Page 21 of All Our Evenings

“No. Not from right now,” he said, blowing smoke out of the side of his mouth. “You look like Amitabh from Zanjeer. Not while he’s throwing chairs or smashing people’s heads in or whatnot, but when the heroine asks him to give up vengeance. Something about the eyes…” He waved his cigarette hand around his eyes.

I laughed.

He said his name was Jiten, oncology. He shook my hand and said, “Let me guess … hmm, actually you are hard to guess. Say, PM&R?”

I said no. Before I could say I worked at the municipality he said, “Oh don’t tell me,” he groaned. “Psych?”

“I’m not a doctor,” I said, laughing.

“Oh thank god. Someone interesting. How do you know Ruhee?”

“We grew up together … just down the road from here, actually.”

“Childhood friends. That’s cute.”

“What’s cute?” the smoker next to Jiten said.

“Zanjeer here is Ruhee’s childhood friend.”

“That is cute.”

So long as I wasn’t a doctor none of them cared or asked what I did. I was referred to as Zanjeer, and I found it wonderful. When Ruhee finally had a moment, she came over to where I was standing with Jiten, an appreciative smile on her lips at how well I was getting along with her friends. For whatever reason they all seemed to share a hatred for psych, or perhaps it was specific to this hospital. I realized with a jolt that I did not know Ruhee’s specialty―I was ashamed to ask now, and stayed on the alert in case someone dropped a hint. Jiten seemed to know Ruhee the best, as if he spent more time with her than others; so perhaps it was oncology. In the middle of Jiten’s story about being stranded in a village med camp during the rainy season, Ruhee leaned her head against my shoulder and I didn’t hear the rest of the story. It was really nice, beautiful like that, as if I’d entered another dimension, a place where I had friends. Ruhee wrapped her arm around mine, and glancing at her watch I remembered my promise to return home early.

“Stay awhile,” Ruhee said. “What’s the rush?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I really was.

“Bring him around more,” Jiten said. “Where’ve you been hiding him. See ya, Zanjeer.”

Zanjeer. I liked that, who cared why? It was comforting and exhilarating to be amongst strangers and new friends. I walked home in the dark night, the stars glinting above, feeling at peace.

At the end of September, about six months after Ruhee and I met at the Irani café for the first time, she came to the water office unannounced. I was at my desk.

“Do you want to get married?” she asked.

“My mother, did she call you?” I said. “Just ignore her.”

“No. I’m asking you. Do you want to get married?”

She looked sad in the same way she did when I said I loved her.

All my life, I’d wanted to marry her. What reason did I have to say anything but yes?

Afterwards, though it wasn’t a Sunday, I went to the hospital. I climbed the twenty-eight steps, ran into a new orderly who insisted it wasn’t visiting hours until I slipped him a rolled-up fifty-rupee note.

I told Ganesh. “We are getting married,” I said. I held his warm hand for a while. “I won’t marry her if you don’t want me to,” I said.

Of course, Ganesh said nothing.

On the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing, my father performed a ritual called ‘the remembrance of fathers past.’ It was during the period, that summer, when I was avoiding Ganesh after visiting his home.

I was sitting cross-legged in our yard, between the priest and my father, wearing a dhoti, a cotton towel covering my torso, a shrine to my grandfather in front of us. My job during the ritual remembrance of fathers past, was to stay by my father’s side. To repeat the Sanskrit verses the priest asked us to repeat, to touch my father’s elbow, just a little resting of my fingertips against his skin, when he touched the three rice cakes in front of the shrine, one each for every father that came before him. Touch his elbow, while he repeated the name of his father. We offered water to the departed souls. Sesame seeds. Barley. Milk. Honey.

My father uttered the names of our forefathers in my ear, and I memorized them and repeated them out loud. Then we stood up and I washed my father’s feet with water.

And just like the day he’d cut down the papaya tree, Ganesh arrived at my house, opening and closing the latch of our gate as if he lived there.

He was holding a bundle of dry grass. As he came near I looked up at him, to show him I felt annoyed by his intrusion into this private family ritual, or that I didn’t want him there, or that I expected to see contrition from him for not trying to reach me, but when I looked, I saw that he felt sad and emotional, watching me and my father, as though something liquid and painful was moving around inside him. And I felt it too, his pain, a sensation that brought a sharp ache to the center of my brow. I wiped the tears in my eyes with the cotton towel around my shoulders. I felt so sorry for him.