His face turned towards her, eyebrows raised.
“The younger folks always say life has felt long. But the older ones… who have seen probably double, triple the problems of the younger ones… they always say life has felt short. Just goes to show that the more you age, the more you understand that even the long days, long weeks, the most difficult of months — are just blips on the map. And that at the tail end, you only remember the short days, the best days, the ones that passed too quickly to hold on.”
“How long has life been for you, Doctor?”
“39 years,” she answered reflexively.
“How long has it felt?”
Ritu blinked at him, stunned. Nobody had ever asked her that. In that moment, she realised that she had asked everybody, and nobody had asked her. And she had never minded it. Until… now.
“Hmm?” His head cocked to one side, not playing a game of tug-of-war but genuinely curious. She glanced down at her feet, sand between her toes, nails painted peach and now looking a horror-stricken brown, water washing over them to take it all away before more silt pushed in. Maybe an age would come for her, too, when the bad would begin to look good in hindsight, when the long would feel short. Or maybe it was already here. The dreaded 40. She was getting old.
“Pot unable to answer the kettle?”
She burst out laughing. The wind whipped her hair half out of her ponytail, and the locks were flying across her face. She laughed, whipping her face against the wind to dislodge her hair. She began to raise her hand to tuck them when she realised it was still in his. He immediately let go.
Ritu glanced up at Nilay. He was staring at her again, like he didn’t have any plans to look away.
“There’s another PVR in Juhu running night shows for you to stare.”
His mouth pulled up on one side. “Is my doctor propositioning me for a date?”
She smirked back — “Not my type of movies running.”
His head cocked to the side. “What are your type of movies?”
“The ones that are not watched with you.”
His eyes darkened.
“Oh, take that middle-school humour away!” She scoffed, looking away at the dark sky kissing the horizon. Something was happening to her stomach. She was a 39-year-old woman, had seen life, closely, too closely, understood biology — even more closely. And yet her stomach was hellbent on riding a merry-go-round. Dopamine. Serotonin. Adrenaline. She knew the hormones, knew where they were squirting and making her feel all this. But why with only a few words? And a look? And why from him out of all people?
“If not your type of movies,” he broke the roaring silence. “Then your kind of food. It’s seven-thirty. Are you hungry?”
Ritu looked between them — “We don’t seem dressed for your kind of places.”
“What are my kind of places?”
“Five stars.”
“You are a world-class doctor, don’t tell me you don’t dine at such places too.”
“I do, but they are not places I would go to if I had to go for myself.”
“Then where would you go?”
She shook her head. “Let’s head home. I have to eat dinner with Maya and family.”
“Mmm…” he stepped back from her, walking backwards towards the beach. “Maybe I can afford a guess.”
“What guess?”
“If you are so opposed to ‘my’ kind of places as you put it, maybe I know what you like.”
“What do I like?”
“I show, I don’t tell.”
