“Grand address,” said Lady Macbeth with her hands on my back, “and a grander dress.” We laughed like children. I love Lady Macbeth; she makes me feel free (I should then love R too - he too makes me feel free).
I was ready to go home at 2:30, but deliberately waited till 3:00. Perhaps I wanted to show off my sari to him. He came at 3:00 precisely. At least, he is punctual, I thought. He roamed about in the portico with his hands in his pocket. then he saw me and stared, and came up to me. “I say, oh goodness - why a sari? It is beautiful.”
“Hello,” I tried to be aloof. But I couldn’t. I told him about my speech, and he listened in rapture. “Oh, I was always a failure on the stage. Say, do you act, too?”
“Not now,” I said. I felt free and light. A burden was off my mind. If he wanted to be friends, I’d be too.
“You are looking very nice today,” he said slowly.
“Never say that to me again,” I warned him. One of my classmates called out to me, “Geeta!” I didn’t know what to do, so I told him, “Listen, my name is really Geeta, not Meera.”
He nodded with a twinkle in his eyes, and said, “You little crook! why didn’t you say so that day?”
“Meera is a better name,” I excused myself. When I came back, it was almost time to go home. He said, “Blue suits you.”
I asked him about his designation, and he replied, “I’m an admiral.” I was thrilled, but he was joking again. I said his jokes were stale ones. He told me a lot about himself. That mod. girl was his stepsister; that he had a stepfather.; that he was afraid of awfully mod. girls - or so he said - the car was his father’s; the mobike was his own; that Geeta was a nice name; that he had a brother too who was in Bombay, learning to act; that he would be in Lucknow for two months at the most...
Then we both went away. He came on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, after that, when I could be free 2:30 and stayed till 3:15. That Pammi, as he called her, used to stare at me in the library with a very surprised expression in her eyes, but no one dared to tease me about having a boyfriend. We always kept standing here and there, never did the idea of going into the waiting room occur to us. He never said anything which would frighten me - except once, when he asked me if I could go to ‘Ganj with him. I refused pointedly, but instead of being offended he said, “Just as I thought.”
I felt happy and secure. What a lot of sunshine he had brought into my life! I had never felt so happy since three years. And he never seemed to notice my kurta and dupatta. He spoke a lot about the ships, the navy life, the discipline, the parties, and ragging. I asked him if he drank. “Yeah,” he said, then saw my disgusted expression. “you see, you have to do it there. But I never do it here.” And strangely, that reassured me, because as long as he was sober here, I’d have a very decent friend in him.
One day I asked him why he was interested in me, and not in other girls who were better than me in all ways. “What ways?” he asked. I said I was short, fat, bookworm, dud, poor in comparison and couldn’t cook any food compulsorily. He was indignant. He was indignant. “What do you mean? Do you think I’ll fall flat on my nose for a girl like my stepsister or like her friends. They -they don’t know what to wear. Always going out with some new chap!”
“So what?” I said. “They are pretty...”
“And you are not? Oh, all right. Do you want me to tell you like other chaps that I admire your eyes, your lips, your face, your complexion, your hair?”
I had never expected such a strong retort. I withdrew into myself, because I was hurt. He saw it, and became jovial again. “You are a little terror, little girl. Shall I tell you that you are an elephant or a rhinoceros?”
“Don’t call me a little girl, please. I don’t want any kind of personal comment from now on.”
“Big girl then... But don’t ever underestimate yourself like that.”
The next day he brought a photograph of himself with five other young fellows - all in white dress, looking very handsome indeed. looked at it for a long time while he told me who was who. The he said, “Do you believe now, that what I am what I say?”
I was astonished that he knew that I didn’t believe him at all the time. I saw his eyes sparkling with satisfaction. “You are a very young girl as yet, and I am a wicked old pirate.”
He put me at ease at once by his frank laugh. Then he said that he would be in the city for one week more - said it very seriously and sadly. “Can you wear a sari next Tuesday?”
I said I’d try, because I felt he was feeling estranged.
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