‘Why?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘What do you mean? Where did he go?’
‘My brother sent him to pick up some people from the airport. He said he asked you.’
‘Yes, and I said no.’
‘Fucker,’ Aakash said. ‘He’s always doing this. Anyway, don’t worry. He’ll be back soon.’
Aakash, having found his bike, was wheeling it out into the street.
‘Come on. Get on,’ he said.
‘Where are we going?’
Aakash stopped wheeling back his bike, swung one leg over the seat, and trying to locate me in the darkness, said quietly, ‘To pick up Megha.’
‘She’s back!’
‘Yes, man. She’s run away.’
‘Fuck. When did you find out?’
‘Just a few hours ago. Can’t you see I’ve been taking so much tension? I couldn’t even greet you properly.’
‘What’ll happen now?’
‘I don’t know, man. We’ll find out.’
We couldn’t continue the conversation because, at that precise moment, a large, moustached man, seeing Aakash on his bike, approached, asking if he could have a ride.
‘Sure,’ Aakash said, ‘let my friend get on, then you get on.’
‘How can three go?’ the man asked, eyeing me morosely.
‘They can.’
I got on and, a moment later, felt the fat man’s stomach pin me in place. The bike sank, then rose and rolled out of the colony gates. Aakash steered it unsteadily, speaking to Megha on his mobile as he drove.
We headed down the dark, keekar-lined road that ran from Aakash’s colony to the main intersection. At the fruit stall the fat man got off. A little further on there was a line of yellow lights gathered under a flyover, and a restaurant with a sign saying ‘Sher-e-Punjab’ in red letters on a white background. Aakash ordered a few bottles of Thums-up, which arrived with straws on metal trays, and we sat down to wait. I made a few attempts at conversation, but Aakash seemed too tense to talk. The only question that aroused his interest, and that had been circulating in my mind from the moment I heard of Megha’s return, was how changed she would be after the lipo.
‘I don’t know,’ Aakash said, with some wonder in his voice. ‘We have to be prepared for any eventuality. She told me on the phone that they gave her lipo in eight places and removed nearly five litres of fat. Five litres!’ he repeated, flaring his eyes. ‘Apparently, she still has her bruises and her skin has become very dry.’
With this, we sank again into a solemn silence, like two children newly aware of the hard realities of adult life. But neither the silence nor this mood lasted long, as a few minutes later Megha’s grey Hyundai pulled up in front of Sher-e-Punjab.
‘Oh my God-d,’ Aakash said, and chuckled with delight at seeing Megha step out of the little car in a pink silken kurta and beige capris. ‘Loddof difference.’
Megha stood timidly in one spot, smiling up at us, her nose ring catching the light from the restaurant. Aakash trotted down the two steps that stood between them and took her in his arms.
‘Come here, and look at my brand-new wife, thin and all,’ Aakash yelled back to me. As I made my way down to them, Aakash was saying, ‘Appu, these lipo people are for real! They’ve pulled off a miracle, no? Sir, whaddyou say?’
I was dumbstruck.
‘Yes, yes,’ I managed. But it was a transparent lie. And Aakash and Megha must have seen it was, because she said angrily, ‘Five litres, they took out, you know!’
Looking at her, you wouldn’t have known it. There wasn’t an ounce of visible difference. The greasy rolls below her neck were intact; her breasts were still vast; and above the hem of her pink kurta, her stomach still sprawled. I was also puzzled by how, if she had run away from home, she was able to pick up her car. These questions, swarming in my mind, were put temporarily to rest by the appearance of the fat man Aakash had given a ride to. He wanted a ride back. Aakash handed him the bike keys and told him to drive it back to the colony. We would go with Megha.
In the little Hyundai, with plastic still covering the seats, Megha, perhaps thinking of the experience of the past few days, looked back at me and sighed. ‘Look what trouble your friend causes me. I think he’s going to cause me a lifetime of troubles only.’
‘This is just the beginning, my darling,’ Aakash replied stylishly, and leaned in to kiss her.
In the car, it emerged that although Megha had run away from the lipo clinic, she had not actually run away from home. She had taken advantage of a journey from the lipo clinic to the house of a suitor to give her uncle in Bombay the slip and escape to Delhi.
‘I went straight to the airport,’ she said. ‘Thanks God, my father hadn’t cancelled my credit card. So I bought a ticket and came back.’
She had even gone home, met her family and picked up her car. Her father was angry at first, but then pleased to see his little girl. He had said to her, ‘The problem is you’re too healthy. We’ve tried our best, but I suggest now that even when you go to the market, you try and look nice. You never know where an offer might come from.’ She also added that among the Aggarwals, there had recently been five or six love marriages. ‘Then there is the age factor and that I have had lipo. The doctor told my parents that I should wait six months before getting married. I’m twenty-six, running twenty-seven. So if I wait three months, twenty-seven will be complete. All this makes me feel that my parents will now be willing to hear my choice.’
Hearing this, Aakash leaned over and kissed her, softly whispering, ‘Appu.’ Then abruptly: ‘What did you tell them before coming here?’
‘Nothing,’ Megha replied jauntily. ‘Just that I was sleeping the night at my friend’s house.’
As we drove into the colony, past the community centre, Megha asked me how the food had been.
‘Very good,’ I replied.
‘You would say that. But it must not have been “very good” because not many are eating.’
‘What are you talking,’ Aakash exploded, ‘we’ve fed some six hundred.’
‘Oh, so you’re counting,’ Megha said, and laughed.
We returned to find that the power was back and the jagran was beginning. Bejewelled women, clutching their saris, rushed towards the tent. Aakash ran upstairs to try on the kurta Megha had designed and stitched for him in the lipo clinic. As the two of us waited downstairs, Megha explained her family’s position. ‘Now, if my father is going to spend two crore on the wedding, then at least the husband should be making fifty lakhs monthly. No?’ Aakash, I knew – though still a huge amount for a trainer – made only sixty thousand a month: a tenth of that amount.
‘I know!’ Megha cried. ‘Now what to do? Every day my mother comes to me and says, “Such and such person has had a son. And her husband went out and came back with a tempo full of stuffs. Refrigerator, microwave, laptop, jewellery, saris – you name it, he bought it.” Imagine how I feel, thinking when I have a son, who will go out and buy a tempo full of stuffs?’ She spoke with such feeling, her eyes beginning to glisten, that it was hard to believe she was talking about electronics and home appliances.
During this sharing of intimacies, I came out with something that had first occurred to me in the car. I had wanted to tell Megha and Aakash then, but had been prevented by some inexplicable feeling of loyalty. But now, fully won over by the cause of their marriage, I told Megha about my accidental meeting with her brother in Lodhi Gardens.
‘That bloody homo,’ she whispered viciously, ‘let him try. Kill me? I’ll make keema out of him and each of his little yellow-fingered friends.’
And though it had seemed a real threat at the time, returning now as an echo from Megha’s lips, it seemed absurd. Of the two, she was without a doubt the more unsinkable. She muttered angrily to herself for a few moments, and then, as if it were too much for her to contain, started yelling, ‘Aakash! Aakash! Listen to what Aatish is telling me my fajjot brother has been saying.’
‘Megha, no, listen,’ I said quickly, ‘don’t tell Aakash.’
‘Why?’
