LEELA, RAVI and THE END

PART 1: Leela

Leela adjusted the excess Kohl escaping from her lower eyelid with her fingertip. She batted her eyes and peered into the mirror, hung by her shut bedroom window, her face a kiss away from it. She carefully arranged strands of hair across her temple into disarray and rearranged them after stepping back to look at it. Even though she was trying to be who she was not today, she still preferred careless attraction to calculated appeal and even looking at herself in such detail bordered on the latter for her. She applied some lip gloss for extra shimmer and measured how to wear a pout. The colour in her cheeks was unnatural, warming up her copper skin to a rust. The other girls at college wore makeup all the time but Leela rarely did. There had been a many firsts for Leela lately and if things went as per her plan today there would be a lot more.

She had not wanted to step out of the shadows before. But now there was a push from inside, forces she could not control commanding her to do their bidding. She had put on a blouse under her sari that pushed up and revealed a lot of her bosom. She had got this blouse tailor made, shuffling her feet and nervously hiding her face beneath a veil of her long hair while the tailor had taken measurements. The tailor was 5 train stations away and not the one she usually went to, lest her mother should find out. She had picked today as the day for her deed as her mother had gone out of town. Leela stepped back from the mirror. “Nice”, she thought but missing some of the magic they called oomph. She slowly slipped the sari off her right shoulder and watched the chiffon slide. The plunge she saw sent shivers down her spine, her hands stammering to find the sari and bring it up again while her eyes darted across the room in fear that there might have been a witness to her obscene act. She sat down, calming herself.

Ever since Ravi had moved into the apartment above, Leela had felt like a woman. On fire.

Leela considered herself neither appealing nor revolting. Just plain. She was born when the stars were aligned to mediocrity. She was neither called on for beauty or personality contests at her college, nor was she caricatured on blackboards and bathroom walls. She was mostly unheeded. She knew she had beautiful eyes that rescued her otherwise common looks from complete anonymity. And she knew she had a bounce in her long black hair which would have been best complimented by a spring in her feet. But she was just not good at putting herself in the spotlight. Before long, her parents would fix her up with a nice man who would be as plain as the walls like she was, call it a match made in heaven, and she would never experience the rush of youth and romance. Since high school, Leela had spent many hours in her classroom looking at the popular pretty girls and hardly ever found anything very special about them. Finally in college, she had realised that it is not who they are, it is what they do and who they want to be. A few months away from graduating and she had did not know how to translate this realisation into action for herself or even if she wanted to, until Ravi came along.

Leela realised she had to make the choice to attract. With only her walls watching, she started trying to be like the other girls and pretend to be uncommon; slant her head the way Blossom does, always standing tall or picking a point of elevation to address her coterie; or smile coquettishly with her eyes like Sabina and talk with phony innocence; or wear disdain on her face like Sandy- Sandhya really- did while snootily appraising a teacher’s choice of attire.
Ravi had moved in two months ago and been a catalyst to her turmoil and the ensuing change. Leela stood on her balcony one morning drying and unknotting her hair when she saw him offload his trunks and suitcases from the taxi carriage. She had felt dizzy as her eyes zeroed in on him. He was simply the most attractive person she had ever seen. Her mouth had gone dry and she had to hold on to the railing as her heartbeat threw her off-balance. And then she day-dreamed about him every day; she ran her fingertips over his eyebrows, ran her fingers through his hair resting her palms to envelope his ears, and outlined the broadness of his shoulders with her scrutiny. She lay awake at nights knowing he was possibly just over her at that very moment except for many feet of space and cement.

But Ravi never noticed her. She had seen him nod at the other neighbours, even spoke to young ladies in the elevators but she knew she was invisible to him. Women swooned all around him and presented themselves to him with great fanfare.

Eventually, she decided it was time to make herself seen. He was no schoolboy. A young man like him, who could pick anyone he wanted with just a twitch of his fingers, needed a young woman who could offer him the world and she decided she would. She resolved she would make herself irresistible. That was when she had boarded the train to the tailor five stations and a world away.

It was time. Leela collected her bags, waved goodbye to her dad behind the dailies and shuffled out pretending to be all together. As if she had a fresh coat of paint on, the skin on her chest shivered from the air they had never felt before, through the chiffon. It was also Leela’s nerves. It was 8:20 and she knew she would very soon hear Ravi lock up upstairs. The open air staircases and corridors made it possible to not only hear all happenings but also to be seen by neighbours in the adjoining block craning their neck to hang sheets out to dry, or to water flower pots that hung on threateningly to pot rings strapped reluctantly to balcony walls or window ledges, or just by those who possessed curious eyes. So while she stood there for two long minutes or so waiting to hear Ravi lock up upstairs, she looked through messages on her cell phone, not really reading any.

Then Ravi clanked the grill outside his door shut and latched it. Leela threw her cell phone into her bag, waited 10 seconds for him to press the lift button and then did the same timing the lift perfectly. And while she held her belongings securely to her side, and hoped she would be alone with him in the lift for once to draw him in with her eyes unashamedly unwatched, she found her hands doing that which she would never have dared. She unhinged her sari from her left shoulders and allowed the folds to fall on her arm stretched across her abdomen. The lift had commenced its stop on her floor leaving time only enough for her to bring her fever to a boil and to borrow some confidence from air.

PART 2: RAVI

For most of Ravi’s 24 years, he got a lot of attention from women. Even as a very young child, teachers deliberated on his retribution or reward a little longer than the situation demanded. The aunties of the neighbourhood always stopped to enquire about his studies and commented on how emaciated he was getting while pinching his cheeks pretending to measure his fat. While there was a sure charm about him, he wore it with much humility and grace. At first he attributed the goodwill he received to his pleasing manners and industry rather than his looks. Ravi had always been a focussed child who understood the meaning of a goal and set his standards very high. This made him a darling of the grown-ups whose search for a model child, to showcase for their own children, stopped with him.

As he grew into a teenager, his charm ripened into a spell and though it was not his intention, girls around him were ever caught in a bad case of trance. Ravi realised this and did not like it. He did not want to be judged on his looks even if the verdict was in his favour. He picked modest cloths, sported basic haircuts, counted his toes as he walked and avoided any place that had too many girls. He rarely discussed girls with the boys as they would do little to hide their envy. “Things are too easy for you Ravi. You will never know what it is like to be one of us ordinary folk”, they would say. After a while Ravi stopped explaining that he did not really want things that way, for they would only roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders dismissing his plea as something he put on to make them fell a little less sorry for themselves.

But Ravi was no stone. Sometimes when he went out for a stroll to clear his head, and when the late night breeze would stroke his face, he could almost feel it also stir her long hair. He could then feel her holding his hands, warming the insides of his moist palm. He would watch her feet taking each step with his. Sometimes when he was in need of rest and repair from the mundane trials of life, he could feel her hands on his temple humbling a swollen vein. Sometimes after his morning meditations, he would feel her joining him in prayer, finally opening her deep eyes to him, inviting him home. Where was she? He knew she was out there.... somewhere. Who was she?

Ravi was in search of true love.

When he saw Leela for the first time, it was from inside his taxi as it pulled into the driveway of the colony he was moving into. Leela was airing her hair to dry in her balcony and as she turned her head around to catch the sunlight and breeze in her hair, Ravi realised the girl who walked by his side when he went out for a stroll on lonesome nights was faceless no more. The bustle of getting his luggage off and paying the driver had distracted him and she had left when he looked up again. It was not until few days later that he saw her again. Since then, he had slowly allowed her image to invade and take over his private moments.

He had learnt from his landlady, that Mr and Mrs Patil lived downstairs just a floor below his and their daughter, Leela went to college nearby; she would graduate in a couple of months. Such a gem of a girl, she had said. “Not like the tramps you find these days!”, she said, her hands symbolically waving and pushing away the air as if the tramps were strutting in front of her eyes at that very moment.

Ravi could not agree with her more. Ever since he had moved in, as if dictated by law, the young ladies and not-so-young aunties threw more than glances and smiles at him. From his perspective, the world had always been filled with those who saw him for what he looked like. Only Leela never looked at him. Perhaps, she will know me for who I am, he thought smiling in relief that he had finally met the One.

“Leela is the One”, he found himself saying aloud once and had celebrated his acknowledgement. Surely, she needs to know me and how she makes me feel. Perhaps, she thinks the same way. Perhaps those deep eyes which draw me in think of me. But what if she never noticed me, he thought in alarm, experiencing for the first time what the boys back in his hometown had tried to explain to him. Ravi felt like a novice and the thrill of vulnerability flowed through him along with all this love. He resolved that he would make her his.

So while Leela was planning a rendez-vous with Ravi , unknown to her, Ravi wrote her a poem:
Days and nights you have been with me,
a faceless angel of mystery.
Now after years of search and agony,
in you I found my beloved - my destiny.
Will you be mine, Leela?
Eternally Yours, Ravi.

“I will give this to Leela tomorrow”, he decided ecstatic about the poem he had written and doors it would open for him. He would meet her, hopefully in the lift on her way to college and holding her gaze he planned to give her the envelope with the poem. No doubt, she would be too shocked and shy and find him intrusive but he would persuade her. “I must try”, he thought as he slipped into his sheets.

PART 3: THE END

The next morning, Ravi was up early. He turned around and gazed at the floor and pictured her in her sleep below the mosaic and concrete and said aloud, “You will be mine today Leela and I will be yours”. This would be the day.

For the first time, Ravi looked at himself in the mirror from many angles and also practiced looking straight at her with as much subtlety and deference as he could. Would she look beyond all this and stay with him through it all till the end? Self-doubt walked in hand-in-hand with nervousness. He meditated a few extra minutes that morning to gain some composure. Finally he was ready to go, his satchel thrown over his left shoulder and the envelope in his right palm, secure.

Ravi latched the gate to his apartment and pressed the lift button. When the lift door opened one

floor below, Ravi was prepared with a smile. Soon it melted away. It was not his Leela who walked in. It was a demon with lust in her eyes, her cloths providing no modesty and her lips dripping hunger. She looked at him, pinned him to the corner abandoning her college bag to the floor and took his lips in hers. Her left leg was riding up Ravi’s and tying him to the spot. He allowed her to be done with her beastly act. He then quietly created space between them with his arm not wanting to touch the creature with his hands. Brows knotted, lips curled in disgust, Ravi stared at her breathless face ugly over her dishevelled sari which she had started drawing up. He pictured himself alone again on a moonless, barren night, Leela consigned to the legion of vacant women.

“Disgusting. You taste like cardboard”, he spat and walked away throwing the poem in the garbage can on his way out of the lift.