Vishal, lost in thought, did not laugh. He said after a pause, ‘Well, I’m here long enough.’
Poonam frowned. Vishal was two years older than her, and she had known him all her life. He had been her brother’s friend, and had walked with him and Poonam to school. At seventeen, Vishal and Poonam’s brother had disappeared to Mumbai to make their fortunes. But while Poonam’s brother, when she had last seen him a year ago, had changed drastically and grown aloof and irritable (‘It’s the pollution,’ Poonam’s grandfather would say), Vishal didn’t seem to have changed at all. He still had a nervous air about him, as if he was afraid he was being judged.
‘Come in,’ said Poonam, getting up, but then stopped mid-step. ‘Ajoba is inside, asleep.’
‘We can sit right here. I don’t mind,’ said Vishal, sitting on the step next to her.
Two boys ran past them. They had been down to the waterfall. One of them had a string with a crab tied to its loose end. It suddenly struck Poonam that she couldn’t recall the last time she’d been down to the waterfall.
‘Were you fired?’ Poonam asked Vishal in a low voice.
‘What?’ said Vishal, a little taken aback. ‘No.’
There was an awkward silence.
‘I quit the job,’ Vishal continued. ‘Not because I was bad at it—’
‘I’m sure not,’ Poonam interposed.
‘ . . . But because I hated it. Poonam,’ he said, turning to look at her, ‘the first day I reached Mumbai with your brother, I hated it. I hated the crowd, the noise, the people. They don’t even speak Marathi there. Can you imagine that? They’re in Maharashtra, and they don’t speak Marathi.’
‘Big deal. You know Hindi, right? Why, all you and Dada did was watch Akshay Kumar!’
‘I kept trying to like it, I kept trying to work all these years. But I couldn’t take it any more. The city just wasn’t for me. I saw that eventually and returned.’
He noticed that Poonam was unaffected by his story. She had taken a long stick and was drawing something in the mud. She didn’t rush to offer him her sympathy or support.
‘What do you plan to do here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I own land. I could farm fruits and vegetables, maybe.’
‘There’s a lot to farming, it’s not easy. Starting from knowing what your soil’s like, and what you can plant there and when, to irrigation, how to sell your fruits and vegetables and where. The people who ran to Mumbai,’ she said, gesturing at somewhere in the distance, ‘they knew this. They preferred Mumbai to all this.’
Vishal laughed nervously.
‘You’re smart. But I hadn’t thought of all that,’ he said.
The compliment brought no smile or blush. Poonam kept drawing in the mud.
‘I’ll take my leave now,’ said Vishal, getting up. ‘I suppose I won’t get to work immediately tomorrow. You and I can talk often enough.’
‘Okay,’ said Poonam, without looking up. Something in the way she said it gave Vishal the feeling that she meant the opposite.
For the next few days, Vishal kept his distance from Poonam. It was a week later that he came to visit, and even then it was ostensibly to meet Poonam’s grandfather, not her, with news of what Poonam’s brother was doing. The only interaction Vishal had with Poonam was the exchange of a nod. This made Poonam angry, but she was quick to realize that the distance between her and Vishal was her own doing, and decided that she should try to be more friendly with him. As she saw him to the door, she addressed a few sentences to him, and even smiled.
Vishal didn’t fail to take the message, and over the next few weeks he visited frequently, perhaps a little too frequently for Poonam’s liking. It was a strange business—when Vishal was absent, she waited eagerly for him to visit, and when he was present, she wanted him gone within the first five minutes. But she kept this contradiction to herself, and tried not to think about it.
Over time, Poonam and Vishal grew close to each other, though Poonam never cared to admit it to herself.
One evening, after one of their now-routine dinners together, Poonam and Vishal set out for a stroll to walk off the post-meal heaviness.
‘Poonam,’ said Vishal, ‘I’ve been thinking . . .’
‘About farming?’ asked Poonam. ‘Because the other day I asked Tatyaba, and he said he has some spare seeds. You know, the hybrid ones they make in labs. He said he’s not planting them—he’s too old to do any planting anyway—and he doesn’t mind giving them to you for nothing.’
‘No, no,’ said Vishal, amused. ‘I was thinking about us.’
Poonam felt something drop in the pit of her stomach. She had an awful feeling she knew where this was going.
‘I think . . . you know . . .’ started Vishal. ‘I was thinking . . . it might be good to get married. You and I, I mean. No, and before you say anything, hear me out. You are unmarried, I am unmarried. We can work together, and make something for us here. Because you and I have nothing here. Very soon you’ll be alone, and—’
‘Vishal, I am happy the way I am,’ Poonam cut in. After staring at him a moment, she continued, ‘And I don’t have nothing here—I have everything. Or at least I have enough for myself. I am happy and secure as I am. I don’t need to marry because I am scared of being poor if I don’t.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘That’s exactly what you meant. That’s exactly what everyone means when they advise me to get married,’ Poonam turned to him and said hotly. ‘I’m going home.’
And she turned around and started to march back home in the dark.
Poonam felt insulted by the proposal. She knew in her mind that she was far too good for Vishal. Here she was, the best-educated person in the village, the most well read. And he! Why, he had gone to Mumbai only to return with his tail between his legs, and with no money! Poonam knew that were she to ‘help’ him run his farm, she would soon find herself responsible for the entire thing. She was far more competent and intelligent than him.
In the following days, Poonam didn’t see Vishal at all. Neither had she the time to think of him, for her grandfather’s health declined rapidly, and she was occupied with nursing him. But the old man’s time had come, and when the doctor was finally called in from Satara, he came home only to declare him deceased.
Poonam’s grandfather was cremated. When the pandit performing the rituals told Poonam that only men could be present at the ceremony, she snapped that she had seen her grandfather die, and only she deserved to watch him burn. She had her way.
In the days that followed, Poonam sank into depression. People offered her condolences and tried to make her feel better, but to no avail. It suddenly became apparent to her that she was really, truly alone. Those who said they were there for her knew nothing of the heavy, hurtful something that sat on her chest and made it difficult for her to breathe at times. If ever she tried to speak to someone about this sadness, it felt as though she were speaking a different language, for she could never get them to understand her pain. Poonam became increasingly short-tempered, and with every fit of anger sank deeper into sadness.