Wrapping up her work for the day, Khushi folded her laptop and crammed it inside her backpack before popping the chiming reminder off, on her phone's display.
Dosa batter, it read—it was a reminder she'd set to jog her memory to soak rice and urad dhal in order to get the week's batch of dosa batter ready. Had she been home at the time of her reminder, she'd have gleefully plugged away, doing the chore. Time was five-twenty five, on a Friday evening and she was still in office.
There hadn't been a smallish interval for her to leave her seat to even take restroom breaks from the morning—she had to finish drafting the project she was working on at the moment, the weekly column that she'd been flourishingly alive in for the past three months and an instalment of other article that she'd been laying over for a long time.
She had eaten her lunch in her seat, jabbing the food in her mouth in between the relentless drumming of keyboard, oblivious to what she was gobbling in.
The past week had been crazy busy for her—for Dev too.
Despite the light being mild and cheering for the morning—for one to open eyes to; and the tree that'd branched near by the balcony window swaying with its scrunching noise, counting the cuckoos singing smoothly along the faint crack of dawn, Khushi did not have a good morning.
There were quite a few things about her project that had a lot of home works to be done and that alone hurtled her through the week.
Well, this morning itself had started with the stick note that Dev had jotted and left at the bedside table, telling her that he'd to leave home early. It was the least shocking for her, when he did that because both of them knew what they were up to—with his job or hers. Regardless of the physical distance separating them, which they had been through in the recent years it felt odd and lifeless to be at home without him.
When Khushi had reached her apartment parking, the scan of unfilled space next to hers hampered her of all the hopes she'd been saving from that morning. She'd thought Dev would be here—spending the evening with her, before leaving out of station to that goddamned training camp of his.
He wasn't here—or that's what the empty parking space implied her. She stepped inside the elevator; her face writhed in grim about the uninflected time she was fated to have that evening. It'd been a week since both of them had sat down to have their dinner together—let alone having a cup of coffee.
It was not as though she needed to be with Dev all the time, but she needed quite some time with him every day, stripping out their lines of work.
And Dev was more meticulous about it than she'd ever been.
Exiting the elevator, Khushi ambled down the narrow aisle, veering into the semi buckled backpack, frisking for her keys.
Forking her crocs out and putting them on the rack she happened upon a pair of brown, leather shoes in their habitual berth and at the stark sight of it relieved her of all the strain. A moony smile grazing over her lips, Khushi felt her face sweeping away with the tautness that'd kept her brows rigid and rucked up.
Whirling left on heels and standing on her tippy toes, she pulled the wooden framed window open which gave her an immense view of her fixed up kitchen, rapturous smell of freshly brewing coffee decoction—a scrumptious looking man—tall, tranquil and homey, towering over to check on it.
There was prompt looming of good cheer gushing in her heart; and a perfection of smile unfurling to the fullest on her creased lips at what she saw from the other side of the half-opened window.
Dev was standing in the kitchen clad in dusty track pants paired with sapphire cotton t-shirt. His face was gaunt signifying the unruly week he'd had and his eyes as jaded as she was, even with the hint of smile in them. His shortly cut hair seemed a little rumpled as with the slipping of his t-shirt, the moustache rightly dappered and twisted adding sublimity to the shaven jaw.
The debilitation that'd been cluttering to her all through the week seemed to wither at it and suddenly, everything started feeling good. With Dev, she knew by heart, it would but this wasn't totally what she had foreseen; perhaps, after hitting upon his parking lot unoccupied.
A tottering smile jiggled on her lips as he quickly flicked his eyes to the window, cognizant of her arrival. She was standing there, her fingers wrapped around the grill of the window and her big, beryl eyes gleaming at him, fascinated. She looked so strung out that he immediately wanted to latch on to her in a balmy hug—the one that could mitigate her from the scraps of longish hours of humdrums, right away.
Twisting the stove's knob off, Dev looked at his wife straight. "Shouldn't you be in the kitchen by now?" uttered he, after noticing the longing riotous in her eyes.
The next moment Khushi was scrambling across the door gawkily, leaving her keys and bag in their places inside the cupboard in the living room, she swarmed into the kitchen to seek him out.
Before anything else, Dev swathed his arms around her, locking her in his embrace, scouting to settle down his warmth in her. Khushi felt as if the incessant tribulation in her had come to its tail end. Eyes hooded and heavy, hair crinkled and many strands of them stirred out of her loose French braid, her loose military green top crinkled all over them as much as the soft frame it'd sheathed, Khushi strapped her arms loosely around his torso, leaning onto him entrusting him with her distress—parting with her exhaustion.
For the next few minutes, it was faint drumming of Dev's heartbeats, her own breathing easing off to its most quietened pace and the dispatch of his warmth and feel looting her senses. Dev had his hand cupping the back of her skull, his chin tucked protectively over her head—he had wanted it as much as she had—nothing less, nothing more.
He broke the embrace just in truck of glimpsing at his favourite face that he'd not seen in a proper week. He cradled her face in his palms and stamped a fervent kiss in her temples. Khushi set a foot back, flaking her hold around him; only to stand wobbly on the nip of her small feet to plant a kiss on his cheek and scrunched her nose with the right to complaint.
"You have no idea how I miss your beard, Dev," planting her feet down, she grumbled. She couldn't help the rapid winding of retrospection about his scruffy beard scratching her cheeks each time he had to engulf her in his embrace, before he had to start shaving every day, before he had joined the Indian Police Service, before they had had any liability of their own, when they were in early twenties and still in college.
A lopsided, silent smile took over Dev's majestic face as he brought an arm around her waist and his fingers getting hold on to her ID card's tag, he looped it out. Khushi, not minding it; let herself dive into a deeper deliberation on his beard and came out with an extraordinary conclusion—actually, two of them, her tired eyes beaming in thrill. "There are only two chances as of now for you to grow a beard..."
"And they are?" he chuckled, brow-raised at her exclamation, eager to know what his extraordinary wife had come up with to transact for her revered beard.
"Either do something and get suspended for a few weeks or plan some undercover operation." She let out nonchalantly, holding his gaze with complete earnestness. The expression that grew on his face was killing hilarious for Khushi—and irreplaceable too. With his mouth hung wide open in stunner, he glanced down at her. He was absolutely shocked to hear this form her, his wife—his supportive wife.
Khushi teasingly wiggled her brows, "Say what?" stifling her giggles at the moment was the greatest to endeavour. Watching his appalled face did nothing but encouraged the devil in her more.
Dev's brows crimped together as he feigned to contemplate about it. "There's one more way I can grow beard permanently, you know?" he alleged, his raven eyes initiating to gleam with traces of devilry. Khushi continued looking keenly at what he was going to call upon. "I can grow beard all my life if I just lose my job forever, simple!" he asserted solemnly.
She fist bumped his arm at his verdict. "I was being serious, okay?"
He responded with a quavering laugh, lush and throaty as he hoisted her palm and crammed the ID card in it. "Well, I was being very serious too," winking at her, he delivered. Khushi glowered at him and moved across the hall to change. He couldn't buck up the laugh that pumped up at her silly thought.
Paused in her tracks, halfway through the hall, Khushi queried again, with all sincerity, "Dev, are Indian policemen allowed to follow no shave November?"
The question raised by her being the whole logic behind the terror that'd painted his face, Dev mumbled. "Baby, now, you're starting to scare me."
"Fine, I am not talking about the beard anymore," she snorted moving back to the bedroom to change.
The next twenty minutes went by talking about random things they'd missed sharing the past five, six days. There were conversations about her office stories—anything and everything that'd kept her sanity in checks during the past week.
Talking about her office and the people in it, reminded Dev of his surly reply to Raghav days ago. He was fully aware of his gruff behaviour but that fellow deserved it for what he had trailed into their lives, that day. Nevertheless, Raghav wasn't that person who'd take one's words earnestly in an easy, random talk—and Dev knew it.
There had to be no concession in what he needed to take for Raghav to mind the thing seriously and that was what Dev had done. There was no abeyance ever since it had happened to ponder over it. And neither Khushi nor he had been leisurely home for continuous batch of hours except for pushing around to accomplish a few hours of dainty sleep.
Raghav raided their home once a week, usually. It'd had been the pattern from the time of their arrival to this flat after their wedding.
Two weeks and he hadn't cared to stake his existence out. Taking the fact that this week was slaving into account still hadn't tallied his truancy.
Disquieted a little, Dev decided to bring it up to his wife, which was the only way to square it away, right at the moment. Keeping it to himself wasn't going to aid the situation.
"Did you notice that Raghav hasn't come home after Nitin's wedding?" Dev plopped his head to level his gaze to his wife's and asked softly. They were still in the kitchen—Khushi was seated on top of the kitchen cabinet, her fingers wrapped around her coffee mug and Dev was standing in front of her.
Khushi let out an exhale—long and thoughtful, nodding her head, watching his face cloud up in silence. With what she'd known in him he was a very rugged and sturdy person to be seen and be with on the surface but underneath it, were everything else she'd known better of him.
She took her hand to sheathe it over his large, calloused hand. "Dev, who knew Raghav well, can tell why you were curt to him that day. In fact, if you hadn't been so, he would've never listened to what you emphasized on."
Dev agreed. "And Raghav isn't here yet, because, may be, he's feeling a little uncomfortable and bad to face you after.. you know..." she delivered, insisting on the disastrous wrong call, rolling her pebble blue eyes.
Dev's face changed swiftly—the branches of his dejection about Raghav rooting down firmer. He wanted to make it right.
"Call him," he claimed deliberately, pointing out her phone with his gaze.
Khushi, amused at his new-born enthusiasm, hunted for her phone and dialled his number. Hauling the phone from her ear, she put the call up on speaker and waited for Raghav to pick the call.
And he did in the next few seconds.
"Hey," he sounded to be in celerity. Adding up to it, there was ceaseless noise widely ranging from bus's honk to the thud of train's wheel resonating on the tracks.
"Raghav, I know you're in middle of road right now. Be precise, where are you exactly?" she asked it meticulously, knowing he'd simply say 'in the middle of the road' for a 'where are you?'
Planting her palm on Dev's shoulder blade, she jumped down from the deck and moved to the sink to rinse her coffee mug. "I am standing opposite to door number 214, Durable, Luz church road, Mylapore," he stated in a tone that was matter-of-factly. "Is that precise enough?" he added.
The sardonic comeback rattled Khushi; and he was here within a kilometre of radius from her flat, yet he hadn't considered visiting home—it rattled her more than the former.
She was not going to leave this as such. This guy needed to get his stupid ass in here, some day. She had contemplated that Raghav had to endure a little of rough patch to process it--but just neglecting his visiting ritual was nowhere near by a healthy coping.
"Fine, I baked some brownies, thought you'd like to demolish them but you—the biggest jackass of the century—seems to have no idea of setting foot in this street...." She announced as she neatly hung her wet mug in its ever-silver stand.
She had no brownie baked.
If there was one thing that Raghav would give up on everything for, it'd be brownies—the ones that Khushi baked, to be precise. Insight of her antics, a smile tuned in on Dev's lips.
"Khushi, you should've stopped when you said brownies," Raghav shot back immediately. This was beginning to work--Khushi winked an eye at Dev.
"Alright, I stop." She replied solemnly.
"Fine, I am coming."
"Good, fast! I am hanging up..." she disconnected the call without another word and shoved her mobile in Dev's hands. "Here, you will have him in here, in less than five minutes. Clarify everything you need to." Khushi raised her feathered lashes to Dev, her eyes glinting with mischief, her mouth squiggled in a triumphant smile.
Raghav parked his bike next to Khushi's in the parking lot and took a whole minute to scrutinize around the place for Dev's bike—it was not anywhere around Khushi's—yet, he plunged into the idea of browsing over the whole stretch of the garage, just in case Dev was home and had his bike elsewhere.
He hated how senseless he sounded at the moment but sounding stupid was better—into 1000 times—than meeting an exacerbated Dev. Raghav had appraised understanding that the phone call due to his mishap the other day would have definitely incensed Dev well—not sure how well—but definitely to the extent of setting a conflict in motion in between Khushi and Dev. He knew, it had done that much for sure, which was the foolproof amount of disquiet that Raghav exactly needed to feel bad.
Raghav was versed clean in one idea—actually, two of them.
One, he will never be able to keep shelving the happenstances of meeting and having this talk with Dev.
Two, if he did avoid, Khushi would butcher him up and hang him bottoms up, without any doubt.
He had to do that someday—not necessarily, today. But when he had walked past the lot and clambered up to Khushi's house and had encountered with Dev's uniform boots outside their house, Raghav had to stop, flabbergasted.
A frigging pair of khaki boots flabbergasted him, and, and, and the conversation and the revelation to the moment he was not ready for made him aghast.
Perceiving Khushi's frame on the other side of the window, he sprang upon the wall, his fingers wrapping around the window grill, sticking his face to the framework. Amused at his super quick action, Khushi gave him a quizzical glare, taking her hands to the curves of her hips.
Anxiety creased his face as he mumbled, "Why, why, why, why?" he sounded grumpy, perplexed and little out of sorts.
Khushi had to press her lips tight in order not to giggle loud—as much as she loved to annoy him, she did not want to do it right now, "What why and why so many of them?" Her voice faint and mushy, she asked naively.
"Don't fake it, why didn't you tell me Dev was here?" Raghav demanded righteously.
"For your information, Raghav, you totally did not ask about Dev's presence, when we were on phone. And since ever I have known you, you have had zero issues in coming home in his presence. How am I supposed to know about you coming up with unforeseen keynotes about coming to this house?" Rolling her eyes dramatically, Khushi liberated.
Tension evaded his shoulders and they freely sagged,visibly.
"Plus, you said no more word when I said brownies." she wriggled her brows viciously.
It set in, in him, "Wait! That was a flipping trap." Raghav bit out each word, carefully, getting it infused in his mind that she'd actually bloody trammelled him with her brownies.
After all, cakes.
But they were not after all, cakes to him—no justification needed.
"You're right." She said it with a smug look.
Raghav repined, "But you are not. You have bloody trapped me with my desire for brownies."
"Not my mistake," Khushi shrugged nonchalantly.
She was right again.
A grand, bottled up breath evaded Raghav's lungs and his body slackened more. There was this thing about Khushi—she was concordant with facts—on target and upfront.
She was always right—not as in she was always talking into others that she was right—she really was right and it was like a proven theory.
It is whole lot of a thing to agree with right things—especially, when you're not one.
Raghav frowned at the epiphany that dawned in him and at Khushi. "Yeah, my mistake it is." His lips rumbled helplessly, letting out a turbulent breath. A faltering smile twitched Khushi's lips, as she nodded her head affirmative to what he had complied with.
"You can't just keep tip-toeing around this one, how about a closure?" Dev's voice broke out, as he gently padded across the hallway to the kitchen with both of his hands tucked in his pants' pockets. Raghav whirled his gaze to Dev—there was no usual good-cheer occupying that dynamic face, he was grilling Raghav with his glare having his uniform mentally on, still. Or, that's how it appeared to Raghav.
As if the dolor of having an indignant Dev boring at him constantly had filched him of opening his mouth, pressing his lips together, he muttered sadly. "He is still mad at me, Khushi."
Khushi swung a glare to and fro between them and waved back to Raghav's beseeching eyes. "I don't know, you ask him yourself." She announced.
"You still mad at me policekaar (policeman)" he popped the question.
"You look pitiable." Dev squelched maintaining the stern face, well. And it enthused Raghav more than brownies.
His russet eyes flickered at it, "Don't I, Don't I?" he cooed, wiggling his eye brows.
"Yeah, but a bare minimum." His face was still expressionless and his voice too unpermissive—which just kept egging on Raghav more and more.
Standing no more on the other side of the window, Raghav breezed in to the living room and stumblingly, past it to Dev. "You're not in your khaki, please don't talk and look at me like that, man. This is just starting to get under my skin, I am paavam (pity me!)" He shovelled every word that danced in his throat down to Dev in haste, trying to settle this down.
Gaping at Dev's face unlace from the complication of an expression it'd tangled into, he continued. "I know, what I did was bad—too bad to be apologising for. I am sorry, Dev. This won't happen again, ever."
"Fine, good," Dev sounded approving what he just heard.
"Only good?" Raghav scowled at it and Khushi laughed at it. She couldn't bag in all the laughter, anymore.
Dubious at his reply, Dev's brow scrunched. Still laughing, Khushi quipped in, "What else do you want?"
All the taunting and the bubbling laughter ruffled him more, he bade the first thing that came to his mind. "Brownies."
"NO!" Khushi yelped in horror. That was a bloody trap—now, after everything had gone right and tight, she can't do it.
"YES!" Raghav counterclaimed.
Khushi put a foot towards Dev, feigning to be innocent and summoned his help. "Dev, I said it to get him in here." but it thoroughly, did not help.
"But you said it! And I got trapped by it, and here you have me. So where are my damn brownies?"
"Raghav..I.." Khushi tried cajoling, but he cut her off. "I have an honest policeman by my side as the witness. You just can't escape your words!" he just didn't demand her anymore, when he had decided she had to bake him, his brownies.
Dev brow-raised at the sudden comment and stroked Khushi's small back, "Sometimes, baby, you say all the nice, damndest things that turn to be your own trap," Dev said quietly, muffling the laugh that was building up.
Khushi looked up at him from his chest, her eyes hanging onto his in its sensile galre. "You're right; it's a trap for myself!"
Raghav broke in, his voice lilting a little "Too late to realize, Khushi; please do the needful soon."
How to blackmail someone and make them bake nice brownies:101
And thus Raghav returned to his home happily after gobbling up a few of the brownies and taking a few of the next batch to home in a small Tupperware tiffin box.
How happily-ever-after like did it sound! Sigh!
"Share it with Himani," Khushi had said, when propping up the box inside his backpack and zipping it up.
"Can't!"
"It's her recipe, Raghav. I want her to taste these and tell me how I have done it."
"Silly, if it's her recipe she'd have eaten it an umpteen times already. Why should I share my quota of goodness with my house owner?"
"I told you, I just want her tips on it!"
"Validation? I am giving you all the validation this brownie needs. You don't need hers. And I am not sharing it with anyone."
"Go away! I will bake more delicious brownies and give it to her alone someday!"
Their conversation chimed inside his head as he parked the bike in his compound and walked into the living room. The noise of pans and ladles from the kitchen alarmed him of her presence there.
May be, he will share one of those with her.
May be, a half of one.
Or, may be not.
Hands down, other options!
