Chapter 3: Veena, Anand and Kartik
Kartik had reached the restobar at 10:15 and was squatting on a table — clean shaven and sporting a perfect left partition on his head. He looked at the giant clock hanging above the bar. The owner had managed to get one of those old round station clocks (through a family friend) when the railways were replacing all the station ones with boxy LED displays. He had asked the restaurant designer to begin his work with the clock at the centre of it all. So now the clock had a large metal plate around it, which had the logo cut into it — six monkeys with gun-bananas in their hands holding onto the circumference of the clock.
Kartik sat with his bum perfectly still. Chairs covered in fake leather had a habit of farting even when you didn’t. He was trying to not stop fidgeting with his phone. This was after he got tired of playing with his sapphire ring. Because if he stopped fidgeting with the phone, he would unlock it to see what time it was and then he would end up checking the social media apps and then he might click Like on the facebook status update.
If Anand wasn’t there by 10:45, then Kartik would take that as a sign and like Anjali’s status⁵. The first salvo in a communication war that would spiral upwards to a kiss that would eclipse the sun for somebody else who had piled on the same sunset as them. Because that was how he understood causality post religion. Being a Jain Gujju, when he quit going to the temple years ago, doing it cold turkey didn’t give him the space to adjust to being a regular atheist.
That and once while third-wheeling Seher and Anuj’s movie night, back when they were dating, he had seen the first half of (500) Days of Summer. At which point he realised he needed to leave. He understood what the narrator meant when Tom Hansen, a young professional looking for love, had misinterpreted sad 80s British pop (dismissed by some critics for being “miserabilists”). In his story, he was Tom Hansen and he had correctly interpreted every Bollywood love song: “If you truly long for something, you will get it.”
Kartik’s efforts to keep himself distracted were interrupted by the waiter.
“Would you like to order something sir?”
“You must be new. Where’s Ahmed? And six brunches on this table. I’ll take a Corona and grilled prawns with lemon butter garlic sauce.” Kartik broke into a gleeful smile as he said prawns⁶.
Veena walked in first, a couple of minutes after 10:40. She wore a short spaghetti dress with two thin stripes (peach and yellow) across the front. Her left hand fixed her hoop earring as she checked with the maître d’. The maître d’ pointed her in Kartik’s direction, who was already waving at Veena. (His phone sat face-up on the table.)
Anand pulled up to Veena’s left as they walked towards the table. He tapped her right shoulder. Veena bent her left elbow just about enough to nudge his ribs. That was how they had started flirting, the old misdirection gag. The first few times he did that, Veena looked right to see who it was and then be startled by feeling Anand breathe on her left. Soon enough Veena stopped falling for it and by the time they officially started seeing each other, she was elbowing his ribs (hard) in response.
– “He must’ve liked that status.” Anand pulled the heavy chair by its upper edge to sit on it.
– “You liked that status, didn’t you?” Veena dropped her bag on Kartik’s lap and dropped herself into the chair without pulling it back.
Kartik continued to beam silently. He had stared at the Facebook post all night before he had called Anand in the morning to ask him if he should like it or not. (Anand had said, “It does not matter.”) Anand had been his best friend since college.
– “It doesn’t matter, Kartik. It is just a Facebook like. It doesn’t mean that you will also get a carpet and a genie and a klepto monkey.” Anand rolled his cyan linen sleeve up, pushed his sunglasses over his head and popped an entire prawn into his mouth. One could hear the tail crunch between his molars.
– “Make it seven brunches today.” Veena said to the waiter.
Kartik looked at Veena in disbelief. The gang was six people and the order had always been six people for brunch. The brunch was the only activity that nobody from outside the gang was invited to. And every time, the universe showed signs of someone new, someone a majority of the group had never met, that majority in their own personal ways, would scream, “ICEBERG⁷!” Some of the gang members communicate that scream subtly or by making jokes about it. Kartik stared furiously. His eyebrows refused to set and the crustacean impaled by his fork stayed there.
– “There has been a slight complication in tomorrow’s plans.” Veena smiled as she looked at her phone, swiping the screen a few times and then using it as a mirror to run fingers through the back of her hair. “But if Niyati is to be trusted, then all is under control.”
– “Where are our margaritas?” Anand wasn’t really worried about the New Year’s Eve plans. As long as Veena was on board, he was fine.
— “Here they are!” Ahmed, the bartender, walked in with two glasses. Anand got up and hugged him. Kartik fistbumped Ahmed and Ahmed fistbumped Veena.
— “How are the kid and the wife?”
— “All well! But yaar, tell me something.” Ahmed parked his butt on the armrest of Anand’s chair. “Have the number of exams increased in schools or what?”
— “Why? What happened?”
— “Arre! Fauzia is either busy with Ali’s exams or the tuition kids’ exams…” Ahmed launched into a set of jokes about exams and the Indian education system. He was going to try his luck at the restobar’s open-mic night.
Ahmed was the one who had told them the story of the clock and how the owner’s brother had designed the restaurant logo. Ahmed loved the gang. The gang had an unhealthy and exhibitionist love for shots. Ahmed loved experimenting with shots and was always looking for guinea pigs.
⁵ Anjali was Kartik’s unrequited crush from college. Someone he had been following closely on Facebook. Inside his head, he was forever stuck in the six months, the semester they had been lab partners, when he could’ve told Anjali he liked her. This morning at 2:34am, her latest Facebook status had said, “In Bombay!” After six years of being in the US. There had been 41 comments and 83 likes on that status update, and Kartik had counted and read every single one of them.
⁶ Kartik had been a Jain Gujju for the first 20 years of his life. That meant he couldn’t have imagined a diet that included onions or garlic or even potatoes. His first non-vegetarian meal was shreds of chicken in fried rice. His best friend Anand did not see that as non-vegetarianism. According to Anand, Kartik’s non-vegetarian birthday was when he ate an entire tandoori chicken, all by himself, without thinking of (garlic-free) ketchup. Of course, it had been the munchies.
⁷ In Actorography, iceberg represents the moment in the movie Titanic, when the sailors on the crow’s nest spot the iceberg right after being distracted by the giggly and post-coital DiCaprio and Winslet. So when a status quo of merry people floating across the ocean of life meets an iceberg — something or someone that might change this delicate dynamic — their faces show a degree (proportional to the size of the iceberg) of the expression made by the faces of those sailors on the crow’s nest. What’s Actorography, you ask? Just keep paying attention to the footnotes.
