For all those who've slow danced to Strangers in the Night

We came out of the movie hall, with the sun making our eyes crinkle and the warmth tingling the air-conditioned goose bumps on our arms. There’s a sleepy contentment that washes over us, as we make our way out in a community shuffle. He has his arm around me as we walk down the sloping parapet, back into the mall.

It’s hot but not too hot. Not unbearable, not muggy and there’s an ever so slight breeze.

We move past the food court into the open air sitting area. We smoke. We chat lazily. He talks about something in the movie which reminded him of something he did as a kid. He goes to get me a gelato, because usually when I see chocolate I want it. He’s being nice but I don’t really feel like it today. We have a spoon or two and watch it melt between us., forming an icky brown mess.

A person from a nearby table comes over, an old friend apparently, he smiles and shakes my hand, I’ve never met him before but he obviously knows about me, whether through him or common friends I don’t know.

It’s early evening, and a different kind of crowd is thronging the mall, less students, more families who’ll end the evening with dinner in this very food court.

I feel like a chilled drink, not a heavy, milky one and definitely not an areated one. The waiter comes over, I ask for seventy rupees worth of ice, water and strawberry flavouring in a tall glass. He brings it fairly quickly. I sip at it.

We talk some more. He’s restless I can make out, because he doesn’t know where he’s going to be this time next month, he’s wrapping his head around the ideas on his tray, and all of them are just ok. None of them involve me. Because I’m still going to be here. I’m happy though, I’m out with him and the impromptu movie turned out to be much better than we expected.

The ice melts and the drink tastes like water that’s been poured into a used juice carton. I abandon drinking it altogether and play around with the straw. We smoke some more. As the sky darkens, he pays the bill and we head to the parking lot.

I give him the keys, because he likes to drive. He’s a careful driver with no cursing and no sudden braking unlike me. We’re quiet most of the way, because the music on is good, he sings a little, I hum, we listen.

We reach his place, he gets out and I scoot over to the drivers seat, he gives me a quick kiss on the forehead and goes inside, I head back home. The music is awful now.

My parents are throwing a big dinner party tonight and I must get ready, wear something ironed and suitable and talk to some horrifically overdressed women and some debonair, aging men who were once young pilots and tell them, how I spend my time. I don’t mind, because we bargain stories, I get to hear about places like Kalaikunda, obscure Airforce bases where these men spent their youth learning to fly Jaguars and MIGs. Now they’re gentlemen of course who talk of their chicken farms on the Jaipur highway and holiday homes in Mashobra.

“I was at Tezpur and your grandfather was doing reconnaissance,” said a suited elderly man in a dull red turban cradling a whiskey soda in his hand, “he’d come down from Agra and we’d fly down to the China border together and he’d report back the next morning to Agra.” He’d cackle and thump me on the shoulder, carried away by the impishness of it, the merriment of the moment.

He’ll message me soon, to check in, in case I need a lifeboat, how’s the evening going? Should I call?

Fine, I’ll say. Just fine.