Twenty Questions
Photo: Karan Madhok
Short story: ‘In the chaos of the pre-lunch Sunday crowd at the mall, in their continuing hum, their smells, their colours, their everything… all that Shalu and Abhimanyu now shared was a small absence of sound, an envelope without its contents.’
It smelled to her like grease and fire, like plastic and chlorine, like last night’s dinner, topped off with that extra-spicy chilli sauce on steaming mutton momos, like the sweat of other bodies, like her own breath. Bodies shuffled past their table, some in conversation, some noisy in their footsteps, some pranging against other tables, all of them creating a hypnotic hum to soothe her in the late morning breakfast.
Shalu realised, when they took their seat on that rickety plastic table, that she and Abhimanyu had made the exact same order. Popcorn-Rice Combo. Chicken popcorn plus fried rice plus one piece of hot-and-spicy fried chicken. One Pepsi each. Both had ensured that their lone chicken piece was a drumstick. Same-to-same.
They had a lot in common, she thought. She looked at him, but didn’t say anything.
Abhimanyu had his sunglasses on, indoors, in the mall. Large, curvy-rimmed Aviators. She could only see a faint glimpse of his eyes behind them. Useless, she thought. It was dark enough in here. Not dark—she corrected herself—but not bright, either. Just well-lit. Some natural light from the glass ceiling above. Some large white lights from the other end over the escalators. But he didn’t need to hide behind anything.
He grabbed his chicken. Fingers tore apart the drumstick, and mouth slurped in the loose bits of skin, chomping on the warm flesh. She saw him bite the meat off the bones fiercely between his thin lips. He ate quickly, crushing the piece with his fingers, breaking it apart.
She followed his lead, but started with the rice first, using the plastic forks the kiosk had provided. She didn’t wish to get messy straight away.
She wanted to talk about something. Anything.
“So, Abhimanyu,” she asked. “how long have you been working for your mother?”
Abhimanyu made sure to tear away all the stranded bits of meat off the bone. He didn’t look up at her when he answered. “That’s what you want to ask me about? First thing in the fucking morning. About my fucking Mom? I need a smoke, man…”
“No, no,” Shalu backtracked into herself, away from her tray, leaning away from the table. “I just meant to ask: How long have you worked at the company?”
“Is this an interview? Are you going to fire me if I don’t answer properly?”
“No, no, Mr Night Manager… I was just…”
“Deputy Night Manager. And you are my junior, remember?”
She took a deep breath. He grew quiet again. So, did she.
In the chaos of the pre-lunch Sunday crowd at the mall, in their continuing hum, their smells, their colours, their everything… all that Shalu and Abhimanyu now shared was a small absence of sound, an envelope without its contents. Abhimanyu filled it with a slurp, drawing up Pepsi from the straw.
Shalu ate another spoonful of rice and felt a numb taste in her mouth. No, it wasn’t the food; it was her mouth: unbrushed and unwashed from the morning. She tasted her own breath: last night’s vodka breath, last night’s momo breath, last night’s Abhimanyu breath. She wondered if he, sitting across from her on the table, could smell her, too. If he was unhinged by her dishevelment. She hadn’t changed from her pink top and blue jeans from Saturday night to Sunday morning. She still wore last night’s makeup: the fading rouge on her cheeks, the crusted pink on her lips, the flicker of dust over her eyes.
He had changed his clothes and brushed his teeth. Of course, he had. Everyone at the mall had washed and freshened-up, and they had wiped the grime off from under their eyes, and cleaned the sweat from between the folds of their skins. They were all new this morning, except for her.
She needed a hot cup of chai. That’s the first thing. She slurped up some Pepsi and it felt cold and sticky and sweet in her mouth. She felt heavy, and tired, and full. She didn’t wish to eat any more.
She looked up at Abhimanyu, clean and crisp, biceps bursting out of his too-short T-shirt sleeves, veins thumping under the carpet of hair on his forearms, shoulders widening and enlarging each time he swallowed and straightened his back to look around the table.
She broke the silence again.
“What are you thinking about?”
Abhimanyu smirked. Or he scoffed.
“Why don’t you guess?” he answered with a question.
“Guess? How am I supposed to…?” And in her mind, she thought, I hardly know you!, but she didn’t say it out loud.
“Just guess,” he said. And from the faint outlines formed behind his Aviator shades, she saw that he was now looking directly at her.
“Okay,” she smiled. “And what do I get if I guess correctly?”
“You’ll get… You’ll get a kiss on your face.”
Now, it was Shalu’s turn to scoff. She lowered her gaze away from his sight. “And what if I don’t want to be kissed?”
“You’ll get… You’ll get… I’ll tell Mom to give you a promotion.”
“I don’t need your help, Mr Deputy Night Manager.” she laughed. “I’m the best worker in the office; I’ll be coming for your position, soon.”
She knew she shouldn’t have said that.
“Fuck it, then,” he said. “Don’t guess.”
“No, no… Come on. I want to guess. Okay, forget what I said. If I win, if I guess what you’re thinking, you pay for my Popcorn-Rice Combo next time.”
“And if I win?”
Shalu slapped the table. “Then, my Deputy of the Night, the Combo comes out of my pocket!”
That smirk-scoff on his face again. “I’m not planning to spend every day at the mall with you.”
Shalu pulled her hand off the table and leaned away from him.
“Okay, then. What do you want?”
Abhimanyu shrugged. “I’ll think about it. I’ll think about what to do with you. I’ll tell you later.” He ate a spoonful of rice, then continued to talk with his mouth open. “Too hungover right now.”
He shovelled more rice into his mouth. With his left hand, he opened up his phone and stared into the screen. His thumb swiped up and down and side to side. He fell into a brief wormhole into another world.
“So…?” she said
“Guess,” he didn’t look up at her.
“I’m thinking. Why don’t we… Why don’t we play Twenty Questions? Then you can help me figure it out.”
“It’s ‘21 Questions’. That’s the 50 Cent song.”
“What is 50 Cents?”
“He’s a rapper. From America”
“Like Drake?”
Abhimanyu took another spoonful, his last. “Better than Drake. Can you hurry up and eat and ask your questions? I need to go outside for a smoke.”
But these complicated cases were to be treated with most caution. “Like walking on eggshells,” the short Canadian lady in the pony-tail had said. Next to her, the Night Manager made the cultural translation for them: “Like walking around keechad, ensuring that, after a rainy day, you don’t step on the mud and the slush on the footpath.” Abhimanyu, the Big Boss’s quiet son, was her keechad.
“It’s Twenty Questions,” she said. “I saw it on an American TV show. You can only give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, okay?”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m one of your customers.” he said. “You’re not in the office.”
But Shalu naturally felt herself falling back into work-mode. She felt her voice change, get more professional, more authoritative. This was how she spent all night, every weeknight: on dozens of calls with North Americans, talking in her trained fake-American accent, which was the realest of all fake accents of anyone at Affirmative Solutions. That included Abhimanyu’s accent, even though he had lived and studied in America for four years. Of course, he never took a call himself.
Shalu was using the voice with which she interviewed job hopefuls and passed on their answers to head-hunters. It was the voice of judgement, that determined—eventually—who would be hired or fired across the oceans, changing lives, upending them. It was the voice that had made her Employee of the Month four of the six months she’d been with the company.
“Now,” she said, fluctuating her accents. “You write down your answer somewhere, okay. Write down so you can’t cheat later.”
“I never cheat.”
Shalu bounced up off her chair and looked around the food-court. They were surrounded by other small groups: families gathered around a giant pyramid-shaped Paper Dosa; groups of boys in leather jackets digging their oily fingers into plates of Chhola Batura; two girls and a young mother sipping from tall cups; and an elderly man, sitting alone, with nothing but a glass of chai in front of him, reading a Marathi newspaper.
“Uncle,” Shalu went up to the elderly man. “Do you have a pen or a pencil that I could borrow?” He nodded and handed her a black ballpoint pen.
Abhimanyu was staring into his phone; Shalu invaded his space and pulled forward his plastic meal-tray, empty now with the damage of chicken skin and rice morsels and squeezed-out ketchup satchels and actual smudges of ketchup, all in disarray, smattered on top of a white back-sheet that covered the tray like a placemat. She ripped off a clean square off the bottom left corner of the back-sheet and handed the bit of paper over to him, along with the pen.
“Write it.”
He reached out, working almost in deliberate slow motion, and scribbled down his thought. She could almost picture his messy handwriting from the jagged, jerky motions of his wrist. When he finished, he tucked the piece of paper under his tray to hide it from her.
Shalu returned the pen to the old man and came back to their table. Now, finally, they were ready.
“Let’s start. Let’s find out what you’re thinking, Mr Night Deputy.”
“I need a smoke.”
“It’ll be quick,” she leaned forward. “Question number one: You’re thinking of Fried Chicken?
Abhimanyu laughed. “No!”
Good. This was all part of her tactic. Lower his guard. Relax his mood. Know him.
“Okay, is it any food item at all?”
“No.”
“Is it a place?”
She’d played this game before, with her roommates at the Paying Guesthouse. There was a strategy to it. Place, mineral, thing, person. Bigger than. Smaller than. She knew what she was doing.
“No. That’s three questions.”
“Is it your undeniable dread of being here with me?”
“Four. No.”
His abruptness interrupted her. She leaned back. Once again, she looked around the floor. Young parents and old ones. Men in groups and women in groups. Old man and his newspaper. A young couple in the corner, both eating chocolate ice-creams. The boy wore a red T-shirt with a black baseball cap and the girl was in a blue T-shirt with a black baseball cap. They sat on the same side of the bench, probably holding hands under the table.
They fit together, all of them: the black-cap couple, the families, the sisters, the friends.
But what about Abhimanyu and her—what were they? Boss and employee? Boyfriend and girlfriend? On top and the bottom? Straddled on each other? On each other’s lips, on each other’s throats, on each other’s genitals? A drunken night? A greasy brunch?
Shalu felt an itch on her lower shin, under her jeans. This is where she had her festering bruise, on the bottom of her right leg, just above her sock-line. She had gotten it while walking around the Lohagad Fort two weekends ago, when she had slipped and landed on the blunt, smooth end of a rock. She didn’t feel the pain at first, but later that evening, when she disrobed to bathe, she saw a spot of shiny, red blood under her trackpants. She found antiseptic and bandages and covered herself up. Her roommate ensured that it would heal in a few days.
She removed the bandages the next day to check the wound, where a dry layer of new skin had formed over the fleshy muscle. It was just slim, vertical mark, no bigger than an extended fingernail. The wound itched, so she scratched it. The dry layer rubbed off, revealing a bright pink discolouration that spread in a circle around the epicentre of the mark, shining bright between the rest of her dark-brown skin. It looked ugly; she wore jeans to work every day to cover it.
Abhimanyu had seen it last night while making his way up her legs. He had pressed his palm over her wound—over that bit of discoloured pink—and rubbed it with his fingers for a few seconds. It made her tickle. Then, he continued with his mission, trekking up to the peak.
Now, the skin felt dry and heavy over the wound. She itched to scratch it off.
She needed to brush her teeth. She needed to eat. The food was growing cold. Last night, sometime after the nightclub, while the rest of their colleagues dispersed to their respective homes, she made Abhimanyu stop at Pune Junction. It had been Ladies night at the club—two vodka shots for one—and afterwards, she was feeling unusually brave in his company. She remembered leaving her sandals in his car and walking barefoot, first, on the cement, and then, on the dirty tiles. She remembered hanging close to him and squeezing his neck as he ordered a plate of momos. They were almost neck to neck. She was much taller than the average woman; in that brightly-lit fast-food restaurant full of people and suitcases and the muddy tiles, she had marvelled at Abhimanyu’s height. She was finally next to a man even taller than her. Those were rare to find. Six-foot-four, at least.
She remembered eating some of those momos, and later, tasting them on his lips: their spiciness, their meatiness, their juiciness.
She was hungry this morning. The chicken-popcorn and drumstick and rice stared back at her.
Also staring at her now—behind those Aviators, of course—was Abhimanyu. The boss’s son. Abhimanyu with his sharp jaw and chiselled cheeks and the scars of old acne, and a clean-shaven face and faint bristles of early grey hair that he was too young for, and that smell of sweat and cigarettes. She knew she didn’t smell great, either. It was probably best not to think about it. Whose idea was it to come here? Shalu couldn’t remember.
Abhimanyu stared into his phone screen again and smiled. He fixed his hair, as if he was looking into a mirror.
She felt seen at this mall. She felt they were both seen. Their uneven fit. Her own unevenness. Parts of her body felt disproportionally larger than other parts. She felt bloated.
She pushed her tray away to the side.
“Is it bigger than your phone.”
“Yes,” he said and looked back at her. “Why aren’t you eating?”
“I’m asking the questions. Is it smaller than a… refrigerator?”
“Depends on the refrigerator.”
“Is it smaller than the fridge in our office?”
“Definitely not. I have bigger fridges than that in my bathroom.”
“Be serious.”
“I’m always serious. That’s six questions. Hurry up; I need a smoke.”
She waited. She took a breath. She slowed down. He yawned without covering his mouth; and then, so did she. They were tired, both of them. This was the curse of a night job, this vampiresque lifestyle that sucked out all of their energy, this habit of nocturnal activity and diurnal lethargy. She understood now why he needed those Aviators: the glare of the morning world, their naked revelation under this spotlight—it was too aggressively bright, all too much to take.
She needed to confuse him. She knew that, sometimes, all it took was a little surprise, something to throw him off that stoic demeanour.
“Is it something you love?”
Abhimanyu didn’t budge. His rapped his fingers on the table. He looked at her from behind his shades.
“Yes”
“Wow—okay.”
Abhimanyu cleared his throat with some exaggeration, as if he was about to choke on his own voice.
“What’s ‘wow’ about loving something?”
“Nothing, nothing.” If she had encountered him as a client, over the phone, he is what she would have called a ‘complicated case’. Or at least, that was the unofficial term that the visiting consultants from Canada used during orientation week.
Those who accepted their rejection with a slight whimper were called ‘fast-work’. Those who shouted at her on the phone and asked for her manager, were ‘tough customers’. But these complicated cases, those like Abhimanyu who disguised themselves behind even voices—or dark shades—were to be treated with most caution. “Like walking on eggshells,” the short Canadian lady in the pony-tail had said. Next to her, the Night Manager—Abhimanyu’s senior—made the cultural translation for them: “Like walking around keechad, ensuring that, after a rainy day, you don’t step on the mud and the slush on the footpath.”
Abhimanyu, the Big Boss’s quiet son, was her keechad.
“So, it’s something you love…” Shalu said.
“Uh-huh.”
Shalu knew what he loved—or who he loved. The whole office knew. At the Diwali party a few months ago, Abhimanyu had discovered that his girlfriend from college back in the USA—Akriti—had cheated on him. She had kissed another boy at another party, in other time zone. Back in Pune, at their office festivities, Abhimanyu befell into broken-hearted Devdas mode, drinking straight from a bottle of black rum. He told everyone about Akriti.
Kamini, Shalu’s younger sister from Indore, had been in town, visiting for the Diwali long-weekend. She remembered Abhimanyu better than most. He had offered to drive her home that night—back to Shalu’s PG—but take only Kamini and no one else. “I need someone to talk to tonight,” he slurred close to her, until she smelled the rum and cigarettes in his breath. “I can’t believe Akriti would do this to me. To me? Can’t fucking believe it.”
Kamini nodded politely but refused his offer. “I have a boyfriend,” she told him.
Nobody forgot about Akriti.
Something he loved, Shalu thought.
“I remember your sister,” Abhimanyu said to her. It was as if he’d read her thoughts.
“What?”
“Your sister. From the Diwali party. I remember her. She’s a pretty girl.”
Shalu didn’t know what to say.
“I was fucking wasted that night. I don’t know if you recall. Last night was bad, too… But Diwali…? Oh, fuck, man!”
“I know,” she said.
“You guys look alike. You and your sister.” Then, he took a sip from his drink. “She’s much thinner, of course.”
Shalu heard a hollow, slightly-wet sound, as Abhimanyu blew up from his straw. His Pepsi was done.
Then, she heard her mother’s voice in his, that voice of unsolicited blunt honesty, of embarrassment in public places with family friends, of comparison while she was presented next to her younger sister. Compliments would fly in for Kamini, about her smile, her hair, or—as one auntie chose to describe it—her ‘bubbliness’. Their mother would come to Shalu’s unwelcome defence, “But Shalu is very pretty, too—if only she lost a little weight.”
“Can you please hurry?” Abhimanyu fidgeted back and forth on his seat. He tap-tap-tapped impatiently on the table.
“A cigarette! You’re thinking about a cigarette, aren’t you?”
“No. I mean, I am now. But that’s not what I wrote down. No.”
There had to be a trick here. From what she knew of him—and after six months and last night, she felt she knew him well enough—she was convinced that he would never settle for the simple answer.
“Is it an abstract idea?”
“An abstract?”
“Yes… Not a real object. A feeling. Or something like that.”
“No. It’s real. That’s ten questions now.”
“No, that was nine. I’m keeping count. Trust me. This is ten: is it something I can touch?”
“Yes.”
“Umm… okay… Is it something hot to touch?”
Abhimanyu smiled. “Sometimes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Fine, yes,” he kept smiling. “It’s hot.”
For the first time since they had left his house that morning, Abhimanyu took his Aviators off. Behind them, she saw that his eyes were a shade of bright, stark red. Red of tiredness, or red of drunkenness, or red of anger, or a redder red. He leaned forward, waiting for her next question. Across the table, she could smell his sweat over the smell of her uneaten fried chicken. She could smell last night once again, she could taste his fleshy lips, the sides of his neck, the lobes of his ears, the warmth of his penis. She could feel him over her, in his bedroom, seeing only shadows of each other’s limbs as they wrestled, faintly illuminated in the dark by nothing but the glow of his laptop screen. He played rap music from the laptop as they made the bed creak to the soft beat. She could feel his weight push her down, feel his hands grasp her, feel him hug her when it was over, so close to him, till their noses rubbed against each other, till they kissed again not because they planned to, but because their lips just happened to be stacked together, one pressed into the other.
And now he was here with her, the morning after. Would they talk about it again? She could never tell her friends what happened, could she?
Would he tell his friends about her? Or would he be silent, erasing the memory, not out of respect but out of embarrassment? Suddenly, she wanted someone else to know. She wanted everyone to know.
“Question twelve: Is it your laptop?”
“No. But I do love my laptop.”
“Is it your mother?”
“Fuck no!” he slapped the table and made it reverberate on its single, shaky leg.
Okay, now they were getting somewhere.
“Is it a person?”
She knew she should’ve asked this long ago.
Shalu began to feel that itch again. That drying-up wound on her shin. She longed to scratch it, to reach down under her jeans and tear her skin off and let the pink insides gleam and the red blood ooze out. It would hurt her, she knew. But she couldn’t help herself: she needed to poke and prod and attack and feel that burst of pain.
“Yes.”
“Is it Akriti?”
Abhimanyu attempted another empty sip of his drink. Again, nothing but the sound of empty air bubbled up his straw.
“No. You aren’t going to win this. You don’t know me at all.”
“Is it someone I know?”
Abhimanyu nodded. Yes. Once again, he grabbed his phone off the table.
It was her. It had to be her. Someone he loved? Could it be her? It had only been one night, but Shalu and Abhimanyu had known each other for some time from a casual periphery. Perhaps last night wasn’t a result of his erroneous cocktail of vodka and mutton momos after all. Perhaps he had imagined it before, imagined being with her, kissing her, loving her.
The Boss Madam’s son? She thought again about how he had hugged her in the bed last night, his arms and legs both wrapped around her body, holding to her for support, like a baby monkey strapping around its mother. Did she love him too? He was this handsome face, this rich hulk that spent his days at the gym and nights behind the computer in the office, pretending he was working, while he probably streamed TV shows, or pornography.
She hadn’t loved anyone before, not even Sameer in Indore who taught everything she needed to know about physical love. Not the boys about whom she wrote blank-verse poems in college, not the German she spent a night with in Goa over New Year’s Eve. No one.
But Abhimanyu? Mr Deputy Night Manager? Mr tall and muscular and rich? Would it change things around the office if he really loved her? She could call him ‘Abhi’, like his friends did, or his mother. She wouldn’t be able to work at Affirmative Solutions anymore. She wouldn’t want to work there. She could stay in his large mansion and find something else to do.
She remembered when she won the inter-school poetry competition in Class 9th, when she wrote about the neighbourhood dogs, about how they all played together, and what it had taught her about life. She hadn’t written a new poem for years, not even a poetic Instagram caption. She knew she had a different calling somewhere. She knew there was more to her life.
So, she summoned up her courage.
“Is it someone from office?”
He opened his voice to answer, but no words came out. Yes, he nodded his head.
“Is it me?”
“No.”
Shalu’s knees shook under the table. The expression on her face, however, remained unchanged. She didn’t say anything.
And Abhimanyu didn’t say anything.
Something he loved. Not her.
She wondered, then, how could it ever have been her? She, a plebeian, an outsider into his world, a class below, a caste below. She, of the guest-house and he of the mansion. She, a Bank of Baroda employee’s daughter. He, the scion of one of the city’s richest families.
Shalu began to feel that itch again. That drying-up wound on her shin. She crossed one foot over the other under the table and then uncrossed it again. She longed to scratch it, to reach down under her jeans and tear her skin off and let the pink insides gleam and the red blood ooze out. It would hurt her, she knew. But she couldn’t help herself: she needed to poke and prod and attack and feel that burst of pain.
“It’s someone from work…”. She collected her thoughts, aloud. “And it’s not me. It’s not Akriti. It’s not your mother… And it’s hot. Sometimes, hot. So, tell me: is it someone you wish to see again?”
“Maybe,” he mumbled. He crossed his arms and leaned forward into the table. He lowered his eyes and stared at the tray.
“Answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” Shalu said.
“Yes,” he mumbled.
Shalu suddenly felt the urge, long-suppressed, to eat her brunch. Or was it lunch now? The chicken had gotten cold and the drink had grown warm. But she didn’t care. She pulled her tray closer, and, with a confident, hungry assault, bit into her drumstick. She ate it quickly while Abhimanyu sat in silence.
“I’m so hungry,” she said, garbling in a mouthful of rice.
Abhimanyu nodded.
“Question 19...” she announced.
“No, that’s 20.”
“It’s 19. Is it someone you hate?”
Abhimanyu took a deep breath and let those large hands cover his face. His shoulders slouched and he leaned back. He rubbed his cheeks and scratched his hair. He let a hand provide cover over his red eyes.
“Answer me,” Shalu demanded.
“Yes.”
She ate slowly. She finished the chicken, and the chicken popcorn, and the rice, and she made sure to suck up every bit of Pepsi left through the straw.
Abhimanyu moved his hand off his eyes. His greasy, wet hand. She could see that his face was now a little greasy, too. His eyes were redder, wetter. From across the table, he reached over to Shalu to bristle her fingertips with his own.
Shalu pulled her hand free. There was still a light itch on her shin, but she decided to ignore it for now. She would distract herself. Walk it away. Do something else.
“You get one more question,” he said. His voice sounded strained. He coughed.
“Do you really want me to guess?”
“Ya, yes, of course.”
“Good.”
Shalu stood up with her tray and walked away from their table. She dumped the trash into the bin and clapped her hands clean.
Every table on the food-court was packed by now. More children, more adults, more couples. They spoke in loud murmurs or reacted in boisterous laughs or complained to each other or giggled or sat in silence, eating.
“Shalu,” Abhimanyu called out. It was the first time she remembered him ever saying her name, including the past six months at the office, including last night. “Where are you going?”
“Home. We’re done.”
“But,” he half-stood from his seat, in a signal that he would chase after her. “Don’t you want to guess what I was thinking about?”
Shalu smiled. “I already know.”
“Hey!” Now, as she walked away, he had to shout louder over the crowds. A few of the other customers turned around to look at him. He sat back down, alone with his empty tray of fried chicken remnants. “If you’re not going to guess, then you lose, right? You’ll have to buy me the meal next time, right?”
She turned around and left. There was nothing else to say. She would see him at work on Monday.
***
Karan Madhok is a writer, journalist, and editor of The Chakkar, whose fiction, translation, and poetry have appeared in Gargoyle, The Literary Review, The Lantern Review, F(r)iction, and more. He is the founder of the Indian basketball blog Hoopistani and has contributed to NBA India, SLAM Magazine, FirstPost, and more. Karan is currently working on his first novel. Twitter: @karanmadhok1.
