Fishy Chronicles 49: Lovers, Beware

“Is something bothering Anjali?” our newfound friend Simran said. I could detect tension in the words. She was being polite. Only I imagined it was a matter of time before the hot-blooded Punjabi lass walking beside me would race upto Anjali and gave her a whack to remember.

We had hooked up with Simran and her boyfriend Dharamveer in the evening. He had promised to take me to some interesting shops he’d found in Katra Jaimal Singh Market. We were going to look at spices, vessels, masalas, clothes, shoes and jewellery. Mostly I just thought he’d show me a little of Punjab that I thought I wouldn’t know to look for.

But I couldn’t understand Anjali’s behaviour. She had clung to the man since we left the hotel, jumped into the rickshaw with him – forcing Simran to ride with me in another rickshaw. Even though it bothered Dharamveer, the rickshaw had already moved and he turned and frantically gestured at Simran to follow in a rickshaw. 

Not that I thought for a moment Anjali was making a move on Dharamveer – even though we looked at him every now and then, surreptitiously. He was good looking and, even better, nice. By the looks of the two walking ahead of us in the narrow lanes of the market, I could understand Simran’s distress.  

“Don’t worry, she’s not making a move on him,” I said before I realised what I was saying. Simran looked at me, shocked. “Oh, that came out badly. I meant she’s not flirting with him.”

“Then what is going on there!” Simran waved a hand in their direction, red spots of colour coming to life in her cheeks.

“I don’t know. Let’s catch up with him… er… them. By the way, what does your boyfriend do?” 

Simran looked at me suspiciously. “Why?”

Yes, why? We were not going to see them again after today. And it was unlikely that we would keep in touch. Shit! What was Anjali doing! She was exchanging numbers with Dharamveer. And Simran almost ran towards them.

“What’s going on?” Simran said stiffly.

Her boyfriend gave her a nervous look and opened his mouth, but Anjali cut him off. “Ah, I’m sorry I hogged Dharamveer. I may need legal services and was asking for references. I’ve taken his number, I hope that is okay with you, Simran?” Anjali smiled.

“Er, yes, of course. What sort of legal advice were you hoping for?”

“There’s this guy who is basically stalking me. Though he says that I’ve based one of my characters on him.”

“Characters?”

“Yes. A character in one of my books. I’ve been trying to fob this man off, but he’s found out where I live and is threatening legal action. My publisher says the man doesn’t have a leg to stand on. No pun intended.”

“You’re a writer? What are the names of your books?”

Oops. Simran was swimming in rough waters. Anjali watched her for a while and then moved her mouth to form a makeshift smile. “Peepal Junction,” she murmured.

There were blank looks on Simran’s and Dharamveer’s faces. This was one of Anjali’s serious books – far removed from the sex-filled ones she was famed for. Peepal Junction was released two years ago and had fared poorly. But luckily the insipid reviews had not fazed Anjali and she kept writing both kinds of books. It was not likely that these two would ever get to know who they were dealing with. Her series surrounding a lothario mercenary were bestsellers several times over, which Anjali wrote under a pseudonym. She lived in a ratty little house in the Himalayas, barely ate and lived mostly for her craft. The only sign she was making money was her frequent travel, which only her closest friends knew.

“Interesting,” said Dharamveer into the silence. He scratched his head absently and then put his arm around Simran’s shoulders and pulled her forward with him.

“That was close! I thought Simran was going to hurt you,” I hissed at Anjali when we were at a safe distance.

“Why?”

“From behind it looked like you were coochie cooing. Of course, I didn’t think so,” I said when Anjali looked annoyed. “But, really, what were you talking about?”

“I want legal advice. When Dharamveer mentioned he was a lawyer I wanted to know where I stood.”

“Really? That bad?”

“I mean, no. At least, not yet. But it feels like I have to weigh my options soon.”

“What does your publisher say?”

“Says my disclaimers should take care of everything.”

“But?”

“It’s time to weigh my options.”

I nodded. I couldn’t say much. I had no clue who was following Anjali or why. But I imagine I would know when she was ready to tell me. “Where’s my copy of the latest book?”

“Ah, that. Publisher said to hold off on it until I weighed my options.”

“What? That sounds serious! What is this shit you’ve walked into?”

Dharamveer and Simran stopped and waited for us to catch up. We walked too slowly for Simran because she waved at us impatiently. Anjali and I looked at each other. We hated jealous women. We hated aggressive women even more. I do not know how we are best friends with my cousin Roma.

“Put on your sweetest smile, darling,” Anjali muttered under her breath.

We smiled sweetly and pushed our way between them – to their shock.

                                            ******
This is a fictional series about the narrator, her pet fish and former manservant. She is on holiday in Amritsar, Punjab, with her best friend Anjali. A day in the wholesale market with newfound friends does not end well.

                                             ******

The market proved a half-hearted effort for Dharamveer. He was overwhelmed by the drama unfolding in front of him – Anjali openly flirting with him, Simran’s jealous looks and increasing coldness and me a silent, enthralled spectator.

After a few shops and an argument between the lovers, Dharamveer suggested we go our separate ways. I poked Anjali in the ribs when I realised she was keen to prolong the lovers’ misery. She nodded reluctantly and we shook hands with the two.

“Not too soon,” Anjali smiled, watching them hurry into a wholesale shop.

“Why did you do that? You should have let them be… especially if you're hoping to get free legal advice from him. You may have scared him off for good!”

“He’s suggested someone I can approach. Even if Dharam doesn’t respond, I can get that information from the net or another Delhi lawyer. Besides, moody, broody, insecure Simran was asking for it.”

Indeed, Simran was. But having had my heart broken a few times, I felt sorry for her. Anjali must have read my thoughts, “Don’t go feeling sorry for that wretch.”

“Why not? We had no business wedging ourselves between them. It was unnecessary, especially as we got off to a good start!”

Anjali pulled me along and we entered a clothes shop, made the owner and his assistant pull out everything, showed no interest in anything and left. I wasn’t sure if the shopkeeper let out a swear word under his breath – so far all the tradespeople had been very courteous. It was doubtful we were going to buy anything – Anjali looked too preoccupied. In any case, we’d already bought shoes and spices with the lovers’ help. It was night now, though there was adequate light in the narrow lanes filled with people, carts, rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, cows, dogs and cow dung.

I looked for a kulfa shop and found one eventually near the city's centre. “What a fake dish this is! It’s a solid version of a kulfi-falooda, served on a plate. And it is bad!” Anjali said annoyed, trying to swallow the tasteless kulfa. I had to agree. So far, our adventures with food in Amritsar were disappointing. We compared incessantly the local dishes with the ‘Punjabi’ dishes we got in Mumbai – the former were bland and mild. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a UK tandoori chicken situation. I once watched a chef in the UK make it. He threw in tomato purée, fried some evil red masalas in lots of butter, poured in water and, after a while, threw in the pieces of chicken, then lowered the heat for the excuse of a dish to simmer and garnished it with several spoons full of butter, cream and coriander leaves. I remember my parents and I watching the TV programme in disbelief. Millions of Brits were clearly being taken for a ride. The Indian version of the tandoori chicken was a vastly different affair and edible and tasty.

But there was hope yet. The sarson ka saag, that we had had bitter experiences with, literally, was excellent and swimming in butter. Plus, we got gyaan on its antecedents from a pair of older women seated near us, one of whom was a food blogger. Ms C said, “Sarson is bitter and usually mixed with palak (spinach) to tone down its bitterness.” We nodded and chatted about strange things. For instance, Ms C’s friend told us about how she hated the pakoras – apparently they were better in Mumbai – to the consternation of the food blogger who had loved them. We mentally crossed pakoras off our list.

In fact, the blogger had found the food a disappointment while the friend hadn’t. “That’s friendship, you know,” Anjali mumbled when the blogger and her friend left and our bill landed at our table.

“How?”

“They can beg to differ… on food.”

“Kuch bhi. Chalo, let’s go. We’ve got to pack. And go back to the Golden Temple one last time.”

“Why?”

“I hear it’s an awesome sight at night. We just have to go back and roam around there. Besides, we’re a pair of free birds on the loose at night in Punjabistan.”

“Do you realise we’ve barely ogled anyone since we’ve been here?”

“Maybe it’s because of all the turbans. Do you think we’re racists?”

“No. We’re just stuck in our ideas about male beauty and, sadly, facial hair and long hair don’t figure. Though, we have to make an exception for Genie. Truth be told, if we fell in love we’d surprise ourselves at how we hankered for one thing and something else overcame our reservations slyly and without our knowledge.”

“You seem to have put a lot of thought into it.”

“Just popped into my head. I’m going to use it in my book.” Anjali grinned and put her arm in mine. We walked out swinging our interlinked arms, much to the amusement of tourists and locals.

                                           ****** 

Cereals, lentils, dried fruits and soap displayed outside a shop in Katra Jaimal Singh market, Amritsar.
(Photo: A. Peter)

Golden Temple, Amritsar, at night. (Photo: A. Peter)

Golden Temple, Amritsar, Punjab. (Photo: A. Peter)

Fishy Chronicles 47: Bon Voyage. À Amritsar!

Golden Temple 
(Photo Credit: A. Peter)

I was searching my bag for my identity card and air ticket when I felt the hard bulge in a side pocket. I stood in the queue at T2 airport and waved to Genie, smiling. I was finally going to Amritsar and he had a lot to do with it, with a fair amount of pestering from my cousin Roma and Fish. 

Fish were quiet this morning when I said goodbye. Pervez and Penaaz huddled in a corner of the fish tank and watched me. I knew they would stay tense until I returned. I felt sorry for them, but, in a freakish way, I felt happy too – someone loved me and was waiting for me to return. 

I located a kiosk, keyed in my PNR details, grabbed my baggage tag and walked slowly to another queue, this time a long one. I thought about my trip. It was going to be my first one alone and I was beginning to feel tense. Would I make it safely to my hotel? 

Last night Fish went through a long list of dos and don'ts with me. They insisted I return to my hotel before dark,  installed a safety app on my phone and showed me how to use it and told me to hold my purse tightly at all times – at which Genie jokingly suggested I put my cash in my bra instead.

                                             ******

This is a fictional series about a 30-something Mumbai woman, her former pet fish and her parents former man Friday Genie. 

The narrator is going on a holiday alone for the first time. A surprise awaits her at Delhi Airport.

                                             ******
In any case, the lecture on safety did nothing to soothe my nerves. Plus the headlines every day of rapes and murders. Roma visited us yesterday and told me to read the newspaper. She spoke so oddly and in a roundabout fashion that I was not sure what she wanted. 

But when I opened the paper, I felt ill. An inside page was full of cases and how none of the victims had found justice. 

“You know, Genie, Roma was acting so weird. Told me to read today's newspaper, especially page 12... but it's full of stories of rapes that weren't solved or cases that are stalled in court. Why did she want me to read it? So urgently too...”

I knew the answer before Genie formed the words. “Roma doesn't want you to go... now. She's afraid for you. That's why she rambled so much.”

I was having second thoughts too. Things were never going to change for women here. There had been a recent rape-murder that was highly publicised. Worse, the victim's name and other details had been published, which was an absolute no-no. 

My thoughts went immediately to my early working years. I was returning home past 11pm one day and jumped into the first class compartment of a moving train, only to find it empty. It was a super fast train and was only going to stop at the big stations. The compartments next to this one were general and a number of men leered at me through the thick metal mesh separating the first class section from general.

I stood at the door, trying to stay out of their sight. At Charni Road, I thought about getting off and running to a second class ladies compartment. But the train started moving – I had procrastinated too long. 

Suddenly a man jumped in and my heart nearly jumped out of my mouth. “This is a ladies compartment,” I said, hoping he wouldn't see my fear.

“Yes. I know. I'll get off at the next station,” he winked and flicked his head back to budge the oily cowlick out of his eye, but it stayed put. He was thin and dressed in drainpipe, stressed jeans, frayed at the heels and slim fit light blue shirt. He turned to look at the guys behind him in the general compartment and let out a short shrill laugh. It made me uncomfortable and I moved into the compartment and sat down. My heart began to race. 

I prayed God would protect me. How foolish was I to enter an empty bogey. This first class bogey was usually deserted at this time of night. I felt panic when I saw him come towards me... smiling. It was not a calming smile. 

“Stay away!” 

“What? I'm your friend, let's talk. Want some sweets?” He  lunged and I screamed in terror, but couldn't avoid him. I screamed and screamed and one of his hands grabbed my neck and squeezed and the other covered my mouth. 

I punched his solar plexus and bit his shoulder and refused to let go of his flesh. I heard him scream and we struggled wildly. I felt a whack across my face and he pushed me hard across the compartment. I fell heavily on the ground, feeling dazed. 

He pulled out a knife, his face red and twisted in a rage. I screamed and screamed and jumped on the seat and over it to the next and pulled the train’s chain. Nothing happened. 

I jumped off the seat and ran towards the men on the other side and screamed for someone to help me. But all I heard was frantic babbling from the men.

He lunged at me again. I remembered Papa telling me to bash the nose, dig my fingers into the eyes, punch the solar plexus and knee the crotch. “Hard, mol, hard!”

I stilled my thoughts. I could hear the men behind me urging me to jump off the train. I waited for the man to come closer. He was running towards me snarling, blood on his shirt where I had bitten him. I had a sudden thought – would I get an infection from biting him. 

When he was about two feet away I let out a blood curdling scream and leaped at him, punching upwards as hard as I could in the direction of his nose. He was stunned for a fraction of a second, then howled in pain and fell backwards. 

I jumped over him, but he caught my ankle and I fell heavily on him. We wrestled and I bit him again and he cried out. I jabbed my fingers into his left eye and he howled. I felt sick at inflicting so much bodily harm on someone but I was drowning in terror. 

“Stop screaming, you idiot!” I screamed at myself, managing to free myself from his grip and running to my bag on the floor across the compartment. 

He stood up and I tore open my bag and grabbed the canister. He rushed towards me and I cowered on the seat, spraying and spraying and spraying, my face turned away and screaming in terror. He screamed, now begging me to stop. I ran after him, spraying all the while. He scratched at his eyes and I saw the lights of the next station loom in to sight. Dear God. Help was at hand. I ran to the doorway and screamed hoarsely for help. 

I prayed the platform would come to me faster. I heard the men next door shouting at me not to jump. When the train slowed into the station, I screamed for the police. People stared but no one budged. 

I waved at a police man screaming that I was being attacked. Some men from the next compartment jumped off and ran into mine. But the man had jumped off from the other side of the compartment and we couldn't see him in the dark.

Someone gave me my bag and told me to go and file a police complaint. I sat on a nearby bench and burst into tears. Some women came towards me and patted my head, trying to console me. 

After a long time, I called my friend Jasmine in office, who spoke to our boss Leonard who had just put the edition to bed. 

“If you go to the police it will take forever and they'll only try and fob you off,” Leonard said.

I felt sick and incredulous at what Leonard was suggesting. My parents were out of town and there was no one at home. If I called them they'd be sick with worry. 

“Er, er, but he attacked me... I think I should be filing an FIR,” I said, crying.

“Not a good idea. Everyone will come to know, police won't do much and for all you know that bastard will be waiting for you at the station tomorrow. You wait there. Jasmine and I will be there in 25 minutes. Don't go anywhere.”

They did come for me, but I was a mess. There was not a soul I could tell that time of night, so when I reached home I called up Anjali and burst into tears. 

She was furious I didn't file the FIR. But we talked and she hung onto the phone until I dropped off to sleep. At 4am, my doorbell rang. I sat up, feeling every part of my body ache. I felt fear course through me and sat transfixed. 

Then there was a frantic knocking. “It's me, Anjali! Open the door. Open the door!”

I flung the door open and threw myself into her arms and started bawling. Anjali pulled me into the house and onto the sofa and we held each other tightly. When I was done, she cleaned my wounds and I told her the whole story again. 

“Do you need to see a doctor?”

“No.” Everything ached, but I was sure I'd be sorted in a few days. 

“When do your parents return?”

“Next week.”

“What are you going to tell them?”

I was silent. I was safe now. There was no point in telling them. Besides, I could think of more serious consequences for me. If my relatives came to know, I'd be forced to leave my job. Or, worse, get married. Plus, I was sure I would be blamed for what happened because I was out so late.

“Nothing,” I said, not looking at Anjali. It was strange. I didn't do anything wrong, but I felt guilty. 

Anjali's arm came around me. By the time my parents called, Anjali and I had cooked up a story. My parents believed me when I told them that I had stayed late in office the previous day and had fallen asleep as soon as I reached home, forgetting to call them.

I strapped myself into my seat. I never told Roma about that incident. I still feel a frisson of fear in dark places and never enter an empty bogey. I haven't seen the man either.

                                              ******

At Delhi airport I walked slowly to my boarding gate. The connecting flight was delayed a couple of hours and I tried not to worry about getting to my hotel at night. Genie had told me to take an Ola/Uber taxi just before getting out of the airport. “That's fairly safe.”

I stopped in my tracks near Gate 42B. I could see long black curly hair and men staring at a woman who was immersed in her book. My feet moved faster, until I was next to her. There was a knapsack in the seat beside her. 

I kicked her foot and her head whipped up angrily. The beautiful face crinkled into a smile. “I was waiting for you, babe. Our flight is late.” Anjali jumped up and hugged me. “I missed you!”

“Where are you going?”

“Amritsar. We were supposed to go to the Golden Temple together, remember?”

With Roma. Part of a wild pact we'd made in our late teens – which involved hot Punjabi men, booze and food and, of course, the Golden Temple. We'd managed none of it because Roma and I had married early.

Anjali was in the middle of writing a book. She lived in a small town in the Himalayas, preferring the quiet and peace there to Mumbai. Mostly she hated big city humanity. She wrote literary fiction and smut. Her literary fiction couldn't find a publisher for years. But side by side she wrote romance novels filled with sex – Roma and I had read all the first drafts and were hooked. The sex-filled romances had made Anjali money. The success of her “rabid romances", as I called them, had also been the reason her publisher finally published her literary fiction. 

“What about your deadline, Anjali?” 

"I thought I'd take a break."

After talking for what felt like ages, I opened my bag to look for the bars of chocolate Genie had bought me at the airport. “Did Genie know you were coming?”

Anjali smiled. “And Roma. She's feeling miserable she's not with us.” 

“Where are you staying?”

“With you. We can move into a double room. I checked with the hotel.”

“I rented the room at a big discount. We may not get the discount.”

“We'll swim that moat when we get to it. Now, let's get something to eat.”

“Er, wait.” I unzipped the inside pocket of my handbag and pulled out the pink, wrapped roll. A whiff of kebab hit me. I unwrapped the bundle, covered in Fish's favourite writing paper, and stared at the wad of cash in my hand.  

“Whoa! That's a lot of money. Who's it from?” Anjali said.

I smoothened out the paper and my heart turned to mush.

“Dear Ducky, 

A little something to enjoy Amritsar with. We don't want the ‘something’ back. Eat well, stay safe and send us pictures. 

Call us everyday at 11.09pm.

Your biggest loves, 
Fish

Anjali read the letter. “Why 11.09pm?”

“Last night they watched James Bond – a Sean Connery one with a lot of under-cover-of-darkness calls.”

My heart felt full thinking of my dear big hearted Fish’s sweet gift and my best friend with me on a trip that we'd always planned but never attempted. I was finally here. And, I wasn't alone.