Ladies Coupe by Anita Nair Read Free Book Online Page B

and felt relief flood her. ‘Where were you? I was about to get up and come look for you,’ she said, sitting up. ‘I was afraid that … that something had happened to you.’
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said as he padded to his side of the bed. ‘Would you like me to ask them for another blanket? There is just this one quilt for us.’
    She felt her heart lilt. ‘No, no, don’t,’ she said softly.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Yes, I’m sure. Get into bed. I feel cold watching you stand there.’
    Janaki could feel herself blushing in the dark. She didn’t understand this warning of her senses. Women her age
were not supposed to feel this way. She turned towards him and watched him put the usual distance between them.
    ‘Can we go home tomorrow?’ she asked.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    ‘Can we go home tomorrow? I’m tired of all the travelling we have been doing these past few weeks. I’d like to go home.’
    ‘They have booked our tickets for the twenty-fourth. Siddharth said that he had to use a great deal of clout to get even that. There are no first-class tickets available before that.’
    ‘I don’t mind travelling second-class,’ she said.
    ‘Are you sure? It won’t be all that clean and the berths are not very wide or soft. You will be tired by the time you reach home.’ He lay on his back and cleared his throat.
    ‘That’s alright.’
    ‘Siddharth won’t like it. He is sure to make a fuss.’
    ‘Let him. I just want to go home,’ she said.
    Then slowly, because she had never ever said these words before, she whispered, ‘I am tired of sharing you with everyone. I want you to myself.’
    She moved closer and fitted the length of her body to his side. She felt him hold his breath and then gradually, in wonder, exhale.
    She adjusted her breathing to his, inhaling the combination of moisture, toothpaste and soap that was his fragrance. He gathered her in his arms and she lay there with her head nestling on his shoulder.
    Friendly love. Under one blanket everything was possible, she thought as her eyes closed and his warmth slipped into her.

3
    Panic fans the flames of fear. Panic dulls. Panic stills. Panic tugs at soaring dreams and hurls them down to earth. Panic destroys.
    Akhila felt panic dot her face. She had escaped. But from what to what?
    Quo vadis. Akhila remembered the name of the strapped Bata sandals her father had bought just before he died.
    ‘Quo vadis,’ Appa read aloud from the side of the box. ‘Do you know what that means? It’s Latin for “Whither goest thou?” I like the conceit of a pair of sandals that dares ask this question. Something I haven’t asked myself for a long time.’ He justified the expense of buying an expensive pair of footwear, of allowing himself to be inveigled into buying a brand from a shoe showroom rather than picking up a pair from the usual shoe shop.
    Quo vadis? Akhila asked herself. Then in Sanskrit: Kim gacchami. Then in Tamil: Nee yenga selgirai.
    Akhila didn’t know any more languages but the question dribbled through the boundaries of her mind in tongues known and unknown. Kicked by a creature in a yellow-and-red striped jersey and spike-studded boots called panic.
    Akhila saw herself as a serpent that had lain curled and
dormant for years. She saw life as a thousand-petalled lotus she would have to find before she knew fulfilment. She panicked. How and where was she to begin the search?
    She rested her forehead on the peeling brownish-red window bars. For the rest of her life, the smell of orange peel and rust would be for her the odour of panic.
    The train pitched and heaved through the night. The window bars felt cold against Akhila’s skin. Janaki’s soft voice continued to echo in her head. It occurred to Akhila suddenly that she was doing it all wrong. She was treating another woman’s life as though it were a how-to book that would help her find clear-cut answers to what she needed to do next. She let the thought loose on her