One For The Road

A cold greyness swirled around the Mall, the trendiest street in town. With all the small pubs and restaurants lit with fairy lights and lanterns, a rainbow of colors winked through the gloom like sparkling foam rising to the top of a tankard of dark beer. The temperature had already dropped to freezing. The forecast of snow seemed to be spot on for once, as a dusting of fine flakes fell from the leaden sky frosting everything in sight: the roof-tops, the heads and hats of the party-goers and the cars and coats of the well-heeled and the down at heel alike as they staggered thankfully into the sweet warmth from the bitterness outside. The flakes were not partial. They also dusted the road, especially the road.

The snow would soon bring more people in its wake. Earthy plainsmen, ready to wash off the lingering traces of their dust laden lives. Ready to drink up to prevent the cold from ‘getting’ to them. Ready for revelry and rides and rage. More than ready to leave unwanted remnants behind in the pristine hills. Today was only the beginning of the long Republic Day weekend. Bhimtal would bear the brunt of the brimming crowds soon enough. But all that would come later. Tonight, was for the early birds.

Nowhere were the lights as bright as ‘The Watering Hole’, the newest and chicest pub of them all. Swinging ‘Kandeels’ glimmered all around the verandah and old- fashioned shades cast a rosy glow over the patrons already seated inside. A fire crackled and glowed in a large central hearth. The long bar on the other side of the room throbbed with activity, the hum of conversation occasionally punctuated by loud laughter. Music pounded from the disco next door and the bar was lit by a sudden flash of kaleidoscopic lights whenever someone went in or out.

Madhav stretched luxuriously as the waiter placed a large Double-Black whisky- on- the- rocks in front of him. This was THE life! As the alcohol burnt its fiery way down his throat and into his blood- stream, he felt himself being warmed both without and within, beginning to unwind like a tired spring after a long, long time. What, he mused to himself was the bloody point of working himself to the bone if he couldn’t nurse a large peg and relax from time to time? Chuckling to himself at the bad pun (he was an orthopedist himself) he stared into the golden depths of his glass like a seeker into a crystal ball, as if expecting the answers to all of life’s conundrums. This impromptu get-together in the hills with the rest of the team of the Indraprastha group of Hospitals was just what the doctor ordered. Setting up a new spinal surgery unit and then running it successfully in the cut throat world of corporatized medicine was not a task to be sneezed at. And he had done it all in a record time of eight months. He deserved this break and more, he thought expansively as he drained his glass and motioned for the waiter to get him another.

Madhu watched Madhav anxiously from across the room, listening half-heartedly as Shivani droned on and on about some ‘difficult case’ she had managed the previous week, trying to punctuate her impatience with polite nods and surprised gasps of relief as Shivani’s story after hurtling down the runway of fact finally took wing and launched into fiction. She hated being stuck at this table and making inane conversation. In fact, she hated being here at all.  What she wanted to do was escape somewhere real. Preferably with Madhav. Somewhere, where Madhav could unwind and relax, but without drinking like a fish. A place where they could hike together or just sit and watch a sunset or sunrise in companionable silence. Or where Madhav could outline his plans for the future and she would listen as she always did, wondering how she could best fit in with whatever he wanted to do.

Seeing the waiter glide across the room with another impossibly larger Double Black, she finally rose from her place, mumbling a hastily constructed excuse under her breath and made her way through the jostling crowd to Madhav. “Well, Madhu! Have you come to join us at last?”, Amit, Madhav’s colleague poured on the oily charm. The thought of too much oil always made her feel slightly queasy and Amit’s failed attempt to impress was no exception. “Shivani had such a difficult time last week. I am sure you heard all about it.” Where Shivani left off, Amit, her proud, doting husband could always be relied upon to continue. “Yes! I heard all about it. It is just that the battery on my phone seems to be dying and I came to see if Madhav has his charger on him. I have forgotten mine”. Madhav held out the charger accompanied by a contemptuous flick of his hand indicating that she should return to where she was meant to be.

But Madhav had tired this ploy once too many. A frown and irritated exclamation burst forth from him as Madhu dropped the charger and then bent to retrieve it. “This is your fourth Double Black. Don’t overdo it please. We still have to drive back”. Her quiet murmur was lost on everyone else except Madhav in the hubbub. And Madhav was a past master at ignoring what she said. Madhu walked back to her table, feeling the usual tug-of-war of conflicting emotions. These days, she chose to focus on the positive ones: the peace which came with having done her duty of warning Madhav. The old Madhu would have concentrated on the hurt of being ignored.

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He sat at the tiny table next to the window, nursing a large mug of mulled fruit punch. Were it not for the crash of the charger falling almost at his feet, he would not have been roused out of his usual reverie to overhear the hushed voice of the girl. The quiet desperation of her voice brought faded old memories back into sudden focus, like shards of glass. And not far behind followed the pain. A stabbing so sharp that he longed to sweep his punch aside, order an entire bottle of Double Black and drink it neat, there and then. The hand hooked around the handle of the mug trembled uncontrollably as he vainly attempted to raise it to his lips. The dark liquid sloshed onto the even darker varnish and gleamed like fresh blood. He clutched the mug in both hands and brought it to his lips, pulling deeply at the warmth of the punch. His throat was warmed, but his heart still remained frozen, just the way it had been for the past seven years.

Normally, this single mug of punch was all he could afford, but the small drama which had played out before him kept him glued to his seat, making him order another. Fishing in his pocket, he brought out a crumpled five-hundred-rupee note which he carelessly tossed on the table where it was immediately snapped up by a hovering waiter. He smiled sardonically. The departing currency resembled him in some ways and was his complete opposite in others: it was crumpled and tired looking like him, but it still had value, whereas he had been devalued by his own conscience years ago.

By the time he had finished his second mug, Madhav had had three more of his large ones. As the evening’s revelry drew to a close, the pub was almost empty and theirs the last group to stagger out. Madhav’s eyes were drooping at the edges, but that did not stop him from attempting to drive, rather the worse for wear. As Madhav wove his staggering way through the dark car- park, the road was slick with the newly fallen snow, Madhu followed dejectedly in his wake, knowing the futility of both, trying to reason with him and the impossibility of wresting the car keys from him through sheer force. The rest of their group had already gone their separate ways. “So many rats leaving a sinking ship”, thought Madhu bitterly to herself. “They were ready to egg him on to drink up. They might as well have pushed us over a high cliff than left us to drive to the guest house along these winding roads in the snow.”

In a last attempt to woo Madhav, Madhu plastered a large smile on her face. “Let me drive once, Madhav. I rarely get a chance to drive in the mountains. Besides, you could get some rest”. “You sthink I am too sdrunk don’t you? I cam besht the roads. Either get in or shtay here”. Slurring and snarling were difficult to do together, but Madhav managed it.

As Madhu opened the door to ride her usual shot-gun, she heard a sudden thump. Looking up, she saw Madhav passed out in the snow, apparently stunned by a blow to the head by a dark figure which was now advancing on her. Before the scream building up in the back of her throat would pierce the monastic stillness of the night, she felt the point of something sharp at her throat. The moonlight glinted on the wicked blade pressed to it. “Shut your mouth and get in you want the two of you to survive”, before she could make sense of the rasping voice, the figure had snatched her handbag, which unfortunately contained her mobile, slinging it around his body and shoved her inside, gagging her with her own dupatta. Thin plastic ropes which seemed to have appeared out of thin air bound her hands and feet.

As she watched in horror, the man opened the back door of the XUV and dumped Madhav unceremoniously inside, but not before trussing him up securely as well. As the man got into the driver’s seat, all she could see were his wild brown eyes. The light in them seemed fragmented, as if he were wandering the twilight between sanity and insanity. It was not a night to go over a cliff. It was a night to be kidnapped, robbed and perhaps raped and killed. A lone tear made its way down her cheek. Even somewhere as beautiful as Bhimtaal had its menacing side.

A large hand encased in a rough woolen glove lowered the gag, but not before the knife point was at her throat again. “Where are you staying?”, the voice rasped. Madhu was surprised not to smell any alcohol on his breath. “H..hi…Hill View Chalets”, she hated her shaking voice. The gag was back around her mouth as the man put the XUV into gear and slid it smoothly out of the parking-lot. Madhu peered anxiously out of the window, hoping for passing vehicles. While her mind told her that the chances of anyone else being out this late on a night like this were slim, her heart hoped that a vehicle would pass them, notice her plight and help. As the town fell away behind them, she felt a strange sense of detachment. Past caring about what was to happen, she stared at the road as the fog lamps cut through the swirling flakes still falling from the sky.

The kidnapper was a careful driver who seemed to know the roads like the back of his hand. The confident and skilled way in which he negotiated the treacherous mountains made Madhu suspect that he was a local. Now that they had been on the road for twenty minutes, he did not seem as menacing as he had. Madhu smiled wryly through her gag. It was strange what the human mind would accept. The Stockholm syndrome cropped up in the strangest situations. Madhav’s drunken snores and occasional mutterings and the drone of the engine were the only things breaking the stillness of the night as the XUV cut through the snow slicked, barely visible roads with ease. Before she could register what was happening, the car veered sharply to the side of the road and stopped abruptly, barely fifty meters from a large neon lit sign which declared ‘Hill-View Chalets’ to the rest of the world. Four expert flicks of the knife to cut both hers and Madhav’s bonds, a depositing of her purse on the driver seat and the kidnapper had exited, leaving the keys in the ignition. Madhu crumpled into the driver seat and trembled for fifteen minutes before she could switch on the ignition to drive them both to their destination, which was so near and yet so far.

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The cottage was dark as usual when he returned. He knew that sooner or later he would be hauled before the police for kidnapping drunks, even though he did it only to save the dunderheads from themselves. Whatever the intention, becoming the law was never an excuse. But he knew he could never stop or the ghost of that fateful night would return to haunt him again. Seven years ago, there had been a night just like today when he had been Madhav and she had been Madhu. And he, with a misplaced sense of infallibility had insisted on driving home, unstoppable, with the alcohol singing in his veins. She had snatched at the steering wheel to stop the head on collision with a truck and had ensured that he survived alone to suffer the guilt of having her blood on his hands. He could never be fully redeemed, but tonight he had come close to seeing her smiling with genuine pride from the weathered, garlanded photograph.

As long as he drew breath, he would ensure that he would be the one for the road…