Under The Mango Trees

Chapter Thirty : In Between Villains And Heroes

I hadn't texted Raul before, my finger always hovered above his number like a soothsayer with a pendulum, trying to prophesize how he would react to my message. Would he come marching to my home and reveal who I was? I knew that Lila's mother wouldn't do that if I didn't pester her for information about Lila and left her alone. Firstly, because her beloved daughter was involved with me and if she dragged me down, I would pull them with me. Secondly, because of our past, she had genuinely liked me before finding out who I was. Thirdly and most importantly, because it was India and people didn't talk about people like me, at least not out in the open.

Whispers would buzz around like mosquitoes and slowly bleed me, but nobody would dare to utter out loud for things that were feared were hushed. As if ignoring it would make it go away on its own. That just made me determined to stay back, make those whispers my own and turn them into screams till fearful people would go deaf with my courage.

My first target was confronting Raul, the archetypal villain of the distance that now separated Lila and me. It didn't take Einstein IQ to figure out who would have played the role of a dirty spy. He was family friends with Lila, they grew up together and I vividly remembered those lemon drop, acidic tears. He would have been scheming all the way home, he definitely would have! Those sharp, eagle eyes were scrutinizing every movement of ours, waiting for one revelation to bring his claws down upon and wrench us apart.

I didn't realize that I was incessantly tapping my feet against the floor of the rickshaw till the driver glanced at me for a fleeting moment. I caught the reflection of my anxious eyes in the rearview mirror. Yet I couldn't stop getting worked up. How could I? I tightened my grip on the black pole next to the meter of the rickshaw, conjuring all the possible scenarios that I would have to deal with. If he decided to parade around the entire country beating the drums about Lila and me, I didn't care. Evanescent memory would soon eradicate itself like an auto time bomb in people's minds and they would get on with the daily trivialities of their lives. After all, we were interested in other people's lives only when we needed to feel better about ourselves. Gossip was self-indulgence at its finest.

If Raul decided to barge into my house and tattle about Lila and me to my parents, I didn't care. I would find a million ways to slander him in return and protect us. Besides, hardly any parent would want to believe something like that about their child, so it wouldn't be difficult to lie to them, aligning with their beliefs and kick Raul out. Suddenly, I wanted him to confront my parents for the sheer pleasure of kicking him out.

All my surroundings had blurred into one, angry mass, so I was surprised when the rickshaw lurched forward on the speedbump and I was pushed out of my fantasies for retaliation. The massive black gates of the society where he lived opened at my arrival and in the thirty rupees rickshaw ride, I passed by the countless Mercedes and BMW's stationed outside the rows of bungalows. I was in the heart of Western Mumbai, yet it didn't feel like this city at all. The rich were quietly hidden from the sweating hustle and bustle of overcrowded streets and apartments where a family of six or eight would share a one-room kitchen.

There were chawls with running gutters right behind this society, but the walls were built so high that nobody could see, only occasionally get a whiff of a piece of thin meat marinated in spices being cooked in one of those dilapidating houses. I wondered if those people on the other side could hear the English speaking children splash water and squeal in their private swimming pools while they quarrelled in lines as to who would get water first from the public water pump. What frustrated me more was that despite haboring this resentment against these upper-class people, I was fascinated by this world they lived in. This was Lila's world too, so closed off from the rest and tucked away in safety and repose. 

When the rickshaw halted outside Raul's bungalow, I fished out the money and stood in front of the two-storey, white structure with plants and creepers hanging from the terrace. I was never invited to his house (neither did I wish to visit it), but once Lila had dragged me here after school. I kept telling her that my mother would kill me if I didn't inform her where I was while she was insistent on playfully shoving me in the pool in my uniform, thinking it would be funny as hell for me to go dripping back home. I had escaped her mischief and lurked uneasily in the backyard as Lila and Raul dipped their feet in the pool, allowing Raul to flirt with her to his heart's content. I felt like deftly catching every drop of water in my fists which he sprinkled at her and punch him squarely with those same fists on his face designed to be hit.