The Benefit Season by Nidhi Singh Page A

view? Without her help I couldn’t have swung it. We should
be thanking her for it’, I protest. I am hurt. I didn’t expect my
grand spectacle to be scrutinized like this. I had hoped it would
become the stuff legends are made of.
    ‘ Thank you Mrs. Nagrath’,
Aarti says, looking up at the towering Monal.
    ‘ You are so welcome dear.
Anything for you, or Arjun here.’ Monal ignores the sarcasm and
notices the ring on Aarti’s finger. She grasps her hand and looks
at the ring closely, while my heart thuds against my chest;
suddenly afraid like a school kid awaiting judgment of his Art
& Crafts teacher frowning over a drawing.
    ‘ It’s…what to say, quite a
classic’, she says, waving her hand away. She summons the maître d’
and says, ‘look after these kids’- and she’s barely a couple of
years elder to us. ‘It’s a special occasion. And put it on my
tab’.
    ‘ No no, absolutely not’, I
protest. ’I totally can’t let you do that. It’s my affair, please-
let us be. Do it on any day, but not this’. I turn and wave a
resolute finger at the detached maître d’.
    ‘ Allow the company to take
care of it silly; we’re all family now. I won’t hear another word.’
She tugs at the maître d’s sleeve and struts away, leaving the food
lifeless in my plate.
    I throw my napkin on the table and look past
Aarti. Her hand slowly creeps across the table to mine, and
squeezes.
    ‘ I am sorry, ‘ I plead. ‘I
didn’t mean it to be like this. I thought this was the best day of
my life, and I‘d done quite okay. Then this happens. You must think
I’m not even allowed some privacy when I’m writing our destiny
here. Can’t I even bring my girl out on this day without some
accountant poring over my bills?’
    She sees my hurting and her annoyance melts.
‘ How did she know we would be here? I am sure this is not the only
place in town’, she asks softly.
    Probably the company chauffer sneaked our
plans to her. But then she could have simply asked.
    ‘ She wouldn’t have been
able to come here if she’d asked you, would she?’ Aarti says,
uncannily right.
    ‘ I guess we’ll have to
just think it happened by chance’, I say, ordering the chocolate
sherbet to calm her mind. And mine. But Monal has stolen the sugar
from my pudding, and the tingle from my tongue as I swirl the now
flat wine on it. I wish this evening hadn’t been stolen from us. It
was a needless intrusion without which the sunshine would still
have prevailed.
    ϖ
    I cannot put Monal out of
my mind. Nor, worse, can Aarti. Many questions linger at her lips,
but she will ask them later. But as usual, I’m wrong and I am
a see-through .
    ‘ Did you see the rocks
that woman was wearing?’ Aarti says as we drive home. She
carelessly places a hand on my thigh, and taps on it impatiently.
Raising the other hand she peers at the ring to see if the tiny
stone is still there. She hasn’t stopped staring at it all
evening.
    ‘ Umm…’ I think hard- men
are clumsy at noticing those kinds of things on a woman. Our
attention is always elsewhere.
    ‘ I bet you were looking
somewhere else. They must pay you pretty well to be able to afford
rocks that big’, she observes.
    I have felt that too. I am not a sucker for
brand names but I am well-read enough to understand a Luis Vuitton,
a Mont Blanc, a Ferrari and among others, an Arabian Sea-facing
duplex at the marquee Sagar Mahal at Worli where apartments can go
upwards of Rs. 1.5 Lacs a bloody square foot. ‘ The cream must be
getting skimmed at the surface, because for low lives like us,
hardly anything is left’.
    ‘ Don’t worry, you’ll get
there one day too’, she says, and dreamily shifts the reassuring
hand a tad higher on my thigh, giving me the
heebie-jeebies.
    She’s been touching me a lot lately. We’ve
never touched each other inappropriately before. She tends to get
physical when high-strung, but a sock in the sides or a pinch on
the cheeks mostly doesn’t mean