M&G: Mr Iyer & Mrs Khurana - CLOSED - Page 47

He shoved the soiled clothes back into his suitcase, when a thumb sucking, gooey eyed 3 year old came zooming into his bedroom, driving an imaginary car with his other free hand.

Maan looked down at him, appearing nothing short of the bean-stalk giant when compared to the boy and wiggled his eyebrows asking what he was doing in his room. The kid took his wet thumb out of his mouth, stared at him for a second longer and tugged on Maan's little finger without another thought.

Before he knew, he was being dragged by the tiny imp, down the stairs, past the courtyard in the center and through the backdoor, over to the palace ruins that lay past their backyard. Once he crossed the back-wall he saw her standing by a rundown pillar in the backdrop of cracked statues and carved limestone balusters.

The wind whooshed past him with an old current that was characteristic of places that still remained anchored to another era. As he took her still form, gazing far off into the horizon while her aanchal billowed in the wet air, the irony of the situation refused to escape his muddled head, that she had called for him. He refused to believe that times had changed and she was indeed waiting for him.

All his efforts invested at every minute of those self-talks that morning tanked just after one look at her. He was beginning to feel inhuman from the amount of lustful desires he harbored. It wasn't his fault, he decided. Not when she looked like one of those nymphs...or rather water goddesses with those long tresses, weaving beneath her waist with a natural wave that came from keeping them plaited for ungodly number of hours. He cussed mentally for the enchantress she was. The numbers had disappeared a long time ago and it had been filled only with her for a while then. Perfectly at home in that place which had endured change, as if she came from that bygone period, he watched her nibble on her nail, appearing to have been caught in a dilemma to bite it off.

He stared down and noticed that the boy had vanished from his side. Turning to find out if they were indeed alone, he spotted the little brat running off at lightening speed as if he would be cursed if he had stayed any minute longer. He came striding towards her, waiting for her to notice his presence in the vicinity. When his sandals crushed a pound of gravel underneath his foot, the sound distracted her from her line of thought and she swiveled around, his gaze falling first on the lips from where her finger slid down.

"Oh! you are here..." She said, coming close, her gaze careful to not meet his.

He looked away, seemingly still angry with her since the temple incident "Yes...ready to be the butt of your second round of jokes"

"Common..." She sniveled and drawled unsure not knowing how to address him anymore "I had no part to play in that"

True, she hadn't been the one to start the mockery of his name. Apparently their temple pandit had had been amusingly shocked when he'd heard she'd married someone by the name Maan...which in her language either referred to a tree branch or a deer which by no remote means gave an allusion of anything male. Her relatives, who until that instant hadn't thought of what his name had meant, had started laughing as if the pandit had told them the joke of the year and it wasn't long until her cartoon troupe of cousins had started all sorts of buffoonery from imitating a tree stance to a running deer at random times. It wasn't by any means coming close to his brash act of throwing her in the pond, but by his standards, it will plenty enough to rile him up.

"I know you are mad..." She said taking his hand and leading him inside of what seemed like a palace entrance that must have once been decorated with all things regal.

His eyes flew to where she was holding him when she added "But its no good reason to miss out on the experience of a personal tour of our ancestral palace..."

It took him a few seconds to grasp what she'd just told him, albeit he switched to full-on traveller mode, once he shifted his attention to the ruined insides of the room. That is also when the full depth of her words hit him like a flood wave and he stopped short in his tracks.

"What did you mean by ancestral...palace? Don't tell me you are some kind of royalty?"

She let go of his hand then and held her stomach like she was containing the laughter that was rising to her lips. "No...No..." She laughed heartily "I wish though...at least I would have a little more property to my name. It just came into the family a few generations ago" She let go of his hand and took a few steps forward.

"This is the home of the royal pandit...Manicheri Nambudaiyar...More a tantrik than a pandit is what I hear" She said looking around warily as she stepped close to his body and grabbed his arm again. It had been an instinctive move on her part and both glanced at where her hands gripped him and at once looked back at each other. Her palms went clammy just as the warmth of his gaze began to fill her insides. She instantly removed the hold on him as she simultaneously scolded herself for having attempted to look him in the eye. Perhaps it wouldn't haven been anything of a problem had it not been turning her head into a mush. She felt she did things beyond her will when she was directly looking at him like that...

Thank God for the awkwardness that still lingered in the air between them. For the ease she felt with him was inexplicable in so many ways, that it had ironically begun to make her nervous. It was the way uncanny familiarity she concluded and perhaps even that longing she sometimes caught in his eyes. Had it not been for the endless pranks he pulled on her, she wasn't entirely sure they were only a old a day couple.

Closing her eyes momentarily to collect her bearings, she walked ahead of him and went on with the guided tour.

"They say that this place is haunted...Apparently he fell in love with this dancer from Ananthapur called Chandramukhi..."

She'd take care to modulate her voice as she'd uttered the dancer's name and the shrill sound echoed in the walls with a sudden eeriness. He swore he'd heard what sounded like jangles of payals accompanying her utterance. But then again, he'd been certain they had been alone all the while, making him dismiss the imaginary sounds his mind had picked up.

He watched her cross the courtyard and halt directly in front of an age-old portrait that revealed a timeless beauty through a million cobwebs. He followed her and stopped right next to her as she cleared the spider webs with her bare hands.

"Don't you think, she looks beautiful?" She asked, for which he didn't respond and instead gazed at her, rather intently.

"Maan...I'm asking about the picture" She nudged him towards the portrait, rolling her eyes.

He smiled for the first time since their temple visit and turned back to study the picture. "She looks sad" He said trying to involve himself into what seemed to have taken her by awe.

"Why wouldn't she be?...She was locked up by that tantrik against her wishes. The story goes on to tell that she had a lover, who was also brought here and employed as her caretaker. The tantrik was obviously a sadist in many ways...Patti told me, he would give Chandramukhi and her lover the idea that they were alone and make an appearance just when they were about to get intimate..." Her gaze lowered to the ground and her cheeks burned a bright red.

"Really now? Your patti told you that..." He asked raising a disbelieving brow at her.

"That and the fact that he killed him right in front of her eyes at one such times" She said, ignoring what he was hinting at.

"They say he burnt her alive after that and that she stayed back in spirit form, haunting this place to have her revenge" She moved in the direction of a closed room and pointed at a huge lock around the door handle that was unlocked.

"No one dares to go in here...it is told this is where her spirit was locked after one mandalam...I mean 42 consecutive days of poojas"

He didn't care for any of those details. But he couldn't bring himself from getting involved when she spoke with a deep attachment to an old wives tale. He assumed she was more intrigued by the story from being a dancer herself. Nevertheless, he was almost certain then that it wasn't all impromptu that she chose to meet him there.

She remained absorbed in the picture and unable to curb his curiosity he interrupted the attentiveness she was giving the picture "So how does all this play into us?...Don't expect me to fall for white sheets and some powder smeared faces that's lit with a torch from underneath" He raised a brow at her and gave her a patronizing glance.

What surprised him even more was how she responded. Looking solemn, nearly with a placid look, she answered "I know you think it's a ghost story...but it has been a part of my life ever since my childhood. I guess it was just me then, who thought that it would mean something to you"

His jaw dropped upon hearing her words and he couldn't stop blinking after that. Well, where did that come from? She had gone straight from a fellow prankster to a thorough sentimentalist and it shook his understanding of the unspoken covenant of 'keeping it light between them'.

She moved ahead of him with a long face that she could have passed for any popular soap's leading lady. Had he not slapped the palm of his hand to cover his eyes and twisted around to mutter profanities over being inconsiderate about her feelings, he would have seen the slight shake of her body as a result of a wayward giggle escaping her lips.

In the beginning she couldn't tell if he'd bought her act, but when he appeared serious moments later, she was mentally shrieking with joy. Sticking out her tongue at him first, while he faced the picture, she then addressed him. "Maan...we should be going now. It's time for lunch and Susheela athai will be mad" She nodded once again with a sorry face and slowly paced herself back to the entrance.

If he had expected time worn antics of animal cries, followed by light effects and a lady in white sari walking by his window, he had got it all wrong about her. His wife was nothing, if not a trained theater artist. Drama was indeed her middle name and Lord! did her body shiver in anticipation of trying to pull a Chandramukhi on him.

She looked up to the skies and winked at her favorite gods on her way out for allowing her final payback for the geek look he'd donned on the night before their wedding...thanking them in every language she knew that her husband didn't watch south Indian movies like she did...for that night would be the night that marked the return of Chandramukhi, just the way she'd planned.