By Sujatha Balasubramanian

Also published under the title “The Hall of Mirrors”

The ambience was purely amber glow. Discreet modern lighting hazed over with cigarette smoke, the amber reflected in the liquid in the glasses and in the mellow voices of the cocktail crowd. With practised ease, the hostess separated Tara from her husband as soon as they arrived and fitted her neatly into a vacant chair between a lady dressed a la Nargis – all in white – and tall portly gentleman with a cherubic face.

Tara smiled self-consciously at the woman in white whom she knew slightly. Often now, the small inanities of party talk found her very much ill at ease and stiff. She clutched her glass of tomato juice in front of her as if it had the potency to ward off people.

“Haven’t seen you for a long time. Where is your husband?” asked the woman in a not too soft voice. Sheer white chiffon fluttered delicately as the spare tyre around her middle rippled. Tara shrank back and stared at her as it there was much innuendo behind the bland blancmange exterior. She mumbled a reply and tried to bury her face in the glass in her hand. Every look she met seemed to be speculative and each word barbed to probe those sensitive spots.

“Hello,” someone spoke gently behind her right shoulder. Tara turned around to find Ranjan’s dark, wavy head bent towards her. He worked with her husband Vijay and Tara had met him quite often at semi-official parties. She smiled at him a little uncertainly and he said somewhat abruptly, “Why the wah look?”

Tara glanced up in surprise. This was the first time that a personal note had crept into their conversation. The man on her left got up and wandered off to refill his glass and Ranjan seated himself gingerly on the chair that had just been vacated.

“How was Nainital?” she asked brightly, recollecting with haste that Ranjan was supposed to have been on holiday. He considered her remark seriously for a while , studying her square face with its high cheek bones and deep set eyes.

“Don’t let them get you down,” he said briefly in an undertone. Tara jumped as if she had touched a live wire. Her eyes began to fill with tears. He knows, she thought, all of them know, the whole world knows. Hastily, she put the glass of tomato juice to her lips and drained it, willing the tears not to fall.

“I’d like another glass of juice please,” she whispered beseechingly. He rose to fetch her one.

Anger was the first reaction, she thought, now grimly clinical. The pounding of blood in her ears and the bitter taste of bile, she could still recollect vividly. Life is full of cliches, but one never expects to be part of them, Tara thought. The man, the wife, and the other woman, a story as old as the hills. But when it is your husband, you don’t sit down and hold your sides with laughter. Inevitably, the peurile little note was found in a suit that was to go to the cleaners. Her whole body had shook with futile anger as she held the note in her hand. Vijay and his secretary! How dared he do this to me, she had fumed within herself. How she knew that anger could never last long, its very strength making it short-lived. What had festered within her these days had been the mortal wound to her pride. It is only my ego that has been damaged, she thought rationally later.

Ranjan returned with the juice. The sweet, sour and salty taste churned her insides and she welcomed the nausea which drained her eyes.

“You shouldn’t have done this – not now and not here or this way,” she accused him.

“I had to get you out of that deathlike mask you wore,” he said gently. “You know it is all over between them now. Vijay is a wonderful man and it was just one of those things.”

“Please – I’d rather not talk about it.” she answered stiffly.

“Don’t let this get you down,” he repeated, his calm brown eyes resting softly on her flushed face, “you are too fine a person to get hurt by this sort of thing.” She turned her head to give him a quick searching look which only found sincerity in the gaze that was bent upon her.

There was a concerted move towards the dinner table which was now the centre of everyone’s attention. Tara managed to put some distance between Ranjan and herself. Vijay was still in deep conversation with his host, gesticulating with a flourish of his whiskey-laden glass. Piling some food on her plate, Tara moved towards a lady in blue who was a stranger to her, and appeared to be middle-aged enough to be harmless.

“What delicious curry!” gushed the lady, providing the opening gambit and Tara accepting, they went back and forth on the delectable merits of their hostess as a chef par excellence, exchanged a couple of Punjabi and South Indian recipes and subsided into a friendly silence punctuated by the rhythmic click of the fork on the plate as the lady in blue, not quite a stranger now, made short work of a heap of rice.

Sighing, “I really shouldn’t, you know, but I can’t resist the pulao,” she went forth in search of further sustenance. Tara found Ranjan leaning over the back of the next chair.

“Tara, you look petite and fragile, almost as if you’d break when touched.” There was no mistaking the note in his voice she she couldn’t resist the little grow of pleasure that warmed her.

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” she asked staidly.

He laughed softly, “I am not used to saying this sort of a thing and I don’t have much time. Your friend is sailing down here with another load of food. Will you meet me for coffee at Sheesh Mahal at ten tomorrow morning?” She didn’t reply. The lady in blue panted up to her chair and sank down with a blissful sign. Ranjan moved away.

It was one of those parties that stretched into the small hours of the morning. Faces and voices swam in and out of Tara’s consciousness in a gentle swirl. Again Ranjan was at her side with a dish of ice-cream. Tara who normally loathed ice-cream took the proffered bowl as it gave her something to do. She could eke the nauseous mess for at least a quarter of an hour. “Beware of the Greeks —,” she murmured under her breath, but Ranjan only smiled back.

“Words are so unsatisfactory aren’t they? They can wait until tomorrow.” There was a question in his eyes, and after a moment Tara nodded.

She was sitting at a corner table with a pot of coffee in front of her when he entered the restaurant. She had dressed with greater care than usual, adding a discreet line of black to her eyelids and a touch of plum lipstick. There was a surge of elation in him at the sight of her waiting for him.

“Tara.” he said softly as he moved forward quickly.

“Coffee?” she asked, the pot poised over his cup. He covered the small, brown ringless hand with his and felt the warmth of the fingers seep into him. “My dear,” he whispered.

“I’m afraid I don’t know how you take yours,” she answered lightly. “With milk and sugar?” A certain note in her voice stopped him.

“What is it?” he asked. A certain tightness made his voice grate. She drank a little of her coffee and put her cup down with deliberation.

“Ranjan, I think I should put you right about me. I’ve been awake the whole of last night wondering how I should get this across to you.” She smiled her slow confident smile. “Then, I decided to tell you the truth. I am not what you are looking for. I have nothing to give anyone now.”

“Tara, don’t be bitter,” Ranjan soothed her as if she were a child. “You must get over the shock. These things happen everywhere.”

She placed her chin on her hands and gazed into space. “Yes, it was a shock but not quite the way you mean. It was like standing on the seashore and feeling the sands sweep away from under your feet. One should never look for one’s self in another person’s eyes. You get so used to building up an image of yourself based on other’s thoughts. How frightening it is to realize that there could be nothing left of you but what exists in other’s minds.”

“Tara, I don’t know what exactly you are driving at, but I feel you are too overwrought to make any decisions now.” A small crease of worry crinkled the corners of his eyes.

She put her hand on his forearm and pressed it lightly. “You have given me something inestimable,” she said. “I had lost a part of me as a woman. But you and I –” she paused uncertain of her words. “It doesn’t add up. The sum total can only diminish sooner or later, Ranjan. This won’t restore me, it will only destroy.” She glanced up at the mirrors on the walls. “Who was it that said, ‘Other people are hell’?” Her lips curved in a gentle smile.

“But Tara — my dear, don’t you know when it is the real thing? I am asking you to marry me.” Ranjan leaned forward and took her hand.

She met his eyes gravely and shook her head. “I don’t know what the real thing is. All I know is this. When you too can no longer burnish my image, where do I go? I don’t want to look over there,” she said gesturing at the walls, “and see a picture created by either Vijay or you or anyone else. I want to see the nothingness that is me. No, Ranjan, I’ll remember you by this cup of coffee.” She raised the cup in salute to him and sipped slowly. Around them, the mirrored walls shimmered like an ocean in sunlight.