the wall. Patterns that have nothing to do with us.

The next day Channa and I try to lose ourselves in the holiday crowd and enjoy the big city – bright, colourful people on the many floors of the malls, so many and all full. People watching people. No wonder local theatre is going out of fashion.

The shops are all selling things that they say will make you show your love to the special people in your life. Sweaters and mobile phones with a hundred attachments to connect with the people you love. “Is there one that will help me sort out my relationships?” I ask at the counter. The salesperson looks through me.

We walk through the shops, getting ourselves sprayed with perfume that we can never buy, but smells delicious. “I like your smell better though,” she says into my ear as I put my wrist to her nose. I colour up. We move on. It’s like walking in a dream. It’s a nice feeling, but tinged with the awareness of not belonging. It’s getting a little depressing now, staring at things, unwanted or beyond reach and, in the end, when we finally fall to temptation and spend on something useless and overpriced, the expense depresses me. It leaves me with an empty feeling in my stomach. It stays for a while, then I push it away. I rationalise it. “We will be far from all this in a few days, so – what the hell!”

She wants to buy me the world, me too. Money may not be enough, so we decide on a big bunch of flowers.

I grope for my wallet. Nothing. I can’t find it. My hands fumble inside my large cardigan pockets. “I lost it or what?” I say out loud to myself and to Channa who is checking her pocket. It’s quite natural for my wallet to appear from her pocket – but nothing! Then we frisk each other’s pockets. Frisking. Mostly, this is our private joke – pretending to be looking for something and feeling up the other, both deriving pleasure out of the silly duping and being-duped. This time, the empty hands brighten no eyes. I want the hands to find what they are looking for.

“Cant find it.”

“Did you drop it?”

“Someone may have picked it up.”

“Should we go back?”

“No, let’s just go home”.

There isn’t enough to take a cycle rickshaw back home. So when we get home, we tell the rickshaw driver to wait while I run up and get money. It’s cold and he stands while I rummage for exact change. “What’s wrong with you,” says Channa. She thrusts some notes in her pockets and goes down to pay him. I’m stung by my own stinginess. It’s this fucking city.

At night, we try to spoon our gloom away. “Why us?” I mumble. “Us with so little to spare.”

“There are many with lesser,” she says.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s another way of looking at it. But I still feel bad and we also really have less, don’t we?” I snap at her. Her being right irritates me. Always trying to see the other side, how better off we are. I turn away from her and spend some time trying to do the mental maths of how much money we’ve lost.

I don’t feel like making up with Channa, but I’m too depressed to be able to sleep without the warmth of her next to me. So I tell her I’m still mad at her but need to snuggle and fall asleep against her warm curve.

I borrow money from my dad the next day, without telling him about the lost wallet. I do not want a big lecture on responsibility. We make up for all the disappointments of last evening by buying expensive theatre tickets and eating a huge meal at a hugely expensive place, our feet touching under the table and faces so close we might as well have kissed. We didn’t. There is still a certain amount of decorum we have to observe – lest we be a corrupting influence on society.

A couple of mornings later, we sit sunning ourselves on the terrace, peeling oranges, Channa and I and my mother. She is making a sweater for my niece, Channa is reading a book. In the inside of the morning paper, I learn that two girls have died in some small district. Their love, they said, would never be accepted. I feel guilty for having my love, for me being able to live and feel it, soak it. I feel blessed, and carry the burden of being one of the few who survive. The feeling stays as knot in my stomach. Barely grown up, barely having tasted love – and to have so much shame heaped on them.

My mother is talking about someone’s wedding and the clothes they bought and how she is waiting to for my wedding and all the beautiful stuff she’s bought. I look at her once, long and hard, and she looks away. “Do you want me to say something?” I say.

“No. Just keep your views away from me.” Her answer is quick, cloaked in laughter, but the fear shows. Am I getting too sensitive? Or is she getting desperate? Lately it seems that all we talk about is marriage.

She says after a pause, “Anita Maami wanted to talk to you, she is coming home today.”

“Talk about what?” I ask, already suspicious.

“Something,” my mother starts to gather her knitting to go down, “Arre, why are you making it so serious? She just wants to meet you.”

Yeah, sure!

Anita Maami comes in with a flurry of laughter. We are sitting around the dining-table drinking tea, when my mother calls Channa in for something. I am sitting alone with Anita Maami. She toys with her biscuit and clears her throat. “Beta, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Just, your life and things…”

“What about them?”

“Beta work and all is good, but don’t you want to settle down?”

“Arre, Anita Maami. Now you don’t start. I’m settled enough…”

“I know bete, but aren’t there other things that one needs? Home and family… A companion?”

“But I have friends, and we all make a family. Well, a sort of family. And if you’re talking of children, you know, I’ve been thinking of adoption. Not now, but at some later point.”

But Anita Maami cuts me off impatiently and, in a rush, says, “I am talking about physical needs. One needs to see to them. As a doctor, beta, I’m saying this as a doctor. It’s nature’s need. You must get married.” She says it so awkwardly that I am more aware of how she is saying it than what she is saying.

“What?” And then, as I realise what she’s saying, I start to laugh. Should I act nun-like? Or should I be bold? I want to throw the answer in her face, but I also want to protect her. From what? Me? I don’t know… From something. “Anita Maami, you really think… I’m fine. Really. All my needs are being met.”

“You ought to get married. Your parents worry so.”

I don’t know what to say. In the kitchen, I can see my mother stirring something on the gas, but I know she is listening to every word of this conversation. There is laughter still bubbling in me. Anita Maami, the cool, liberated aunt we all looked up to, trying to couch in ambiguities my family’s fear of my sex life.

I’m thinking if she will give me a lecture about contraception. What will she say if I tell her that I always have safe sex? And, right now, I’m not worried about getting pregnant. I open my mouth. My mother sees me. She sweeps into the room and engages Anita Maami in some nonsense. She talks so much that I get the point and leave the room without any subversive speeches. I do it because I feel bad for the amount of effort she puts in with all that talk.

I and Channa go for a walk.

When we come back, my parents are in the TV room, watching the news. I can hear the shrill newscaster. His excitement would make you think that something of major import has happened but, more likely, he’s talking about the elimination of yet another music-show contestant.

Three more days before we go back home.

That evening, we are with a group of friends when Shekhar, our third housemate calls to say that he’s received a phone-call from someone who found my wallet. “But there was no ID,” I say. “How did they get your number?”

“From the bill of the STD call you made to me in the morning. At least that’s what they told me.”

Shekhar thought it wise not to give out my number, “You never know what’s on the other person’s mind.” So, instead, he made the Good Samaritan give him theirs.

“Good,” I say and take down the number.

As soon as I put down the phone, I repeat the whole story to the others.

“What? Really? Someone called up some town 200 miles away to trace you?”

“That doesn’t happen often. Not here.”

“Wow! What a thing to happen in a city like this.”

I don’t feel like making the call, so Channa steps in to do the needful. She calls the given number. A man answers. She give him my ID, tells him it’s her wallet. He asks her to meet him the next day, any time after eight. Not earlier? No, he can’t get off work earlier than this. Channa says, yes. I nod with her.

As soon as she cuts the phone, she is bombarded by a thousand questions.

“Was it a man?”

“Yes”

“Funny! The name sounded like a woman’s.”

“Yeah! But he sounded nice,” Channa says.

“Decent type?”

“What do you mean decent?”

“Well, you know, our type. Hindi speaking or English.”

“Hindi,” Channa says.

“Oh. Why does he want to meet you at night?”

“I hope you didn’t give him your correct address.”

“He didn’t ask for my address. I have to call him tomorrow and fix up a place to meet.”

“When you fix the meeting, keep it away from your house. Go with someone else.”

“I’ll go with her!” I say.

“No. I meant, go with a man, or somebody. Is there someone who can go with you?”

We nod a “yes”, to ward off any arguments.

The next day, I call and try to shift the appointment to early afternoon. He can’t make it before six – even then, he will have to leave work early, he says. I tell him I have a train to take. A lie. He relents. Six thirty, then.

In the evening, I feel a little ashamed for having lied. How come we find it difficult to speak the truth? How we make it seem like an act of putting oneself at risk. And use this sense of threat to our advantage.

We meet him at a coffee-shop. We are standing just outside the door when he approaches us. In a blue sweater, as he had said he would be. He explains to us how he found the wallet. He asks a couple of questions to check our identity and then hands over the wallet. “The money is all in there,” he says. “You owe me thirty-six rupees for the phone calls.”

“Yeah sure,” I fumble in my pockets.

“I think you have the change in the wallet,” he says.

“Oh, sorry!” I open my wallet to take out the money. “Thank you so much.”

Both Channa and I have repeated this line at least ten times in the five minutes that we have been here. But nothing else seems to occur.

“That’s okay,” he says.

“We never thought we would get it back. You saved our vacation,” I say.

“That’s nothing, just my duty,” he says. “A month back, my wife lost her purse. It had everything, all her identification and an ATM card. She had just started a new job and got all these things for the first time. And then she lost them. And she never even got anything back. You have better luck.”

We say thank you once again. We stand uncertainly at the coffee-shop entrance. He seems uncomfortable there and we stand shifting our weight form one leg to another, uncertain whether we should invite him in for a cup of coffee.

Finally, he breaks through the awkwardness and says, “You should go now. It’s time for the train, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say. “Yes, yes our train. Thanks again!”

When we turn to leave, we all walk in the same direction. We nod a little sheepishly. We reach the lane to my parent’s house. Channa and I hesitate. Then suddenly, together, Channa and I say “What the hell!” in our heads and stop, waiting for him to catch up with us. I point towards the flat, “That’s where I stay.” He points to a set of buildings across the road – small, poky flats, crumbling a bit. I have heard our neighbours talk of it as an eyesore. “I stay there,” he says. We smile. “What luck? My wallet fell many kilometres away and was found by someone who stays just across the road.” I laugh. He just smiles back. My shame sits in my throat. I want to call him in for tea, but hesitate. He says bye and walks away. I stand and look at his blue woollen back. Suddenly Channa turns and calls out, “If I ever find a wallet I’ll do the same. Just to pass this, what you’ve done, on.” He turns to smile and carries on.

“Let’s buy him a present,” I tell Channa.

“Yeah.”

“What? Flowers, chocolates, a laughing Buddha?”

Nothing seems enough, or adequately expressive of what we feel. We don’t want to make a big deal of honesty, but don’t want it to pass unnoticed either. So we decide to think about it.

We tell this story once we get home. There is much happiness about the fact that nice people still inhabit the planet. Then everyone gets on with their evening.

We mostly stay home for the rest of the visit. Though we have got our money back, we’ve had enough of the city and its malls. So we spend the next two days watching movies on TV, when my parents aren’t watching the news. I hope that we won’t bump into the Good Samaritan. But I have thought up a story just in case we do meet. I will tell him that someone had fallen ill and we had to stay back.

I didn’t fight my mother for the remaining days I spent at home. I think we were both biding our time. Already thinking about the going away, talking about the next visit and, therefore, letting this time pass under the shelter of our coming absence from each other’s worlds.

On the last day, as the train pulls away from the station, I feel the heaviness of farewells. But underneath is the lightness of knowing that I am going towards the home I am most at home in.

It is only much later that Channa looks up from her book and says, “We never bought that man a gift.”