“It’s 8.30. Where out?”
“Ok, Daddy, I’ll text you the address and my friends’ numbers,” she mocked. Then waved and turned to go. He caught her elbow. She stumbled, and he tightened his hold.
“What?” She pushed her hair back from her face, this time only with one hand. The strands struck across her cheeks again.
“Where?”
“Maikhana.”
He frowned.
“Pub, pub,” she pronounced. “I have Indianised my vocab after all these years but you are raised here. Still don’t know what maikhana is?”
“I know what maikhana is. Why are you going there?”
“KDP drove me to drinking.”
That reminder brought all his rage raging back.
“Some of the Media Team is meeting there to celebrate.” Her voice broke through the haze that was beginning to cloud his mind. Samar left her elbow. “I can drop you on the way.”
“That works, actually. It’s on your way.”
They crossed the road and got into his Innova. The party Innova, because all the cars in their fleet now were registered under the KDP name.
“It’s clean,” she commented as he turned the wheel and merged into the swiftly flowing traffic.
“My old car wasn’t clean?”
“You never knew what you’d find in there.”
He frowned, concentrating on navigating the tight spaces between mopeds and hatchbacks that drove like the road belonged to their fathers.
“Glock or blood or whatever,” she muttered. And his mouth curled up, just as they cleared the jam and zoomed out onto a relatively empty stretch. It ran parallel to Dal, and the streetlights and glints from the lake made it smoother.
“I once borrowed your Indica to pick up my parents,” Amaal went on. “And I spent the entire drive to and fro worried that they would find something antisocial inside. Even after I had checked it multiple times. I don’t know if you remember…”
“I remember.”
Her face pushed closer to the windshield — “How do you know where I am going?”
“There is only one pub in Srinagar open on all days.”
She sat back.
“Do you have a pepper spray?” He asked.
“Do you have a pain relief spray?”
He cut his eyes to her, staring. Silent.
She stared back. Unaffected.
Samar’s jaw clicked. “I am serious.”
“When are you not?”
“If you don’t have it, I am not stopping at the pub.”
