The air that hits me as I escape the plane is the first sign I’m somewhere new: somewhere not India. A thick, wet blanket smelling of flowers, salt and something sweet, like incense. I should be able to do my own stuff, but I let go. Raghav leads me through the airport, processes our visas, pays for them, walks me to the conveyor belt, loads our suitcases and exchanges currency.
By the time I’m useful, we are already in the taxi.
‘You okay?’ he asks me.
‘It’s humid here, no?’ I uselessly tell him.
The journey from the airport to the hotel is a complete sensory assault. I’m glued to the window of the taxi, trying to process everything. The roads are a flowing river of scooters, thousands of them, weaving around each other. I see tiny,intricate offerings made of woven palm leaves and bright flowers, placed carefully on the ground.
‘What are those?’ I ask, pointing.
Raghav pulls out his phone and does a quick search. ‘Offerings,’ he says, reading out. ‘They put them out every day. The island is 90 per cent Hindu even though Indonesia itself is Muslim-majority.’
What he reads, I can see out there. I see strange, beautiful temples with carved monsters—or mythical figures, whatever they are—tucked between concrete storefronts. I could ask Raghav to look it up again, but I let the mystery simmer. The strangeness and niceness of it all is overwhelming. It’s so vibrant, so unapologetically and shamelessly alive.
Then we arrive at the hotel—the hotel Aman always wanted to come to. I know what he would have done. He would have whipped out his phone and clicked pictures of every corner. I would have pointed out that there needs to be people in the picture, but he wouldn’t have listened and found beauty in the corners of the columns, the edge of the swimming pool and whatnot.
To be fair, it’s quite something, this hotel. It’s a different world. The lobby is a vast, open-air pavilion with a soaring thatched roof and no walls, looking out on to a series of infinity pools that seem to melt into the jungle and the sea beyond. Bookingplacesnow.com pictures didn’t do justice to what I can see here.
‘No need to be nervous,’ says Raghav. ‘You have paid for this place.’
‘But I haven’t... Aman has,’ I say. ‘I... I can’t believe this is a real place.’
A woman with a flower tucked behind her ear hands us cool, scented towels and something to drink. I see Raghav smiling. He notices me noticing him and wipes it off. Is this the dancewe will do all our trip? Be happy and then be guilty about being happy?
‘This is fancy,’ agrees Raghav, even as he hands over our passports and completes the check-in formalities.
In the room, my awe only deepens. There’s a fruit basket with spiky red and yellow fruits I don’t recognize. Raghav holds up a note that reads, ‘Happy Memories Begin Here’, which feels like a cruel joke.
And there’s a private pool!
I stare at it. Raghav stares at it.
‘This is why he wanted to come here,’ I say.
‘For anyone who has the money, it’s worth it,’ he says.
‘Are you hungry?’
We order room service—Raghav asks for suggestions and orders Indonesian fare—and we sit with our legs dipped in the pool. When the food comes, we eat on the pool beds. The food’s average and yet we wolf it down. The flight must have been taxing, because I don’t remember falling asleep, but I wake to the sound of the balcony door creaking open. It’s dusk. The sky is a bruised purple and orange. In the balcony, Raghav holds a cheap new phone, now active with the old personal number he had abandoned in the raw months after the tragedy. For the past year, his work phone had been his shield, reducing his life to a manageable set of professional contacts, delivery messages from Blinkit, Amazon and the like. He had only reactivated the old SIM for the practical reason of avoiding work calls and roaming fees on the trip.
But then as I watch him, he’s talking to someone. A lot of talking. And then a lot of listening. Is he smiling? He’s plucking flowers as he’s listening to what’s being said from the other side.Is it a girl?Has he started talking to someone? A part of me feels a sharp, unexpected pang. He talks to the person for ten whole minutes and I decide to pretend to be asleep. I walkover slowly after he puts the phone away. When he turns, there are still remnants of a smile on his face. When he catches me staring, he wipes his smile off his face.
‘Are we going to do something today?’ he asks, rather uncharacteristically.
I want to ask him who’s the person on the phone, but I don’t. Before I can say anything, his phone rings again.
‘A video call from an unknown number?’ he says, and cuts the call.
The call comes again, and this time it’s audio. Tejal’s voice streams out. ‘HEY! SWITCH ON VIDEO!’
And Raghav does. Tejal’s face fills the screen, grinning, with Sumrit waving enthusiastically in the background. But it’s the background that catches my eye. It’s our apartment.
‘Surprise!’ Tejal yells. ‘Guess where we are!’
‘How did you—’ Raghav’s interrupted by Sumrit.
‘Bro! We had keys remember! For surprise checks?’ Sumrit says, coming closer to the phone. ‘For emergencies. And this is an emergency. An emergency need for privacy, bro.’
