Falling into Place Page 7

  Tara washed her face and left the bathroom. Sameen was fast asleep when Tara checked on her. The half an hour or so Milind took to arrive felt like the longest in Tara’s life. Part of her was relieved she didn’t have to say good-bye to Sameen, even though a twinge of guilt curled around her. She felt guilty about lying to Milind too, but she didn’t know what else to do. Thank god Rohan would be back in a couple of days and this rigmarole of spending half her life at Sameen’s would stop.

  When she got into bed at home, sleep was a long time coming.

  Chapter 11

  “You have to stop spending so much time with him.” Tara struggled to keep her voice down. The smell of re-fried samosas in the college canteen was making her sick.

  Radhika pecked at the sandwich they were supposedly sharing. “We are working on a project together. How do you expect me to do that if I don’t talk to him?”

  “I take the same class. I’m working on the same project with a partner. I don’t spend all my free evenings with him. Don’t pretend this is all about work.”

  “I’m not pretending. It’s the truth.”

  Tara’s hands balled into fists. “Don’t lie to me!”

  “Calm down. You’re creating a scene.”

  “You’re one to talk.”

  “Tara, you’re being completely unreasonable.”

  Tara banged her fist on the table. “You started this.”

  Radhika winced, taking a quick, surreptitious look around. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Fine then, if you don’t want to talk about it…” She stood.

  Radhika caught her hand. “Please, Tara, just listen to me. Please.”

  Tara glowered but she sat down reluctantly.

  Radhika placed her palms on the table and leaned forward. “I am not interested in Amandeep,” she said in a low voice. “I love you. I want only you. He is just my friend and classmate. That’s it.”

  A tear rolled down Tara’s cheek. She brushed it angrily aside. “You are going to leave me for him. I just know it.”

  “How can you say that? We’ve been together for more than a year. Hasn’t it meant anything to you?”

  “Of course it has. But I doubt it meant anything to you. I’ve been just fun and games for you. Now that you have a man in your life, you can seriously start thinking about building your future with him.”

  “You’re being completely ridiculous now. You are my future. Not him.”

  “What future are you talking about? In this society? In this country? You think we can live together or get married?”

  “Not get married maybe, but yes, we can live together. A lot of other people like us do.”

  “I don’t care about other people. What are you going to tell your parents? What am I going to tell my parents?”

  “Hang on. Wasn’t this about me being friends with Amandeep? How has this suddenly become about society?”

  “These are very real questions. We don’t live in a bubble.”

  “We don’t have to worry about all this right now. I’m sure we can find a way to deal with it when the time comes.”

  “I’m not so sure. I don’t think I can do this any more.”

  “Yes, you can. Give it some time. Just let’s get through this project. Everything will go back to normal. You’ll see.”

  Tara shook her head. “Nothing will ever be the same.” She got up again and walked towards the door. The tears kept coming. This time she did not stop when Radhika called her name.

  That was a decade ago, but Tara still remembered it like yesterday. At that time, walking away from Radhika had been the hardest thing she had done in her twenty-year-old life, but time had mended her broken heart. Radhika had pursued Tara relentlessly for months after that conversation in the canteen, but Tara hadn’t given in. She had been convinced they could never have had a future together. And she still thought she had made the right decision.

  Tara was in her early adolescence when she got a sense that she was different. She had not shared her friends’ growing interest in boys, but she had spent a lot of time mooning over a particular senior who travelled with her in the school bus, even though she never talked to Tara. It all came together one day when she had been watching an American TV series where they mentioned the word “lesbian”. Something about it had rung a bell and the thirteen-year-old Tara had pulled out a dictionary to look it up. One meaning had led to her looking up other words, and many things made sense to her that day. Though she had been relieved that a term existed to describe the way she felt, her feelings weren’t something she’d spent too much time thinking about. She’d had too many other interests that occupied her.

  That is, until she had met Radhika when she was eighteen and had just entered college. Suddenly, her whole world had shifted. Feelings she hadn’t known existed overwhelmed her and took her to places she’d never been. In a matter of months, they had gone from classmates to friends to lovers. Tara had discovered love.

  But whereas the young Tara had accepted her sexuality with equanimity, the newly adult Tara had freaked out. She couldn’t help comparing her relationship to the freedom her straight friends took for granted—the way they could flaunt their partners, for instance. Even though she’d realized that if she looked carefully, she’d be sure to find other gay people around her, she was aware how different things would be for them.

  Tara had subsequently made a secret project of ferreting out all the literature she could on homosexuality and how gay people lived around the world. She’d read about civil rights struggles not just in India, but elsewhere as well. Later on, when Section 377 was read down, she celebrated by buying herself a silver bracelet. And when the Supreme Court had reinstated the colonial law, reversing the earlier decision and re-criminalizing gay sex, she had cried into her pillow.

  Back in university, she’d had her antenna out about how those around her talked about gay people. The more she’d learnt, the angrier and more afraid she’d become. She had hated keeping her relationship with Radhika a secret, yet she had seen no way they could ever tell anyone about it. In fact, what was the point? They couldn’t exactly walk into the sunset together, hand in hand. Actually, Tara wasn’t sure what she was looking for. True, her parents weren’t ultra-conservative, but she just couldn’t be sure how they would react.

  Sex and sexuality were not topics that were discussed in their house. Talking about homosexuality wasn’t exactly taboo. In fact, to say it was in a pre-taboo stage—way beyond her parents’ imagination—would be more accurate. They might’ve read about it in newspapers and books, and heard it referred to on television shows, but it was always far removed from their lives, and Tara didn’t know where to begin having this conversation with them. She wasn’t exactly dying to pour her heart out to her family, but it would have been nice if what she felt for Radhika didn’t seem so awkward and unwieldy.

  Breaking up with Radhika had then become an inevitability. In her heart of hearts, she had known it wasn’t Amandeep that was the problem—it was society, and she had no stomach to fight it. The pain and guilt of the break-up were enormous, and it had left her devastated, but she had been convinced she had done the right thing and saved herself from inevitable heartache later. Because, clearly, there was no future for her as one half of a lesbian couple.

  Of course, there was always the option of migrating somewhere with a more liberal outlook towards homosexuality, but this was her home and she had no intention of leaving it. That left the only other option: to marry someone of the opposite sex and live a socially approved life.

  Tara did, however, understand that marrying a man she didn’t love would not only destroy her life, but also his. So she had managed to pack up her guilt, confusion, and anger, put them into a box, and seal them deep inside her. She promised herself to stay away from anything that could lead to her developing romantic or sexual feelings for
anyone. And she had been quite successful in sticking to that resolve.

  Then Sameen had come along. What was it about her that had unwrapped Tara’s carefully boxed-up life without her being aware of it?

  I can’t believe this is happening to me, Tara thought, as yet another sleepless night stretched on in which the same thoughts roiled around in her head.

  That night at Sameen’s and that brief intimate touch had shaken her. So far, Tara had managed to distance herself whenever she’d noticed an attraction to another woman. But what had gone wrong with Sameen and why had it felt so right? Tara didn’t have an answer. She only knew she could no longer deny that she had feelings for Sameen.

  The more Tara tried to push the images of Sameen out of her head, the more they flooded her. That moonlit walk home when they’d both been a bit tipsy. How stunning Sameen had looked in her sari, with her gold earrings and her hair done up. The way they stayed up late so many nights at Sameen’s place, talking about anything. That little bubble of happiness she felt when Sameen would hurry through the gate and hop into the cab. The way she looked forward to their evening plans. That first sight of Sameen standing under the bus stop, and her smile. The way her heart would give a little flop when her phone beeped and it was Sameen with a message or call.

  Oh my god! How could I have let this happen?

  But worrying about these questions was pointless. It wasn’t like the answers were going to matter because Tara had no plans to explore them in any greater depth. And if she had been tempted to, she just had to remind herself that Sameen was straight and in a committed relationship. She was straight. Straight!

  Tara knew what she had to do. She had to nip it in the bud. And the only way to do that was to stay away from Sameen Siddiqi.

  When Sameen had woken to find Milind rather than Tara in the house, with some story about Tara having a work emergency, she hadn’t thought too much of it, apart from feeling a smidge of disappointment that Tara had gone without a good-bye.

  “We had such fun last night,” she’d told Milind, looking at the mess of the jigsaw on the dining table. “First there was the jigsaw, then we got pizza and watched this hilarious comedy.”

  Tara hadn’t turned up that evening. She hadn’t even called—just sent a message to ask if Sameen was okay. The next day, Rohan had come back and there was so much to talk about and settle him back that the days went by. Sameen was puzzled at Tara’s continued absence, but with her lack of mobility and Rohan fussing over her, she couldn’t exactly chase Tara down. But that didn’t mean that Sameen wasn’t a little bit hurt.

  Of course, Tara had really stepped up when Sameen had needed her, and Sameen was inordinately grateful. Those few weeks had also clearly separated her real friends from the fair-weather ones. Normally surrounded by people, she had been quite taken aback when they had slowly become very busy in her time of need, leaving only Milind, Ashish, and Tara.

  Now, a fortnight later, when she was finally and officially mobile, smoking out Tara was Sameen’s number-one priority.

  They’d barely exchanged a word in this time, nothing apart from a few hurried texts. Tara’s work schedule seemed to have exploded, seemingly leaving her with no room for a social life. Heck, no room for a life. A website relaunch and preparing for the Davis Cup coverage, whatever sport that was, was all very well, but how could she disappear just like that? Especially after they’d become so close. And, more than anything, she had filled a hole in Sameen’s life that she hadn’t even known existed.

  When Sameen had moved to Delhi three years ago to pursue her ambition of being in the frontline of publishing, she’d had to leave her home and the friends she had grown up with back in Bangalore. Always used to being surrounded with people, she had been miserable until Milind had also moved to Delhi. They’d shared a flat for a year or so, till he decided to move in with Ashish. Sameen had lived on her own for another year before she and Rohan decided to live together. Of course, she had made other friends in the meantime, but Tara had been different from all of them. In just a few months, Sameen had felt a closeness with her that she hadn’t with anyone else in her adult life.

  And then the damn woman had vanished. Which had left Sameen with only one option—to hunt her down.

  She put her hands on the low iron gate and studied the car that took up most of the space in the small courtyard. The red-brick building had three floors and a terrace. A nameplate next to the gate said, “Dixits, Ground Floor.” Sameen wondered who lived on the other two floors.

  She stretched her ankle. This was the longest walk she’d taken since her accident. Her foot seemed fine, though. She glanced at her watch—Tara should be home by now. She unlatched the gate, went up to the door, and rang the bell. A few seconds later, an older woman opened the door and looked quizzically at her.

  “Is Tara at home?” Sameen asked politely.

  “No, she’s not back yet. Is she expecting you?”

  The woman was clearly Tara’s mother. They had the same eyes and the same way of slightly tilting the head when asking a question.

  “I’m Sameen, her friend, I live—”

  “Oh, you’re Sameen?” Tara’s mother broke into a happy smile. “How’s your foot, dear? Come in, don’t stand there. Did you walk all the way here? Oh my! Are you all right? Sit down. Shall I make you some tea? Water?”

  Sameen blinked. She suddenly had second thoughts about this garrulous woman being related to the reticent Tara. “I, er, I’m fine, Aunty.”

  “Aunty? Psh. My name is Chhaya—you can call me that. We’re all adults here.”

  Sameen was ushered into a neat living room. The first thing she noticed was the giant TV. She hadn’t realized how big forty inches was. It sort of made sense now why Tara had been appalled she didn’t have a TV. The second thing she noticed was a half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the dining table.

  Chhaya went to fetch her a glass of water. “Tara should be home in a bit. Will you have some tea?”

  “Oh no, Aunt… Chhaya, don’t trouble yourself. I just wanted to check in on Tara. I haven’t seen her for a couple of weeks, so just wanted to say hi and catch up.”

  “You haven’t seen her for two weeks? Why?”

  “She’s been so busy, you know. The relaunch and all.”

  Chhaya frowned, looking bemused. “Relaunch?” Then she shook her head. “Uff, this girl. I never know what goes on in her head. Never mind her. You’re here now and Tara talks so much about you. Let’s have some tea—I was going to make some anyway.”

  The tea was made—Sameen helped—and a plate of cumin biscuits appeared. Chhaya was quite the chatterbox and admitted that Tara had inherited her retiring personality from her father, who had died of a heart attack a few years ago. She looked sad when she spoke of how close he and Tara had been, and how his passing had seemed to put a light out in Tara.

  “But I was so happy when she made friends with you,” she said. “It’s like she started to have a life again instead of sitting around watching TV and doing jigsaws all day.”

  Sameen glanced around the living room. Now that she was finally getting to see the inside of Tara’s home, Sameen wondered why she had been so cagey about it. The heavy wooden furniture reminded Sameen of her own parents’ home. The space had a comfortable, lived-in feel to it, not like the sterile, shining homes some people preferred, with not a pin out of place.

  She also admired the building itself and said so to Chhaya. It was old but wonderfully maintained. She wondered again why Tara had never invited her here. If Sameen had a house like this, she’d have people over all the time.

  Tara’s mother kept up a non-stop chatter till there was the sound of a key turning at the door.

  “Tara, come and see who’s here,” Chhaya called out.

  Tara’s face peered around the door.

  “Hellooo!” Sameen grinned at her.

 
; Tara seemed to freeze. She stared at Sameen, nonplussed, inhaling loudly. Her eyes roved the entire room, taking in the living room and dining area. Whatever she saw, or didn’t see, clearly passed muster, because she relaxed visibly. But not completely.

  Sameen stared at Tara, an uneasy feeling bubbling inside her. Why was Tara not happy to see her? What was going on?

  “Hey, Sameen,” she said, plastering on a smile that was a bit too bright to be natural. “You’re up and about?”

  “Yes, just got cleared to go out today,” Sameen said, searching Tara’s serious, dark eyes for an answer. Any answer. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Tara didn’t even meet Sameen’s gaze. She appeared tired and drawn. Sameen was used to seeing her after a long day at work but didn’t remember her ever being this worn out. The way she stood uncertainly at the doorway of her own house was also odd.

  “Sameen has just agreed to stay for dinner,” Chhaya told her daughter. “I’ve made chicken, and we can quickly make some chapatis.”

  “Oh, er…great,” Tara said.

  Chhaya stood. “Now that you’re back, I’m going to go to the tailor and see if the curtains are done.” She nudged Tara as she passed her and said in a sibilant whisper, “Such a lovely girl. Why haven’t you brought her around before?”

  Chapter 12

  Tara got herself a glass of water and went to sit on the chair at right angles to the sofa Sameen was perched on. She took a few deep breaths, raised her glance from the mug in Sameen’s hand to her face, and braved a little smile.

  “So. Back to the land of the living?” Tara asked.

  Her heart hammered fit to burst out of her ribcage. Sameen was a sight for sore eyes. How Tara had missed her. Friends weren’t exactly crawling out of the woodwork for her, but the few she had meant a lot. But there had never been a Complication—capital C—like this one before.

  “I am, but you’ve gone into some dark and distant place yourself.” Sameen leaned forward and caught Tara’s arm. “Are you all right?”