When in doubt check it out Chapter 6

The next two days were the weekend, which was unusually busy for Ashmi. In the month of May the weather was stifling in Gurgaon. Akhil was lounging on the couch, like always, the TV was on and a match was going on. Ashmi was breezing through the room and suddenly she saw the glimpse of Ravi Shastri on the crease batting. ‘What happened, now he plays instead of giving commentary?’ she wondered aloud. Then she sat down to watch it. The match happened many moons ago in 1986. She looked at Akhil demanding an explanation.

‘It was a closely contested match, I am just watching re-run of it,’ he said without removing his gaze from the TV. 

‘How could you do that?’ she asked with surprise and contempt mixed in her tone. ‘Oh! No, there is nothing better to do,’ he said.

All of a sudden from nowhere clouds lined the sky and post lunch, jubilant Akhil went to play a game of golf in Golden Greens located towards Manesar. He had been playing golf for the last three years and his handicap was 12, which was quite good for an amateur golfer. He had even won local tournaments and was always game for a game of golf. The girls had gone with their friend’s mom to watch the cartoon movie Kungfu Panda at DT Mega Mall. Ashmi was all alone. Tanishta, their friends’ mom insisted to come along, but she was reluctant.

 She enjoyed the solitude and moreover in the evening, didi, Akhil’s elder sister would descend with her husband and son. Weekly meetings were a norm. Akhil had always maintained that they were a closed knit family, but they weren’t so close that they could live together. ‘No ways, everyone is entitled to his privacy, came the wise words of her mom-in-law,’ the matriarch of the family, who was unkind towards Ashmi from the very beginning. She had learned to live with neglect. Initially, she would cry herself to sleep, never making Akhil realize how much she was hurt, but then she learned the art to take it in the stride. Right now, Ashmi was keen to talk to Mathias and the opportunity was too much of a temptation to let it go by.

She dialed his number. He picked it instantly. ‘Hello…how are you doing?’ she spoke enthusiastically.

‘I am good, just whiling away time, downloading movie from the internet,’ he drawled.

 ‘Mathias. Can you download movies too from the net and by the way what are you downloading?’ she was keen to know.

 ‘Erotic stuff, not your type,’ he cut her short.

’ And how do you know what’s my type? I can also watch such movies,’ she defended.

‘Okay! I get that. How many have you watched?’ he was enjoying every bit of the conversation.

 ‘Not even one, but I can watch, certainly,’ she challenged him.

 ‘You never watched even one with Akhil,’ he said with astonishment.

 ‘He is elder to me and has always treated me like a baby,’ she explained hurriedly.

‘Ashmi, come on, you are his wife, aren’t you?’ he refreshed her memory.

 ‘That I am, but you see, we don’t watch such things together, neither does Akhil alone,’ she reasoned.

‘Okay. You do those things together,’ he asked genuinely intrigued about the standards of hypocrisy in their marriage.

‘Mathias. You are crossing limits,’ she chided.

‘‘No, I am just curious,’ he said.

‘Why don’t you meet me?’ she spoke without thinking and regretted immediately the slip of her tongue.

‘I want to meet you, where are you at the moment?’ she went on against the warning of reason.

’Me at home,’ he told her.

‘And where is your home by the way,’ she asked him. 

‘It’s near Gold Souk,’ he said.. ‘Can we meet at the café at Gold Souk?’ she decided the venue for him.

‘Yes, we can,’ he said. ‘This had to happen some day, better today,’ he thought.  

‘I will drive and come and meet you,’ she said.  ‘How much time will you take to reach?’ he questioned her.

 ‘You tell me,’ she prompted him.

 ‘20 minutes,’ he said.

’Same here,’ she agreed.

Ashmi put the phone down and was wondering, what she has done. She had committed to meet Mathias. Anyway Akhil and kids were not going to come before 5 pm.

‘What should I wear?’ she thought. After several years, she didn’t know what to wear. Carefully, she looked at her wardrobe and then settled for a pink sleeveless kurti with v neck and silver lace trimmings. The colour pink looked just perfect on her. Everyone had told so. She put kohl in her eyes and wore dark brown eye liner, which opened up her eyes. She wanted to wear her regular brown matte lipstick from Clinique, but then, she chose more youthful frosty pink lip gloss, and left her face nude. She had one of those faces, which didn’t tolerate makeup well. She completed her look with her favourite Burberry perfume. In less than 15 minutes, she was parking Honda City, when the message beeped on her cell phone.

‘Have you reached?’ Mathias enquired.

‘Parking,’ she texted back.

She went upstairs and ordered two ice-cold coffees at Barista and two brownies to go with it. After ages, she had butterflies in her stomach. She felt nervous, excited and guilty all at the same time. Words in the book that she was struggling to read began to get jumbled. Her heart was hammering against her chest and a line of sweat beaded on her palms. She felt like running away, but then the excitement of seeing the person with whom, she had been chatting for so long, was too much to let it go. ‘After all, with whom she was talking to for the last whole month? He could be a psycho, she had to see that the profile picture and the real Mathias in flesh and blood matched. She scanned through the room to check if anyone was 180 cms tall. Mathias had informed his height to her while discussing his travails of not being able to get a tall girl on the matrimonial websites.

She calculated, ‘150 cms was 5 feet and an extra 30 cms, means 12 more inches, so this guy is 6 feet.’

Her eyes were glued on the doorway. She was too scared to even focus at anyone. You are a grown up woman, stop behaving like a teenaged. But, then her heart was beyond her control.  Soon her cell phone rang. She didn’t pick the phone, and looked around. There was a tall man, frantically looking for her all over. She had seen him before, somewhere. Where she couldn’t place? She stretched her arm to show the ringing cell phone. He disconnected.

‘Call me Joe…’ It struck her as lightening. ‘I met you that day at Park Plaza.’

‘Yes, you have.’

‘Why two identities?’ she asked point blank.

‘I had to break up with my girl friend because of parental pressures. I was heartbroken. And, one day, just like that, I created fake identity in the online world,’ he said.

Whose profile picture is it?

No one’s, just an image downloaded from Google.

She was stunned. He knew from the beginning who she was, but she was groping in the dark. And, he was professionally involved with her.

‘What about Sid? Did you discuss this with him?’ Do I have to resign now?

No, this is between you and me.

Then, he held her hand in between his big palms. She didn’t wriggle. There was no need to create a scene.

Does it matter for you what my name is? After all, what’s there in a name? he waxed eloquent.

‘Stop quoting Shakespeare,’ she hissed, ‘come to the point.’

Well, you need a friend with whom you could talk and I need a friend for the same. Let’s just be friends, nothing more, nothing less. He tried to convince her.

Ashmi kept gazing at her toe. ‘Say something, please,’ he urged. ‘I know I am wrong, but still, Ashmi, my intentions are good.’ At last she spoke.

‘I am embarrassed. You are good long distance. Seeing you in flesh and blood is unnerving,’ Let me go.

‘You are behaving like a teenager,’ he teased.

‘No. I am not, I am shocked.’ She glowered.

‘Okay, tell me, what made you agree to come and meet me?’ he had to keep her talking, otherwise women sulk, which is worse. Learned from experience

 ‘Mathias, I don’t know, it happened instantly and I thought I should meet you. Moreover, I wanted to see the face, with whom I was chatting for so long, because all of a sudden I became nervous today,’ she said. And my fears were right.

‘Shall I make a request?’ she implored.

‘Please delete all the messages that I have sent you,’ she said without waiting for him to say a word.

‘Yes, I will.’ The pain in his heart got expressed in his eyes.

‘How is your work going?’ She made a lame attempt to keep the conversation flowing.

‘Don’t you know it?’ he said.

‘But then I know a whole lot of other things too,’ he said.

 They finished their drinks in silence.

‘You want to have something,’ she asked.

Though she had already ordered brownies before.

While waiting for the brownie to be served, she gently held his hands and said,

‘Thank you so much for being a friend, you know, no one has talked to me like this in ages.’ Then, she left.

A message beeped, as she started to pull out from the parking. ‘I am sorry.’

The social media remedy of the doctor had backfired. Ashmi had gone to meet him with the objective that she would make it clear to Mathias that she couldn’t meet him anymore. And now, it was imperative that she shouldn’t meet him.

Epicureans future too was in limbo.

The next day at work around 11 am her intercom buzzed.

‘Joseph Zachariah is waiting at the reception to meet you,’ the receptionist said.

She came down exasperatedly. This was getting tangled.

‘Talk,’ she spitted angrily, once inside the conference room, when just two of them were there.

‘Ashmi, please don’t avoid me. Let it be the way it was,’ he implored.

She was shell shocked. Can I retreat?

‘Just give it a thought, there is nothing to lose, I am just asking for friendship. No hanky panky business,’ he assured.

The office boy brought in coffee. Ashmi pretended to scribble something on her notepad.

‘What difference does it make to me whether he is a Zachariah or Mathias?’ She thought.

‘Professional ethics?’ she knew the answer.

She wasn’t bothered about it. Jain didn’t deserve it.

‘Okay, but you know the limits,’ she said sternly. Mathias nodded in agreement.

Every day on weekdays, around 9 in the morning, just after she had settled down at work, he would call her.  Immediately after waking up, he loved to hear her voice. Her crisp voice like a dip in the bubbling brook prepared him for the day ahead.

Ashmi was getting kind of used to the ritual. There was someone who was eager to talk her.

And one day, he didn’t call her. The clock struck 12, but still there was no phone call from him. She was worried.

Are you alright? She texted him.

‘Am sleeping, had a late night with friends yesterday,’ he wrote back.

‘Rise and shine. Get up and shower,’ she wrote.  

‘Care to join,’ he asked immediately.

The message completely unnerved her. But, one part of her enjoyed his flirting.  ‘No, I bathed in the morning,’ she said.

‘Is there any rule that you could bathe only once?’ Her moral science moorings amazed him.

She did enjoy the way he was flirting with her unabashedly, but she had to set a moral angle to it. He was younger to her, and she shouldn’t forget that.  She too was married with young girls.

‘Hope you get a girl who enjoys showering with you?’ she messaged.

‘Have you done that?’ he was keen to know.

‘Yes, but long back,’ she had to literally jog her memory to answer it.

‘Why don’t you refresh it?’ he suggested.

She needed to shake herself out from the romantic languidness that was building inside her. A cup of tea was badly needed. As she began to sip the sugary beverage, she started to pay attention to the work before her. As usual, her ‘to-do’ list was overflowing and she never knew that unabashed flirting can even pep you to face the day. She began to sort her day as usual.

The chat window popped open on her computer. Mathias was on another side.

‘Hi!’ he typed.

‘You didn’t answer my query, will you join me in the shower?’ he insisted.

‘Certainly, I will, call me in your imagination tomorrow. By the way, I use only Body Shop body wash’ she typed on the chat window.

‘No, ma’am, I don’t luxuriate in bath so much.  The body wash I use is Palmolive Lavender. And it’s good,’ he wrote.

Next evening, when Mathias, returned back home, his roommate gestured him towards a courier packet. He wondered who could send him a courier. The envelope didn’t even have an address of the sender written on it. ‘How could it be delivered by a courier?’ he wondered. His flat mate, Jerome Sherpa was quick to explain. It was delivered by an office boy. Though intrigued, he opened the packet. Body Shop Cocoa Butter body wash and body butter tumbled out. A hand written note accompanied it. To You, From Me. Mathias looked at his watch. It was 9.30 pm. Ashmi must be home and so would be AkhiL. He immediately wanted to dial her number and talk to her. But, then it wasn’t possible to do so. Hence, he thought to wait patiently and hear from Ashmi. Around 10.30 at night, a message popped on Mathias’ inbox. ‘Awake?’

He answered, ‘y’ for Yes.

 ‘Can I call?’ she messaged back. He keyed back, ‘Y’ the short code for ‘yes’ as answer. She tip-toed out of the bedroom.  Anyway, when Akhil came back home, he needed his single malt before his dinner to unwind. He had slept by then, and so had kids.  She went to the drawing room and sank in Akhil’s ottoman, his favourite chair. When he wasn’t around, she and girls would take turns to sink in it.

She keyed in his number and immediately Mathias picked it after two rings.

‘Hello! Where is he?’ he questioned.

‘He is sleeping,’ she said.

‘Where are you?’ he wanted to be doubly sure.

‘I am in the drawing room. Oh! You are so secretive,’ she was a bit irritated at so many questions.

‘Actually, you are so precious to me, that I don’t want to lose you,’ he said.

‘So how did you manage to send the body wash to me?’ he was curious.

‘There is something called reception at office, and I know how to use it,’ she said.

 ‘But, how could they give my address?’ he reasoned.

 ‘Because I convinced them, that I am your relative, who has lost her phone in the train, and needed to go to his home, as my trip got extended,’ she explained.

 ‘Cunning woman,’ he commented.

‘Anything for you, but do use it every morning, and you could smell me,’ she said.

 ‘This is how you smell!,’ he said inhaling deeply in the decadent smell of cocoa butter.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I can smell of you, but how do I get close to you?’ he sounded impatient.

‘Whom are you talking to?’ Akhil asked gently, putting his hand on her shoulder. She turned around, while the phone was still glued on her ears. She couldn’t disconnect it immediately. Akhil would doubt her. ‘When did you wake up? I was talking to my mom,’ she lied.

‘Okay,’ he said almost half dozed.

 ‘You go, I will join you,’ she said.

 ‘When you come can you get a bottle of water?’ he requested.

‘Why not?’ she said in a voice sweeter than sugar syrup.

 Akhil ambled towards the bedroom. ‘That was so close,’ she whispered to Mathias.

‘I know,’ he agreed.

‘I must go and join him,’ she said.

‘Yes, you will go and sleep by his side,’ he supplied.

‘Stop it, Albert,’ she reprimanded him and disconnected. She 
grabbed a water bottle and a glass tumbler and crawled on the bed 
by his side and hugged him close.
 ‘Oh! You smell so sweet,’ Akhil murmured and settled his head in the crook of her neck as he drifted in deep sleep. Sleep eluded Ashmi, as she saw the flickering light on air conditioner and began wondering about another summer when she had started falling in love with Akhil…..