A Wave’s Touch

I was waiting at the Bangalore Bus Station Complex impatiently. The Madras bound bus was yet to arrive and I was pacing up and down the platform. I had already finished with the two periodicals I had bought at the news-stall. 

  “When is the bus to Madras expected?”a nightingale’s voice poured honey into my ear.

  I looked in the direction of the sweet voice. Beside me stood a tall and slender girl of twenty. She was very beautiful to look at. She stood before me with a suit-case in one hand and an air bag slung onto her shoulder. 

  “It is scheduled to arrive in ten minutes miss,”I replied, surveying her attractive figure through the corner of my eye. As a writer it was my experience that, if you stare straight into the eyes of a beautiful woman, she takes you for a roadside Romeo and you may soon land in trouble. Then the golden opportunity of winning her heart is lost forever.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “Madras,” she said.

  “Me too.”I said. I was already devising plans to engage her in conversation because I had already become a poor victim of Cupid. “ Hi! I am Rao” I introduced myself to her.

  “I’m Lavanya,”she said.

   “Why should we strain by standing?” I said to her,”let us sit and relax for a while.”

But she stood undecided with her suit-case in her hand for a while and then nodded. 

But before we could sit on a bench and relax, the most unwelcome bus arrived on scheduled time. 

  Soon the passengers gathered at the entrance of the bus to get in. Lavanya also joined the gathering to push her way into the bus.

  As soon as the passengers got into the bus, the driver honked the horn twice.  Lavasnya put her head out of the window to ascertain whether or not I got into the bus. 

  I felt that she was anxious that I might miss the bus.]

  I got up, took the suit-case into my hand and got into the bus leisurely. As I checked my seat number on the ticket, it was a pleasant surprise for me.; My seat was next to that of Lavanya. I put my suit-case on the luggage rack and sat beside her. There was no arm-rest, separating the window seat from the aisle seat. So I sat huddled up to avoid falling over her, if the bus took a sudden turn. But she sat relaxed.

  Thus laying huddled up in a corner of the seat, I reopened the conversation. “The weather is chilly. Isn’t it?” I said.

  “Yes,” she replied, “because it’s winter.”

  I felt a little beaten. But I did not lose heart. I continued, “If the weather is chilly, as it is now, your mind is numb and you lack the initiative to do anything creative.”

  “Creative!” she repeated with a note of frustration in her voice, “I am the personal secretary for a sill, old boss. “To take dictation from him in shorthand and bang it on a typewriter, I don’t need any creativity. But why do you speak about creativity? Are you a poet?:”

  “No, I am a writer,”I said, “but my critics say that my fiction is as poetic as that of Thomas Hardy.”

  “I was an avid reader of Thomas Hardy, when I did my B.A. with English Literature at Madras University.” she said.

  “The syllabus of B.A. English literature at the Madras University is exclusive. There is no other subject in the three year course unlike at many other universities. Hence it is almost half M.A English literature course.” I added.

  “What about your academic career?”she asked.

  “I majored in B.A. with English literature, History and Philosophy. So my knowledge of English literature and language may be less compared to yours.”

  Again our conversation reverted to the fiction I write.

   “What are the books you have written so far?”

   I reeled out the titles of five unpublished novels and two collections of short stories.

  She pouted her lips and seemed to rack her brains for a while. “Sorry,” I don’t remember having read your novels. But believe me. I read a lot of fiction.”

  I felt a little sad. If she hadn’t heard the titles of my books, it was not her fault. It was my fault as they were not yet published.

  “I wasn’t a famous writer,” I said, “I shun sex, violence and sensationalism in my writing. So I could not shoot up into prominence as some other writers could.” I thought that she realised the hurt note in my tone.

  “Don’t be sad because you are not known to many. Great writers like Somerset Maugham 

were obscure and felt desperate, when they began their career as writers. But when they became mature in writing, the world recognized their genius and the public simply flocked to them.”

  Her soothing words gave me the strength of a hundred elephants. “If only I had that much encouragement” I said, “I am sure to come up in my career.”

  “By the by”she said,”what do you write about? What are your themes for fiction? Please tell me all about your fiction?

  “The joys and sorrows of the urban middle class are an inexhaustible source of material for my fiction.” I said.

  “Then what about the rich and the poor? Don’t you write about them.

  I smiled and shook my head in the negative.

  “You are a committed writer then!”she said.

  I was a little alarmed. I have taken Lavanya simply to be the personal secretary to an aged cranky boss till now. But now I realised her depth of understanding. Talking to her refreshed my spirits, which lay dormant all these years.

“You are partly right.” I said “when I write about the urban people, they cover both the neo rich and the poor.”

  “But you see,”she argued, the Indian middle class is not confined to urban areas only. The middle class exists in rural areas too. What about them?

  As she posed this challenge, my spirits were reinvigorated. Had I had this brilliant, incisive thinking girl by my side, I thought, I would have earned my due place in the world of fiction. I answered her question with great enthusiasm, which was frightfully surprising to myself, that I was born and brought up in an urban middle class family. So I could write about them faithfully. 

  “Agreed” she said laughing. “Now I call you a ‘sincere writer.’”

  “Any tag which pleases you.” I laughed too.

  The bus made a halt at Chittoor. She was about to get down to have a cup of coffee. But I stopped her. “I myself will go out and fetch two cups of coffee for us.”

 I fetched two cups of coffee and offered one to her. Sipping over her cup of coffee, she wanted to pay. But I told her that I had already paid. Then she promised to give me a cup of coffee in Madras, our final destination.

  I bowed my head and said like a gallant lord pleasantly,”As the lady pleases.”

  She raised her eyebrows in feigned fright and exclaimed,”Oh my good heavens, you are a knight! Must have found yourself at the round table of King Arthur!”

  I met her at her own level. “Yes Lady, a knight, a gallant lord who fights a monster to win his beloved lady.”

  Suddenly she became silent. I thought that she had got the cue of what I had said. Her lower lip trembled and she held it with her glistening white upper teeth.

  “Isn’t it  a sign that she was also hit by the arrow of Cupid?” I thought. I fancied a thousand roses blooming in her reddened cheeks.

  I did not want her to be silent. I yearned to hear her talk through her bashfulness. “Why are you silent?” I challenged her, shoot me some more sharp questions if you can.”

  She looked at me and smiled. Her shy smile tingled my entire being and I thought that I could write an excellent novel with the electric charge of her smile.

  “You’re very designing,”she said, “I must be careful about you.” 

  “Of course I am designing,” I said, “a lord is always designing to win his lady’s heart.

  “Oh, please stop it,” she said with a suppressed smile, “Won’t you keep quiet?”

  “Yes, as the lady pleases,” I said and remained silent for a while.

  The bus was racing along the tarmac road that looked like a long, winding black cobra. From the window I saw the beautiful green paddy fields, flanked by tall trees. I looked at her. She was enjoying the beauty of nature, and while she was thus immersed, I gazed at her golden brown complexioned body, glowing in the warm sunlight.

  The silence was killing and I wanted to engage her in conversation again. “So you are beaten in the argument.” I teased her. “No more questions to fire at me?”

  She looked at me and gave one of her radiant smiles. “I am tired of the argument,”she said but posed a challenge to me immediately,”Why don’t you appoint me your personal secretary? Being a P.S to a writer is wonderful. Isn’t it?” 

  I was taken aback. I was a writer of sorts and could hardly make both ends meet. But... had I only sufficient resources to have her as my P.S, the ambiguity and abruptness in my writing, which my readers often complain, could be avoided by her incisive criticism about my writing. Keeping with the style of the Mills and Boons fiction, suppose this P.S fell in love with her boss, that was me, and became my wife in due course of time after the usual challenges and counter challenges and misunderstandings, I should be the luckiest person in the world, I thought.

  “Why don’t you answer me,” she persisted, “Do you doubt my abilities to be your P.S? If it were so, I explain my secretarial achievements?”  she paused for a moment and then continued, “I will make the best PS you can ever dream of having. I can just tell you how useful I can be to you. Once Somerset Maugham’s personal secretary suggested a punctuation change - inserting a comma, in his magnum opus ‘Moon and Six Pence.’ When the suggestion was carried out, it enhanced the greatness of the master-piece. When I become your P.S. I can do better than that. Can’t I?”

  “Oh God!” tears welled up in my eyes. I lied to this angel that I am a very successful writer, when in fact none of my books were accepted to be published. “What a cad I am” I thought.

  “Yes, I was mean, mean to the girl who believed in me that I was a popular writer. But me? A hypocrite. But there is no going back. I must keep my pretense. So I found myself saying, “Right now an old man is working as my personal secretary. He is lonely and unable to seek employment elsewhere. If he quits on his own, the next preference is yours only.” 

  “Thank you very much” she said brightly and fished out a scribbling pad and a pencil, “give me your address. I will be visiting you at your office.

  I was caught in my own pretense again. I rented a dirty bed in a dormitory. All my property consisted of a suit-case, full of clothes and another bag, full of white papers, ball pens, refills, punching machine, pins, gem clips, other stationary necessary for a writer and some books. Both the suit-case and the big bag were stowed away under the bed. I did not have even a separate cupboard for me. There was hardly any walking space between the beds. If I gave her my address and she visited me at the dormitory, my pretense would be blown up and she would take me for a cheat. It would be suicidal for me. So I reeled out some more lies. “I am vacating the spacious apartment and my office which I have rented till now. It’s because I am leaving for Malaysia to partake in the Asian Writers’ Conference. After that event, I will go on a world tour for three months.”

  She looked at me in awe. “It will be simply great for me to be your PS in future. I do hope that when you return from your world tour, people will recognise your literary genius and admire your writings.”

  I could not look straight into her eyes. I was guilty. 

  “Rao!” she said breaking the silence. “You have already made a mental journey to Malaysia. A realistic writer should be mentally and physically present at the same place.”

  “Yes!” I said desperately trying to look composed, “I will be mentally and physically in India till I leave for Malaysia.”

  “That is it,” she laughed in agreement. She wrote her residential address on a piece of paper and gave it to me. “I will live with my grandparents in Bangalore. Please visit me at my house someday.”

  “O.K. sure” I said, 

  There was silence for a few minutes. “I think your people come to the bus station in Madras to pick you up”

  She opened her beautiful, honey oozing lips to reply but just then the bus swerved to the extreme left to avoid head on collision with an oncoming lorry in the opposite direction. The instant result - there was another head on collision between me and Lavanya. But this collision was a romantic one. She lost her balance and hit against me, her lips covering mind fully. 

  We recovered as soon as the bus steadied again.

  Our lips met for only a moment but the experience of it is of ages. We did not talk to each other for some time. We were still wrapped in that sweet experience.

  At last I looked at her. She looked at me too with her eyes downcast. I thought that she had not yet recovered from her virgin bashfulness for what had happened. Now she looked like a shy bride but not like the tantalising and lively girl.

  We were loath to break the silence for fear of losing the sweet mood.

   We talked to each other for a while before the bus reached Madras.

  The bus made its final stop at the Broadway Bus Station in Madras . All the passengers crowded at the exit door to get down and Lavanya joined them.

  I was the last person to get down. As I got down, I saw her getting into a taxi along with her people, who came to the bus station to pick her up.

  I stood at the parking slot and looked at her.

  She blew me a flying kiss as the taxi moved on. Her flying kiss expressed a hundred thousand meanings.  

  Gone was she, but may not be forever.

  I heaved a sigh and walked along the road that led to the Marina beach.

  I was walking along the sea shore and the waves were rising up and falling down. The droplets of a  milky white surf of a fallen wave rose up in a soft breeze and touched my lips. The soft touch was like that of Lavanya’s lips.

  I held my pen in my hand with a firm resolve to come up as a writer against all odds. Then Lavanya will find me and become mine, I thought. I set my face homewards - the dungeon-like dormitory, planning the plot of a new romantic novel.