My husband got a call from someone on the neighborhood WhatsApp group. I believe you have a villa to rent, the caller said. Some friends of ours are moving to town. They’d be interested. My husband put the phone down and looked at me. This is how things come to you when you don’t go looking for them, he said. He sounded excited.
We had just bought a house. He had drawn a large bank loan for the purchase. I am saying he and not we, because it is true. This understanding flowed like a sewer line between us – that it was his money the house ran on. We carried on our daily activities, lived a normal life, right above this muck.
With this house, the idea was to settle finally, not shift from place to place, not be at the mercy of landlords. But now our daughter didn’t want to move from where we lived. She had friends in the neighborhood. The compound was nice and big – she could cycle around, play a game of badminton. She was seven. She could do with all the space.
This was how the talk of renting out the new house came about. The new house was a fully furnished villa on a decent sized plot in a gated community. I had a little pang when the texts and the calls began. To have someone come and sully the place before you had the chance to call it home… I said to my husband.
What is there to do? he said. Either that, or we move ourselves.
He was right. You couldn’t possibly have everything. I was happy where my daughter was happy. Or to put it in another way, I didn’t know yet how to handle my daughter’s misery.
So back to renting business. What comes in from the villa will go into the EMI, my husband explained. This way, the new place will take care of itself. Plus, we could rest easy with the idea that there was a place of our own to move to – given enough advance notices on all sides – should the need arise.
He didn’t want to put out an ad. Online or newspaper, anywhere. The moment you do that, the phone will begin to ring constantly, he said. All kinds of people calling. Brokers! Who wants to deal with the brokers! He hoped to get someone through word of mouth. There were families we knew from our daughter’s school, new to the city, looking out.
And then the call came. The caller said that his friends, the ones interested in renting, would be in town next week. It was decided that on Tuesday of the following week they’d meet at a café in the same area as the villa, and from there proceed to take a look at it.
Should I come along? I asked. Up to you, he said. Naena will be at school anyway.
Hmm. But then I dropped the idea. In any case, all of it had been his initiative – the researching for the right kind of place, shortlisting, loan application, running around, getting documents in place, and for sure the money. I was there for all the signings, and yes, the house belonged to both of us, but like everything else, it belonged more to one person than the other.
On the decided day my husband went. He was gone for more than three hours. I thought of texting him, but then I got busy. When he came back, he went straight to take a shower. He would tell me later, he said. Okay. I continued eating lunch alone.
I was doing the dishes when he came into the kitchen, opened the freezer, and dropped a few ice cubes into his glass of water.
It’s so hot outside, he said.
I know. I wiped my hands on my pajamas and turned to face him. So how was it? How were the people? Did they like the place?
He laughed and moving his free hand up and down, told me to take it slow. A sip of water and he said, You won’t believe. The friends this caller was talking about, ones who came to see the place, I’ve known them for ages!
Oh, that’s cool, I said, filling up a glass of water myself.
Actually, not both of them. I know the girl. Of course, she’s not a girl anymore. But I knew her well at one point.
Was she your girlfriend or something? I squinted at my husband.
He couldn’t stop smiling and now he laughed again. He laughed and touched the cool glass to his cheek. Well, we did see each other. But it was too short a time to be called boyfriend or girlfriend. But yaa… in a way she was.
No wonder you took so long!
What do you mean? He looked at me with a mock frown. She came with her husband.
I was just joking, I said.
He stared at the pot of coconut stew on the kitchen counter. The stew was very hot, so I hadn’t put the lid on it yet. I looked at the stew too. He shook his head. But would you believe it? To meet someone like this? After what – he looked at me as though I had the answer – some fifteen years? And then, to meet here!
He kept shaking his head. Wow. He walked to the table with the glass in his hands.
Hmm. I leaned against the counter and smiled at him. So, is she like wanting to shift here?
Yes, he answered, pulling a chair to sit. She and her husband. They’re both graphic designers. Have their own little outfit. Sick of big city. Same story. Looking to move to a quieter place.
Hey. I pointed at the clock behind him. Just keep a track of time. Isn’t it time to pick up Naena?
Relax, there’s more than an hour to go.
Okay. I came to join him at the table. I looked at him. As in really looked. It’s actually quite absurd the way these things happen sometimes, I said.
He nodded and shook his head, both. Then I told him how something very similar to this had happened with me a long time back. And it’s funny, I said, because this too was related to houses! His eyebrows went up.
So Naena was only about six months old and we lived in a different city. It was the first floor of a bungalow we lived in and we quite liked it there. But we were put on notice by the landlord. It came as quite a shock.
I asked my husband if he remembered all of that. Of course, he said. The landlord’s son was to return from somewhere…
Yes, I said. From Australia. He was nice otherwise, the landlord.
I took a sip of water. My husband’s eyes went from me to the glass and back. I continued. We told the brokers, looked out ourselves. When you were away at work and Naena slept, I marked classifieds. I made sure to mark only the ones advertised by the owners. The brokerage was always the most annoying thing!
Always! he said.
One afternoon, I made calls as usual. So, I call this number and the words are already there, ready at the back of my tongue to roll out – saw your ad blah blah blah. But then I hear this Hello. And I stop. All the noise stops. It’s like I zoomed out of the setting and went really high up and from there watched this woman holding to her ear a telephone receiver with a looping cord that goes on and on and circles around time itself!
My husband made a face. I grinned. Remember we still had a landline in those days? Of course, he remembers, he said.
So, it took me a few seconds to bring my focus back again, I continued. And then I asked – Is that Mohit Jain? Although I didn’t need to ask, I knew it was.
Mohit Jain? My husband’s palm went to his cheek.
That’s the thing! Mohit Jain is this person I went out with, in my first job. I mean when I made that call – without of course knowing it’s him I was calling – it had been some thirteen-fourteen years of not knowing anything about him.
You never told me about any Mohit Jain, my husband said.
I must have! I told you about all my boyfriends. It was a pretty intense thing we had, Mohit and I, but it didn’t last long. I guess it got too much… it had to snuff itself out.
I reached out to adjust the carnations in the vase on the table. I looked at my husband. I’m sure I mentioned him to you.
He shook his head in a clear no.
So, Mohit and I talked a little. I told him about you and Naena. I asked if he was married. He never really wanted to be married. No, he said. But then the way he spoke, like blushing and talking at the same time, I could sense someone’s presence there. I mean, if not there at that point, for sure in his life. In a relationship? I asked him. Although I don’t know why I did. I was a stranger to him, to his life. He and I were not the same people anymore. But there had been something. That time was gone. But that thing sat like a pearl in that time. You could see it glow from a distance.
My husband frowned and smiled at the same time. Then he looked at the kitchen clock. I looked at the clock too. About ten more minutes for him to leave.
Anyhow, I said. He was only looking at a company lease for the house he had advertised. The call became awkward quickly. I mean, what do you say? Stay in touch? Nice talking to you? It was all very sad if you think about it. Something was so sad about that call. I remember feeling heavy from it. I had loved this person and he had loved me and now we had long shed those skins we loved each other with. Now we introduced ourselves to each other all over again.
Can you imagine, I said. We lived within ten-kilometer radius of each other all those years!
I took a sip of water. My husband did too. Both of us were quiet for a few seconds, then I continued. Once that strange sadness was gone, however, only awe remained. Who is playing this game through us? Why do things happen that send a chill through us? What are we being told? Why don’t we get it? We must try to get it. We absolutely must!
I shook my head as though for something to settle in it.
Cool. My husband began to get up. Interesting, he said. But I don’t remember you telling me about this person or this episode.
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, I said. I have no memory now. You know how it was in those days. Naena was a little baby, you were so busy. I was such a spinning top of a person. It seemed if I stopped, I would never be able to get the momentum going.
My husband laughed a little and pushed his chair back under the table. What does that have to do with sharing?
I mean it wasn’t a secret or anything, I said. It came and went and there was never a good time to talk.
Okay, he said. Chalo. I will get going.
Yup. See you. I stood up too.
***
It wasn’t true. It wasn’t true that the thing with the ex-boyfriend, whom I did call quite by accident, came and went. For days I had remained in a sort of daze, in a state of private elation. For days I had imagined his hands on my body. For days I had wondered what my life would have looked like with him.
I had saved the number. I had called him. We met for coffee. We kissed in his car. He still had the same violet color car. Maybe we met two more times, or three, but that was it. Mouths and skin weren’t enough in the end. In the end, there just wasn’t enough energy to call, to meet, to scheme. Maybe I wanted too much and was disappointed. I had wanted for his strong hands to haul me up from the deep place I was in. I had wanted to be resurrected. It wasn’t an easy ask. It could frighten anyone. It frightened me too.
I let go. It passed. It passed so radically that it hardly ever came back to me again. Up until now. And it was a good time too.
Photo by Natalia Trofimova on Unsplash
