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Word Count : 3500

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03 | What The Brain Hides, The Spirit Unwinds

| December, 2022 |

Nothing is constant in one's world except one's own sins.

Like his marriage with his dead ex-wife Shivalika?

Was she his sin? Definitely not.

Or was their marriage his sin? Perhaps.

A forced sin.

There are certain secrets between a couple that are only known to them. Friends and family can only play the role of a Cupid and relieve the situation to some extent, but they can't undo the past blunders done by each partner. If two people take the decision to get separated, believe it, they must have thought over it for a considerably long period of time.

Think about it.

A crofter sows hundreds of seeds in his fields per year, but while growing up, some of the saplings are infested by insects, some perish due to the loose hold of their roots on the soil beneath, and some just don't get enough nutrients from the soil required for their sustenance and eventually reach their ultimate demise.

Now, if the situations were to be a little contrasting, a little different, they would have grown up to be healthy crops, wouldn't they?

Maybe.

But then the question arises—why?

Because they are simply not meant to live, and at the very end, only some of them grow up to be healthy crops, and later, they are harvested. Relationships and marriages are exactly like that; not all of them are meant to be, no matter how hard you try or how painstaking your efforts are.

Sometimes, two people are just not meant to be.

Because Shivalika Bohra was definitely not his sin. Someone else was.

And that someone had slowly turned into his only constant.

He turned his head around to fix his gaze on the toddler.

"Ma-ma-ma... mamma!" The toddler blabbered continuously while clapping his hands.

"Mamma is here." Saying so, she put a morsel of chapatti with dal in his mouth.

"You don't like peas?" Maybe she saw him separating the peas from the Mattar tofu gravy with the spoon from her peripheral vision.

"No." He smiled sheepishly.

"Give me your plate," she said.

"Huh?" Confusion spread across his face in a second.

"Give me your plate, Dogra Sahib."

"Alright." He forwarded his plate towards her.

She gently lifted Anirudh from her lap and made him sit on the table, just next to her plate, which was still untouched.

He saw her separating all the tofu pieces from her Mattar tofu bowl and transferring them to his bowl, then she transferred all the peas he had separated earlier into her own bowl. Now, her bowl contained only peas and gravy, while his bowl had tofu and gravy.

She then forwarded it back to him, a weird combination of confusion and amusement visible on his facial features.

"You don't like peas; I don't like tofu, so this seemed more reasonable." She shrugged her shoulders.

"You dislike tofu? Then, why did you even cook it?" He counter-questioned.

"You like paneer, but you can't exactly consume it. So, Tofu seemed like a better alternative." She replied, smiling feebly.

He chuckled, nodding his head.

A second later, an unconvinced expression marred his face again.

"But you can't just have peas and gravy, can you?"

"Dogra Sahib, I absolutely love peas. Plus, the daal, pulao, and chapattis are more than enough for me."

"Sure?" He was still doubtful.

"Sure." She smiled. "Have your food, please." She said this while putting another morsel of softened chapatti soaked in daal in Anirudh's mouth.

He nodded.

"Mamma!"

She affectionately peered at him and then tipped her chin up.

"Ta... Tasthy!" The toddler's pinkish-white cheeks, which had puffed up with food, were soon smothered with kisses from his mother while he clapped his chubby little hands, his body vibrating vigorously with his own laughter. The round bush of soft black curls around his head jiggled with his body movements.

"My round little Laddu!" And then a chorus of giggles and laughs endearingly engulfed the walls of the dining room—a harmonious blend of babyish giggles, sonorously deep chortles, and tender feminine chuckles.

***

She let her hair loose off the bun and wrapped her maroon Pashmina around her arms, shoulders, and torso. She then tucked a few disturbing strands of hair behind her left ear and adjusted her specs with the tip of her finger.

"A penny for your thoughts?"

Startled, she looked up to find the person of her thoughts standing next to the swing, holding a tray with two coffee mugs.

A pair of black trousers, a navy blue pullover to counter the chilly December winds of Delhi, and a classic white polo underneath, its collar peeking out from the V-neck of the pullover.

"Um, nothing, just office work." What would she have said anyway? That she was planning an attack six to seven months prior to its original date of occurrence?

It sounded odd to even think about it.

"Okay, if you say so." He shrugged and then moved on to keep the tray on the center table in front of the swing. He then adjusted his specs with the tip of his left-hand index finger.

"The tea you make is absolutely delicious, Inu, but today I wanted you to taste my coffee."

Lately, he had started addressing her as Inu.

Her nerves tingled in anxiety, yet she didn't stop him or even question him about it. Things were just fine the way they were. There was no advantage in tangling them or making a knot.

"Okay," she replied.

"So, coffee with Dev then? Minus the Karan?" He chuckled at his own joke.

"Hm." She nodded.

He settled down on the left side of the swing, maintaining a considerable amount of distance between them. She took a sip of the coffee while he looked at her, trying to decode her facial expressions.

"It's good." She said with a smile, looking at him.

"Pass or fail?" He asked enthusiastically.

"Distinction." She remarked.

He nodded back victoriously.

She began, "About your work, the fix you were in the previous day—" She paused, taking a deep breath. "Laid the trap?"

"Check." He shot back with a smirk.

"Lured the sheep?"

"Check."

"What about the big bad wolf?" She inquired again, gazing at the distance in darkness, a smug smile tugging at her lips.

"Checkmate! Tastefully slaughtered, in fact." He shot back simpering, "Out of our way and under criminal investigation. The construction of the hospital building has already started. All our employees and the military authorities are ecstatic."

"That explains your beaming face, relaxed toes, and easy tone." She smiled at him, taking a sip of the coffee and shutting down her laptop with her right hand, unobtrusively.

"Yes." He answered, pausing a bit before turning to take a peek at the closed lid of her laptop, with his eyes narrowed, eventually fixating his gaze on her.

The human pneuma was weird—it would force you to sneak in order to do certain things. Force you to lie to cover up those things. Force you to delete them to avoid them being seen.

But the spirit would know.

For what the brain would try to hide, the spirit would definitely try to unwind.

So, whatever it was that she was hiding in her laptop under the control of her brain, was her spirit capable of unwinding it by any chance?

He felt otherwise. She was far too intelligent for even her spirit to ever determine.

His squinted eyes took back their normal sizes as he observed her from head to toe. For a change, today she wore a long Indian-style white skirt that covered up even her toes instead of those cigarette pants, a short baby pink kurta, and her regular maroon pashmina shawl. Her hair was open.

It made her look delicately beautiful.

"My friends and their spouses wanted to meet you." He said

"When?" she asked.

"Tomorrow evening, will that be fine with you?" He suggested, clasping his fingers together.

She took a good thirty seconds to think. "I don't think I have any commitments tomorrow, so yeah, fine for me."

"The Leela Palace, New Delhi. Tomorrow at 7 p.m.?"

"Done." She shot back and signed with a thumbs up.

They sat in a comfortable silence for the next ten minutes, casually sipping on their coffees. "Inu?"

"Yes?" She tucked her hair behind her ear as her eyes darted back towards his relaxed frame.

"You are an alumnus of National Forensic Science College, Thiruvananthapuram, aren't you?" He probed.

"Yeah." She squinted her eyes. "What happened?"

"From studying criminal psychology to taking up a job in the administration field, don't you think it's a complete one-hundred-eighty-degree turn in terms of career?" He asked, throwing a curveball.

Would her brain force her to hide things again? Or would her spirit unwind those hidings this time?

He wanted to know, so he waited with bated breath.

She took some good five to ten seconds to think, just like always, then sighed. Was her brain giving her time to think? "Valid point." Pausing a bit, she continued again, "By the time I was in the last year of my bachelor's degree, I already knew that criminology was something I was fond of as a subject to study, but administration, societal issues, arts, history, and politics were my calling and my passion. Moreover, most criminal science graduates don't get any jobs anyway, and on top of that, I liked the idea of working for people, which thus germinated the objective of joining the civil service. After that, there was no looking back; I started preparing for UPSC from the first semester of my master's degree itself."

He chuckled inwardly.

Obviously, the brain won, and the spirit lost again. She was far too intelligent for all this.

"Oh." He nodded. "I get it."

"Yeah." She replied, and he hummed.

Then, she turned to look at him; night battled against earth, displaying each other's reflections and, maybe, a promise—she didn't know, but a promise that felt warm yet uncanny.

It felt like home, yet it felt like their undoing.

Because in that moment, he saw her looking at him with her spirit instead of her brain.

***

"Wait! No! No, those aren't for you." She rushed from behind the kitchen counter with a spatula in her right hand.

"Why?" The sudden interruption caused him to look up in surprise.

"Those aloo parathas are for Ani. They don't contain any chilies or spice mix, just salt and mashed potatoes." She reasoned, "I am making yours now. They'll be done in a minute. Just read your newspaper until that time and keep his parathas back in the casserole. He likes them lukewarm."

"Inu! He is just a child—lukewarm parathas? Really?!"

"Yeah. He likes them that way, so he'll have them that way." Taking a roundabout around the slab edge, she flipped the crisp, looking stuffed flatbread on the Indian-style frying pan and said, "You have any problem?"

Standing up, he picked his plate up from the table and made his way towards the open-style kitchen. He walked past the bar stools arranged in front of the countertop to the slab attached to the other side of the kitchen wall. Keeping the plate aside, he plopped himself up on the white marble kitchen slab.

Turning around, she brought two thick and crispy parathas, balancing them both on the spatula, and plopped them on his plate. She then walked back to the inbuilt gas stove and placed the spatula half in and half out on the pan.

Pouring some tomato chutney into a small bowl, she kept it on his plate next to the parathas. A minute later, she plopped the third paratha on his plate, switched off the gas, and walked towards their room.

Ten minutes later, he heard loud giggles. Taking the plate along with him, he walked to the source of the exuberant sound.

Taking a turn, he walked inside their room. The resonation continued to come from the closet-to-bathroom area.

Leaning on the door, he looked at them.

She was giving a bath to that little brat—let's say, she was trying to.

Anirudh was in his birthday suit inside the small VIBGYOR-themed plastic bathtub that Hinduja had bought from some supermarket. Weirdly enough, when he was renovating this penthouse apartment, he had specifically asked the interior designer for small baby bathtubs to be constructed inside both this bathroom and the bathroom attached to Anirudh's nursery. But even after the bathtub was there, he never saw her bathing the kid inside those granite tubs. There was some sort of fear in her eyes. He could make that out. Instead, she bought this rainbow-colored plastic tub with elephant drawings around it. It was cute.

At the moment, the little boy was giggling while splashing soapy water on the young woman. Some of the soap bubbles were flying around, while others were glistening on the boy's naked stomach.

"Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma!" He blabbered.

"Mamma?!" She mock-slapped him on his left cheek with a light pat as the boy's pinkish-white cheeks wobbled. "Laddu! You have drenched me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes!"

She then wiped his face with her hands and said, "How will Mamma go to the office now? You will go to her office as her proxy? Tell me, will you go?!" She picked him up from the tub as he showed whatever little teeth he had and gave a full belly laugh while kicking his legs in the air.

"My Laddu will go to the office? My silly little boy will go to the office now?!" Pouring four mugs of water on the little boy's body, she wrapped him up in a soft pink Turkish towel.

"Today Laddu will munch on delicious aloo parathas." Wiping his body dry, she stood up with him in her arms.

Now that she turned around, he saw something he hadn't seen to date.

The soap water had penetrated the off-white khadi kurta that she had worn this morning as her office attire for the day, along with a pair of black pants. The outline of her soft swells on her chest area was visible through the pellucid wet kurta. The kurta had wet patches near her abdomen as well, through which her belly button was discernible even through the cotton over slip. He peered upward. Some of her soft black tresses were wet now as well, sticking to her face and that glistening neck. Her eyes coruscated with unconditional affection as she peered at the toddler while a single water droplet on her soft, lower coral-hued lip travelled down from her lip to her chin, then to her neck, from where it flowed to her generous bosom, slithering into her abundantly lush cleavage inside the kurta.

The moisture in his throat immediately disappeared while his ears took up a deep tinge of cerise. He clasped his sweaty palms as the pulsating organ in his sternum started pumping its vital fluid aggressively to a certain southern segment of his anatomy.

In that very moment, he knew that if he didn't take any countermeasure immediately, he was not only going to embarrass himself; he was also going to make her uncomfortable.

Averting his eyes from her enticing frame, he immediately slipped out of his coat and tied it around his lower torso, hiding his crotch area.

Hinduja, on the other hand, now had her full attention on the man standing next to the doorframe with his blazer weirdly tied around his waist, pelvis, and femur bone.

Her eyebrows constricted as she looked up at his face. His ears had turned a dark shade of red.

She placed the wiggling little monkey on the bed and then picked up her dupatta from over the pillow. Wrapping it around her chest and shoulders, she turned around to look at her husband.

"Dogra Sahib?"

He cleared his throat and then answered back, "Shoot."

"Why have you tied your blazer like that?" She asked him, pointing at his waist.

"Aa . . .h" He stuttered, but then his eyes averted to the Sunday edition of the Showbiz newspaper of The Hindu on top of the stack of newspapers kept on the centre table from a week ago. On the front page was an article about the Bollywood film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, which was soon going to reach its twenty-fifth anniversary in October this year. "Rahul!" He suddenly yelped.

The twenty-five-year-old collector was suddenly taken aback.

"Who, Rahul?" She asked, completely clueless.

"Rahul Khanna." He asserted while looking around at the room maladroitly, sweat trickling down his temples.

"Who, Rahul Khanna?" She squinted.

"Rahul Khanna from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? You don't know?" Awkwardly chuckling to himself, he rubbed his perspiring palms.

"I wanted to tie the jacket around my waist, like he did in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, while playing basketball with Tina." It sounded more like a question than an answer.

"Sorry?" She felt like scratching her forehead. "You wanted to tie your jacket around your waist like Rahul Khanna from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? While you are dressed in your formals and blazer?"

He bobbed his head like the pendulum of an ancient clock.

"Okay . . ." She was still trying to conjecture his abrupt and weird craze for Rahul Khanna's dressing sense when it suddenly occurred to her, "Pardon me, Dogra Sahib, but Rahul used to tie the jacket on the anterior side, so the vent of the jacket used to stay at the posterior side of his ventral cavity. On the contrary, you have tied it to the rear of your pelvic portion, causing the back vent to be on the front, so it doesn't exactly match Rahul's style," she reasoned, reflecting deeply while pointing at his blazer.

"Um . . . I wanted to do it a bit differently." The six-foot-six, lethal-looking scion of the Dogra Empire squeaked out and immediately turned around to head to the hall.

"Okay," she replied when it again dawned upon her, "Dogra Sahib?"

"Yes?" He gulped, barely turning around.

"Just a correction." She paused, gazing uncomprehendingly at his fiddly form, and said, "It was not Tina who used to play basketball with Rahul. It was Anjali, the one with the bob cut, his best friend." She replied with a smile.

"Oh yes! Anjali. It was Anjali." And then the man rushed out of the room into the bathroom attached to the hall, his blazer dangling around his waist like a half-length cooking apron.

The white ceramic plate with a quarter of an aloo-paratha and an empty bowl was long forgotten on the chest of drawers next to the door.

Weird.

She then turned around to dress up the little chubby monster, who was already dozing off on the bed, drool dripping from the corners of his pouty red lips.

What's with this child? The moment he is out of the bath and on the bed, he falls asleep?!

Like father, like son—both were weirdos!

***

She peeked at the glass dial of her wristwatch. It was 6:45 p.m.

The driver zoomed the government-allocated vehicle through the national highway as it made its way to the Leela Palace.

She gazed out of the window while placing a call to Geeta, their housekeeper.

"Hello, Geeta Didi?"

"Yes, madam?"

"Anirudh . . ." She trailed.

"Madam, Vijay Sahib came home in the afternoon, and he took Anirudh along with him just some time back."

"Vijay Bhai came home?" Perplexity crossed her visage.

"Yes, and he took Anirudh along with him to his farmhouse." The forty-five-year-old lady answered back.

"Okay, but does Dogra Sahib know about this?" Hinduja probed further.

"Madam, it was Sahib who called Vijay Sahib Home. Both of them had lunch together, and after that, Sahib took Vijay Sahib to his home office. Till then, I also fed Anirudh his lunch, after which he fell asleep. He woke up at around five p.m. this evening. I fed him his boiled fruits and milk. Then, Sahib dressed up Anirudh himself, after which Vijay Sahib took him along with himself."

"His diapers, baby wipes, and food? And toys?" Her throat bobbed in uncertainty. Anirudh was still too young to be without female supervision.

"I packed all his baby essentials in that black duffel bag you kept in the closet and handed it over to Vijay Sahib." Taking a pause, she continued, "Don't worry, I have packed two extra pairs of onesies and water bottles as well."

"Okay." She was still worried. "I am disconnecting the call then."

"Okay, madam."

She then placed a call to her brother, but the commander didn't seem to be in the mood to pick up the damn call.

Checking the time on her watch once again, she sighed.

"Iyengar?"

"Yes, madam?" The driver shot back while turning around by a degree or two.

"It is 6:50 already; how much more time will it take?"

"Just ten minutes more, madam; we are about to reach." He replied, courteously.

"Alright." She replied back.

Nodding his head, the driver focused back on rotating the steering wheel. She breathed out and looked out of the window just as her phone buzzed.

***