***

It was a sultry Friday afternoon. Avani noticed the google talk clock turning from orange to green, meaning Aaditya had just come online.

 

‘I’m so sleepy,’ Avani said.

‘Keeping you up all night, am I?’

‘Yeah, right. In your dreams. You know, I have never seen people as ebullient as you -with so many diverse tastes in life.’

‘I have had strong influences, princess.’

‘Last night I was thinking about messaging you. To say something.. or say nothing. But then I had an epiphany. About things that people often tell me, how I am a strong, independent girl. Do you think so too?’

‘Well, right they are and I agree. Would you like a cup of coffee? I am going to get one.’

‘No thanks, I'm a tea person. And I’d rather not be awake when I’m trying to sleep.’

‘Being sarcastic today, eh?’

‘I am perfect. So it comes naturally. Simple. ’

‘And by the way, you look so pretty in that saree pic of yours uploaded on facebook. Something I tell myself often – The Naris look very pyari in a saree. But I digress. Off to grab a cup, ciao, now’

‘So, what do you think?’ Aaditya asked when he came back.

‘About what?’

‘About being the figment of somebody else’s imagination. About being able to bottle up the sky. About being able to ride on a dolphin’s back. About watching the stars and the full moon and the brilliant white ocean. And things like that’

'Later, alligator.' 

Well she must have been really sleepy because she could tell him what she thought about these things. Avani always had her own unique opinions. She was sure of everything. Aaditya loved listening to her as much as he liked talking to her.

‘Listen. I wish we could spend some real time together. Do you want to swing by this weekend, maybe we could go to Port Blair and be back in a couple of days.’

She must’ve blinked her eye or she must’ve imagined how such an insane idea could ever be possibly true. Aaditya couldn’t be sure. But he was hoping she didn’t.

‘Like a date?’ she said.

‘Yea, call that, if you want to. I hear we could even scuba dive at this time of the year. It should be a blast.’

‘Who’s going?’

‘Err, me..?’

‘I don’t think so, then. My parents! What will I tell them? I have never done anything like this.’

‘Neither have I. And, hey, great. Bring them along too, if you want.’

She wondered if she had read him right. ‘Shut up. They won’t come. They won’t allow me to go either. Are you MAD?’

‘I don’t know. I look at it like this. If you’ve got nothing else to do this weekend, come on over.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea. I have to be at work on Monday. I have the dance classes over the weekend. You know how it is.’

‘But it will be so much fun, I assure you.’

‘It’s not allowed. And it will not be approved.’

‘But I really thought you could come by. Have you ever been scuba diving?’

‘No. But that’s not the point.’

‘You think people will talk if you came over?’

‘Exactly. I don’t care that people would talk, but these are things you don’t understand.’

‘I’ll tell you what. You’re welcome to come if you’d like. All you need to pack is a bathing suit. Clothes are optional.’

She knew she should have said no. But she swallowed through the sudden dryness in her throat.

‘Maybe I will’ she replied back.

WHAT ON EARTH just happened?

That pretty much summed up Avani’s mental state for the rest of the afternoon. She felt only partly-present at work. Another part of her was back on the conversation she had had with Aaditya. Even after she left from work, she was wondering if Aaditya had actually been flirting with her all day today and whether maybe, just maybe, she had sort of liked it. 

Of course she liked it, she decided. She herself was of the opinion that one should flirt with EVERYONE. She eyed the flight ticket that she had booked for herself for the night plane into Andaman via Chennai. She didn’t know just why she had done it, but she was sure it was going to be an interesting weekend. The risks were worth it, her rational head figured. 

She went home; she packed her bags and left without informing anybody so that she wouldn’t have to lie, at least, not yet. He said he would come pick her up at the government airport.

He did. 

Prologue

Stories are as unique as the people who tell them, and the best stories are those in which the ending comes as a surprise. At least, that is what Aaditya Sharma remembered his grandfather telling him when he was a little boy. 

Aaditya remembered the way his grandfather would recline on the bed, smiling, as Aaditya begged for a new story each night.

‘What kind of story do you want today?’ his grandfather would ask.

‘The best one ever,’ Aaditya would answer.

Usually his grandfather would close his eyes first and demand a feet massage. Then he’d slowly start, in a pitch-perfect voice and launch Aaditya into a story that often kept the boy awake long after his grandfather had gone to sleep.

There were stories from the Bhagvada Gita, Panchtantra, Mahabharata or Ramayana. There were stories full of adventure and danger and excitement, journeys and quests that always took place outside his rather ordinary world back home.

There were stories that almost always inevitably made him ask his grandfather, with impatience:

‘What happened next?’

There was a time when Aaditya dreaded the annual visit to his grandparents place. Every year after the school closed down, his mother would open up a suitcase and fill it with a fortnight full of horror and misery, he used to believe.

‘But I don’t want to go, ma!’ he would scream. ‘You go, but leave me here.’

His mother would stare him back into silence.

‘Daddy, you tell mommy not to take me there, NOW. Lucy has given birth to a litter of pups and we are building her a nice little house by the compound. I was just about to go collect dried leaves and broken branches to build her a home, her very own home. I want to play Contra after that at my friends place. I have also invented a revolutionary new board game to fight mid afternoon boredom. It’s based on Battleship. I want to sit with my friends and teach them how to play it and I want to go ride my bicycle with my friends, later in the evening.  So tell mommy to not take me, NOW.’

And then to balance the outrageous demand that he thought he had just made, he added, ‘Please.’

‘Aaditya, you must go. Now, remember. Never ask for anything that is not offered to you and you will do fine, over there,’ his father would say in the most irritatingly comforting voice he had ever known.

To Aaditya, those days seemed like innocent vestiges of another era. He took a turn and reached for the door, looking fondly at the flowers he had bought for Avani. Her words echoed inside his head. Seemingly innocent, they were imperfectly perfect words, containing the one question, he realized, that had chased him time and again.

‘How much do you love me Aaditya?’ she had asked.

***

‘Tell me something. Anything.’

He looked out at the sea and then back towards her.

'Ephemeral breeze,
an iridescent earring,
serendipity.'

Avani smiled but did not break the silence, afraid that the moment would pass. Only her scarf fluttered in the wind.

'I don’t think that’s Haiku. But you know I’ve never heard anyone speaking these words before,' she finally let out.

Now it was Aaditya’s turn at smiling.  

'Maybe it’s not. But people should try rolling out new words on their tongue every now and then. 

Ephemeral,’ he continued, ‘is to sit under this coconut tree and sip the cool juice of a tender coconut. Iridescent, obviously is how your earring looks when you turn. Serendipity is to stare into the vastness of the ocean and somehow feel the same inside.’

'Corny.’

‘That is not corny. Maybe it’s cheesy, but not corny.’

‘Really, now? How much do you love me Aaditya?'

‘That, is definitely corny. Why do you keep asking me that?'

'Typical, you answering questions with another question when you don’t want to talk.'

'Umm..'

'Umm?'

'I don’t know,' he said, with a goofy grin.

'You don't know.. You don't know?! What kind of an answer is that?'

'Inevitable? No, look. I was just kidding. I’ve always loved you.. And I always will.'

'Really? Sweet, but that’s not what I asked in the first place.'

'It is an answer though, kind of.’

She began to look away.

‘Ok fine. I love you as much as all the water in this ocean. Even more.'

She turned back, trying to make up her mind if it were corny or cheesy. She couldn’t, so gave up and asked pointing towards the tide instead, 'You know what they say about the tides? They are fickle. Sometimes the waves are right up to the shore, over here. And sometimes it recedes way back, like it’s in a hurry to meet someone on the opposite side. You are like these tides, you know. Wanting me, being with me, loving me so much, and then disappearing when I need you. Why?'

'Well maybe sometimes I love more and sometimes I love less. But the ocean is still here, isn’t it? And my love for you is always there too.'

They kept quiet for some time.

‘Do you know how many words there are in the English language?’ he asked.

‘Maybe a million?’

‘Yes, maybe a million, some in use and some are obsolete. How many different ones from these do we use every day?’

‘I don’t know maybe a thousand.’

‘Yeah, for some women that could be true, and lesser than that on average for us, boys. Ok, sorry that was an obnoxious, demeaning, generalization. Nevertheless my point is from all these words our lives revolve around only three of them. I, you and they.’

It was already dark and the moon was full. The wind was gentle. It was such weird ways of his thinking that attracted her - on assorted nonesuch of people, stars, beer, music and the Fibonacci sequence. His remarks came at unexpected times. They made her ask questions and they made her think.

She looked up at the sky; all around her was in black and white. It is amazing, she thought, the way nature had painted itself up on its canvas that night. Picasso began with a white paper and painted all the colours in. Nature had started with a black paper and taken all the colours out. But the effect was still stunning. Like a caretaker who knows where things belong in a house, like a chef who knows his kitchen to the last spoon, nature had done a similar thing. Somehow, it knew. It added a twinkle to the stars.

It was Aaditya who had first started talking about the stars one such day. He had looked up, like all amateur astronomers who gaze at the skies and asked a simple question about their existence. Where does it begin? And where does it end? And who was the first person to ask this? There is no way of knowing it, but you sure can imagine whatever you like. However, could you say how many have sat in their gardens (or looking out of their windows into the gutters) and thought about it at some point in their lifetime? This is not about stars and ambitions and flowers and sunsets, she caught herself thinking. This is about him and me and the one question that he doesn’t want to answer.

‘How much do you love me?’