The Love Asana

‘It’s my keys. I can’t find them,’ she bit back, getting up to glare at him.

‘Pity. Just when I was getting truly impressed by your dedication to your subject.’

Pari didn’t think it warranted an answer, so glared at him again as she continued to search.

‘Think again,’ he added helpfully, speaking slowly to help jog her memory. ‘You got out of the car. You shut the door. You pressed the lock switch on your key, I presume, and then?’

‘No. No. This car’s old. I have to lock it manually. I can’t—’ Pari stopped suddenly, annoyed that she had even engaged in dialogue with him, and simultaneously being struck by the common-sense explanation of what had obviously happened. Pari leaned down to look into the car, grimacing as she directed the phone’s light near the dashboard. There, hanging on a little chain, the key dangled jauntily from the ignition switch.

‘I must have pulled the handle to lock it. I was running a bit late today,’ Pari said, dismayed.

‘Let me drop you back,’ Vivan offered, hitting the unlock button on his key to have all the doors to the sleek super-luxury car click open in low understated beeping synchronisation.

Pari clutched her bag and started walking away from Vivan. ‘Thanks. But, no, thanks. That’s not necessary,’ she said, not stopping to think why the idea of sharing an intimate space in a car with this man should feel so dangerous yet exciting. ‘I’ll get an auto,’ she mumbled, her explanation wasted in the wind and Delhi’s heavy night traffic.

Ten minutes later Pari realised the hopelessness of getting an auto to go the short distance of three kilometres. If that wasn’t bad enough, an early winter mist was settling in. The only alternative was to walk home—not the safest of ideas but her best bet for now.

Vivan manoeuvred the car as swiftly as he could through the chaotic parking lot and was relieved to see Pari walking desolately, dodging the speeding cars, jacket huddled close, big bag clutched under her arm, vainly trying to flag down autos. Each one would careen dangerously close and then speed away on hearing the destination, before anyone could call the cops on them.

‘Get in,’ Vivan barked, vehicles already starting to pile up and honk behind his car.

There was no option; Pari quickly lowered herself into the plush low seat of the heavenly warm car and its lemony interiors.

‘Where to?’

‘R.K.Puram. Sector twelve, just behind Sangam, please,’ Pari said, pointedly polite. ‘I hope I’m not taking you out of your way.’

Vivan replied with just the merest shake of his head as he looked straight ahead, making Pari all the more aware of the overwhelming masculinity of him. At least ten inches taller than her, maybe more, he seemed to fill the large car effortlessly. His slim hands on the gear stick and steering wheel, she couldn’t help but notice, were as large and sensuous as she had thought they would be. His fingers were long and well made and she could imagine them caressing an instrument with masterful ease. The same ease with which they would slowly caress a woman’s body …

There was a huge traffic pile-up, Pari saw, and it wasn’t just the usual bottleneck around the dug-up sections where the Metro rail was planned. Some motorcyclist had chosen to cut a red light and the car he’d hit was badly dented, though luckily no one was hurt. This of course meant that at least a half-hour argument would ensue before the vehicles were moved. Unlike many others who kept honking and keeping their cars unnecessarily revved, Vivan had pragmatically switched off the ignition.

Pari looked a little tense, not quite settled into the deep low seat.

‘Might have been faster if I’d walked,’ she mumbled awkwardly.

‘Ah, but not nearly as comfortable.’ Vivan picked up the sleek wafer-thin remote to flick on the high-end music system and decisively selected a channel that was playing a soothing Sufi song. He saw from Pari’s expression that it was something she liked too. He then pressed open a slim freezer chest cleverly designed to sit neatly between the two front seats, which seemed to be stocked with an eclectic selection of beverages. ‘Something to drink?’ he asked, offering her a chilled premixed bottle of cranberry cocktail.

‘Thank you. But I don’t drink,’ Pari said politely.

‘Of course. I should have guessed.’ Vivan held out a bottle of imported sparkling water. ‘Something healthy, I guess, given that you’re a yoga teacher. Oh, not just a yoga teacher … a “Purist” at that!’ he teased.

Pari shook her head, allowing herself a small smile. ‘Actually, I’m more of an adrak ki chai person.’

‘There’s nothing to compare with hot gingery dhaba chai,’ Vivan agreed, to Pari’s surprise.

‘Somehow I didn’t see you feeling that way,’ she couldn’t stop herself from quipping.

‘Why?’ he asked, amused.

Pari looked uncomfortable. ‘I mean … if you’re used to these pricey bottled waters and top-end cars … of course, this car is brilliant … But I thought you’d like everything … you know … um … fancy.’

‘In that case you should know at one time … I probably had a large hand in keeping DK dhaba in business. I wonder if it’s still around, after the flyover came up.’

‘I’ve heard so many people talk about that place. What was so great about that chai?’ Pari quickly realised she’d actually said her thought aloud.

‘I think it was all those truckers’ diesel fumes. It was right on the highway,’ Vivan said, with a wry smile. ‘In fact nobody could make bun omelette like those guys. I’m sure it was the grease and pollution and sitting out eating it on the charpais that added up to it!’

‘Exactly!’ Pari was amazed that he should think as she did. ‘Nowadays everyone gets so hyper about having chaat and that too with the poor chaat fellow’s hands all hygienically covered in plastic gloves and only mineral water chalega to put into the golguppas. That’s not what eating chaat is about! It just doesn’t taste the same.’

Pari caught the deadpan look on Vivan’s face. ‘You’d rather have the full flavour of where the chaat walah’s hands went before? Come on. Admit it!’

Pari couldn’t stop the giggle that escaped. ‘I know,’ she said, stretching out the syllable in a long childlike sigh. ‘I know, it’s probably wiser and safer and all that.’

Seeing Vivan’s openly amused expression now and the look that said, ‘Really?’, Pari scrunched up her eyes, chewing on her lower lip in a jokey kind of grimace to laugh. ‘OK, OK, I confess, I’d rather have the full “impure” street taste of how it’s meant to be, than all that clinically made stuff.’

The RJ had gone into a commercial break. A young female voice in the ad complained about her husband heading straight for the TV after he got home. The totally corny commercial plugged a brand of stick-on bindis as a cure-all to get the husband’s attention back to her charms.

Pari turned her face to the car window to smile to herself.

‘So remember … get your Chamki bindi on. Your husband won’t be able to get his eyes off you!’ the shrill female voice-over artiste repeated.

‘Enough already!’ Vivan said, exasperated, as he switched to another channel.

The traffic had started moving.

‘Why?’ Pari giggled. It was interesting to discover that this overpoweringly male student whose brazen sexuality had thrown her quite off balance was not some MCP at least.

Vivan found her laughter infectious. ‘What century is that ad for?’ he said wryly. ‘Can you imagine, in this day and age, they are advocating this woman should, what …? Set a daily alarm or something? Then the moment it’s time for the husband to come home … she should run around frantically … to get her Chamki bindi on!’ Vivan continued in the same deadpan voice.

‘And what if she’s just got back from work in her trousers? Or she’s into powder bindis?’ Pari said, laughing more naturally and openly than she’d thought she could ever have done with this man who was turning out to be easier to talk to than she’d thought.

The car had stopped at a traffic signal and soon enough a young urchin was tapping at Vivan’s window. He held a bunch of crudely made battery-operated plastic fans. The kind that looked like table fans but were about five inches tall, threw up a whisper of air and probably lasted no more than a day.

‘Saab, twenty-five rupees. OK, for you twenty! Boni kara doh. I haven’t sold a thing all day.’

Pari assumed Vivan would keep his window up and drive on when the light changed. To her surprise, he pressed on the button to roll his window down, held out a hundred-rupee note on the ready and took the useless toy from him. He rolled the window up without taking any change from the surprised child’s hands and drove on.

‘Here. Would you like this?’ Vivan put the plastic fan into Pari’s hands.

‘Why?’ she asked him, bunching her shoulders as she shook her head.

‘Why not?’ he answered. ‘At least he wasn’t begging. Why not encourage that?’

It was a sweet gesture and Pari felt a wonderful warmth in her belly that he had done it. She contained her sudden urge to reach forward and touch his palm. Instead she fidgeted with trying to switch the little fan on. Surprisingly, it did, almost instantly, throwing out more noise than air. ‘Look. It works too!’ she said playfully, turning the toy fan to her face and feeling a light shaft of air.

Vivan saw her face, framed by the loose strands of her rich brown hair blowing gently, in the glow of the mercury lights of the road.

‘Even better,’ he said, his head turned to one side, his eyes not leaving her face.