The Celebrity:
The First Class was very sparsely occupied, just two
or three people in all those 20 odd seats. I spotted one face that struck my
solar plexus like a ton of bricks. She was wearing Salvar-kameez and had
covered a good portion of her head with the Dupatta. She pretended to be
engrossed in a book, quite oblivious of the surroundings. The setting sun shone
through the window on her side. She was wearing very large sunglasses that
covered almost one-third of her face. Very obviously, she valued her privacy
very dearly and did not want to be recognized.
Even then, it struck me that she seemed very familiar, as if I might
have met her some where, some time. But
I just could not place a label on that face. I kept walking and came back to my
seat.
The sun had set after a while. The lights had been
dimmed. Only some soft lights at the aisle were kept on. Some passengers had
turned on their reading lights. I stood up and walked toward the First Class
cabin once again, wanting to take another look at this mysterious passenger.
The reading light illuminated her face partially; it was still buried in the
book. Only then slowly, it all came back to me.
She was Archana Roy. Yes, oh my God! It was indeed
she. I had watched her on the movie screen so many
times...............................................
I heard a gentle knock on the intermediate door. She
had seen the news on her TV as well. She was flushed pink and visibly shaken.
She was in tears. She pleaded if she could come in, as she was scared and
shocked beyond belief. I let her come in. We were both still in the same
clothes we had been in all day.
We sat on the bed resting our backs on the pillow
and headboard. We were watching the breaking news, clasping our hands with
horror in our eyes. I could feel that she wanted to clasp me and hold me close.
But I was just too confused and emotionally broken myself to make any kind of
physical response to her overtures...........................................
She asked if she could leave the intermediate door
open. I readily agreed. As she went into her room she turned and told me over
her shoulder to give her a wake up call at 5:30, if she was not already awake.
I could see that her bathroom door was also
half-ajar. I could see her full image reflected on the large mirror at the
sink. She was probably unaware of that or she might have purposely wanted it
that way.
She took her Dupatta and hung it on the peg at the
opposite wall. Then she slowly removed the hooks on the back of her Kameez one
by one and slowly slid it over her head. Turned around and hung that also on
the peg....................................... One by one everything came off
and she disrobed completely. Her ivory complexion and smooth skin made her look
like Neptune under moonlight.
She pulled out a brush from her handbag, stroked her
dark brown hair a few times. She took
out an elastic band and bound her hair into a ponytail. Then she splashed her
face with cold running water. Rubbed some soap all over to remove the makeup.
She rinsed her face finally and covered it with fresh laundered hand towel from
the rack. Her clean spotless natural skin without any makeup shone looking even
prettier.
Then she pulled out a brown paper package from the
handbag and removed a T-shirt. She pulled it over her head and let it fall all
the way down to her ankles. It was a top-to-toe large T-shirt with
"Welcome to Arkansas" written on the back with a picture of a sunrise
behind Ozark Mountains in the front. Obviously this was the piece of article
that had started the whole rigmarole that evening. Or should I say it was the
cause of our survival today. I heard her switch off the light and get into her
bed...........................................
Sojourn:
As my flight was approaching to land at the New
Delhi International Airport, my thoughts were wandering back to my childhood in
a sweet little town Udaipur in the state of
Rajasthan.................................
We lived in a villa on the banks of the Swaroop
Sagar lake, a villa that was the official residence of the Prime Minister of
the local Kingdom before the princely monarchies were constitutionally
abolished. The villa was several miles away from the main town and Sohan Singh
our Chauffeur would drive me to and fro school. While driving back from school,
he would let me sit by his side and steer the car, my legs would not reach the
pedals on the floor. He would roll down the window on his side and take a few
puffs. We had a perfect quid pro quo, I would tell nobody that he took puffs in
the car in front of me and he would let me steer the car. Sooner or later my
legs started growing and reaching the pedals. I even got my own driver's
license. That was a sad day for Sohan Singh, his puffing privileges were
severely curtailed then on. In fact if Sohan Singh had his way, I would not
have got my license for another few years...................
The school itself was in the middle of a farm. If
you looked out of the classroom window you could tell the season by the crop
growing around you. Whenever we had a free period, we kids would run and sit by
the well. Two blindfolded bulls would go round and round in circles drawing
water from the well with a Persian Wheel and spilling it over a mud canal. I
would spot a twig and follow it on the flowing water, recalling each of its
stopping places with the ports of Marco Polo our teacher had just told us in
the geography class. We could run into the fields and pick up fresh carrots or
maize (corn?) to be roasted on charcoal, eaten with lime and salt or a stick of
sugar cane to be squ