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Song - O Rangrez | Bhaag Milkha Bhaag |

Word Count - 2049

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06 | Rahul, Who?

"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 Anni. 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 casserole. He likes them lukewarm."

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

"Haan toh? Mera beta hai!" Taking a round about around the slab edge, she flipped the crisp, looking stuffed flatbread on the Indian style fry pan and said, "Usse khaana jaisa pasand hai, woh waise hi khayega!"

(Translation: So what? He is my son! (He will eat his food the way he likes.)

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 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 himself, 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.

And there it was—the scene that could melt anyone's heart. Leaning on to 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 birth suit inside the small VIBGYOR-themed plastic bath tub that Hinduja had bought from some supermarket. Weirdly enough, when he was renovating this penthouse apartment, he specifically asked the interior designer for small baby bath tubs inside both this bathroom and the bathroom attached to Anirudh's nursery. But even after the bath tub was there, he never saw his wife bathing his son 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 his mother. 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. "Laddoo kahin ke! 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 office now? You will go to her office as her proxy? Tell me, you will 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 Laddoo will go to office? My silly little boy will go to office now?!" Pouring four mugs of water on the little boy's body, she wrapped him up in a soft pink Turkish towel.

"Today Laddoo will munch on delicious handmade 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 bra because of 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 traveled 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 dissapeared 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, especially in the initial stage of their marriage, when she was still trying to adjust with him as his wife.

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.

"Sir?"

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 center table from a week ago. On the front page was an article about the 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?"

What in the world was this man saying?!

"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.

"Hain?" She felt like scratching her forehead. "You wanted to tie your jacket around your waist like Rahul Khanna from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai? 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, sir, 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.

"Ummm—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, "Sir?"

"Yes?"

Oh no, no ------ Did she understand------

"Sir, 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, yes! Anjali—yes, 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 are weirdos!

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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 Didi, their housekeeper.

"Hello, Geeta didi?"

"Ji, Beta ji?"

"Anirudh----"

"Beta Ji, Vijay Sahib came home today. And he took Chotu along with him just sometime back."

(Here, she is addressing Anirudh as 'chotu'; chotu means 'little one'; an endearment for small kids, especially boys.)

"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 Bade Sahib know about this?" Hinduja probed further.

"My dear, it was Bade Sahib who called Vijay Sahib home. Both of them had lunch together, and after that, Bade Sahib took Vijay Sahib to his home office. Till then, I also fed Chotu 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, Bade Sahib dressed up Chotu 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, Beta Ji."

She then placed a call to her brother, but the man 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's 6:50 already, how much more time will it take?"

"Just ten minutes more madam, we are about to reach."

"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.

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