A G'bye of Sorts.....

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Rhea

Bougainvillea Bliss

Chapter 11

New Furniture

A few years after I had first bought the house, I inherited some old furniture that was in incredibly good condition and quite valuable at that. The first installment of new furniture at the house had actually been some Rosewood sofas. They were, even in their antique state the most beautiful sofas I had ever seen. The intricate features of the delicate carvings on the dark veined, strong wood were exquisitely stunning. Three dimensional rose patterns running along the top of the headrests seemed almost to emulate the appearance of the rococo style hand carvings that I had read about. I was not an art connoisseur so I couldn’t tell for sure, but to me it didn’t matter. They were gorgeous even in their imperfection and I was determined to keep them. The upholstery was not in perfect condition and needed to be redone. The legs were artistically curved out, and although the front leg of one of the sofas was a bit crooked, it was a small price to pay for such valuable furniture.

I placed one on the far side of the room pressed against the wall, the other below the window, and even managed to get someone to polish the wood carefully so as not to reduce its value too much, fix the crooked leg and redo the upholstery. I chose a crème based material with the most delicate floral pattern running through it so it complemented the sofa instead of taking the attention away from the carvings.

When I inherited the new furniture I was thrilled. I knew that transporting it and bringing it into the house would be a headache to say the least but that was hardly something to deter me from possessing the brilliant pieces. Among the furniture were four large, extremely heavy and ancient Godrej steel cupboards. They didn’t catch my fancy as much as the other items but I knew they would do well in the two rooms.

There were two solid wooden stools, simple in design and structure but astounding in their quality, along with a wonderful little (albeit in slightly worse condition than the other things) wooden folding table that was perfect for setting up outside and putting serving dishes on during lunches etc. My plastic dining table (sensible, but not the prettiest looking in the world) paled in comparison. There was also a clothes horse, and a little side table, both in perfect condition.

My favourite of them all though was a beautiful dressing table with a long mirror reaching almost to the ground. The top half of the mirror was a three way vanity mirror that opened out at the sides on the release of a small clasp at the front. Towards the base was a sheet of glass where I was determined to put the loveliest little photo frames, below which the little wooden base signaled its end. Three drawers were attached to one side, a drawer and a little cupboard attached to the other. It was the perfect romantic dressing table and most certainly an asset to my bedroom décor. It was such a bonus to see what perfect condition it was in as well.

Once I had finished admiring and examining each piece of furniture I began to make the arrangements to have it all sent out to Lonavala in a big truck, while I followed in my little Palio. Sam sent his driver along with the rest of the truck crew. Just in case. He also came along with me, although Roxanne was busy with work and didn’t have a weekend off in between, making her unable to accompany us. I was incredibly glad to have a man by my side, not only was I certain now that I wouldn’t be taken for a ride, I was also quite sure the work would be finished slightly more efficiently. I felt extremely silly for thinking that way, some part of my brain still told me to do it on my own, that I could manage by myself as I always had. The sensible part of me however (as tiny as it was) told me to think rationally. That was the way things were around here. I couldn’t change that even if I wanted to.

When we finally reached and the men began unloading the truck, Sam and I were busy upstairs with the maid, getting rid of old, worn out wooden furniture as quickly as we could. If anyone had been there to record everything on camera it would have made for an extremely comedic little documentary on ‘moving furniture’ or something of the sort. There Sam was, lifting one end of this particularly heavy and extremely worn out little wooden cupboard, while I stood at the other end trying to wipe a smudge off my blouse.

“Nicole!” he was saying over and over and I simply nodded in response.

“Lift the other end Nicole!” and once more I simply nodded and held out a hand almost as if to say “Give me a minute will you, I’m ever so slightly preoccupied here”

Tired of holding on to one end of the cupboard that was coming apart at the bottom as it is (which meant my poor brother in law had more than his fair share of cuts and bruises by the end of the day) he finally let it drop, giving me a little shove that brought me out of my reverie.

“What is wrong with you? I told you to pick up the other end!”

“I got distracted” I grinned and he shook his head, obviously unsure of whether to be annoyed or incredibly amused. The result was a half smile that looked almost sinister, but made me chuckle for a good two minutes.

“Pick up the other end now” he repeated almost slowly as though I wouldn’t understand if he had said it at a normal speed.

“I understand you Sam” I grinned back picking up the other end and sidling sideways towards the balcony where we were quickly putting all the old furniture from the bedroom.

We continued this lifting, moving and placing back down of various items in my bedroom until we reached the last, and the heaviest of the lot.

“I think we should have moved this one first” I said and he nodded in agreement. We both stood there a second, looking (down) at the Herculean task (well alright that is a horrible exaggeration) ahead of us, finally deciding to move it.

“This could have been easier if we hadn’t already moved so many things” he said as though he had to justify the difficulty he was having lifting the said cupboard.

“I think it would have hurt my arms this much whether we had moved it first, second or third.” I grunted under the strain of the weight on my girlish arms.

By the time we were close to the balcony I could hear the movers trudging into the gate with each item, setting them down ever so carefully on my patio. When we were finally almost out onto the balcony and could actually see three men carefully unload the massive Godrej steel cupboards.

It seemed as though watching the men was incentive enough for us to quickly move the cupboard to the balcony. What was actually taking us several minutes seemed almost to suddenly take a second as soon as we saw the heaviest steel cupboard being unloaded from the truck.

The workers had already begun to lug the furniture into the house. I ran down quickly, trying as hard as I can to explain which cupboard I wanted them to bring up first. We decided to put the heaviest cupboard in the second room without the balcony, so that was to be brought up last. I couldn’t however explain to them why I wanted them to stop dragging the heavy steel into the house first. Sam, sensing from my incomprehensible shrieks that I couldn’t explain what I wanted, came bounding down and explained in perfect Hindi that the cupboard was in fact, to be brought in last not first.

The men understood and nodded, placing it back down on the patio, wiping the sweat off their foreheads and giving me strange looks, wondering why I couldn’t explain myself. They exchanged smirks and raised eyebrows as if to say “I can’t believe she couldn’t even tell us to bring that in last”. I couldn’t believe it myself. My Hindi wasn’t that terrible, atleast I didn’t remember it being that terrible. Maybe it was all the pressure of actually being unable to comprehensively explain what I meant that hindered me from doing the same.

Whatever it may have been, I was glad Sam was by my side to explain and translate for me.

“The shoe rack first. It goes in the room without the balcony, the second room”

“Where do you want me to tell them to put it?” Sam asked after explaining that to them and they had begun to carry it up the stairs.

“Near the window, where the black sofa’s used to be”

“Okay now the clothes horse, next to the cupboard that’s near the shoe rack”

“What about the dressing table? There’s already a dressing table in the second room. Do you want them to shift that to the first one or just take the new one up to it?”

“The new one in the first room, let the other one be where it is already” I said already tired, even though I wasn’t doing any of the moving. It was almost painful to watch them lug everything up the stairs, they didn’t seem as though they were being too careful about everything although Sam often made me stifle my shrieks and waved an impatient hand at me to shut up every time I protested about the peeling plaster from the sides of the staircase falling ever so roughly as they scraped the furniture passed it.

I watched as one by one they lugged all the furniture up the stairs and to the respective bedrooms. Even before they had begun to take the cupboards up I was already anticipating the damage and trouble that was forthcoming. And I was right.

They began with the smaller and lighter steel cupboards and then advanced slowly to the bigger ones. When at last there was just one left, they all stood before it for a second, wondering how much of a trial it would be to actually lift it up and carry it all the way to the bedroom.

Six men were prepared for the task at hand, three of them standing at the head and lifting it from the one side while three stood at the foot and tried to lift it from there. Various grunts and other manly labour worthy noises erupted from each of the men’s mouths as they struggled to even get close to the staircase. It was hard enough for them to drag it towards the staircase, and I began to wonder how they were going to actually lift it up all the way to the bedroom. The three men at the front proceeded to climb the stairs and pull, while the men below proceeded to push. As soon as they were at the third step however, the drama seemed about ready to begin.

“Stop biting your nails” Sam said tapping me lightly on the hand that rested near my mouth.

“They’re going to drop it” I said softly so as not to disturb them.

“No they aren’t Nicole. Relax and let them do their job”

“But….”

My words were cut short by an eruption of shouting from the men below, who were trying exceptionally hard to prevent the cupboard from sliding down onto them while the men at the top tried really hard to pull it back up towards them. I could see from his expression that Sam was slightly apprehensive by now as well, although he refused to let me know.

“They’re going to tear the house apart” I muttered as a loud thud signaled the loosening and dropping down of several other pieces of plaster from the side of the staircase.

“Stop talking!”

“Look…..the marble is falling….SAM!” I shrieked almost in succession to the big marble slab at the top of the staircase thudding less than gently to the ground.

And at last Sam had nothing pacifying to say to me as he stood staring at the scene before us, unsure himself of what to do.

Several more grunts, pushes and shoves later, it seemed almost as though the task was progressing smoothly. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be. Almost and instant later it was stuck, wedged there between the two sides of the staircase, stuck at the point halfway to the top where the staircase was slightly winding. No matter how much pulling or pushing took place after that would make the cupboard budge any further.

So there they were, stuck with the cupboard wedged in between them, a marble slab in two pieces on the floor below my feet, plaster splattered and strewn all over the rest of the floor. It felt as though I had to do something, so I began to move forward. Of course then there was the voice of reason that stopped me from moving any further, knowing of course that it would really be of no use to try and have a conversation with the workers when they were stuck at two ends of the heaviest cupboard they had probably ever had to lift.

Unfortunately this voice of reason that was so sensible and practical, the voice that stopped me from doing extremely stupid things ever so often was not the little voice at the back of my mind. It was, of course, Sam!

He thought calling the contractor who dealt with all the “painting and such things” would be able to help.

“How would he help?” I asked, my flustered brain refusing to think rationally.

“He probably knows a lot of strong labourers, being in the business of heavy lifting and all that” Sam replied a bit sarcastically. And then immediately looked extremely sorry about it and apologizing profusely. Which for me, took all the fun out of having heard a sarcastic statement from him instead of the calm, reasonable and perfectly placed ones I was so used to.

The contractor was soon rushing into the gate with his own little group of workers and they tried to help with the pushing and shoving to no avail. There was little I could do at this point but stand and stare as they continued to push, shove, pull and tug until the sweat was trickling down their persons and their faces were wrought with exhaustion.

At last the cupboard made its way into the bedroom, where it was pushed into place with such relief that I felt almost guilty for asking anyone to bring it here. When at last everything was done and the maid and I had scraped away every piece of plaster from the stairs as well as the floor and shoved the broken marble far out of sight, Sam and I proceeded to pay the workers their wages. And a little extra for all the effort involved in the carrying of the last, tiresome cupboard.

Then I sat, suddenly so dehydrated it was almost as though I had been the one pushing and shoving. Glass of water in hand, I surveyed the cracked plaster and broken marble, wondering for a minute if it had all been worth it. Then I thought of the beautiful dressing table waiting for me in my bedroom and my lips involuntarily curved upwards in the slightest hint of a smile.

Chapter 12

Winter Wonderland

Let’s imagine winter for a while. Dabble in the thought of there being the perfect winter, right here in sunny Maharashtra (surprise! Not California!) With the gloomy winter trees covered with snow and dripping with icicles; instead of the cool winter dust. With the rivers and lakes covered in good old fashioned ice, instead of the leftover moss from the monsoon. And although the only time I’ve ever seen real snow, is when I’ve been far away from the city, being home for Christmas, and for New Year, with my friends and family is more special than being in my perfect winter wonderland all by myself.

Winter is my favourite time of the year. Keep in mind of course that the winter’s here in the city were more or less just as hot and humid as the summers, with the occasional breeze billowing past my window. So although there was no need to bring out the woolens and warm up the fireplace, the idea of winter was so strong in my mind I could have frozen to bits from an imaginary snowstorm.

Of course with the weather being the way it was here, there were more chances of a dust storm or a hurricane even (and the chances of THAT were slim….) before snow ever covered the streets of Mumbai. When I was a little girl, I thought it snowed anywhere that was colder than Mumbai. Which meant, I thought there was snow in Lonavala. And surprisingly enough, as a child, I had never been to Lonavala in the winter. So imagine my surprise, when as an adult, I travelled two hours, and there was no snow waiting for me when I reached my little cottage.

“You could always sprinkle mud around your front door” Roxanne grinned at me and I shook my head.

“Sand Roxanne, it was sand!” I said not failing to catch Sam’s extremely confused glances.

“Mud? Sand? What on earth are the two of you going on and on about again?!”

“Oh Sam, sorry. Remember when I told you about the brilliant little primary school we went to?” Roxanne began and Sam lifted his arms up in the air and walked off with an indignant grunt that almost seemed to say “I know what you’re going to start off on and I don’t think I want to hear all of it again”

“Can you believe him? I haven’t even told him that yet!” she turned towards me, indignant as she could possibly have gotten with a slight smile on her lips.

“I’ll do it for you” I said, my winter cheer kicking in slightly prematurely considering it usually started around the tenth of December and it was only just the sixth.

“Sam!” I yelled across the room and he looked up with his signature half smile taking form, knowing well enough I was going to yell the rest of the story across the room as well.

“When we were small, we were in this brilliant little primary school. We were right next to a beach and they used to take us there really often. We used to pretend the sand was snow, and sprinkle it all around the place. We had sand snowmen and ‘sandball’ fights (that often didn’t end very well at all) and everything!” I stopped, pausing for a breath and then realizing I had no more to say.

“’Sandball’ fights?” Sam was trying really hard not to burst into laughter.

Roxanne stopped him from doing so by giving him a quick tap on his shoulder and gesturing towards the bags on the patio. He started lugging them into the house while Roxanne and I surveyed the outside of my cottage; that was in desperate need of a paintjob.

“Winter……” I said with a sigh. It was a comforting thought in itself. It made everything seem almost perfect even in its imperfection. For once in all the time I had been visiting the house I didn’t miss the evergreen foliage around me or the verdant mountain hues. The dusty brown was fine as long it was accompanied by the occasionally icy mist on extremely foggy days, or atleast the pleasant wind that frequented the area more often than not.

When I settled down later that evening with my steaming cup of coffee and my shawl wrapped tight around me, huddled up on my chair with a collection of winter poems I looked out at the rustling leaves and crackling branches and thought of how inspiring a season it was. Any writer worth their ink must definitely have had constant light bulbs flashing on everytime they stepped outside and saw winter in its full fledged wonder.

There were of course the dangerous reality of winter in places where the snow was heavy and the wind bitterly chilling. The soft snow topped mountains and the frost covered pinecones that thudded ever so pleasantly to the ground were often overshadowed by the tangible reality of how dangerous the harsh cold could actually be without the warmth of a fireplace and the comfort of a room filled with central heating.

Of course I could never stop myself from imagining writers in their little winter cabins, bound indoors by the snow so much so that the world became simply a movie you could watch in motion from indoors rather than participate in by stepping out. At such times it was possibly so much easier to write, with the pure white covered land providing the inspiration, as well as keeping the distractions at bay.

I could only imagine however, because I was neither lived in a snow covered land nor was I a writer. Apart from the brilliance of the scenery itself, winter was more beloved to me than any other season because it was the season for presents, decorations and more parties than I had time to attend. Ever since I was a child, Christmas was one of the most celebrated seasons I ever had the privilege to witness or be a part of.

There was simply something about this time of year that was incredibly magical. It wasn’t just ‘magical’ because all the songs and stories about Christmas said it was magical. It was because of the aura surrounding it. You could almost feel the change in the air as Christmas crept up around the corner. No matter how busy you were, or what religion you belonged to, Christmas was the season for everyone. It wasn’t just about being Christian anymore. It was more than that.

I remembered having friends in school who argued about the popularity of Christmas and the incredibly festive feeling that accompanied it. These were the people who said Christmas was just another festival. That there was nothing special about it at all really. The people who sat at the front of the class and were determined more or less to find a practical and rational explanation for everything. It had become too commercialized they said, too much flair and too little essence of what it truly was.

And maybe that was true. Maybe the story surrounding Christmas did in fact get overshadowed by the decorations and the food and drink and presents and what not. Maybe the lights and the cards and concerts held in honour of the season took the focus away from the season as a whole. Whatever it may have been, Christmas to me, was still the most memorable time of the year.

This year, we had decided to change it up a little. Instead of the traditional party at someone’s house, or terrace, we decided that calling everyone over to my little cottage in Lonavala would be just about perfect. There was more room for decoration, and most people we knew already had little holiday homes here. So there was no need to worry about Christmas Eve traffic or anything of the sort. All we were crossing our fingers and praying for was proper electricity. Because Christmas without lights wasn’t really Christmas at all now was it?!

Roxanne decided to drive down with me a week before the party. So there we were, in constant disarray, driving Sam completely up the wall with our constant exclamations and worried conversations about whether to put the colourful rice lights or the big yellow ones on the tree that year. We needed several extension plugs for the amount of lights we had planned to put up that year, and Sam’s feeble attempts at rationally saving energy seemed to have been falling on deaf ears.

I continued to worry about the menu and what to serve as dessert while Roxanne ran around town trying to find as many extension plugs as she possibly could in the little village market, rummaging through our luggage to find the right decorations and the perfect tinsel.

The week seemed to flit by us in less than an instant really, and there we were, on the morning of Christmas Eve, running helter skelter wondering if the Suckling Pig would arrive on time and whether our mother would remember to bring the potatoes and whether the fondant covered cake with the little snowmen falling all over was enough to feed the twenty people that were expected at the party.

Sam sat in a little corner through most of the day and fiddled with the music system, attached and re attached wires and occasionally ran to help Roxanne fix the lights when she looked like she would fall over backwards trying to get them to sit properly.

By that evening the house was ready and decorated, and all the food was in order just in time for everyone to arrive. An hour before our first guest arrived (and an hour after my mother arrived, WITH the potatoes as well as her delicious mushroom pate and a bottle of Riviera White Wine) I ran upstairs to change into the empire waist emerald green I had chosen as my Christmas dress that year.

I felt as though the party had started already as I surveyed how the emerald green dazzled in the dull yellow light of my bedroom and my earings sparkled majestically while I brushed my hair away from my face. I stepped into my shiny silver stilettos just as the doorbell rung and I saw a flash of peach as I walked outside my bedroom as Roxanne bound down the stairs to get the door. She was much more childlike when it came to greeting people or dressing up, but when the presents arrived; I was definitely the most immature. However insignificant the content of the present, it was the glittering gift wrap and the idea of there being a present at all, that got to me the most.

As the evening went by, and everyone trooped inside, after placing their presents under the tree that we had put up on the patio(that I had to keep glancing at now and again to admire our handiwork, it looked brilliant in the night) the music began to become less ‘Christmas like’ and more mainstream so it began to become like a party more or less. It was probably the lack of snow outside that made me glance towards the presents and the decorations everytime I passed by the tree to remind myself that it was indeed Christmas Eve.

I had to stop every once in a while to join in bits of conversation that I caught as I walked by.

“What a brilliant dress! And your sister’s is brilliant too!”

“The decorations are just wonderful! So much more elaborate than last year!”

“So….Nicole….where are you spending New Years?”

“Is there anymore of that Tapenade?”

“Did you do all this today?”

“Next year we’ll have the party at my cottage, it’s just down the road……..”

“It’s such a change not to be in the city this time of year”

“Nicole dear, do you need any help getting the dinner out?”

Soon enough I tired of the constant walking around and let the conversations come to me, which they did in plentiful. An eventful number of these and some hilarious antics and pleasant dances later, I decided I was hungry enough to serve the dinner. When dinner was served, I watched as Sam carefully carved the Pig (we had done Turkey last year and didn’t quite want to repeat it) and then as everyone piled food and cold cuts onto their plates.

When at last the gifts were opened and the dessert plates were swiped clean, a lone snowman slouched onto the plate where the cake had sat, Roxanne and I surveyed the room. It was filled with bits of gift wrap and tinsel, boxes of gifts that we had received strewn around the hall, dirty plates lining the sink in the kitchen, half empty glasses scattered around the room. And the glorious sight of leftovers in the fridge. Sam, looking at the same thing, let out a little sigh. “What a mess” he muttered.

Roxanne and I simply smiled. To us, this was the most glorious sight of all. It was the sight of another successful Christmas to add to our list.

Chapter 13

Painting The House

A while after Christmas was done and well into February, I decided that it was about time I painted my little holiday home. I decided this when I was on my way back home from a particularly grueling week as an airhostess.

Back in my small little apartment in Mumbai, I contemplated visiting Lonavala that weekend. I wondered at the wisdom of another trip when I had so many relatives to visit. All the people I had promised to visit last year, and then told myself I would as my New Years Resolution. I decided then, to postpone the trip by a week or two and finish off these obligatory visits that in truth I quite enjoyed.

There I was, plucked out of the solitude I had begun to enjoy when I had acquired this escape from the city, visiting nightclubs with friends and having lunches with aunts and uncles. Occasionally in the two weeks (when I wasn’t busy travelling the world) I would treat myself to some good old retail therapy, and indulge in the occasional lonesome dinner.

Otherwise I was surrounded by people, whether on flight or in the city. And for a while I didn’t miss the solitude and I reveled in the company. I thrived on the laughter and felt the old satisfaction of an evening out with friends for simply no reason at all creeping back into me.

Not that I had been a recluse from the minute I bought and furnished my little cottage in the valley, I just had become so used to using it as an escape from the hustle and bustle, that, incredulously enough, I had begun to miss the same chaos that had driven me away from the city in the first place.

I had actually begun to miss the nightclubs that were insanely packed on a Saturday night or the restaurant that I frequented so often I had almost begun to live there. So back I was again, almost every evening that I wasn’t on flight, at Zaffran, a comfortable restaurant in Oshiwara that I had begun to frequent in college, lapping up once more, the delectable food and charming service.

And it was sitting there one evening running over my finances as well as I could without my father or Sam by my side, sipping delicately on my Lemon Ice Tea and picking at my Mutton Yakni Palav that I decided it was time at last to paint the cottage.

I was tapping my fingers over my keypad as I worked and reworked the numbers several times to make sure that I had in fact, a sufficient amount for the job, when I came to the conclusion that even if I was several figures off mark, I still had just managed to collect just about enough to do so.

“Subtracting of course the cost of this meal” I said to myself, and then sighed disgustedly at my own failed attempt at any sort of humour whatsoever.

“I think I’m ready to paint the house” I told my mum on a particular luncheon together. She looked up, halfway through her Roast Chilli Lamb and raised her eyebrows.

“Painting the house is such a headache Nicole!” she said shaking her head.

“Not really” I said thinking it over in my mind. I didn’t even really have to be there through most of it.

“You’ll have to move everything and cover everything else…..and the smell will just kill you. Where will you sleep? You can’t…..”

“The LONAVALA house mum” I grinned. I probably should have mentioned that instead of ‘house’

“Oh. That’s okay then. Just ask Sam to go over it with you, just so they don’t cheat you or anything” she said pointing her fork at me in warning.

I agreed to do so, and so it was that Sam and I were once more sitting down to discuss the little cottage in Lonavala.

“I didn’t think you’d want anymore work done there after the furniture fiasco” Roxanne said grinning at me as she walked past with a cup of tea.

“This won’t be that bad. Will it?” I looked towards Sam for reassurance but he was too busy going over figures and making decisions with the contractor to be interested in anything we were saying at the moment.

I wondered how long it would be until he tired of constantly having to be there whenever anything needed to be done at the cottage. He insisted however that it was no trouble at all, that in fact he rather enjoyed having a say in the making of decisions. At this, Roxanne gave him a tap on the head to which he responded simply by smiling.

I couldn’t for the life of me decide what colour I wanted my little cottage to be. The old paint that was already on there seemed to have faded so terribly that it was almost unrecognizable. There was almost no trace of colour at all, and was covered in so much moss and mould that I couldn’t for the life of me decipher what colour the cottage had been originally.

Roxanne and I sat at the table while Sam went over the figures, with the little book of colour samples, trying to pinpoint the perfect colour combination.

“Blue and white....it would look so lovely!” Roxanne exclaimed excitedly.

“White…” I pondered upon the thought, coming to the conclusion that it would become too dirty too soon. There was no possible way I could keep touching it up; I didn’t have that sort of money lying around. Especially since this wasn’t the only house I had to maintain.

“That’s sad. White would look so lovely with any colour. White and yellow, white and green, white and……”

“I know Roxanne!” I said cutting her short. The perfect colour for me would definitely have been a little blue and white cottage. The flowers in the garden would have looked so vibrant even in their February gloom. It was a tempting thought. One that I pushed to the back of my mind so I didn’t end up actually painting the house that colour and then regretting it a year later.

We continued to go through the colour palettes over and over. The given combinations didn’t do anything for me, I couldn’t bring myself to paint my house a vibrant green and yellow, and the purples shocked me into silence.

I began to imagine myself coming to Lonavala every other week and seeing a bright purple house in front of me.

“Dull purple then” Roxanne said yawning, getting tired of my constant thumbing through the colours over and over without making a decision.

“No purple Roxanne. No purple, no yellow, no greens or oranges!” I exclaimed, loud enough for Sam to look up and give us a slight smirk. To him it didn’t matter what colour the house was, or what the paint would look like after a year.

“It’s a house!” he said over and over, unable to understand my frustration over being unable to come up with a colour.

“Brown and beige looks fine” Roxanne said.

I gave her the dirtiest look I could muster up, repeating my intense dislike for both colours. “They say ‘boring’ to me” I said shaking my head as she pointed out the colour.

“They say ‘decision at last’ to me” Roxanne shot back.

I sighed, looking at the colours all over again, shaking my head and sticking my tongue out in disgust at all the browns and pondering over for barely a second, and then shaking my head to the olive green and lemon green combination as well.

I finally settled on a cream and brick red combination that to me looked almost perfect. Not as perfect as the blue and white would have been, but it came pretty close. I was lucky to have selected February as time to paint the house. Even a month later may have been too late. The rains would loom closer as June popped its head around the corner, and when that happened it would be more than just difficult to get any painting done at all.

When at last everything about the colour combination as well as the type of paint and how much it would cost to paint every portion of the house that I wanted painted I settled into a semi deep state of imagination wherein I was standing in front of my newly painted house, surveying the colour and the texture of the new paint, watching as it glimmered in the rays of the sun.

I settled the colours with my contractor and began to anticipate the day that they would start the painting. Not that I would be there when they did. I wasn’t planning on telling the labourers to wait until I had a free weekend. Because with my schedule being the way it was, I wasn’t sure if I would ever have a free weekend off in order for them to start in time.

There were so many things I wanted done, I didn’t have the time, energy or the money to explain them all to anyone who could have done them for me. I settled with the painting of the house, leaving the rest in my mind for me to fantasize about every once in a while.

Before I left Roxanne’s house I looked up wistfully at the chandelier that hung in her hall, thinking of how lovely it would look above my lovely Rosewood sofa’s in my little hall. And then I remembered there was a fan right where the chandelier would have fit in all its glory. And I remembered how often Roxanne had to call someone to get it cleaned, how much she had to pay them in order to get it done. It might look delightful and its aesthetic value was higher than I could describe in words.

But the amount of time and effort (not to mention a sufficiently painful sum of money) you had to part with almost every two weeks in order for it to be maintained properly was just not worth the trouble of putting one up in the first place. Not in a little home down in a valley that I frequented only thrice a month at the maximum. So I quietly shoved that want to the back of my mind as well, and it sat there for a while, resurfacing every once and again along with the blue and white paint, crystal taps, balcony swing, bean bags and full red roses.

The chandelier eventually faded into the back and ceased to re surface that often as the idea became less rational as weeks went by and I grew to accept the impossibility of the idea.

The blue and white paint tended to resurface more often than not, however it began to become one of those things you dream about but never really get down to doing because you know better. And even though of all the things swimming around in my mind this was the one thing I could so easily have achieved considering my house was being painted at the very time, I refrained from calling my contractor and insisting upon it. Because I knew that a newly painted white house was tempting, but an old, shabby one was far from appealing and I didn’t want the house to look lovely for a few days and then become a distant memory as the moss from the rains stained it and dust layers disguised the white so it was no longer recognizable even.

Then there were those crystal taps. Those lovely things that were hardly easily available, but wouldn’t have taken very long to acquire and fix in. I couldn’t really think of any problems with them except that in order to have my perfect taps I needed my perfect bathroom. And THAT wasn’t about to happen in a hurry. So there they stayed as I mulled over the wall colour and tile pattern that would best suit them when I summoned up the courage to redo the inside of my house.

The balcony swing remained a doubtful thought, something I wondered if I should end up committing to as I considered what had happened to my neighbours. I had been considering it so seriously that I had almost bought it when one evening as I sat in my relatively comfy foldable chair and looked over to my neighbour’s balcony, and surveyed her old and rusting swing, abandoned as though it had run its course and was no longer any use or even half as attractive as it once must have been. And then the idea didn’t seem so tempting anymore.

The bean bags were something I was still contemplating. I didn’t want to banish the thought altogether and so along with the balcony swing, it became one of only two things that I actually willed my mind to think of. I wondered what their state would be when I returned one weekend after say months of being unable to visit. Would they still even resemble beanbags or would they become soggy reminders of the delightfully sink in seats that they were meant to be? I was an indecisive person as it was, and this was something I definitely had not made my mind up about yet.

The full red roses I couldn’t really do anything about. They were something I wished I could have in my little garden but could do nothing about even though I had tried, unsuccessfully to grow them. I remembered the many seeds I had planted and the manure I had changed in vain, all the instructions I had left with the maid and various types of roses I had tried out since I had been there. Nothing seemed to help, the stubborn roses refused to grow. So I continued to wait and watch and wish and hope for a miracle. Maybe next summer my little roses would bloom. Maybe they would stay bare or maybe one would grow in between the bare stalks and leaves.

My cream and brick house and white and red gate were the only things concrete in my mind the next couple of months.

Chapter 14

Shadows of Rain

Thunder pealed across the darkened sky as the clouds drifted lazily over the tops of mountains. Lightening streaked through the heavens as I stood at my balcony, video camera in hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

My hair danced a tangled tango across my face as I struggled to shake it back, the biting wind causing my arms to ripple with goose bumps as the clouds leisurely darkened the sky at a snail’s pace. I waited even after my coffee was done, wrapping my arms around myself to ward off the cold, waiting for the rain.

Summer had come and gone, and my roses had forgotten to bloom again. I had been too busy to visit all summer, taking on as many flights as I could without fainting from the mere exhaustion of repeated jet lag and the pandemonium that was my life.

Leaves waltzed to the ground in colourful disarray, yellows, greens and the occasional red that summer failed to turn to green. The strength of the wind scared me ever so slightly. I wasn’t scared enough to say I was terrified or too frightened to step out, for there I stood at the balcony with my video camera in my hand as the lightening continued to threaten the heavens with its hot and vivid flashes.

But it wasn’t the sort of wind you could brave to go out for a walk or visit the already overflowing stream. My freshly painted cottage stood tall, braving the lashing winds and unwavering against the lashing of nature around it. There were no other visitors this weekend and Lonavala itself seemed bare and empty, almost forlorn in its isolated state with the blustering winds and upsetting thunderstorms.

I waited for a long time there at the balcony, wondering when the rain would fall down in its heavy sheets. I waited almost apprehensively, for I knew that the minute it washed over the village I would have to dart back into the house before I was completely drenched.

But the rain refused to pour down and I soon tired of waiting. Stings ‘Fields of Gold’ played cheerfully in the background as I looked out towards the back of my cottage at unending fields of green. Lightening continued to strike as my lights flickered and the signal on my cell phone went from barely there to completely negligible.

The lights and fan finally succumbed to the wind and I sat there in darkness, wondering if they would ever come back on in time for me to make myself dinner. I gave up trying to use my cell phone, using my last remaining bits of laptop battery to entertain myself by listening to some rain worthy songs.

The rains however, continued to evade me. There seemed to be no way it could possibly not rain today, the thunder and lightening continued to rage on so violently I was wondering when it would be that the rains would cascade down again.

The sky darkened ever so slowly, but it did eventually fade to black. There was this interestingly gradual change from the bright blue of afternoon to the dull pinks of evening to the purple flashes of dusk. Soon it was all dark and the lights were still off as Led Zeppelin and Leonard Cohen played in succession after Iron Maiden and Ryan Adams had run their course. There was nothing I could do but sit and wait as the laptop battery dimmed and then slowly died.

Then there was the silence that was almost deafening in its noiseless condition, broken only by the deafening sound of the wind. The rain still hadn’t come. It seemed as though I was in the midst of what was more likely a windstorm. A raging of the winds that prevented me from stepping out for fear of flying away; but not angry enough to knock down poles and uproot trees.

I could almost hear the rain in my mind as I sat staring out at the darkened world. I didn’t need a candle; it would only spoil this perfect angry calm that I found myself in the midst of. The rains were all but over in the city, and as October approached, the sun seemed to shine brighter and happier all through the day, rising earlier and setting later than usual.

The wind was unheard of there, so this situation was more than just an unusual one for me to be in. It was glorious, more than glorious even. That is of course after I managed to get over the intense dark and buzzing sounds around me of creatures I couldn’t even see.

I thought of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘Rainy Day’ wondering if any part of it fit in my little ‘rainy day’ without any rain. But after really thinking about it a while, I realized it didn’t. Not really. I wasn’t sad or angry….it wasn’t gloomy in my heart and soul even though it was in a sense in the heavens.

The rain seemed to refuse to pour down so I gave up on it for around the hundredth time. I walked leisurely into my kitchen, rinsing out my coffee mug and grabbing another packet of the crisps that were almost certainly going to travel right down to my thighs the way I seemed to be going at them. It was funny how junk food often seemed to be the food that indulged all my cravings.

I didn’t as such have a particular aversion to good wholesome and healthy food. But the frequent chunks (Chunks, is a necessary word to apply to the pieces because sliver, or slices sound too tiny for the size of those that I gobbled down) of rich, heavy cake and the bags and bowls of all the other junk that the world possessed fulfilled me just as much.

I walked outside, munching on my wafers as happily as a little child with his ration of junk food for the day when the electricity fluttered back on. “Thank God!” I sighed to myself plugging my laptop in and continuing my pursuit of the perfect song for the windy, stormy weather.

“You probably shouldn’t be sitting here with all those electronics with the weather the way it is!”

At first I didn’t know where the voice came from until I saw a shadow of a face at my gate. I wasn’t used to neighbours, I was almost always there on weekends that most people were not.

“Probably not…” I wondered whether I should invite this person standing at my gate inside. Somehow it didn’t seem like such a good idea so I let the idea slide and at the risk of being rude simply smiled (almost coldly I thought) and continued to look at my laptop.

“I’m in the house at the end of the lane. Don’t hesitate if you need anything!” and with that the shadow passed along, leaving me to form my own picture in my head. Even through the raging winds and the gloomy skies the voice had sounded almost certainly male which is something that had prevented me even further from inviting him in.

Living in Mumbai had taught me well not to talk to strangers in the street, and that inviting them into your home when you were alone was almost definitely a bad idea.

The next morning I realized that the old couple in the cottage next door was also visiting and I decided to go over and say hello. My contractor had filled me in on all the details, of various residents in the area. I wondered why I had never heard of a young man living at the end of the lane. The thought that entered my head after, scared me ever so slightly so I pushed it to the back of my mind and continued to brush out the tangles in my hair that were all thanks to the ferocious wind that had blown up a storm the night before.

The wind was still raging in a gentler fashion than it had been at night, which made it easier for me to step out doors but all the same regret my choice of clothing.

The tie and die gypsy skirt (that I would probably never have worn in the city) seemed almost to have a mind of its own as it followed every gust of wind that blew past me. I struggled to control the skirt as decently as I could while walking over the unpaved road towards the green and white gate that swung open as soon as I reached it.

A young man was walking out, and when he saw me he smiled a smile of recognition.

“Hello! I more or less figured you hadn’t died of some sort of electric shock last night”

“That was you?” I said still a bit wary.

“I’m pretty sure” he said his lips curving upward in a sort of lopsided smile.

“Sam. I live…..”

“My brother in law’s name is Sam!” I said before he could finish his sentence.

“That’s a co incidence” he smiled cheerfully.

“Nicole”

“I can’t say I know a Nicole, I really don’t!”

I smiled, he seemed a tad too cheerful. But maybe I was just being a bit too paranoid.

“I should……..”

“Sure. I’ll see you around”

I watched as he walked past, unsure of what to make of him. So I didn’t bother, walking into the gate and up to the front steps, knocking on the whitewashed door, preparing to meet my neighbours for the very first time.

They were a pleasant, semi old couple. I didn’t feel right calling them ‘old’, although in reality the sixty five plus marks had been crossed a long time ago, and that quite obviously made them ‘senior citizens’. Well, not in their hearts! They were the most delightfully sociable and hospitable people I had possibly ever met. Ignoring their infirmities and ailments, they had the air of a young couple in their mid thirties.

I sat there in the midst of a deluge of custard and a cascade of biscuits and sandwiches, talking about normal neighbourly things (mostly about everyone else around us and the typical society gossip one must get used to as ‘part’ of a society)

I realized in the time that I spent with my delightful neighbours that everything I did since I arrived there hadn’t gone unnoticed either. I made it a point not to do anything too embarrassing from now onwards, or to keep a check on my activities at the least so that I could be as minimal a topic of gossip as that months rent.

I also, quite obviously learnt about the young man I had the priviledge of meeting twice over the course of two days and had so willingly offered me his assistance when and if I should indeed need any. He was a young writer, not very well known but in Mrs. T’s words ‘most astonishingly equipped with a magnificently delightful style of writing and quite worthy publishing material for anyone who had half a brain’, a sentence that made me bite my lip for the acrimonious fashion in which the words exited her voice could have sent me into a fit of embarrassing giggles.

He had apparently been visiting almost every weekend for a long time now, trying to get his next book up and running.

“He’s in a bit of a rut with it” Mr. T said almost sympathetically.

“It’s not a rut! He simply needs to find some encouragement and inspiration!” Mrs. T shot back in defense of the young man that she so obviously had extremely high regard for.

“It’s hard to write when no one believes in you” she said turning to me in explanation.

I nodded my head in agreement although I couldn’t possibly have claimed to know anything about the same considering I would have found the task of writing an entire book an entirely different magnitude of both tedious as well as mostly unachievable.

I learnt more about everyone living around me than I had in the many, many visits that I had made to Lonavala. My polite smiles and waves as I had been out on my evening walks to neighbours and visitors had apparently not been enough to learn anything at all.

My little tête-à-tête had been quite successful, and I braved the winds once more, trying to hold my flying skirt down as I hurried back to my house.

“Come visit soon! You live just next door!” Mrs. T shouted across the fence as I pushed my key into my door.

Then she shouted over an invitation to breakfast the next morning. I hadn’t the heart to tell her that I was anything but a breakfast person. A cup of tea would suffice. And I could tell they were heavy eaters. I agreed however, already dreading what I would feel like after a heavy Parsi breakfast, that as a Parsi myself I couldn’t quite digest.

I walked back into my little cottage, shutting the door behind me and wondering whether if I skipped lunch and dinner I would be ready for breakfast the next morning. I laughed at the preposterous absurdity of the thought and continued on my ascent of the steps towards the balcony where I would have my little ‘music and scenery’ time with my laptop, a foldable beach chair, my favourite cushions and a blanket.

I made sure my headphones were on and no noise emitted from them, knowing now that my every move was most certainly being watched as people walked past, smiled and waved, all the while recording in their minds another little anecdote for the gossip mills.

Chapter 15

Breakfast and Bed

The next morning I woke up with apprehension already lining the sides of my worried tummy. Would it survive through the day? I wondered at the wisdom of having my cup of tea and then making it over to Mr. and Mrs. T’s….when I realized that probably wasn’t the best idea.

So I slipped my feet into my slippers, wore the most flounced out and loose dress I could find (to make room for the possible expansion of my stomach) brushed my hair back as neatly as I could, refrained from dabbing on the lip gloss that would never survive past the first five minutes at the big breakfast table, and abandoned any eye shadow whatsoever.

So there I was, standing at the door of my neighbour’s house with my minimalistic appearance most certainly already making me uncomfortable, when who should open the door but the ‘delightful, marvelous’ writer himself.

I was taken aback, though his presence at the house was predictable enough for me to have suspected the day before. All the same, I was a tad surprised, and immediately regretted my appearance. It wasn’t because I needed to impress Sam, for I hardly knew him, and it definitely wasn’t because I had taken any sort of fancy to the idea of him or to the picture Mrs. T had painted of him the day before. It was simply because I wouldn’t have been caught dead looking like this even on my worst hair day.

The neat, tied back hair was hardly my style, the ‘no gloss’ look didn’t do much for my confidence, neither did the slippers and loose falling dress and small, hardly noticeable earrings. I felt small and insignificant in comparison even to his casual three fourths and plain white tee.

I tried to overlook this however, wishing I could untie my hair without being noticed (which never happened) or atleast run back and put on a decent pair of earrings. The outcome of this appearance caused me to almost ignore the poor young man as I walked inside, as though that would somehow make him notice me less.

Before we sat down to breakfast I had a chance to look over the hall in more detail than I had the day before when we had sat mainly on the porch outside. I surveyed the rich interiors of the house, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. By the looks of the inside, they not only had exquisite taste but money enough to cater to it as well.

They had bought two cottages and combined them so they looked like one. It was easier of course considering the cottages had been adjoining and not separated by a fence and garden like theirs was to mine. The two cottages combined made way for quite a brilliant looking hall, complete with plush sofa’s, cabinets of showpieces, a long family dining table with ornately carved wooden chairs, and long velvety curtains that could put English Royalty to shame.

When we were finally seated at the breakfast table I began to prepare myself for the onslaught of food. It wasn’t as though I didn’t enjoy food. Food, of mainly any sort, was one of my favourite things in the world. Eating in fact, happened to be at the top of my list of favourite pastimes. However, I could never get myself to wake up in time to eat breakfast, (when I was on vacation that is) which had probably led to my inability to digest any sort of solid as soon as I woke up.

I was prepared however, so I looked at the various empty plates and glasses laid upon the pristinely white tablecloth, sitting before them delicately so as not to disturb the balance, all the while partaking sparingly in the ongoing conversation that Mrs. T was intent on making me an integral part of.

I poured myself some freshly squeezed orange juice, ignoring completely my own dislike of the same, and regretting it a second later when I saw the maid bring out the tea, wishing I had waited.

“Do you like reading Nicole?” Mrs. T was asking me and I snapped back to reality.

“I do, quite a bit” I replied politely, sipping on the hated juice as I watched her delicately sip on her tea with jealousy.

“What genre do you write?” I asked turning to Sam, because I almost guessed that this was what Mrs. T had wanted me to do all the while.

“Fiction mainly. No particular genre of any sort” he said almost unwilling to discuss his work with me.

I didn’t push it, continuing instead to compliment Mrs. T on the brilliant homemade jam that I was spreading lavishly on the only piece of toast I intended upon eating.

“What do you do?” Sam asked me eager to change the topic as Mrs. T seemed to lean towards his writing again.

“I’m an airhostess” I said leaving it at that.

“That must be interesting, getting to travel, see new places”

“It’s a bit tiring too” I smiled.

“Wouldn’t that inspire you fabulously?” Mrs. T said popping up with energy as she saw another opportunity to praise his writing abilities.

“I’m sure it would” Sam said smiling politely.

I was about to say something when I forgot and lost my train of thought completely as I watched an enormous bowl of traditionally Parsi ‘akuri’ being brought out. A mixture of scrambled eggs, tomatoes, chillies, spices of all sorts and the occasional unique twist according to personal preferences.

I loved eggs of any sort, and had a particular fondness for ‘akuri’ as well, but just looking at the amount that had been laid out for merely four people shocked me into silence. The special, unique ingredient here were nuts of some sort, and I had to pick them out carefully but subtly as well so as not to have to explain my intense dislike of nuts in my food and dessert.

After the eggs came a large plate of sausages, and an even larger one of potato and cheese croquets, fried to golden perfection. I tried to take as much time as possible on one of each so it didn’t seem as though I didn’t have as much of an appetite as the rest of the people at the table who seemed accustomed to all the oil and food, gobbling it down as quickly as I would have liked to but physically couldn’t.

“I made some delicious ‘ravo’, I think I’ll bring it out now” Mrs. T said making me widen my eyes.

“There are a lot of courses even for breakfast” Sam said grinning at my obviously widened eyes that thankfully enough no one else noticed.

The ‘ravo’ was creamy and delicious. After I had fished out the nuts and ignored the signals from my stomach that said ‘stop now or you’ll be sorry!’

“How long are you staying?” Mr. T asked after a lull over the conversation had ensued.

“A week” I smiled thinking of how wonderful it was to have the opportunity to spend a week away from the city.

“That’s just lovely!” Mrs. T said her face lighting up in between a spoon of the next dish that had been brought out, little cheese and chilly toasts on a pretty pink platter that I didn’t fail to notice.

I wondered how much further I could go on with the façade of being fine when actually my stomach was about ready to burst from all the food I had already shoved down my unwilling throat.

I stifled a yawn and obediently spooned some of the jelly (yes, there was jelly at the breakfast table) that came next onto my plate. I picked at it, pretending to be extremely interested in a conversation about the state of the roads in Lonavala and the political mayhem running through the country.

“There are no countries without political problems” Mr. T was saying shaking his head.

“Of course, there can’t possibly be one at this point can there? But the state of this country’s political backbone in particular seems to be crumbling as we speak” Sam replied

I nodded along, pretending to agree with everything they were saying, all the while trying to stifle a yawn that had been brought on by this sudden onslaught of food into my system.

“There is no need to dilly dally over half the issues that the government seems to take up so vigorously. There are other needs and issues that need a lot more attention and receive none at all” Sam was going on with fervour.

Politics. Boring, dry topics that we all needed to discuss from time to time because they affected us all to a certain extent, one way or the other. The discussion at hand however seemed almost pointless. It wasn’t an argument, simply a continuous rally of how horrid the government was, and an occasional good word by Mr. T who felt the need to be slightly polite towards the nation’s government, just in case someone was watching. Or something of the sort.

I was soon sitting back however, trying to cleverly hide the fact that my stomach was just about ready to burst. I refused anything else that I was being told to eat politely enough and couldn’t wait to get back home, because the amount of food I had just consumed had me feeling lethargic and sluggish enough to go home and crawl straight back into bed.

The conversation continued however, as the people seated at the table continued to surprise me further and further with their ability to eat more than I could possibly imagine.

I found myself being drawn out of my shell of slight hesitancy and taking part in the conversations at hand, and indeed becoming relatively interested in them as well.

Sooner than I had expected (in reality, it was probably the longest breakfast I had ever been witness to) it was all done, and there I stood at the door waving a cheerful goodbye to my ever so hospitable neighbours who had so gracefully and generously ‘christened’ me into the neighbourhood. That’s what it felt like, in a way. This; meeting and greeting of the neighbours over breakfast!

I felt almost ungrateful because I hadn’t been able to stomach half of what had been lain out in front of me. And then I wondered why I was thinking so much and my mind turned to blank again as I began the walk (that in reality was less than a minute away) home.

Before I had waddled into my gate and up to my porch, Sam appeared behind me almost out of nowhere. “Care for a bit of a walk?” he said in his elegant, proper voice that I had once denoted to be that of an extremely snobbish author. Sam however, was far from snobbish. Perhaps he was simply well spoken. Time would be the test of that.

I couldn’t bear the thought of any more strain on any other part of my body, all I wanted was to flop back amongst my pillows and blankets and close my eyes to the world. I didn’t want to sound rude, but I couldn’t think of a polite enough way to refuse. So of course, I ended up going on that walk, much against my wishes of course.

Sam was an eager talker when alone, something I had come to realize off late. When in company he could almost be the politest young gentleman there ever was, like a storybook character lifted out of an Austen or Bronte novel. Alone however, he was more fun than any of those characters could possibly have been.

I found myself at a steady pace, and then I realized how slowly we were actually walking. It was nice of him to silently fall back with me, although it made me feel ever so slightly like an overweight hippopotamus (yes, an overweight one at that).

“Have you been to the dam?”

I realized how his questions lingered around and about Lonavala.

“No” I said playing along.

“And up the mountains?”

“No” I repeated.

“What have you been doing here all this time?” he joked and I smiled at the easiness with which he conducted his conversations.

“I’ve been alone mostly. Sitting and reading, looking out….”

“Stuck to your laptop with earphones plugged in your ears blocking out all possible sounds of nature?” he continued cutting me off with a wry smile that made me feel almost guilty.

“Well….”

“Would you like to go to the dam?”

The question was abrupt, almost too sudden and he turned towards me, awaiting response.

I shrugged at first and then wondered what possible reason in the world I had not to go. I did want to see it, and he seemed like he would be an entertaining guide.

“Tomorrow then” he said as we stopped at my gate after the little walk we had just partaken to digest our heavy breakfast.

“Okay” I said. I had hardly spoken on our little walk, not that it mattered really, except I was normally quite the chatterbox.

I waved goodbye cheerfully enough, trying not to run as I made my way inside, thoughts of beds and sleep and pillows pulling me up the stairs.