The One She Was Warned About. Shoma Narayanan
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job brought him into contact with models and actresses, all of whom seemed to be afraid to breathe in case the air contained calories. In his view Shweta had a better figure than all of them—she was slim, but not stick-thin, and her body curved nicely in all the right places.
‘Like the food?’ he asked, watching her as she dipped an appam into the curry and ate it with evident enjoyment. For a few seconds he couldn’t take his eyes off her lush mouth as she ran her tongue over her bottom lip—the gesture was so innocently sexy.
‘It’s good,’ she pronounced.
He dragged his eyes away from her face to concentrate on his own untouched plate before she could catch him staring.
‘Everything’s cooked in coconut oil, isn’t it? It adds an interesting flavour to the food.’
Nikhil thought back to the last time he’d taken a girl on a date to a restaurant in Mumbai that served authentic Kerala cuisine. She’d hardly eaten anything, insisting that the food smelt like hair oil. She’d been annoying in many other ways as well, he remembered. Rude to waiters and refusing to walk even a few metres to the car because the pavement looked ‘mucky’. Not for the first time he wondered why he chose to waste his time with empty-headed women like her rather than someone like Shweta. He didn’t want to delve too deeply into the reasons, though—self-analysis wasn’t one of his passions.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Shweta said as she polished off her last appam. ‘Why were you out to get me in school? We used to be good friends when we were really little—till you began hanging out only with the boys and ignored me completely. And when we were twelve or something you started being really horrible. You used to be rude about my clothes and my hairstyle—pretty much everything.’
‘Was I that bad?’ Nikhil looked genuinely puzzled. ‘I remember teasing you a little, but it was light-hearted stuff. I didn’t mean to upset you. Maybe it was because you were such a good little girl—listening to what the teacher said, doing your homework on time, never playing truant... It was stressful, studying with you. You set such high standards...’
He ducked as Shweta swatted at him with a ladle. ‘Careful,’ he said, his voice brimming over with laughter as drops of curry sprayed around. ‘I don’t want to go back looking like I’ve been in a food fight.’
‘Oh, God—and your clothes probably cost a bomb, didn’t they.’ Conscience-stricken, Shweta put the ladle down. ‘Did I get any on you?’
Nikhil shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. If I find any stains I’ll send you the dry-cleaning bill.’
She looked up swiftly, wondering whether he was being serious, but the lurking smile in his eyes betrayed him. ‘Oh, you wretch,’ she scolded. ‘I’ve a good mind to throw the entire dish at you.’
‘Mariamma will be really offended,’ he said gravely. ‘And if you throw things at me I won’t buy you dessert.’
‘Oh, well that settles it, then. I’ll be nice to you.’ He hadn’t really answered her question, but she didn’t want to destroy the light-hearted atmosphere by pressing too hard. ‘But only till we’re done with dessert.’
TWO
‘Aren’t you going to wear something under that? A churidaar or leggings?’
‘It’s a dress, Siddhant,’ Shweta explained patiently. ‘It’s supposed to be worn like this.’ Dresses had come back into fashion a couple of years ago, but evidently no one had informed Siddhant.
‘I like you better in salwar kameez,’ he said. ‘Or even jeans. You look—I don’t know—sort of weird in this. And the shoes...’
Shweta surveyed herself in the huge mirror in the hotel foyer. The simple pale yellow cotton dress set off her golden-brown skin and lovely black eyes to perfection. And the shoes were her favourite ones—flat open-toed white sandals with huge yellow cloth flowers on the straps. The flowers were even of the same genus/sub-species as the white printed ones on her dress, and until she’d come downstairs she’d been pretty happy with the overall effect.
During her childhood she’d been forced to wear truly horrible clothes—her aunt had had absolutely no sense of colour or style, and had usually bought Shweta’s clothes at discount stores or got them made up by the local tailor. It didn’t help that the tailor was the same one who’d made Dr Mathur’s shirts. All her clothes had ended up with boxy cuts and mannish collars. She’d tried complaining to her father, but he’d told her she shouldn’t be bothering about something as frivolous as clothes, and she’d been too much in awe of him to protest. It had only been when she was in college that she’d started choosing her own clothes and, while she knew her taste wasn’t perfect, she hated anyone criticising what she wore.
‘They’re very nice shoes,’ she told Siddhant firmly. ‘Actually, all in all, I think I look pretty good.’
‘I agree,’ a voice said behind her.
She spun around to meet Nikhil’s smiling eyes. Brilliant—now he probably thought she was needy and totally hungry for reassurance.
‘I wasn’t intending to criticise your clothes,’ Siddhant said, after nodding stiffly to Nikhil. ‘I just thought that jeans might be more practical, given that we’re going sightseeing.’
He himself was dressed in khaki trousers and a crisp white short-sleeved shirt. Somehow, though, he managed to look a little stiff-necked and conservative next to Nikhil’s rugged good looks.
Nikhil gave him an easy smile. ‘We’re driving to the backwaters and we’ll spend the next few hours on a boat. It’s hardly a Himalayan trek. Shweta—I came to ask you... You said you wanted to pick up some spices for your aunt, right? I’ve decided to stay back for another day, and I’ll be taking the SUV out again—you can ride with me. We’ll stop at a spice garden I know—you’ll get much better stuff there than you do in the stores.’
Shweta nodded happily. The alternative was to ride in a bus with the rest of the office crowd. Siddhant would be with the other partners in a specially rented van. Not that they were trying to be elitist, as he’d hastily clarified, but they had some urgent business to discuss, which was confidential, and it would be a pity to waste the travel time when all of them were together anyway.
He didn’t look at all happy about Shweta going off with Nikhil, but there was little he could do about it. ‘I’ll see you at the boats, then,’ he said.
‘Yes, we should be there in a couple of hours,’ Nikhil said. ‘Come on, Shweta, we should leave now. See you in a bit, Siddhant. I was taking a look at the video of yesterday’s dance, by the way—not bad at all. I wish I could have made it back in time for the actual performance.’
‘Don’t make fun of him,’ Shweta said in an undertone as they waited for the car. ‘He was pretty uncomfortable with this whole dance thing, but it was his boss’s idea and he couldn’t wriggle out of it.’
There was genuine surprise on Nikhil’s face as he replied. ‘I wasn’t. OK, he isn’t India’s answer to Michael Jackson, but he did a good job. Must have practised a lot.’
‘He’s a bit of a perfectionist,’ Shweta muttered.
She still hadn’t figured Nikhil out. Maybe he’d been telling the truth the night before—he’d only been teasing her back then in school and she’d overreacted. An incipient persecution complex—that was what her father would call it.
‘So is it serious, then?’ Nikhil asked after a pause.
‘With Siddhant? I don’t know—we’ve not talked about it. We’ve been dating for a while, so I guess there’s a good chance of us ending up together.’
‘Are you in love with him?’
Startled, she felt her gaze fly up to his face. ‘With Siddhant?’ she asked again, stupidly.
He