As the car wound its way up, one hairpin bend after another, my childhood carsickness resurfaced. Jai Singh was speeding in a way I was sure he would not have if Akshar was in the car. Better to be late, Mr Motorist, than the late Mr Motorist read a corny cautionary hoarding at one nasty bend, which I wished Jai Singh would heed.
My stomach and mind were both churning, somewhat harmoniously – anxieties, memories, hopes and the tea I drank at the railway station all jostling against each other till I felt so squeamish that I asked Jai Singh to stop. He braked so hard that I had to rush out of the car as the bile rose in my throat. After vomiting my guts out, I felt better.
There was a burnt, leafless pine tree right next to me – spindly, slimy and reptilian in appearance, which sent a chill down my spine. Had there been a fire here? But Jai Singh said the fire had happened near the station; he hadn’t mentioned one on the hills. Were there fires going unrecorded?
I picked up a pinecone that lay on the side of the road before returning to the car. There was something amazing about pinecones and how perfectly they were constructed, as if on a hilly assembly line run by invisible spirits that lived in all the quiet places. But now that I looked closely, this one was a bit grotesque – half-burnt, threatening to crumble in my hands. I threw it out of the window, repulsed, remembering the twisted, eerie tree it had come from. I fumbled for my inhaler and took a slow, deep breath.
“How much longer?” I asked. The infamous question that all children on long car journeys ask to drive their parents crazy.
“Still a long way,” Jai Singh said with the stoicism of a long-enduring parent, minus the love. “You should try to sleep.”
I wished I had carried Avomine with me. Without medicine I wouldn’t fall asleep, I knew.
It seemed to go on forever, all those relentless twists and turns that made my stomach clench and unclench. But just when I felt I couldn’t bear it any longer, I found we were in front of an imposing iron gate with some sort of family crest monogrammed on it. The driveway stretched out, long and winding, behind the gate and all I could see were huge brooding trees on either side of the road, no sign of a house or mansion.
The guard stepped out of his box beside the gate and saluted. I sat up straight, smiled and nodded, unsure how one acknowledged saluting uniformed guards. The gates opened inwards, driven by some automation which made it rather eerie – the silent opening of unmanned gates. I leaned out of the window eagerly, relieved that the journey was almost over. I could see the top of a stone building and four turrets in the distance now. There seemed to be a solitary woman standing in one of the turrets, like a locked-up princess in a fairytale, but as the car took the next bend I lost sight of her. When I saw the building again it stretched, empty and vast, into the sky. There was a bird soaring above the precincts; maybe it had given the illusion of a lonely figure from this distance.
As Jai Singh turned the last corner and slowed down, a sense of inexplicable gloom made my heart sink. Faced with Akshar’s imposing house, with its vacant eye-like windows and walls that were dull and lustreless like the skin of a terminally ill patient, I felt an iciness in my very bones which had nothing to do with the high altitude. I thought I caught a whiff of a burning smell in the air again. It had happened too many times in the last few hours. It was likely that I was imagining it.
A middle-aged man was coming down the flight of marble stairs that led up to the front door. They stretched wide, held up by fluted columns but with no bannisters.
“Good afternoon, madam,” he said, eyes not meeting mine. He picked up my small purple suitcase and started climbing the stairs to the arched entrance. “Myself Ravinder. Follow me.”
Jai Singh restarted the car and as he drove away to the garages I had seen on my way up, I wondered what I would do if he refused to take me down to the railway station on 25th March. It was a random thought that I shook off as best I could but when I went into the house, my sense of unease only intensified. It was dark inside – with moulded ceilings; dusty, faded thangkas mounted at regular intervals on the walls; the ebony blackness of the floors and the general air of grandeur and neglect.
We went up another flight of stairs. On the landing that branched into two flights of staircases, I met a man with a stethoscope around his neck and a look of strange cunning in his pale eyes, wide-set and moist. He could have been good-looking if it weren’t for those eyes. I wondered if this was Aahana’s doctor husband. He must have come to see Akshar – a professional visit, going by the stethoscope and briefcase in his hand.
“Doctor saab,” Ravinder nodded without stopping and I followed him, throwing glances over my shoulder at “Doctor saab”, who smiled. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.
On the next floor, Ravinder went halfway down yet another dimly lit corridor before turning towards me and throwing open the door in front of him, ushering me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was large and lofty with long, narrow, pointed windows set at such a height from the wooden floors that it would be difficult for anyone but a giant to look out of them. Feeble, protracted gleams of sunlight lit up the room rather haphazardly – most of it, including the vaulted ceiling, remained in darkness. Heavy draperies shrouded most of the furniture except for one sofa with faded floral designs, on which Akshar was lying down. He rose when he saw me and came forward quickly to engulf me in a hug. He smelled clean and fresh, and I clung to that hug like a lifeline.
It took a few moments for me to register how altered his appearance was. His eyes were feverish, his cheeks hollow, the hair that fell long and straight to his shoulders was limp and greasy. There was an air of forced gaiety about him as he greeted me with questions that didn’t really need answers. “Was your journey comfortable, Shalini? You must have felt carsick? Jai Singh was waiting for you, right?”
He stopped to direct Ravinder, who was still standing near the door, to put my suitcase in the room that had been readied for me and to send in tea and snacks for us. We sat down at two ends of the long sofa and for a few minutes, neither of us spoke – we just looked at each other and smiled. I didn’t want Akshar to speak, to tell me anything. His face had always been remarkable. The aquiline, regal nose. His lips thin and pale but surpassingly beautiful in the way they curved upwards in a smile. I could go on.
“Akshar, why are you so pretty?” I asked. It was my favourite rhetorical ice-breaker with him.
“You know the answer, Shalini.” He was laughing.
“Yes, yes,” I sighed. “Someone needs to be pretty enough for the two of us.”
“But you look … wait …” Akshar leaned back and scrunched his face in mock concern. “Shalini, you are glowing. You look quite amazing. What the hell have you been up to?”
“Never mind that. Here we are again. You and me. Tell me what’s going on, Akshar.”
“Always so impatient. All in good time. Can’t you wait, Shalini?” The smile on his face softened his words.
“I can. We have four days. No hurries,” I replied. And I meant it. I wasn’t in a hurry. I wanted to settle down, to enjoy the hills, to push aside the thoughts that jarred and focus on the ones that were calming. And then I would talk to Akshar. A long, long chat to understand what indeed was the matter. Why had he summoned me in this way? It didn’t seem as though he was dying. He couldn’t be dying. He must have just been lonely and sad and going out of his mind, living in this vast mansion all by himself. I didn’t tell him that his ancestral home had filled me with unease. I wanted to listen to him talk, give him unconditional support, as had always been my job where Akshar was concerned. Against all odds, I wanted the next four days to be filled with light and warmth.
Excerpted with permission from The Burnings, Himanjali Sankar, Pan Macmillan India.
