The Scenic Life

Chapter 13

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Our driver, who we returned the car to on the night we arrived in Jaipur, drove us back to our hotel by evening. The sky was a beautiful melange of warm colours with black birds littering across the sky. Few airplanes had left their mark in the white smoke left by their tails, they looked like the pathway by which santa claus would arrive on his sleighs.

Vihaan and I walk through the hallways towards our room. I can feel the tiredness seeping from my legs to my hands.

Vihaan's walk is a bit slow, like he has been running around all day, which, admittedly he has.
He opens the door with the key from his pocket, and we enter the room. We keep our bags in the corner, and I head to the bathroom with a change of clothes in my hands. I look at my reflection in the mirror, pink cheeks, wild hair, and a very sweaty black turtleneck.

I need to take a shower.

After scrubbing every proof of sweat and grime from my skin, I wrap myself in the fluffy robe the hotel has provided and do my skin care routine.

I'm in the middle of applying my 3fold Vitamin C  serum, when I hear Vihaan's signature three rapt knocks on the door,

“Sara, you done?”

“yeah, just a minute.”

He hums his response, I try to rush through my routine, feeling guilty for making him wait. I quickly change into my pair of soft fuzzy pajamas for the night and open the door.
The moment I get out of the room, Vihaan takes his towel, gives me a nod, and heads in the bathroom himself. I make myself comfortable on my bed, and open up my laptop to send everything from my camera safely in the folders.

I'm in the middle of updating dad and viki on what I did today, skipping over the fact that I almost fainted due to dehydration, when Vihaan comes back in the room and plops himself on his bed, leaning his head towards me,

“What do you want to do about dinner?”

I tilt my head over to the side, think for a moment and then give the obvious answer. “Room service?”

He nods his head, then grabs the menu card from he bedside table and asks, “What should we order?”

“Mexican? I want to eat tacos.”

“sure. I haven’t had Mexican in so long,”  he grabs the receiver of the landline and calls the restaurant below to order some tacos, two burritos and some fried rice.

Yum.

We sit on my bed together when the room service arrives, gorging on the tacos and burritos. If Vihaan had sat next to me just a week before, I would’ve kicked his nuts. And that is not an understatement.

Friends is playing in the background when I chew my last bite of taco and ask him,

“Should we play twenty questions or something?”

He looks at over the taco in his hands, an incredulous expression on his face. He considers my proposal for a moment, then nods, “Yeah sure, we don’t have anything better to do anyways.”

I giddily smile, “okay! Ill start. What's your favourite movie? As of now.”

He wonders for a while but then answers, “I just watched The Zodiac last week, I thought it was pretty good.”

I nod, “Yeah it’s a good movie.”

“Its my turn right? Yeah so. Uhh, what's your favourite childhood memory?”

I'm blanked out right now, I cant think of anything. Its not like I don’t have any, I just cant think of one right now. I wonder for a moment,  but then it clicks.

“My 8th birthday,” I murmur.

“My dad taken a day off, and he had taken me to the zoo and the museum of arts. Then mom had joined later in the afternoon after her office. We had gone to the movies, where I saw a 3D movie for the first time. It was amazing. I remember being so entranced by the hands that were reaching out to me, it was almost funny.” I pause for  a moment, looking at him , he urges me to continue, “it was probably the last time everything was so happy and smiles before,…..the fights began.”

I am the face of serenity, but inside my mind is in a panic. I cant believe I told him this, but the way he was looking at me, with no judgement on his face, no pity whatsoever. It made me feel comfortable to spill all of my life's beans to him.

He quirks his eyebrow, “The last time?”

“Yeah, it wasn’t so good after that. I think they stayed together just for my sake.”

“They're not together now?”

I shake my head and take a bite out of my burrito. Vihaan looks like a sad hedgehog, its cute. He nods but doesn’t prod much. I respect him for that.

“what's your favourite memory?”

He smiles, “its actually a funny one. I was 10, and our house had recently gotten painted. I had thought that a plain yellow colour was boring,” I murmur out an of course, fully invested in the story. “so you know what I did?” I shake my head. “I took some black paint and painted stripes. In the living room. On the whole wall.”

I snort out a laugh, shaking my head, “like a tiger?!”

He laughs too and then nods. That makes us both laugh hysterically. I wipe the tears from the corner of my eyes,

“what happened later?”

“I was punished, of course. I had been told to repaint the wall yellow. All by myself. And of course, it ended up great so that wasn’t any problem. But the look on my mom's face when I showed her the wall,” he starts laughing midway, which makes me laugh again.

“oh man, that must've been hilarious.”

“yep.”

There is a comfortable silence around us, both of us eating our rice and tacos. It is my turn to ask the question. I want to ask him about why he hates me or why he hated me. I'm sure that now what exists between us is a stage less than dislike. But then I hesitate, I don’t want to ruin the flow that we've got between us right now. It'd be immature to think that this calm and peace is permanent, its temporary, it’s a fleeing moment. I don’t even know if I'll ever see a smiling vihaan again.

When we finish our dinner, we put all the trays outside the room where the room service will come and take it away.

After switching off the lamps, and the recurring episodes of Friends on the TV, we get under our blankets, cucooned like a burrito that we just ate.

I turn on my side, keeping my phone on the bedside table near me, and murmur a quiet goodnight just like the quiet night we are in. He says it back it with just as much authenticity. And I think to myself, that this is probably the rawest I'm ever seeing him. So I take it in, like a sponge, like a learner at the start of a school day. Like a lover with a last petal left.