5 Bazaar India contributors pen short stories reminiscing about a summer of love

House of candy
by Megha Rao, Author of A Crazy Kind Of Love, It Will Always Be You, and Teething

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The summer my Ajja told me my first story, I was six. His was a strange world; dragonflies gossiped, chairs danced when nobody was looking, and trees dressed in flowers to impress the sun. When I slept, warm against the gentleness of my mother’s sari, I thought about Ajja’s fish that flew to the orchestra of oceans and Gods who headbanged to the protest poetry of thunder. 

It was in this world that I felt truly alive. 

For him, I was not Megha, but Megham, which meant cloud in Malayalam. He told me I was a warrior of the sky, shielding the moon prince on nights that felt too dark. Some days, I was an airplane’s favourite roller-coaster ride, and some others, a superstar rain maker. Shapeshifter, lightning archer. And so, often I found myself disappearing into his world even after we stopped visiting him. Into the mysterious candy house of tales, the secret hiding spot for misfits, the safe spaces for silly girls who spent more time imagining than studying. I daydreamed in class, and I drew on desks until I was sent to the principal’s office for vandalism. I sat alone, and all my friends were imaginary: characters from books I’d read and fantasised into life. But time was a thief. It stole from me my surreal glittery lands, it replaced them with stone pillars of bitter truths. Love showed up fast and business-like as small talk at workspaces. I moved through the ordinary with a jaded indifference. Undoing my old school romanticism and shooting into my bones the doctrine of kiss and run.

And then I moved to a new city...and it was there that I met him. Introductions were brief, but he had my attention when he left a doodle on a tissue at the coffee shop. When he bent to tie his shoe laces and I noticed he’d painted one of them golden. When he said things so jarringly familiar, I had a flashback of Ajja spinning fables in his easy-chair. And so, an hour before midnight, we broke into a park as the guard slept next to the gate. Warmed up to his mouth under the statue of a queen built during the colonial era, and joked about painting it blue. Made out in isolated bus stops and alleyways, stopped for red velvet cake at a confectionery. As the city slept, we blazed through, giggles echoing, holding hands. Everything was breathing. Suddenly, I couldn’t unsee the magic of the world. In the middle of an illuminated street, sitting on a metro’s old flight of stairs, he told me about growing up odd, being picked on for vanishing into worlds nobody had even heard of. In class, he sat alone, and as time passed, he learned to fit in, even though he never felt like he belonged. 

All my life, I had never once believed my weird was wonderful. But as I sat there, leaning on him, waiting for dawn, I felt ready to be myself again. To find myself in that sweet, vulnerable fairyland again. To hear dragonflies gossip, know the chairs had been dancing all along, watch the trees dress in flowers to bewitch the sun. He felt intimate, as if I had seen him wandering the corridors of the house of candy. As if he had locked inside him the very same things I had hidden in me too, only to find out they were treasures, not filth.

All night, we stumbled around, arms looped into each other, resurrecting a legacy my Ajja left his enchanted granddaughter, like we were back again in the magical field we had reigned when we were young and innocent. All night, we found ourselves discovering once more, the very world we’d traded for reality. And come morning, I knew what those who had listened to the orchestra of oceans did: that this was a ritual of homecoming. That I was flying above the water now, to a point of no return. That I didn’t have to kiss and run. Not anymore. Not ever.

Anuj and Seher
by Jugal Mody, Author of Toke and Turds Of Gold

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anuj and Seher had first met at a party. They exchanged glances for the first half of the evening, each gauging what the other laughed at, or said to the group they were standing with...and neither tried to one-up the other’s last word. Seher even checked for Anuj on Facebook but before they started living together, Anuj was not on Facebook. They didn’t say a word to each other for the first half of the party, or at least till they found each other alone (or after 26 songs as both of them had counted, when Florence Welch sang Kiss With A Fist in a version without drums). They discussed movies when they finally spoke, and websites to waste one’s time on when staring at the computer at work or at home when there was nothing to do. That night, they ended up at Seher’s. The next day, they ran into each other again at another party. Initially, both of them tried to avoid each other but when they ran into each other at the bar (after 17 songs this time), Seher said, “This party is boring.” And they landed at Seher’s again. 

Seher asked Anuj to find a TV show to watch as she changed into her night T-shirt. It was yellow, with a stretched neck and a print parodying Mr Men. It said Mr Hump and it had a rotund teapot-like character with biceps, a wink, and a marijuana leaf where a fig leaf would have been.

They watched a few episodes of Black Books before they started making out, while waiting for an episode to load because the Internet speeds decided to drop. When Anuj crashed, Seher texted Veena frantically. Seher and Anuj communicated over e-mail through the next week, during which they met twice. They would have met more times, except Seher had to be with Veena on one day and the other was production day at work.The next time they spent a night together, when Seher woke up, she saw Anuj watching her. The side of his head was resting on his palm. This was also the first time the two saw eye-to-eye after making love. Anuj’s eye wandered a bit before he blinked and it was back to looking at Seher’s morning face. She grinned, exchanged some morning breath in a kiss, and then let him make her coffee before she took a couple of drags of his morning joint. And then she jumped out of bed and escaped. Numbers were not exchanged till Veena interfered. The ruse was that whatever it was may just be casual. When Seher finally started talking after sex, she had called Anuj’s wandering eye a singularity. “It wanders and devours parts of the universe before it returns to look only at me.”

Seher had bought that T-shirt from a thrift store at a steal when she was in college. By the time she met Anuj, the neck of the T-shirt had stretched so much that all she had to do was bring her shoulder to her cheek and the neckline would drop down her arm. This particular feature of the T-shirt was responsible for the sobering up of many-a-drunk-men who would have been waiting for the euphemistic last drink or the euphemistic post-date coffee. Anuj had dubbed it, The T-shirt of Uncontrollable Prettiness, like it was a treasure item won after slaying a boss-level monster.

Strange Lovers
By Stuti Changle, Author of You Only Live Once: One For Passion Two For Love Three For Friendship

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer isn’t a season; summer is an emotion. When I was a kid, I used to visit my grandmother’s village only to spend time with my cousins, chasing peacocks, and stealing mangoes from the nearby farms. When I was a young woman, I used to visit the movie theatres with my first (and only) love, for the fear of being seen with him on the streets. Now, I am an old woman who has acceded to the request of her children and grandchildren to spend the summer of 2022 in the town of Seville, Spain. If life is a gloomy rainy day, summer is the occasional rainbow that continues to light my face up.

I was at the airport when a face suddenly emerged out of the crowd and stuck in the pupil of my eyes. As the cloud of memories in my mind fizzled out, at that very moment, it felt as if a lump stuck in my throat, and something took over my heart. How could I not recognise him? That gentle face and that naughty body language. I could recognise him in the crowd of millions. Why do some people never grow old? His mannerisms still set him apart from everyone else. Why is he alone at the airport? Perhaps, he never married anyone. My mind was filled with countless questions and answers as Aditya broke my reverie, “You will get tired, Ma, sit for a while. The wheelchair assistance staff will be here in some time.” My heart raced faster than the jets on the runway. I worried if my old heart could bear the deluge of emotions anymore. As a young woman, I would see him every day and come back home with the same racing heart. 

As I took a seat, I thought I should send Aditya and call him. Then I worried about what will he think of his Ma! Even after years, I haven’t changed at all, have I? Many years ago, I could not let go of thinking about what people will think of me; I still worry about what they will think. It baffles me how much my mind even thinks? The mind thinks of itself and thinks of others too. But maybe I did the right thing when I let him go to Mumbai to pursue his dreams. When I see him in the newspapers sometimes, I feel happy to see all that he has achieved.

He would often tell me, “Your name is Kavita, but you are my Ghazal,” and I would chuckle, “If I am Ghazal, you are my Sher...arz kia hai...,” and we would burst into laughter. I wish he would recognise me once and laugh again, and I would not complain about embracing death. I just keep diving into the tornado of my feelings, don’t I? I don’t dare to go and talk to him but even today, I can pass by him and feel him from a distance by filling my lungs with the perfume of his body. I told Aditya, “I’ll just be back from the washroom, son,” as I started to take slow steps.

As I moved past him, I held the pallu of my sari to the height of my face instinctively, covering half of it as I did not want him to recognise me. My heart leaped like a frog as a soft voice landed in my ears. “Ma’am, listen! You’ve left your handkerchief behind.”

Thank God, he did not recognise me! I picked up the handkerchief and without thanking him, rushed towards the washroom. I shut the door close and rested my arms on the door while bending my head down to calm my anxiety. As my chest moved up and down in a rhythm, I realised, I didn’t carry any handkerchief. Then? I unfurled the handkerchief while letting it loose from my fist. It was as spontaneous as the lightning in the sky. It was one of those moments when I went blank. He hasn’t changed. I thought to myself as small pearls of tears emerged in the corner of my eyes. The handkerchief had Ghazal embroidered on it in vivid, colorful threads. As young lovers, we would often listen to Amrita Pritam’s poem, and it echoed in my ears today, “Main tujhe phir milungi, kaha, kaise, pata nahi”. [I will meet you again, don’t know where or how].

THE TROUBLE WITH FANTASIES
by Andaleeb Wajid, Author of All Drama No Queen, and Mirror, Mirror among others

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaurav was calling me? I watched his name flash on the screen for a few more seconds, aware that I should answer the call, but my hands wouldn’t move. Idiot, I told myself as I swiped across the screen with trembling fingers. “Nina! Hi!” I cleared my throat a little self-consciously before replying, “Hi Gaurav! How are you?” 

Gaurav had been the hottest boy in my class and I was biased enough to think that he was the hottest boy in our entire college. My heart skipped several beats whenever he was around, but he’d never asked me out...and I didn’t have the courage to go after him. “I’m good. Can we meet?” he answered in a self-assured and confident manner. I was surprised. “What? Um, yeah, sure!” My heart raced for a few seconds as we decided to meet at a nearby coffee shop. It was a Saturday and I was free, but I had planned to go for a movie with Tarun, my colleague and best friend. The movie wasn’t until later in the day, but I had been angling for a relaxed day at home.

I raced through my wardrobe looking through possible options, flinging aside everything, trying on clothes after clothes. I was being extra critical of everything. After all, I was meeting Gaurav—in college, he had been the ultimate catch. He was magnetic and charming, and he had been slated for great things. I followed him on social media, but, sadly, he was the sort who didn’t post much about himself. So I didn’t know if he was single or committed, or even where he worked. The few photographs I saw were mostly random, nature shots that didn’t reveal much about him. 

Meanwhile, I worked as a software developer at CKN Solutions. Tarun and I often joked about how it sounded like the short form for chicken, and oddly enough, Satish, our CEO, did remind me of a chicken, albeit a plucked one.

Finally, an hour later I was seated at the table and Gaurav was on time. He looked great. A boyish smile lit up his face when he appraised me and I hoped the lavender top I wore complemented my complexion. “You look nice,” he said. I smiled widely at him. I envisioned him telling me that he had seen my profile on social media and he’d been smitten, regretting that he had wasted all this time not reconnecting with me. I briefly thought of what I’d tell Tarun about our movie plans. I might have to cancel them if all went well here. He would be disappointed, but he’d live. Gaurav cleared his throat and I snapped out of my mental plans. “Are you happy with your job?”. I frowned. “Um, yeah I guess.” He nodded, sipped a glass of water and then smiled. “I was pleasantly surprised to see your profile and...” 
“Where?” I interrupted him, surprised. “On LinkedIn,” he replied. “We’re connected on LinkedIn?” He shook his head. “I sent you an invitation some time ago. You haven’t accepted yet.” 

The absurdity of a world where Gaurav was waiting for me to accept his invitation hadn’t sunk in yet. Before I could speak, he steepled his fingers together. “So,” he said crisply, “Are you looking to move out and expand your horizons?” Time slowed a little. I was not being wooed. I was being head-hunted. The disappointment flared inside me for a few seconds before I accepted that this was flattering too.

“Not really. I’m quite happy where I am,” I said. It was the truth. “I have a feeling you might change your mind after we have this coffee,” he said confidently. I grinned, surprising him, but I nodded, letting him get into his spiel. An hour later, I left the coffee shop holding his business card in my hands. Nice to have contacts in other companies, even if they were desperate start-ups.

My phone rang and I answered it. “You won’t believe what just happened Tarun! Wait, can we meet for lunch before the movie?” I asked him. “I was just going to ask if you were free for lunch,” he replied. The smile on my face grew and something about his voice warmed my insides. “I can’t wait,” I said.

Birthday Girl Brunch
By Riva Razdan, Author of Arzu 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He’s Just Not That Into You blared from her steel-silver laptop as Nandini poured herself another drink—just a little measure—of JD left by an ex. The Ex. She sloshed the bronze into her glass full of ice with one hand and unstrapped her black stilettoes with the other, mentally chiding herself for drinking his stuff.

Well, 3 a.m. was too late for unassisted sleep. And then, she should just be celebrating that her Uber driver was decent and hadn’t decided to kill her on her solo trip back from Toy Room the night before. Had he judged her for stumbling out of the nightclub half-drunk and kohl smudged? Absolutely. But perhaps if Ram Krishna Hari, MH 02 6745, knew whom she had fled from that night, he wouldn’t have been so judgemental. He would have nodded at her like the cabbies in NYC rom-coms, after the heroine kicks her no-good boyfriend to the curb. Nandini knocked her whiskey back and fell into a deep sleep.

That morning she woke up to a choir of texts on her phone, of the excited BFF variety. “I’M SO SORRY!!! I had NO idea he was going to show up!!”; “You’re so so so much prettier”; “Are you nuts?? Why did you Uber ALONE?”. But outside of the explosions of her girl gang, who were equal parts genuinely concerned and utterly riveted by her humiliation the night before, there was another text. An innocuous SMS, from a number that was just digits because she had deleted the name of the sender and blocked him on WhatsApp. “Happy birthday, Nandi. It made my night to bump into you.”

Bump into her, hah. Like it was a total coincidence that he had shown up at her birthday hang after watching her Stories on Instagram. Like it was a total coincidence that she had squeezed into his favourite gold dress, splashed sparkles on her eyelids, contorted her mouth into a duck pout, and recorded all of the above, with the location tagged and Highlighted so a viewer—The Viewer—would know exactly where to locate her on the eve of her 28th birthday.

She had been delighted beyond belief when he walked in. That moment held all the satisfaction of piercing a bullseye with a well-sharpened dart. The same way Cupid must have felt when she first met him, in a club exactly like that one, 10 years ago. When she was dying to know Bombay and he was dying to show it to her. Just like that night, Nandini was swollen with vanity and pride. Until she walked in behind him. Her face had fallen when she saw Nandini. And Nandini had felt herself go pale when she saw the ring on her finger. Rose-cut, from the ‘right family’, and picked out by his mum. The girl and the diamond. 

What sort of sociopath brings his future wife to an ex-girlfriend’s birthday party? The same kind of sociopath that flirts with a nearly-married man. Nandini ran straight to the bathroom and threw up all the whiskey that 10 years of drinking hadn’t bullied her stomach into holding.

By 1 p.m., all the birthday flowers had been delivered. There was her father, who forgot to call but sent blooming pink chrysanthemums to make up for it. There was her aunt, who had accompanied her glorious buttercup bouquet with exact instructions on how to take care of the flowers, and of herself. The tenderness in her aunt’s voice had led Nandini to start crying. She passed it off as quiet gratitude for her gift. She didn’t want to argue about moving back home. She had fought too hard to be the Beauty Editor at a luxury magazine, to give it all up now.

But even work couldn’t excite her that morning. The idea of sitting in her swivel chair, drinking coffee from the office pantry on her birthday was too pathetically wall-flowerish to consider. So far, every birthday was spent having brunch with him at his favourite café. Bacon and fried eggs, just the way he liked them. No toast because they were perpetually Keto-ing together. It was funny how her own life had turned stranger to her, with him out of the picture. And then...more mockery followed. Flowers. Ugly, ostentatious roses. Along with a message on the watchman’s intercom. ‘Aapke dost aaye hain. Neeche wait kar rahe hain.’ [Your friend is here. He’s waiting for you downstairs.]

Nandini knew she shouldn’t go. She decided to set three eggs to boil. She cut up some avocado and said a soft prayer. And with a surge of strength, she stuck sliced bread into the oven. The intercom buzzed again. He negged her as soon as she appeared in the lobby. “Oh, is the hangover as bad as it looks?” She resisted the urge to unknot her hair and finger-comb it into lustrous beach waves. She sat down opposite him, still in yoga pants, dark circles unconcealed. “Look, I came by to see if you wanted to get coffee. It felt wrong...to not see you today.” She didn’t ask what he told his fiancée. She knew what he would have told her—that they had been best friends first. And the girl, the poor thing, had no choice but to acquiesce. It was his way or the highway. And by the time you’d gotten close enough to love the charming warmth of him, the highway seemed like the coldest, bitterest place on Earth. Nandini herself had spent the best part of her twenties teetering at the threshold of that icy tundra, gripping onto him with skinny girl coquetry, easy-going affection, everything in her power except sex. She knew that a boy like him, from a family like his, would never marry someone who had ‘been around’. The joke was on her, because he refused to marry a virgin too. And 10 years of whispered nothings had become just that: nothing.

But she was still posting Stories, exchanging DMs, and entertaining him if he appeared in her lobby on her birthday—still, pathetically hoping that he may change his mind. “Look, I think we have a lot to talk about. If you don’t want to go out, let’s go up?”

All it took was a crook of his smile, more familiar to her than her own, for her to get up and to let him follow her home.He leaned too close in the elevator as he authoritatively punched in the sixth floor. She got a big, intoxicating whiff of him. His morning run mixed with Ralph Lauren. In a heady rush, she decided that she would do whatever it took to get him to reconsider his position. Perhaps, in this last surrender in him finally getting his way, she might get hers.He took her by the waist and pulled her close. Nose to nose. So much for talking. And yet, he seemed to be promising just what she’d imagined. Complete possession for complete possession. She inhaled greedily—stuffing her senses with him. Except now, there was something else too. A faint, floral scent. Hers. Like she’d always been there, nestling her neck into his collar. The door swung open to the rumble of boiling eggs. To the fragrance of her family’s flowers. And then, as if on divine cue, the ring-ding-ding of her toaster oven, waking her to reality.

Suddenly Nandini stopped him—even though he was already tugging her hand towards the bedroom. “Go.” “Excuse me?” he rebelled. “Leave,” Nandini added. He looked at her like she was psychotic. “Why?” he seemed puzzled. “Because unless you’re here to tell me that you’re leaving her, that you’re going to be as reliable and constant as my family, my work or my breakfast...I’m not interested,” she replied. He blinked for a moment, taken aback. “I love you Nandini. I can’t be with you but...” 

“Nah.” He stopped, shocked, again. She scooped out some avocado with her finger and sucked on it right in front of him. “I’m going to build a life that looks like mine.” She crunched on another piece of toast. “And then find the guy who’s man enough to commit to sharing his life, built by him—not his parents—with me.” “Good luck with your broke-*ss simp,” he snorted.

"Good luck paying for the Botox bills. She’s younger than you.” “Being married to you will age her,” Nandini quipped. He laughed, shocked. Nandini smiled. She had never risked the last word before. She knew what ripping his ego would have meant.

And she was right. He left. Never to leech her out of living again. And as the door slammed shut, she felt release instead of despair. Neither her living room nor the day seemed as empty as before. It felt full with promise and young with hope. She put a jazz number on and decided to wear pearls to work. 
 

Lead image: Andrea Varani