Page 32 of Six Days in Bombay

His head reared back. “In that dress? Have you not noticed the way these men have been ogling you tonight? If I hadn’t been by your side, who knows what would have happened?”

That’s why he’d been shadowing me all evening? Not because he wanted to be near me but because of my dress? This was too much! The pleasure I’d felt in his company earlier gave way to outrage. I walked quickly to the door and called out to a bearer. “I need a tonga please.”

“Of course.” The servant went down the front stairs to the road below.

“Sona, please don’t be angry. Let me drop you off at your house. I’m not joking. It’s not safe at this time of night. There are protests on the streets.”

“I leave work at this time every single day. I’m used to the night.”

“You cycle home. It’s not the same thing.”

He knew I cycled home? What was he doing, watching me out his office window?

The bearer came back to the front door. “Memsahib, carriage is here.”

Amit got to him before me. He gave the servant a few coins and ushered me down the steps.

“Will you stop being so stubborn and take help when it’s offered?”

I slowed down. Wasn’t that what I was always telling Indira? I knew she needed help even if she didn’t. Was that what Amit was doing? And here I was being stubborn. And petty.

He sensed the change in me as I came to a stop. “Now what?” He rarely sounded exasperated, but he did so now.

“You’re right. I need you to take me home.”

He closed his eyes. The relief on his face was palpable.

When he helped me onto the rickshaw, I wondered what the people at the party thought when they saw the two of us together. Did they think we were married, bickering as married people do? Or did they assume we were lovers, quarreling, and that all would be well when the spat was over? Like Mrs. Mehta’s lovebirds.

***

It was always difficult to avoid sitting shoulder to shoulder in a tonga unless you were absolutely determined not to. The seat was narrow, and the jostling caused by trotting horses made riders slide toward the middle. I made no attempt to stop the slide toward Amit. Every inch of my skin was aware of Amit’s body heat against my thigh, my breast, my shoulder, my cheek. He was trying to protect me from the jarring motion of the carriage by extending his left hand across the back of the tonga. The sleeve of his jacket rubbed against my back, sending goose bumps down my legs. Some urgent need was tempting me to press my body against his. How would I possibly keep from doing that on the forty-five-minute ride to my flat? I clasped my hands together and thought of India’s colonial blight, the children of thekothas, my mother’s eggplant curry. Anything to distract me from laying my hands on him.

I cleared my throat. “Where will Gayatri and Dev settle, do you think?”

Amit was looking straight ahead, as if he were trying to avoid looking at me. “I would have thought Bombay—to live with his family—but I heard someone mention that they would live in Jaipur. Something about Gayatri not wanting to live in a joint family. It’s probably just as well.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Dev is complicated. It’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. He’s very hail-fellow-well-met, but he can carry it too far…where women are concerned. I helped him once at Oxford—I’d just started studying medicine. Not yet a full-fledged doctor.There was a young woman he… Anyway, it’s a side of him I don’t care for.” Now he did turn his head to look at me. His lips were a hair’s breadth away. “Have I ruined your image of him? Perhaps you—”

I couldn’t help myself. I placed my hands on either side of his face and pressed my lips to his. Me, Miss Old Fashioned. I knew you weren’t supposed to do that with the tonga driver just six feet away. I knew you weren’t supposed to do that with a man who was your superior at work. I knew you weren’t supposed to do that sort of thing as a woman—that it was a man’s domain. I did it anyway.

But then I felt his lips move against mine. Tenderly. Mine had been an act of frenzy. His was a slow build of desire. I hadn’t been dreaming after all. He did at least feel some of what I did.

He pulled away first, taking my hands in his and bringing them down to my lap. He was looking at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. He blew air out of his mouth.

“Dev Singh is not my cup of tea, Doctor,” I said.

“That’s good to know, Nurse.”

He seemed to remember that we were in a public vehicle and reluctantly let go of my hands. Tonga drivers coming from Malabar Hill tended to know all the houses they serviced as well as the owners, the groundskeepers and chauffeurs. If our driver saw us, we’d be giving him plenty to talk about. Slowly, Amit turned to the front and placed his arm behind my back once more. This time, he didn’t try to keep from touching me. He moved in closer.

The carriage couldn’t make it down our narrow street, so Amit walked me to our front door. He guided me with a hand at my elbow. I wanted so much for him to put his arm around my waist, to slide his hand under my wrap so I could feel his warm palm against my naked back. But it was eleven in the evening, and any scandal—even public displays of affection among married couples—was entertainment for prying eyes. We lived inIndia, not Prague or Paris or Florence or any of the places where Mira had lived and loved so freely. Where could Amit and I go (assuming he wanted to)? Not to my flat where my mother was waiting for me. Not to Amit’s apartment where word of the indiscretion would travel faster than a monkey can scale a banyan tree. The man who shined shoes at the corner of Amit’s apartment building would tell the peanut vendor on the next corner, who would tell his cousin the mechanic, who would tell his wife, the one who cleaned the house of a society matron, and before you knew it, all of Bombay would know Dr. Mishra had had afemalevisitor—or was she a harlot?—late at night.And did you see the half-naked gown she was wearing?

So Amit left me at the front door of our building without a word but with a look that told me he wished our evening had ended differently.

Chapter 6

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