Losing My Virginity and Other Dumb Ideas (7 page)

I took my hand out to shake his and found the courage, ‘I’m Kaveri.’

After what seemed a long time but was actually a few seconds, he asked, ‘Like the river?’ I nodded. He continued, ‘So you’re south Indian?’ I nodded again and added, ‘Partly. And partly …’

‘Beautiful,’ he said without missing a beat. I smiled. I might have been looking like a tomato. Suddenly hiding my big stomach and small cleavage was the top most priority on my mind. So I leaned forward and sat up a little as close to the table so he couldn’t see too much of my body.

‘What about you?’ I asked, sipping on my beer and all the while thinking that it would be so wonderful if we got married and had sex!

He took a long gulp of his beer and said, ‘Partly not beautiful and partly from here.’

‘Ohh but you are …’ I mumbled. Oh god, I wish I could have kissed him. I was going mad.

‘What?’ he smiled and asked.

‘Um … I mean, you’re from Goa?’ I corrected myself.

He nodded. He stopped drinking, eating, being. He just kept looking at me. In a deep, intense way and his eyes said a lot more. But I didn’t want to misread them. That was it. I knew then that what we had was chemistry.

‘Yup, from Ponda,’ he said, finally looking away and then asked looking back at me, ‘What brings you to my land?’

‘Work,’ I replied and smiled. I tried to sound normal. Instead a squeaky girlish voice came out and he smiled. I had not done this in a long time. Flirting didn’t come easily and my back up called Aditi wasn’t around to make me look good.

‘Oh, you look like you’re doing a lot of work!’ he smirked.

I smiled, ‘I have an afternoon off.’ I ran my fingers through my hair, desperately wanting him to fall in love with me.

‘Let me guess, you’re an agent to a Bollywood star?’

‘No,’ I laughed softly, trying to be coquettish.

‘You’re a model in search of real food?’

I laughed out loud, secretly happy he thought of me as a
model
. ‘No! I’m a freelance interpreter.’

‘What’s an interpreter?’

‘A person who translates languages for delegates coming from different countries.’

‘Oh, there’s a job like that? Wow. That must be cool.’

‘Ya. Sometimes. And sometimes it can be extremely taxing,’ I said nonchalantly. ‘What do you do?’ I asked politely.

‘I’m in TV.’

‘Are you an actor?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said very seriously, knowing how good looking he was, ‘I work in syndication for the media.’

‘Wow, that’s exciting,’ I said, not knowing what it really meant but wanting to impress him.

‘Hardly exciting. Makes you travel a lot and you get to drink a lot of airport coffee.’ He left it at that and looked away. And I didn’t pursue it. I guess he didn’t want to talk about work. We sat there for a while not talking and just looking at the sea.

‘I love this place,’ he mumbled after some time.

‘Hmmm,’ I agreed.

‘It’s so much better than beaches across the world that are more famous.’

I looked at him stunned and asked, ‘Like?’

‘Miami, Hawaii, Mexico, France.’

‘You’ve been to all these places?’ I asked.

He turned to me and said, ‘Oh ya. My work made me travel to all these places. I hate travelling though. If I have to do so, I will, but otherwise my idea of a perfect vacation is right here.’

‘Home, you mean?’ I said. He nodded. I didn’t want to tell him about my world travels. I loved travelling. I thought it enhanced you as a person. And I didn’t want to tell him that I would rather be travelling than be home with my parents. Just then, there was a strong gust of wind and the ketchup that was on the table fell on my lap. My white skirt was completely stained.

‘Shit!’ I cried out.

He got up immediately and poured water all over it and I was shocked. We both just stood there with our mouths open for a while till I started giggling.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, smiling a bit. ‘I thought that would help!’

I started wiping the sauce and my wet skirt with some napkins. It became worse. We both began to laugh and I gently held his arm pretending not to fall over with laughter. ‘I’m such a klutz,’ I proclaimed, all my coyness coming to naught.

‘Oh, join the club,’ he said.

‘You? No!’ I said, feigning shock and laughing some more.

‘Ya, why do you think I’m all about the cutlery?’

‘Oh really,’ I said and squealed with more laughter. ‘I was wondering why a guy would pick a fried calamari with a fork when it’s easier with two fingers!’ I teased. He laughed some more.

‘I wasn’t the one who ordered ketchup.’

‘Hey. Ketchup tastes good with everything!’

‘Ya, I’ll bet you have it for breakfast with toast,’ he said while nudging me gently.

‘How did you know?’ Laughter followed. All our pretenses of trying to be cool for each other had gone out of the window.

‘I think I should go change or something,’ I said.

‘Oh don’t go. Just put my shirt around your waist and it’ll soak up most of the water.’

He took off his shirt and handed it to me and said with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I’ll buy you as many beers as you want … if you stay,’ and then suddenly, he quoted a famous painter, ‘You can drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink any more than that.’ He finished with a flourish.

I quickly looked away suddenly conscious once again and trying not to stare at his hard body. My mind was whirling with thoughts about how I could just rub my hands all over his perfect ‘pecs’. I started feeling hot and said shyly, ‘No don’t worry about it. I’ll just put some napkins on it.’ We sat down again and he looked at me and said, ‘You’re really stunning, you know that?’ My body started tingling. But my mind gave me the logic that I barely knew him.

So I tried to change the subject. ‘Hey, you know what you just said? Those were Picasso’s last words.’

‘Really? I read it on a t-shirt somewhere yesterday,’ he exclaimed, ordering more beer for us.

‘Really?’ I asked, scarcely believing that the famous painter’s quotes could be put on t-shirts that are sold in Goa. ‘I thought only the Rolling Stones got onto t-shirts.’

He laughed. ‘Okay, you’re right. I didn’t. I was just trying to impress you with some quotes by famous guys.’

‘You mean a famous painter!’

‘Well, I was in Paris a few times and visited the Louvre. It was then that I became fascinated with art. I’ve never said that to anyone. Everyone will think I’m just a pansy!’

‘No you’re not! How could you be? You look …’ and then I stopped myself. I was smitten by a stranger. A stranger who looked like a Greek God and knew my favourite subject. ‘J’taime Paris,’ I said.

And he replied back, ‘I still think the French are really foo foo though.’

‘Foo foo?’ I asked, sipping my beer.

‘You know, uppity, pretentious, wannabe. Foo foo.’

I laughed till there were tears rolling down my cheeks. ‘There’s no such term, Arjun! But it makes so much sense!’ I said and then when I collected my thoughts, ‘But I still think the French language is very beautiful.’

‘It’s hardly a language. Most of the time the French are saying ‘aaah’, ‘oh’ and ‘um’. They gesticulate with their hands and you understand the gestures, not because they complete the sentence.’

‘But look at English as a language. The phonetics alone is a nightmare for students. Which should we follow, the British or the American system?’ I contested. I was actually having a debate with a stranger who had made me open up to him.

‘Personally, I think language is a manifestation of the behavioural pattern of a race,’ he said, while ordering yet more beer for us.

‘Meaning?’ I asked, interested that a man that good looking could arouse me intellectually as well. Ahem!

‘Well look at Bengali. It is a slowish language with a lot of emphasis on “o” and when do you say “oh”? When you are stretching lazily. Hence, the race itself is a lazy lot made to work hard, but the language is reflective of their nature. Look at Tamil. Tamil is spoken very fast; it’s not a languid language. That’s because Tamilians are always in a hurry to achieve something. They need a language to be curt and crisp and to the point so they can speak it fast. Phonetics is completely different. Get what I mean?’

I nodded, but said, ‘That’s a very general statement to make though. I’m sure neither a Bengali nor a Tamilian would like to hear that! I mean, I know so many hard-working Bengalis and an equal number of languid Tamilians. Okay, what do you think about Hindi or Punjabi?’ I asked. And he told me some more theories he had. And I refuted him some more.

Our conversation lasted for hours into the sunset and we were wonderfully buzzed with beer and each other. He was amazingly cool without trying to be so. He had impeccable manners and made me look like I had grown up in a village, even though I had travelled the world. He was undoubtedly the most interesting man I had ever met. We chatted about art, films, books and the French Riviera. But what was most astonishing was that he made me see life through his eyes. Even though I might have known the subjects better, he gave me a new perspective to them. I knew this man had many more tricks up his sleeve and I wanted to wait and watch!

I was having such a good time that I didn’t realize I needed to get back to my job or I would be fired. So I thought I should go check on the Princess and wash away my beer buzz and sandy hair.

We decided to meet later for dinner. I don’t know what it was, but somewhere in my heart I felt I had known him forever already. It was a strange feeling, one I had never had before. Oh my god, was this my first infatuation? Did I just have a ‘love at first sight’ day? I needed to call Aditi and tell her that just a week after giving up on men, I had found one. But then again, I knew this was something I didn’t want to share immediately. I felt that by talking about it, I might jinx it. And I did not want to jinx the only connection I’d ever felt with a man in thirty years!

I went back to the hotel feeling like a teenager. Maybe this is what people meant all along. A feeling that makes you
want
to wait for a man. The feeling called Love.

We not only had dinner that night, we ended up having a snack somewhere at two and breakfast at dawn by the beach. It was truly magical. The evening went something like this.

Greek God looked wonderful in a pair of dark blue jeans and a black shirt. He was casually smart. I went over and air kissed him on the cheek as if I’d known him forever. He smelt of Acqua di Gio, a light smelling but expensive cologne. Thank god I had showered well and washed the smell of beer and sand off my hair. I could see him checking me out in my blue chiffon top, black skirt and high heels that I’d kept only for special occasions. Just when I thought he was going to compliment my look, he turned around and said, ‘Would you be comfortable in that on a bike?’ Then I saw the Yamaha behind him.

‘I would be uncomfortable in a skirt if we were going on that. I’ll just go and change,’ I said and he nodded, ‘I’ll wait here.’

So I came down wearing my jeans and an emerald blue, sleeveless top with a white shrug, losing the heels for silver flip-flops. He saw me and smiled.

‘Ready,’ I said.

And this time he made no bones about checking me out while saying, ‘Perfect!’

Greek God seemed to know all the by-lanes of Goa really well. So I asked him the obvious question, ‘How do you know Goa so well?’

He clarified, ‘I used to live here. I was born and brought up here.’

I nodded my helmet head. He insisted I wear a half helmet even if I was pillion.

Cruising along the streets of Goa for about an hour, he had shown me all the tourist spots that I had not seen. Goa looked glamorous by moonlight. It reverted to the quaint town it used to be with small bars, music and merriment spilling on to the streets. The world seemed to stop while people stepped out of their mundane lives and enjoyed themselves. The energy in this city was infectious. Unlike Bombay or Delhi, or any other city in India, the people of Goa were warm and friendly and partied every day of the year. So whenever you were there you would feel like partying as well.

We slowly took a turn about an hour into the drive and he pointed to a small red and white bungalow with porch lights and a lovely manicured green lawn in front. He had stopped and we were looking in from across the street into the house. He took off his helmet and said, ‘That’s my house.’

‘You’re serious?’ I asked incredulously. He nodded and smiled. I felt all tingly.

Here was a stranger who was sharing a little bit of his private life with me, as if he wanted me to be a part of it. And then he said, ‘We can leave the helmets now. We’re going for dinner to a place close by.’

We were sitting at an Italian bistro, a five-minute drive from his house and looking at our menus when one of the waiters came over with a bottle of wine and poured it in the glasses. I looked confused and was going to say, we didn’t order yet, but Arjun smiled at me and said, ‘I’ve already ordered for the night. I didn’t want to waste a minute with you.’

I felt that tingly sensation again. I put down my menu and gave it back to the waiter.

‘Why didn’t you take me to a Goan eating joint?’ I asked.

‘Well, we had so much calamari and sausages and fish as snacks in the afternoon that I felt a change would do you good,’ he said. He seemed very sure of himself. It was as if he had taken the reigns of the date and he would woo me in style. ‘So, tell me more about your job. Do you need a degree for it?’

I picked up my glass of wine and clinked it with his, ‘Cheers!’ I said and continued, ‘Yes. I learnt all these languages but my degree was from a university in the USA that specializes in how to translate languages.’

‘Oh, you’ve studied in the USA?’

‘Yes, for a short bit and then I did the rest online … because I went back to staying with my parents who were missing me too much.’

‘Only child?’ he asked, sipping his wine while the waiter came with a basket of hot, soft, garlic bread.

‘Yes,’ I said, stuffing my face with a garlic bread. He, however, took it from the basket with tongs and then ate it with a fork and knife. I thought for a man to have such table manners was quite extraordinary. I wondered, however, what he would have done if the bread was crisp. But I found out soon enough when a large, thin crusted, crisp, cheesy pizza with Goan sausages came in front of us. This too, he had with a fork and knife while I dug into it with my hands, folding the pizza and putting it in my eager mouth.