I don’t have to ring the doorbell; Nishant knows I am waiting outside. He must. I can hear his slippers slapping against the floor. I fix my hair and straighten the creases in my new Benetton shirt. I ring the bell anyway.
I shouldn’t look in through the peephole. That will only make me seem overly eager, which I am not. So I turn to my left. My good side. And I look at the little hand-painted ceramic birds placed on the shoe rack kept outside. Some are perched along the edge, some tucked behind a beautiful philodendron, a philodendron with a personality of its own. Its leaves spiral outward with excitement or joy, or both. It’s cared for, this little guy. It says something about Nishant, you know. A man who can keep the plants alive.
Nishant opens the door with a smile on his face. I can see the faintest dimple forming on his left cheek that I had not noticed in the pictures because of the beard. But he shaved today. For moi. I should have at least trimmed my nose hair, I suppose.
‘Hello!’ He says, like yell-low. ‘Aniket!’ He takes my name like he knows me. He pulls me into a hug right there in the corridor. I barely come up to his shoulders.
We have been chatting for a couple of weeks on the app. He told me that he wanted to meet me ‘someday’. Someday. One day. I fucking hate them all. You might as well give up and die. Which is what I was trying to do. But then Nishant texted me today asking me what I was up to later in the evening.
‘Oh, this and that,’ I texted him back.
‘Why don’t you come over to my place? I’m cooking.’ He said.
Nishant shows me to this big-ass couch, the kind that I have only seen on tv. I place my sling bag on the rug underneath, so as to not dirty the lemon-coloured upholstery.
‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘I got us some wine,’ I say, pulling out an unreasonably expensive bottle that I had picked up on my way.
‘Would you like that now? Or would you like some water, maybe coke?’ He asks, sliding an apron over his head.
He must have taken the apron off before opening the door. Smart move. It’s not very flattering. It barely reaches down his waist. Besides, there are ugly, blue flowers painted on it. For what it’s worth, it clings to his chest in a good way, you know. I can’t help but smile.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So, coke?’
I nod.
His place is so much bigger than any other place I have been to. It could seat like, I don’t know, fifteen people? The room that I am currently renting is a PG the size of his guest bath. What do you even do with so much space? Sit here on the sofa, then there, on the recliner? Follow the sun? Tell time? I chuckle.
‘What’s that?’ He asks from the kitchen.
‘Nothing.’ I get up.
It’s well kept too. Well decorated. There are curtains, cushions, and rugs – the good, expensive kind. There are paintings, vases, and little knick-knacks. But then he is a lot older than anyone I have been with before. Been with, going to be with – can’t say. Not yet. We have not spoken about the exact ‘nature’ of our meeting. He doesn’t like things to be planned-planned. Though a change of clothes in my bag might suggest otherwise.
‘Did you have any trouble finding the place?’ Nishant walks up to me and hands me a glass.
I shake my head.
‘Whitefield is kind of far from Koramangala.’ He says.
‘It is,’ I say. Whitefield is kind of far from everywhere. I don’t say that.
‘Did you drive?’
‘I took an Uber.’
‘Must have cost you a lot.’
I shrug.
‘So much trouble?’ He places a hand on my neck. ‘Just to meet me?’ He says, running his thumb up and down my neck.
‘It’s hot today, no?’ he asks. He reaches for his phone and turns on the ac. ‘Temperature okay?’
I nod.
He walks up to the kitchen and pours himself a laughably small amount of coke.
‘So?’ I ask, ‘How have you been?’
‘I am doing fine,’ he says, wiping sweat off his brows. ‘Been in the kitchen most of the afternoon.’
I nod.
‘You look good,’ I say.
‘You too.’ He says from like a mile away.
‘So, what are you cooking?’ I ask, getting up from the corner of the sofa he has relegated me to. I take a few steps to the shuttered balcony – more plants – a giant Monstera as tall as I am. Rare. Expensive.
‘Take a guess.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘That Monstera in the balcony is pretty rare,’ I say.
‘The what in the balcony?’
‘That giant plant in the balcony – with leaves the size of my face?’
‘Oh, that. Ya.’ He smiles. ‘It is. You into plants?’
‘We have it back home in Delhi too,’ I tell him. My father owns a nursery. I don’t tell him that.
‘You eat non-veg, no?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Sometimes-uh?’ He cocks his brow. ‘Come. Take a look.’ He motions me into the kitchen.
I follow him barefoot.
There are things in the oven, in the microwave, on the stove. There is enough food to feed me twenty times over. How long does he think I am going to stay? I smile.
‘What’s that?’
I shake my head.
He opens the lid of this prettiest looking cast iron pot, ones like those chefy-chefs use on tv. I see chunks of meat simmering in thick, rich, onion gravy. Little pieces of green chilli and torn up coriander leaves bobble up and down, breaking the surface ever so slightly. He scoops up some gravy in a spoon and blows air to cool it down. I instinctively open my mouth. I flinch.
‘Too hot?’ he asks. Dimples form on both his cheeks. Blood rushes to mine.
‘More coke?’ he asks.
‘I think I will take some wine,’ I say.
He brings out a bottle of red he has kept for chilling already. It’s better, he tells me. It’s French. Like I can tell the difference.
He rips open a bag of chips with his teeth and throws them into a bowl. He asks me to pull up a chair at the dining table. ‘So that I can talk to you while I finish things up in the kitchen,’ he says.
He reaches for the spices kept on the top shelf. His t-shirt rises and exposes the small of his back.
The waistband of his black Calvin Kleins (fucking two thousand bucks apiece) pinches the skin around his waist. His jeans cling to the back of his thighs, his calves. I take a sip and admire my blind luck.
Don’t they say something about kissing a thousand cocks before finding your prince? I chuckle.
It’s all luck. It really is. He didn’t have to call me to his place. Or cook for me. He could have simply asked me to meet him in the back of some alley, in his neighbourhood or mine, in a park, in his car, in a hotel lobby. I would have kneeled on the floor. I would have kneeled in the grass. I would have leaned against the basin, a commode, or a tree. But no. That is simply not his style. He is better than that. Heck, maybe I am better than that. There is no rush. Only propriety. Only propriety and kindness and seduction.
There is kindness in seduction. There is seduction in kindness.
Everything is buzzing, beeping, whistling, gurgling together like a band gone wild, no, an orchestra gone awry. But he is still very much in control. He turns towards the oven, and something comes out. He walks up to the microwave, something goes in. He has a spatula in one hand, ladle in another. Every step he takes is premeditated, every turn thought out. Each flick of the arm measured and precise, every motion utilised. It’s elegant and delicate, like watching water ballet – or whatever the fuck people watch with a glass of wine.
I walk into the kitchen. I stand next to him and move about, keeping in step with him like it’s a waltz.
‘What are you doing?’ He says, pushing me aside.
‘Nothing,’ I say.
I look at our feet – coming within an inch of one another and then parting. His feet, they are – the word ‘neat’ comes to mind.
‘What are you looking at?’
His stubby, little, pink toes peek out of his slippers. I tilt my head sideways. ‘Your toes,’ I say.
‘What about my toes?’ He wiggles them.
‘They remind me of grapes,’ I say, ‘for some reason. I want to...’
‘Yes? You want to...’
‘Eat them.’
He tilts his head back and lets out a full-throated laugh. He snatches the glass from my hands. He takes a sip from it. He has earned it, he says, now that everything tastes precisely how it’s supposed to – or nearly so.
‘Come here.’ I hold his face between my palms and pull him down for a kiss. His lips part. He kisses me as much as I kiss him.
‘I was thinking we will eat, but I guess that can wait.’ He whispers into my ears. He slides his hands under my shirt, I slide my hands under his.
He leads me into his bedroom. And asks me to wait. I stand at the door in the dark as he walks up to the cupboard. He takes out this crumpled bedsheet that he spreads over his impeccably made bed. He sits cross-legged and motions me to join him. I sit on his lap as we kiss. He buries his face into my neck as he takes off my jeans.
He places his hands on my shoulder and guides me towards his crotch. But I push back. I need my time to soak him in. His sweat, his smell. I trace the trail of hair mapping his chest: circling once around his nipples, going all the way till his navel and disappearing thereafter.
‘Here, get into these…’ He hands me a jockstrap. Whose? I don’t know. He doesn’t fuck without it, he says. ‘Keeps all the stuff from getting in my way.’
He turns me over and spreads me on the bed. He parts my cheeks and presses his thumb against me. ‘You don’t shave?’ he asks. ‘I would have loved to eat you,’ he says. He sticks a finger inside me. ‘Screw that,’ he says. He burrows in with his tongue. He draws small, wet circles like I am a ripe peach, and he must devour me whole – skin, flesh, seed – all.
He places his palms on my back and enters me. I can hear his laboured breathing in between the sound of my moans. He pulls out and asks me if he could get rid of the rubber and finish inside me. I agree. I always do. I try to keep up; I count the strokes. But ever so often, I have to start again. I spill before he finishes. He collapses on me, covered in sweat. His scent is smeared all over me.
He puts on some shorts and an old t-shirt and walks onto the balcony. He lights up a cigarette. He asks me to dress up and join him. I could borrow his shorts. I could just take them from the third cupboard, top-shelf – he says.
‘How old did you say you were?’ he asks, offering me one from the pack. It’s one of those imported thin cigarettes.
‘Twenty-three,’ I say.
‘Man.’ He flicks the ash into an empty planter at the corner of the balcony. A single dead stalk juts out of it – just jagged edges and thorns. Rose probably. Didn’t take.
‘How old did I tell you I was?’ He smiles and plucks one more cigarette out from the pack.
‘Thirty-seven?’
‘Close enough.’ He smiles. ‘So? Aren’t your parents asking you to get married and all?’
‘Well, I just graduated from college. So, I have a few years, I guess.’
‘Look at you – Mr I-just-graduated-from-college.’
‘Aren’t you planning to get married?’ I ask.
He laughs. ‘Don’t I look married?’
‘I don’t know. What do married people look like?’
He laughs. I laugh too.
‘I am married! I have a daughter. She turns nine this year.’ He says.
‘I should be leaving soon then, I guess.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, your wife...’
‘Don’t worry. She is at her folk’s place in Bombay.’ He lights the cigarette. Embers fall into potted gerberas. ‘Stay for dinner. At least.’
I nod. I slide the planter away from him.
‘I guess I should have told you, no?’ he says.
‘Told me what?’
‘That I am married?’
‘Na. It’s fine.’
‘It is?’
I put out my cigarette on the floor and hold it in my palm and nod. ‘I would have met you anyway,’ I say.
He lightly punches me in my arm.
‘Let’s eat?’ he asks.
He brings me a plate with two pieces of naan and some curries in small bowls. He sits me down at the table across from him. I ask him if he is going to eat, he says that he doesn’t do dinner these days. He is trying to get back in shape. In fact, he has to sleep early so that he can go for a jog at Cubbon. They are training for a half-marathon, he says. Him and his wife.
I eat quietly, slowly, with my mouth closed. He looks at me with this expression filled with contentment. Like my mother. He offers me some more mutton. Just the gravy, I say. He tells me that it’s her favourite, his wife’s. Her folks are vegetarians. And she has been craving his mutton curry. In fact, she had begged for him to make it for her when she got back. She gets back tomorrow.
He brings some ice cream. I eat while he stands in the kitchen with his hands on his waist, wondering which container to empty the dishes into. And then he would have to do the dishes. That is one thing that they both absolutely hate. And that they are always fighting over.
I ask him if I can help. He points me to the dishwasher. I simply have to stack them on the rack.
‘This is nothing like doing dishes,’ I say.
He gives me a half simper.
‘I absolutely wouldn’t mind doing this every day.’
‘The dishes?’ he smirks.
‘Ya. And everything else.’ I say. ‘I mean, I can only imagine what it would be like to live in a place like this.’
He smiles as he holds a kitchen towel under running water. He begins to scrub the slabs.
‘I mean, I would just laze around all day. Watch the rain from the balcony with a cup of coffee. Fall asleep on the sofa with our legs intertwined. And the evening sun would fall on us through the screens, warm our bodies. And later, he would wake up and cook. And I would help clean.’
‘Why should he do all the cooking?’ Nishant asks.
‘Because I can’t.’ I smile. ‘So maybe I will order in when it’s my turn. Thai.’
‘Thai?’ He asks.
‘I really really want to try Thai. But haven’t met anyone to try it with. You like Thai, no? You should tell me a few places...’
He smiles. He hangs up the kitchen towel and motions me back to the living room.
As I change into my clothes, he hugs me from behind. He turns me around and looks at me. For a second, I think we will kiss and do everything all over again. But we don’t. He gives me a quick peck on the cheek.
‘You are really sweet, you know,’ he says. ‘You need to find yourself someone. Someone as sweet as you. Someone you can order Thai with.’
‘Someday,’ I say. The right man is just around the corner. I don’t say that.
*
Prateek has been living in Bangalore for the past decade. He writes code for a living. In his more youthful days, he used to moonlight as a kickboxing instructor. More recently he has taken to writing short stories. Some of his works have appeared in Spark Magazine, Wasafiri Magazine, Jaggery Lit, and Muse India. His story ‘Less Than Perfect’ was short-listed for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in 2019. He is a graduate of the Bangalore Writers Workshop. He likes to cook, eat, sleep, read, write, and collect art prints from glossy magazines and old calendars.