Leena froze. At first, Lata Mangeshkar smiled sweetly, demure in her typical white sari, and approached the counter behind which Leena stood, wide-eyed. But after Leena confirmed that she indeed was Leena Engineer and she was honored to receive Lataji in her store, Lata shut down the smiling.
“You listen to me,” she said. “Prem Kumar is a good boy. What did he do wrong? Nothing. So many years he has been working and working, living under the onions, for you only. He could have gone back to India and lived like a king, but no, he gave everything up. For what?”
Leena was taken aback by the Queen of Melody’s wrath, and it seemed the Queen of Melody herself was also taken aback by it. She cleared her throat, causing several pretend-shoppers to move closer in case she might be getting ready to sing. Instead, she began again. “Leena, beti, I am sorry.” She went on to explain that it hurt her to see two young people suffering in this way when they could be together and happy. It was especially painful, she said, because one of those people was her friend’s son, who could have lived comfortably in India but subjected himself to an austere lifestyle just to be near her.
“Lataji, thank you,” Leena said, “but what is this comfortable kingdom you keep mentioning? Prem is from a simple background. You must be thinking of some other family.” Seeing the alarm written on Lata Mangeshkar’s face, Leena understood then that it was she, not Lata, who was mistaken. The singer offered several more apologies plus a namaste, purchased all of the raisins, and hurried out of the store, leaving Leena with a tangle of questions and a few stunned customers.
The rest of the day was quiet in the store, with no further celebrities popping in. As evening approached, the sky cast a shadow over the store, the parking lot, and King’s Court. Customers remarked that some rain would be a good thing for the burning trees and smoke problem, but when the rain came, customers wished it would stop. Leena turned off the lights and locked up. When she turned to walk home, Prem stood there, at a distance, wet and earnest.
“I was thinking,” he called.
Leena stopped short, startled by his sudden and sopping appearance. Rain gurgled out of downspouts and dripped from awnings. A gang of pigeons descended upon a soggy samosa in the parking lot. “This is a strange place to do it,” she answered.
Prem took a deep breath and blurted out his thoughts on the exhale. “You told me Falguni and Snigdha said I was odd.”
“This is what you came to discuss?”
“Not exactly, but, I was wondering, why were you talking to your friends about me?”
“Huh? I can’t, I just, I don’t know.” Leena said, her palms rising to her face in exasperation, her eyes widening in disbelief. “You’re upset that I was talking about you? I really can’t, I …” She closed her eyes briefly, then let fly a storm of indignation. “Did you forget I defended you, I said you were nice and different? Is that why you took back my tickets? No, wait, that was before. Why did you take back my tickets? Really, what type of person—”
Tony, of Tun-Tun and Tony, exited Quicker Liquor just then and offered an answer (“Who? Pumpwalla? Top of the line, five-star.”) and kept walking. “Thanks, man,” Prem offered, then returned to Leena and quickly spoke before she could. “If you were talking about me,” he said, “that means there was something to talk about. Was there?”
Leena hesitated because it was true. She had been discussing Prem with her friends because she liked him all over again. Those days at the hospital and at the store, he was sweet and funny and more handsome even than before. And he was there for her. She relented.
“Fine, yes. Maybe.”
Her admission precipitated a stunned silence. Before Prem could respond, she qualified her statement. “But then you took my tickets away, and today, I hear you are from some big, rich family in India. Did you send actors to pressure me? And why did you come to the hospital? For my father, or just to impress me?”
Nalini Sen emerged from Quicker Liquor pushing an overfull cart. “To impress you, obviously, come on,” she weighed in and moved on. “For Hemantji, of course, why wouldn’t he?” ghazal-singing icon Jagjit Singh countered on his way into Big Bhupinder’s Divine Arts & Handicrafts, formerly a hardware store.
Prem turned for a moment to greet internationally legendary vocalist Jagjit Singh. When he turned back to Leena, she was gone. He could see her in the distance, hurrying home to King’s Court in the rain.
“Why is she yelling at you in the rain again?” Beena wanted to know.
Cash the superintendent was changing a kitchen light bulb. “Someone yelling at Prem?” he asked.
“Leena Engineer,” Beena replied.
“Hemant’s little girl?”
“No one was yelling,” Prem clarified. “She just had a lot of questions.” He was on the couch, dejected and lamenting in the same place he’d lamented for so many years. There was too much to sort out—the varied accusations, the confession of some vague level of romantic interest. What he knew for certain was that her ancient bitterness was gone, replaced by fresh, new bitterness.
“I’m going there right now for straightening out this mess,” Beena said. “Don’t try to stop me.”
“No one is stopping you,” Prem pointed out.
Lenna had also retreated to the place where she’d done so much thinking over the years. The swing in her father’s apartment had developed a creak, but it comforted her all the same. The other mainstays of 5F also offered solace in their varied states of being. Hriyan had gone from remarkable feat of indoor foliage to unmanageable botanical oddity, while permanent paying guest Viren Bhai, on the balcony in Ardha Baddha Padma Vrikshasana (half-bound lotus tree pose), had stayed exactly as is. Before she could begin sorting through her manifold feelings, there was an angry knock at the door.
“Shhh,” Leena said when she answered. “Papa is resting.”
“Good, you are both here.” Beena pushed her way in and made herself at home on the swing. “Let’s have a talk.”
“Beena Auntie, I have had a difficult kind of day. Can we talk some other time?” Leena kept her hand on the knob of the open door. “I can make some chai and there is a nice new masala chevda I can bring from the store, you will like it. I’ll just call you—”
Beena appeared to be engaged in an entirely different conversation. “How is he doing, your father, recovering good?”
“Really, Auntie, so sweet of you to come to check up on him, but I am just too exhausted, there was some trouble at the store—”
Beena uncrossed her legs and the swing issued a giant squeak. “I know what kind of trouble you had at the store. Why do you think I have come?”
Leena closed the door and sat down. What followed was a full rundown of all of Prem’s dealings with T-Company and Tiger Nayak, from the Mumbai movie debacle to the initial investment in Superstar Entertainment all the way to Wristwatch, the threat to Leena’s eye, and the happy ending involving Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN, orchestrated largely by Beena herself, of course. It was all too much at once for Leena. She closed her eyes and rested her head on the arm of the sofa, hoping for some kind of respite. Instead, her father came out to the drawing room.
“Listen to Beenaji,” he said. “She is correct, absolutely.”
“You too? It’s like Prem Kumar has put a spell over all of King’s Court and all the Hindi movie actors. How has he done this?”
“Everything this boy does is for you only,” Hemant noted.
“Exactly!” Beena clapped her hands.
“He is not a boy, he is forty,” Leena said.
“And whose fault is that?” Hemant had confused even himself. “Oh yes, never mind.”
“Where is that board?” Beena said to Hemant. “The one you use with the markers for your community meetings?”
It was as though Beena and Hemant had been jointly preparing the ensuing presentation for months to ensure maximum impact and results. Their backs to Leena, they worked hurriedly, creating a bullet-pointed chart the likes of which Leena hadn’t seen since Drop Thread Gorgeous was debating full-frontal services. “Okay, look here,” Beena resumed as Hemant propped the board up on the kitchen counter. Using a serving spoon as a pointer, she began from the top:
