She had only just stepped into our midst when she was expressly roped into the fashion clique, a group of girls who had everything money could buy, including boyfriends. They called themselves the ‘StyleStahs’. I wondered if the second half of the half-baked acronym was ‘sisters’ or ‘stars’. They were four in number until that June morning.
I was at the periphery of this bunch of expensively-turned-out teens by default. Meena Iyer, who was the epicentre, was my closest friend in school.
Ours was an unlikely association. I didn’t have the fashion sense or hail from that kind of money that gives one admittance into these leagues. But Meena was a generous soul. She looked out for me. If I didn’t tag along to their outings every time she invited me, it was only by choice. I had no great longing to be a charity case, even back then. I took care of Meena’s homework. She attempted it most days but couldn’t complete it. Juggling outings, outfits and boys was time-consuming.
When the StyleStahs fragmented two years later, following the Class X board exams, each going separate ways, Chhaya and I drifted towards each other organically.
Unlike Meena, however, Chhaya rarely telephoned me once she was home. She came home often though, dined with us, slurping glasses and glasses of my mother’s ‘sumbarrr’, which she later bastardized for her eateries, calling it exactly that.
My first visit to the Mehtas was years later, after I joinedMorning Herald. Chhaya had invited me to lunch with her family. I used to think Chhaya lived in an apartment complex, not as tired looking as ours, but a flat all the same. However, she lived in a bungalow with a circular driveway. At the centre of the lawn was a marble fountain. Liveried guards manned the gates.
Chhaya greeted me at the door, standing a little behind her uniformed housekeeper, Mrs Molly.
As she led me to the formal dining hall, she apologized for her father, who was away on work. A giant door opened into the grandest room I had ever seen, fit for a state banquet. My whole house could flow into it comfortably.My eyes were so busy taking in the walls and the high ceiling that I failed to notice the two people seated at the other end of the mighty teakwood table. A lady in Juicy Couture tracks and an awkward-looking boy. Chhaya introduced me to her mother. I smiled involuntarily. My eyes were still on the boy.
‘And this is Chetan,’ she said, ‘my brother.’ She smiled as she spoke; I heard it in her voice. Chetan made snorting sounds. His eyes were like Chhaya’s, his skin was pale, and his neck didn’t hold.
I had thought that, like me, Chhaya was an only child. I would joke about it when we were in school, and she never once corrected me, going along, even teasing me.
‘Chetan has cerebral palsy,’ she said softly as we settled into our chairs, ‘but we’re making sure the palsy doesn’t have him.’
I turned to my friend and smiled. She responded with a laugh.
It was then that I saw for the first time, beyond the mesmerizing colour of her eyes, a quiet sparkle that reflected in everything she did.
Long ago, the Mehtas had made a family decision not to talk about Chetan. They never hid Chetan, but they didn’t advertise their life either. They wanted to protect their daughter.
I stole glances as mother fed son, making soft, cooing noises, comforting him. She was telling him about me, ‘didi’s best friend’. He tried to get up from the chair and move towards his sister. His mother didn’t stop him. Instead, she followed him, and his sister rose from her chair and reached out to him. She ran her hands through his hair and pecked him on the cheek.
Later that evening, as I chatted to a photograph of my mother, I told her that, like me, Chhaya had everything.
Chhaya and I were similar people with distinctive tastes. She drank tea, and I was a coffee lover; she had a sweet tooth, while I devoured savouries; our political ideologies were not opposite but different; reading habits, Hardy and Austen. She liked milk chocolates, and I enjoyed them dark and bitter; she flaunted easy lines, and I liked my clothes fitted, but we were united by a toughness we instantly recognized in the other.
As she settled into a garden chair opposite mine at Perky Grace on this windswept Bengaluru evening, I was quick to verbalize the elementary questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’. I forced her to speak first. I was buying time.
We had broken with our Wednesday breakfast tradition, reuniting as we were after three weeks. Any time of day or night would do.
Chetan had contracted a virus; his body temperature had risen to 104 degrees. They thought they had lost him. He cried all day and night, his limbs wracked in pain. He would scream and turn violent even. Chhaya and her mother took turns nursing him, and her father never left the room.
They could afford all the help in the world, but the Mehtas took care of their own.
Chhaya was exhaling. Her eyes widening in terror, her fuchsia-stained lips twisting, her voice strained in part until it gave way to laughter.
I rode the roller coaster with her.
As I drained the last of my once extra-hot, now ice-cold cappuccino, my eyes were still on her.
‘Enough about me,’ she said suddenly. ‘What’s going on with you, babe?’
The drama in my life didn’t compare to what she had gone through these last weeks. I was caught between a sob and the excitement that was growing within me. I didn’t know what to say.
Chhaya stretched out her long legs and wrapped her arms across her chest.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
I had a choice, of smiling and putting it all off for later, or I could just tell her. I chose the latter. It would be a good distraction for her, and it would make me lighter. Win-Win.
‘Andrew Brown has joinedMorning Herald.’
