Please tell me you know about the palash trees in Rockford Garden?: Jamshed’s first message read when it arrived in Anna’s inbox on Hinge, three hours after she’d hit like on a picture on his profile. The picture: Jamshed’s face squished against the cheek of an open-mouthed milky-white puppy who looked like it was seconds away from the biggest sneeze of its life.
Her location on the dating app said Rockford Town, 300m away from the garden; he was at Denton Road, 3km away.
Jamshed looked a lot like a boy she had once been in love with. A senior who all the school’s girls had a crush on. Tall, limber, fair. The nose was similar too. A toucan’s beak with a bump at the top. Jamshed’s is better looking, she admitted to herself. His Hinge profile had a picture of him looking to his left, which made the nose look even more toucan-like. It made her thoughts drift to a day in the future when she could run a finger over his nose. From the bump at the top to the tip. Slowly. So very slowly.
She’d responded to his message saying: What about the trees? That they have a secret meeting every Thursday night? Ya I know. Tell me something new.
His second message arrived an hour later: I’m impressed. Do you know about the party that happens after that meeting?
Anna: No, I don’t! Tell me tell me.
Jamshed: The after party reveals itself only to a few people. It’s a very exclusive list. To enter, one has to tag along as a plus one.
Anna: Let me guess. You’re on the list.
Jamshed: *shrugs*
Anna: Are you asking me out?
Jamshed: *shrugs*
Anna: Slow down, champ.
Jamshed: Fine. Fineeee. I was kidding.
Slowing down meant talking for four hours on average for the next five days. There were no questions resembling small talk. No ‘tell me your favourite colour?’, no ‘what are you currently watching on Netflix?’, no ‘what’s your favourite book?’ or ‘what’s your favourite movie?’. Instead, Jamshed told Anna about Dot, his seven-month-old cat, who liked chewing on his toes around three every morning. Anna told him about the ash-coloured, elderly lizard she felt attached to, the one who lived by the door to her washroom. It disappeared for a few hours every afternoon. ‘His name is Praveen and he’s out having some farewell afternoon romps,’ Jamshed had responded. He made her laugh. Easily. He told her how he only wore white pyjamas to bed. ‘The cotton kind that aren’t too soft to touch.’ He also enjoyed the occasional skincare splurge. ‘Somebody once told me that my skin’s a little too nice for a guy. Not sure if that’s embarrassing or flattering,’ he said after asking her if she preferred Neutrogena cleansers to Cetaphil’s. ‘Ya, your skin looks perfect! Drop your routine deets please, thanks very much,’ she texted back.
Jamshed: Slow down, champ :)
*
‘Umm so … weird realisation has happened,’ Anna texted Jamshed on day five of talking, a Wednesday.
Jamshed: Go on, go on.
Anna: Okay, so this may come across as a bit much but I feel like I have to tell you. So, I’m going to cross my fingers and go ahead and just do it…
Anna: You’ve never felt like a stranger. Somehow. I can’t explain it. You didn’t feel like one on day one, you don’t feel like one today. I don’t know what that means. What does that mean?
Jamshed: Okay, wow. I guess I can now tell you that I found myself missing you this morning. I don’t even know how that makes sense. But I suppose one doesn’t miss a stranger, right? If somebody is a stranger, you can’t miss them, right?
Anna: I have a dumb smile on my face now.
Jamshed: Hahaha me too.
Jamshed: Btw, I stopped by Rockford this morning. Those fellows said they’re doing a special set tomorrow. I tried to pry more out of them but they said I just have to come find out…
Anna: Then it’s decided. You should go find out.
Jamshed: *We should go find out…
Anna: Are you asking me out?
Jamshed: You’ve been on my mind a LOT, so yes. Will you be my +1 please? Because there’s nobody else I’d rather go with.
*
They met at a little bar nearby, seven hundred metres away from Rockford. It’s where everybody goes to pre-booze, Jamshed told Anna. The bar had benches instead of chairs. Broad, painted a handsome tan, plonked on either side of wide, wooden tables. The air was warm, happy. Like a close friend’s big, bear-like embrace. Laughter from the four other tables floated up into the air, their sounds wisping and twirling around each other.
Jamshed’s face broke into a grin when he saw her walk in. His toucan-beak nose crinkles at the top when he smiles, she noted. Her thoughts darted to the touching-his-nose day of the future and when he reached out to hug her, those thoughts shape-shifted into little tube-and-piston contraptions that pumped oxytocin so aggressively through her insides, she felt them at the tips of her fingers, and in her mouth as they coated the roof with the sound of her heart. He was still grinning when they sat back down; she clasped her hands together under the table, hoping it would quell the jitters.
He pointed at a little pimple on his cheek, barely visible. ‘See this? I don’t remember the last time I got a zit. This mister showed up this morning. You know what that means?’
Anna’s words hadn’t fully pulled free from the buzz of her nerves. She shook her head and smiled, hoping the jitters wouldn’t leak out of the edges of her mouth, hoping he wouldn’t notice how nervous she was.
‘That I’ve been bloody nervous but also so happy, all at the same time, and my skin couldn’t handle all the feels, so it just panicked and broke out.’
It made her laugh out loud, the sound reaching her nerves and calming them down. Like a magic instant-relief balm.
Over the next couple of hours, the conversation slipped in and out of pockets of two kinds. The air in the first – kindled by the heady high of gin-and-tonics drunk at a speed faster than the average G&T consumption rate – was filled with the sound of their laughs. His arose from the base of his throat: deep and gentle. Hers started out soft and flat and rose like meringue being whipped into stiff peaks. The flirting was generous, brazen. ‘No, you don’t have dead eyes Jamshed, I don’t know why people would say that. To embarrassingly borrow from the Arctic Monkeys – they’re as deep as the Pacific Ocean.’ For two people whose internet words were at least 40% braver than their in-person words, Anna had anticipated far more discomfiture.
G&T No. 3 pushed them into pocket #2, whose air had a liquid orange-yellow warmth, like a room lit by a single lamp in the corner, making them speak of things they hadn’t planned on sharing. Jamshed told her how he was still reeling from the loss of a cousin who’d taken his own life two years ago. It made Anna want to go sit next to him. She didn’t. Instead, she ended up sharing how she still dreamt of her dead grandfather at least twice a week. Jamshed, in response, reached his hand out saying, ‘You’ve got some ketchup on your cheek, let me get it for you. Is that okay?’ His hand lingered for a few extra seconds when he reached out to wipe her cheek with the napkin; the jitters rushed to her fingertips and her thoughts bounded back to her nose-touching future. By the time he had set the napkin back down, his smile had almost risen to the crinkle at the top of the toucan-nose. He chugged the last dregs of gin in his glass and declared, ‘Time to go find out what’s playing at Rockford tonight.’
*
‘11:30 is when the party starts, you have to be on time,’ Jamshed informed her as they sprinted to the wall closest to the spot they had to get to. The gin made their legs move faster. Before he could ask her if she needed help climbing the wall, Anna had landed on the other side. Almost soundlessly. Like a cat. Jamshed laughed and told her, ‘My friends are not going to believe me when I tell them that you climb the Rockford wall faster than I do!’
They ran – the sprinting interspersed with the sound of their laughs – for a couple of minutes before he stopped and pointed at a bench. Green, wooden, well-used. They sat themselves down, looked at each other, panting, laughing. The gin made the laughs easier, louder. Jamshed’s toucan nose scrunched up. It made Anna want to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. Not yet, not yet, she reasoned with herself.
She looked around. They were surrounded by the palash trees on all sides. As if the trees had stepped back and cleared a little private spot for them. There was no other bench around. No other people. Just them and the trees, branches long, spindly, sweeping, their flame-like flowers reaching out into the night sky. Anna imagined the flowers waiting for a cue of sorts. Perhaps they’d open up exactly at 11:30, music would escape from their folds and the party would begin. Before she could tell Jamshed about this, he quipped, ‘I didn’t tell you this but, I actually do know the set they’re playing tonight.’ Anna’s eyebrows darted up. He responded with a shrug. ‘It’s a date after all. I had to have a say.’ She laughed. ‘Let’s hear it then.’
He picked up his phone and played B B King’s cover of Louis Jordan’s Let The Good Times Roll. Anna pointed at the trees and burst out laughing. ‘These folks like the blues?’ He smirked. ‘Mhm, yup.’ B B King’s voice boomed into the night’s quiet, soaring and melding with the air, floating towards the trees.
Hey, everybody, let’s have some fun.
Anna pulled her feet up onto the bench and sat cross-legged, shaking her head, a wide smile on her face as she looked around at the trees. Jamshed’s back was against the bench, hands resting in his lap, head tilted to his left, eyes closed, a hint of a smile on his face.
Let the good times roll, let the good times roll.
‘Is it time? How do we know when the party starts?’ Anna asked. Jamshed opened his eyes and raised his chin in her direction. ‘Look at that dude, the shortest one there.’ Anna turned to her right. ‘He’s the first one to dance,’ he said. The tree was the shortest, squattest of them all. Its branches shook, rhythmically, to the inflections in King’s voice. The leaves fluttered in tune to the sax and the trumpet, the tips of the flowers quivering in response to the bass notes.
‘And now, look at them all. Look! Look to the left of Short Dude,’ Jamshed directed her. The three trees to the left appeared to be responding only to the notes of the trumpet, their branches intertwined, their leaves brushing over each other’s. Did all three trees drop a flower each to the ground right when the words Mr King’s in town played? No no, I’m just drunk, Anna told herself and laughed. She turned to see Jamshed looking at her. He nodded. ‘Yup, that happened. That happens sometimes.’ The gin made her laugh louder. Stiff meringue-peaks.
Jamshed had put the song on loop. By the time it played the third time, Anna’s shoulders were swaying of their own accord. A slow rolling of the shoulders, one at a time. A high sax note pushed her entire upper body into motion. Still cross-legged on the bench, she let her torso move however it wished. Side to side. Front to back. Her eyes travelled left to right as she watched the trees dance.
Hey Mr Landlord, lock up all the doors.
She lifted her arms in the air, watching them move with a lack of inhibition she was only used to in her own company. The trees were doing a dance of their own, trunks and branches and leaves and flowers, bathed in moonlight, putting on a show for her and Jamshed and the night.
Let the good times roll, let the good times roll.
When the song started playing the fifth time, she looked over at Jamshed. He wasn’t looking at her, he wasn’t looking at the trees, he wasn’t looking anywhere at all. His head was hanging off the back of the bench, his eyes were still shut, his arms now draped across the edge of the backrest, his left foot tapping, a smile on his face. His toucan nose looked even better in the light of the night. Anna was tempted to lean in and kiss him. Not yet, not yet, she told herself.
*
‘Anna, it’s been over a year,’ her best friend tells her. ‘It has to stop, okay? It’s like you’ve just been living in those memories, man, with no intention of getting out. You guys dated for just three months. This is getting ridiculous. There are tons of other men out there. Come on, you will obviously find somebody better.’
‘I know, I know. I’ve been working on it,’ Anna replies. ‘In fact, I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think I’m ready to get back on Hinge. I even discussed it last week at therapy and my therapist agreed that I do seem ready now,’ she adds. It’s what her friend wants to hear.
*
A writer born and raised in Bhubaneswar, Amrita Lall is currently based in Bangalore. Her works of non-fiction have appeared in publications like Lonely Planet Magazine India, Nat Geo Traveller India, and Architectural Digest India. Her short stories have been published in literary magazines like Out of Print and Gulmohur Quarterly.