Who is she,part 17

“Sit down, Mr. Suri, why are you so angry?”

“I have not come here to sit down. I want to meet Lalit.”

I did not want my poor mother to face all this. I stormed into the room, quite furious.

“I am here Mr. Suri. How dare you shout at my mother like this, you better learn to speak politely, I am sure you know your manners”.

“Manners be damned, Lalit. Where are the letters which my daughter has been writing to you? You hand them over to me right away or I will have to go the police.’

“You can call anyone you please but at the moment will you be good enough to leave my house. You are trespassing, I can have you arrested “. He gave me a hard look, he must have seen the smoldering fire in my eyes because he immediately stepped back, went out and flung a Parthian shot at me.

“My daughter is getting married soon, if you try to create any problems, you know what to expect”.

The door closed behind him. I looked at my mother, she was in a state of shock, and her face had turned pale. My mother was a chronic heart patient, had been one since the age of fifteen and had already undergone two major heart surgeries. The doctors had strictly advised us to keep her away from all kinds of stress, it could be fatal.

“Don’t worry mummy, he is only bluffing. There is nothing he can do. I have not done anything wrong or illegal so why be scared?”.
“Bittu you don’t know this Suri, he is a dictator in the office as well as in the family. On top of it all, he has a devastating temper and they say he can be very vindictive”. I had heard these stories about Anita’s father and Anita herself had told me how he was a terror for the family.

“Why should we bother about him, you just relax. Should I bring a glass of lemon juice for you?” My mother had been told to have lots of fresh lime juice; she would have one glass after almost every hour. I hardly ever made anything for her. My brother was the one who used to take care of all these things. He was not at home at that time so I went into the kitchen and brought her a glass of juice with lots of ice.

“Bittu, please give me a Valium, I feel a little restless and it will give me some relief.” I took out a tablet from the medicine cabinet and gave it to her.

“Mummy, you lie down for sometime, a little sleep will do you good”.

“Bittu, I am worried”.

“Why, Mummy? Why are you worried? I assure you Mr. Suri’s threats don’t mean anything”.

“I am not concerned about his threats, I am concerned about you. What if Anita gets married to someone else? What will happen to you? Will you be able to bear the shock? I am your mother, Bittu, I know how much you love her!”

“Mummy, don’t you know how much Anita also loves me? Do you seriously think that she will agree to marry someone else?”

“You never know, Bittu, you never know” .The door opened and Ravi entered. It did not take him long to realize that something was wrong.

“What is wrong? Is mummy alright? Why is she looking so pale?”

“Everything is fine Ravi, nothing to worry about”. I did not want to tell him about Mr. Suri’s visit, I knew what his reaction would be. But my mother could not help herself; after all he was her darling son. She rattled off everything that had happened and expressed her worries about me.

“Right from day one I had told you that you were pampering this Prince of Wales and encouraging him to do whatever he wanted to. Didn’t I warn you mummy, not to encourage Anita’s coming to this house? Didn’t I tell you Bittu would bring trouble for all of us? But you didn’t listen to me, you did what no other mother would have ever done, you allowed Anita into this house, she could come and go as and when she pleased. This house became a meeting place for these two lovebirds. If they had to meet they could have met somewhere outside. Why here? You didn’t have the courage to tell him anything because you were afraid of his famous tantrums. Now reap the harvest you have sown” .Ravi was furious and I could also detect traces of jealousy which he had always harboured against me.

“Ravi, I did what I thought was right and you better not say a single word more”.

Ravi flashed an angry look at me and left the room.

In the evening, my father came back from the office and Ravi was the first one to spill the beans. Papa was angry but his anger was directed at Mr. Suri.

“How dare that son of a b…h come to my place in my absence?” It was left to my mother to calm him down in her own special way.

The visit of Anita’s father had disturbed me no end. I had acted normally in front of my mother for the sake of her health but deep within me a storm was brewing. How had Anita’s father come to know about us and that too in Chandigarh?  Anita and I had been seeing each other for almost four years. All our meetings took place in Amritsar and most of them at home. It was very rarely that we went out. We must have seen a few movies but never by ourselves. Prakash, Urmila and Urvashi had always been with us. If anybody had happened to see us in any of our outings, he would not have had even a remote suspicion of anything going on between Anita and me. All these years in Amritsar, her parents had not known anything and now, just within a month of her going to Chandigarh, they had discovered our secret. Who could have told them? Who was the villain? Who was the one who wanted to keep Anita away from me?

My mind went back into the past and recalled how both Prakash and Jayesh had tried their best to dissuade me from coming close to Anita. I had stopped suspecting Jayesh after it was proved that he had been telling the truth about what Anita had asked her to tell me. Jayesh soon went out of the picture as his father was transferred to Kolkatta and since then we had not been in touch. That left Prakash. He continued to be close to me. He had apologized to me for whatever he had said against Anita, explaining that those were just rumours which he had heard from some of his friends. I accepted his explanation and bore no ill will towards him. He and Swarn were the only ones who knew about my relationship with Anita.

Hey, wait a minute, there were two others, how did they slip my mind? There was Urmila, Anita’s vivacious sister and Urvashi, Prakash’s niece. Now that I looked back, I recalled Urmila’s behavior whenever I was with Anita. Normally, a reticent girl, she would become very garrulous in our presence. While watching movies, she would go on prattling ceaselessly which was highly unlike her. At times I had noticed her looking at her sister with hatred. Why?

Then there was Urvashi, the girl who had wanted to marry me when she was only nine years old. She was almost fourteen now but her feelings towards me remained the same. Whenever she met me, she would make it a point to say” Remember, Lalit, no matter what happens, I am going to be your wife one day”. I would take these remarks of hers in jest as I had always done but now she was also under the radar of my suspicion. She may have been only fourteen but she was too mature for her years. I was sure that one of these three had been responsible for Mr. Suri’s visit to Amritsar. Now the question was which one of them?

It was not for me to play the role of a Sherlock Holmes or a Hercule Poirot, and I did not have any time for that. Time would provide an answer to my question. Who was or was not responsible did not seem to be important to me, at least at that moment. The most important thing to do was to contact Anita and find out what was really happening at her place. Were her parents preparing to marry her off? What was going on in Anita’s mind? I needed to know and needed to know immediately. I must leave for Chandigarh and leave I did. My parents did not stop me, Ravi even offered to accompany me but I said it would be better for him to stay with mummy. I knew in my absence mummy would remain very tense and Ravi would help ease her tension.

I left for Chandigarh early next morning. I took the 5 o’clock bus reaching Chandigarh at 11. The bus stand was in sector 17 and the university in sector 14. The only way to meet Anita was to go to her department. I took an auto rickshaw and within 15 minutes it dropped me outside the university gates. This was my first visit to the well known campus and as I entered it, I could see that it was really very beautiful. It was green all around, green lawns; green trees only the buildings were red or rather brown, reddish brown. I had not come here to admire the University campus and all this I took at one glance. I asked someone about the way to the English department and he pointed it out to me, it was just a couple of blocks away from where I was standing.

 I walked towards the block which housed the department I was looking for. I had no idea how to go about looking for her. I did not even have any idea about her class timings. I hoped she would be moving around outside and I would run into her. But no such thing happened. Lots of boys and girls were loitering around, some were standing, some sitting. There was a canteen on the lawns and many students were sitting there sipping cups of tea and chatting away to glory. I looked carefully at each and every girl I could lay my eyes on but the girl I was looking for was nowhere to be seen. She must be in her class, I thought. Whom should I ask? I was tense and I was nervous. I saw a girl standing by herself and walked up to her.

“Excuse me; are you from the English Department?”

“Yes, I am. What do you want?’ She sounded a little annoyed.

“I am looking for a friend of mine, Anita Suri, I wonder if you could tell me where to find her?”

“Oh, Anita, that girl from Amritsar? I didn’t see her today, not so far at least. This is her class time and that is her class room. The class will be over in another 10 minutes and if she is here, you will meet her” She sounded very comforting.

 I headed towards the room which that girl had pointed out and stopped at some distance from the door. I stood at a place from where it would be possible for me to see everyone coming out of the class room. I waited patiently for the class to get over but it seemed to be taking a long time. In the state I was in, every minute seemed like eternity. Finally I heard the clanging of the bell and soon after an elderly man walked out of the room, with a book in hand and it was not difficult to make out that he must have been the teacher or should I say the lecturer. Students started following him. I had no eyes for the boys; I was only focusing on the girls. Every time a girl would walk out, my heart would skip a beat. Soon, there was nobody coming out. I mustered enough courage, went up to the class room and looked inside. It was empty. I looked at every nook and corner but they were also deserted. Maybe, Anita had gone out and I had missed her. I went towards a couple of girls whom I had seen coming out and asked them about Anita.

“She has not come today, as a matter of fact she has not been coming for the last three or four days”.

I felt a sinking feeling inside me. What could be the reason for her not coming to the university? :’’ She is getting married soon…” her father’s words rang in my ears. Could that be the reason for her not coming for her classes? Had her father imposed restrictions on her? He was capable of doing all that and much more. What to do now? It was imperative for me to meet her, come what may. But how? I had the telephone number of her house, we had talked over the phone a few times and that seemed to be my only hope now. How I wished we had cell phones those days! I knew that The U.S.A and most of the developed countries had started using cell phones but in India we were still to get them. It was August 1989, a year more important to me in more ways than one. At the moment the only important thing was to get in touch with Anita. I asked somebody the way to the market and as soon as he gave me the directions I almost ran as if my life depended upon reaching the market.

The moment I was in the market, I looked frantically around for a telephone booth. There had to be one. Every market had. I looked at each and every shop but could not see any sign of a telephone booth. Finally, I entered a shop and asked the shopkeeper if I could make a phone call.

“This is not a telephone booth; we don’t allow anyone to use our phone. Go to a telephone booth” he was terribly rude but then how could he know what condition I was in?

“Can you tell me where the telephone booth is?”His brusque tone made me gnash my teeth, which my family knew had been an irritating habit of mine since my childhood-and still was.’’ You will get dental corrosion’’,  Swarn  or Dr. Swarn would often quip, much to my amused ire.

“How should I know? Go and look for yourself”

It was the market within the university campus and there were not many shops out there. I needed to go to a bigger market.

“There is a telephone booth just around that corner” It was a young man, probably a university student who must have heard me talking to the shopkeeper. He was pointing towards one end of the market. Without even thanking him properly I ran as fast as I could and reached the end. The telephone booth was located to the right and it was not visible from the main road. Thankfully, the booth was empty except for the person who was manning it.

“May I make a phone call?” I tried to sound as normal as I could but the man gave me a strange look suggesting that there must have been something abnormal about the way I uttered these words. He merely nodded his head and pointed a finger towards the telephone instrument. I grabbed the receiver like a mother holding on to her long lost child. I was trembling, my hands were shaking but somehow I succeeded in dialing the correct number at the third attempt. The phone at the other end started ringing, each ring sounded like a thunderclap to me. Finally someone picked up the phone. I did not say a word. I wanted to find out who was at the other end.

“Hello” It was a female voice but it was not Anita’s mother. It was not Anita either. It sounded very much like Urmila.

“Hello, may I talk to Anita?”

“ Lalit, is that you?”

“Yes it is me, please call Anita quickly”.

“Sorry, she has gone out, why do you sound so panicky?”

“Urmila, I am in Chandigarh, I have come all the way from Amritsar to meet Anita. Your father had come to our place and he said your sister was getting married soon. I want to know what is going on.”

“Lalit, I cannot help you in meeting Anita as she is not in town. She has gone to Delhi”.

“Why? When?” I had become desperate now or rather more desperate.

“I can’t give you all the answers over the phone. Is it possible for you to reach Sector 17 in 15 minutes? I will meet you there, outside Neelam cinema” With these words she hung up and I was left holding on to the lifeless receiver and lots of disturbing questions.