Work Text:
*
The average temperature in Hyderabad is twenty-seven degrees Celsius throughout the year.
The normal body temperature for dogs is between thirty-eight and thirty-nine degrees Celsius. Younger dogs have a higher body temperature. Dogs are considered to be adults when they are eight to twelve months old.
Brat is a black Brittany Labrador who is four and a half years old. In human terms, he is about thirty-two to thirty-five years old and is in the prime of his most protective stage of life, the maturity having already caught up with his young owner.
Brat was born and raised in Hyderabad. He has never left the city his entire life. He does his duty by getting up every morning to pick up the newspaper from the mailbox at the main entrance; despite the fact that his owner's house has been upgraded with a comprehensive electronic security system and is manned by security personnel twenty-four hours a day, he remains alert to anything that passes by and, if necessary, uses his primitive barking language to notify his beloved owner; he likes to stand guard while his human cooks and goes to the bathroom, because his primitive genes tell him that these two things are essential for survival.
Certainly, dogs have dogs' philosophy.
Brat is a bright animal, and within just six months of being born and joining the family, he knew all the streets of the Venkatagiri district. He knows his little world well like the back of his paw, the grass, the bricks, and the rubbish bins at the back of every alleyway (Shhh! This is a guilty pleasure that cannot be told. After all, as long as you don't tell and I don't tell, no one knows who is responsible for the suddenly appeared muddy dirty paw prints on the carpet on Wednesday mornings), and knows his owner very well, who always comes home for a couple of months and then disappears for a few months. He restrains his longings and uses his simple-structured prefrontal lobe to blot out as much desire as possible, because he knows that his owner actually misses him too and will stay with him for as long as possible for the limited period of time.
Unlike most dogs with an abrupt nature, Brat uses socialisation as a way of being loyal to his human as well. During the day he tries to meet as many dogs in the neighbourhood as possible, developing a healthy system of communication with them, thus avoiding unnecessary conflicts and making it easy for his owner to take him for walks around the neighbourhood while he is at home.
His favourite treats are apples, and chapattis that are not dipped in anything on top. Of course, the owner is dutiful and would never bring anything unsuitable to his mouth. The chapatti is a beautiful coincidence. The reason for this can be attributed to, and is perhaps the only plausible explanation: the shape of the chapatti is surprisingly similar to that of Brat's favourite Frisbee toy. So it fundamentally defeated other human foods, instigating Brat to take his first decisive bite - stolen, of course, from a brass plate on the coffee table through a highly difficult rear-legged upright manoeuvre. From then on, the fondness was unstoppable.
Ram Charan asked the many nutritional experts around him and, of course, the vet for their expert opinion on whether eating chapatti was bad for pets. In the end, the unanimous conclusion he came to was that whole grains (such as brown rice, wheat, oats, barley, millet and quinoa), along with pulses, provide a variety of important nutrients for dogs; the mixture of brown rice and cooked vegetable puree is an easy and healthy meal for the furry ones, and as long as no other side items and no spices are added on top, chapatti can only be good for dogs. So, victory! The chapatti has since become Brat's special treat and, of course, the only way to control and bribe our rather thoughtful furry friend. On a brighter note, this means that sometimes Brat and Ram Charan can indeed share the same food at the same time, and the boundary between human and dog is blurred a lot more.
That's all for now about Brat. Once again, the average year-round temperature in Hyderabad is twenty-seven degrees Celsius. The normal body temperature for dogs is between thirty-eight and thirty-nine degrees Celsius. Brat is an adult dog, so his body temperature is around thirty-eight degrees Celsius.
This is slightly higher than the body temperature of a human.
As a result, when the dog's blood gets on human skin, a warm body sensation is the first to occur. Then there was the quick subsequent cooling-down. An icy, prickly, sticky congeal forms. The early morning temperatures in Hyderabad are even colder, perhaps not yet reaching fifteen degrees Celsius. The air is saturated with dampness, which solidifies this coldness, layer upon layer, against one's bare skin, compressing the fabric of clothes, making them hang tightly, picking at the hair, drawing in the breath, stripping away the heat, and drenching the lungs from the inside out.
As a result, Ram Charan's breathing was difficult. His chest sinks as if his body were completely submerged in water, unable to be lifted up by the act of inhaling, allowing air to enter. Unfortunately, Ram Charan needed this air more than ever, for his throat was trembling violently and silently at that moment, nerves straining and unable to loosen, the air rushing out of his throat - he could not hear his own voice. He had been kneeling here for twenty, twenty-five minutes, perhaps more. The cries didn't stop breaking out of him, the sound had the substance to slice through his ribs and tumble outwards from the inside of him with heated air and blood, until his throat couldn't take any more of the tearing and stopped working.
Brat was lying flat between his arms, on top of his thighs, his limbs stretched out in a direction away from the body. The dog's blood was spreading and falling cold around him. There was some heat steaming up from the surface of the liquid in a kind of misty form. Both of Charan's forearms were stained scarlet. His body processed the fact that Brat was possibly dead, embracing the weeping and wailing that went hand in hand with the pain that lashed his flesh. But he remained practically unaware of the event. In his consciousness, nothing had happened. Everything remained a pit-black, incessant, slashing, strangling void.
Forty minutes earlier, at approximately three-thirty a.m., a black Hyundai Santa Fe had sped across the northwest section of the 'Hill Top Road' from the side of the road close to the hard shoulder. It was effectively beyond the lane, indicating that the driver had most likely been drunk. Charan recognised the model, as cars was one of his casual interests to follow in his spare time, and the Santa Fe graced the front pages of a number of car magazines as part of Hyundai's new two-thousand-and-seven series. However, on a road with two rows of street lights out at dawn, the shifting shadows of the trees obscured what little moonlight there was, he eventually failed to make out the numbers on the licence plate on the back of that vehicle.
Not to mention, the car was simply going too fast. So much so that the SUV's high-chassis wheels lurched and undulated only slightly to the left as they ran over Brat's body, which weighed nearly eighty pounds. And then, without a hitch, the car drove on.
Charan was a dozen paces behind Brat. He was wearing shorts and trainers. Brat was an energetic fellow. Due to last night's family dinner and late return, Charan had missed its evening walking session and Brat was clearly throttled by boredom. Charan would have thought that the calm of the Venkatagiri district at three in the morning would have been as conclusive as the low-decibel noise that coalesced in the air. If he had been able to understand the universe's patterns and see what was to come, he would never have given in to the incessant pleas and undo the buckle on Brat's collar.
But there just isn't too much space for what-ifs in this world.
As Santa Fe drove past, Charan heard a shrill wail coming from Brat's mouth that he had never heard before in his life, almost like the bark of an unidentifiable animal rather than the beloved dog he knew so well. He rushed over. Brat looked intact and for a moment he thought a miracle had happened. He witnessed the wheels of a car run straight over Brat, tilting and falling back to a stable position. But the moment he saw Brat he remained steadfast in his belief in miracles.
The dog wanted to stand up and ran back to Charan.
Brat also believed he was okay. He saw the terrified look that appeared on his owner's face and became anxious, wondering if he had run too far and made up his mind to go back to Charan's side to calm his fragile human. Only he rose in a very odd way, like manipulating a damaged puppet whose strings were tangled in a knotted mass, and the one that had been picked out to pull and control him was so entwined that it was about to break. His two hind legs collapsed together in a kind of manner with two knees folded and touching each other, his sturdy, black body slumped to one side, his back bent like a broken tyre. As his spine collapses, his neck is also askew and the limbs twist and twitch uncontrollably. But his head was still facing in Charan's direction. The wet, quiet black eyes looking at the vacancy beside the only human on the street: the last place he wanted to be.
The blood, did not flow immediately. Instead, it poured out of Brat as Charan ran and stumbled, holding him in his arms, on his way to the nearest vet emergency to the southeast, called "Care & Cure The Animal Hospital".
Brat let out his last breath on Rd Number 2. It was only a block away from "Care & Cure".
*
It took quite a bit of effort for Tarak Ramrao to find out where Ram Charan was.
Rd Number 2 is close to forty minutes' footfall from his place - a drive that normally takes a third of the time. However, because Rd Number 2 was a one-way street, he had to enter from the east side of the road and turn around before he could drive the entire section in search of Charan.
Tarak would have been able to ask for more specificity. But, perhaps, his body's inability to function properly in the dead of night after being woken up by a ringing phone at four or five a.m. had slowed down his ability to think logically, or perhaps the young man's uncontrollable sobbing and distorted voice on the other end of the line was so fragmented that he couldn't even bear to ask him ordinary questions that were only meant to solicit information. He simply said, "Stay where you are, I'm on my way." And hang up the phone and came.
Fortunately, Tarak hadn't been driving on Rd Number 2 long before he spotted the figure of the man he was looking for on the pavement at the side of the road.
Charan wasn't actually very close to him. At the very least, not well enough to call him a friend, but at best an acquaintance. The reason why he would choose to call himself was not really clear to Tarak. Perhaps it was because he was the only Telugu actor in Hyderabad who lived closest to Chiranjeevi's residence and could still be woken up by the ringing of the phone at this hour. He assumed so. Or perhaps he naturally has a kind face. But at the very first sight of Charan's completely distraught face he believed that closer to the truth was the possibility that Charan had simply dialed a number blindly from the phone book.
Although surprised that he was the first to focus on these aspects of the situation, once the brain had picked up visual information it had to finish processing it, and here was the result of Tarak's visual information processing: Charan collapsed on the side of the road in an almost heartbreaking posture. His upper body was bent like a little shrimp. In his arms was a bloody, plush object, the shape of which could not yet be distinguished from such a distance. His head was bowed and he was motionless. The face appeared to be very mottled.
He must have just finished shooting his first film. He had certainly taken great care in getting into shape and planning his diet for the camera, even a little too much if Tarak was to judge. The last time Tarak met Ram Charan, he was doing acting training at Kishore Namit Kapoor Acting Institute in Mumbai. They had met at a party during a sabbatical from the training camp. At that time, Ram Charan looked even a little chubby, wore a pair of rectangular, short-sighted glasses and had uneven teeth. Today, he keeps his soft, slightly curved hair semi-long, has lost almost half his own figure of weight and the glasses are gone, too. He's almost looking like a real movie star.
For god's sake, his eyelashes look even denser and longer when they are all wet.
Tarak jumped out of the door of his indigo Porsche Cayman and just as soon as he got a good look at the other man, he slammed the door and quickly ran to Ram Charan, kneeling down beside him and firstly checking Charan himself for any injuries. Even Tarak, as calm as he was, was momentarily shocked by the amount of blood on Charan's body, so much so that his first reaction was a fear that something had happened to him. It was a much more horrific scene than Tarak had imagined when he answered the phone.
Charan just hung his head and shake. His forehead was pointing against the lifeless pet in his arms. There was something, don't know if it was sweat or tears, falling from it, landing on the animal's stiff body and disappearing into the dense black fur. A trail of blood froth hung from the corner of the dog's mouth, coagulated at the bottom, the surface layer of foam thinned to a pale pink shade, supposedly exhaled from the lungs, some of which had ruptured, only the dried crust of blood strands remaining at the bubble's edges.
"Ca... Care... and..." Charan had obviously been crying too long before Tarak came, the back of his throat throbbing uncontrollably, unable to utter a complete sentence. Teardrops continued to trickle down from his eyes by default, "I... I couldn't... make it in time to... go..."
Tarak nodded. Charan still wanted to get the dog to the emergency centre.
The animal looked like it already died. Any living thing would have died if that much blood had come out of its body. More so, the dog's fur was even cold to the touch. But Tarak couldn't bear to say a word, at least not under Charan's surging mess of tearful gaze.
After running his hands up and down the young man to make sure there were no injuries, Tarak helped Charan get into his passenger seat. His young fellow colleague, who couldn't even stand up, leaned against him and took only a few steps even before reaching the car door, had collapsed weakly towards the ground, but was still holding his pet dog to his chest.
Tarak half-carried Ram Charan into the carriage like lifting a kitten, then fastened his seatbelt.
It was almost seven a.m. when they came out of the veterinary hospital. It was three in the morning when the accident happened. The streets were empty. And at this moment, Hyderabad, like dozens of towns and cities in Telangana, was gradually reviving. The roads are filled with the sound of bursting motor vehicles, the chirping of birds, and the echoes of hawkers in distant lanes. The morning sun is gradually becoming brighter, night lights in front of the convenience store windows are not yet extinguished, the orange and yellow light illuminated by the energy of the sun's stellar radiation, shining like a waterdrop falling into the sea. All the tranquillity of people and animals and scenery was absurd, absurdity that floated in the air like white noise. The colour of the scene before Tarak's eyes wavered vaguely, and the whole upper part of his head felt uncomfortable, as if the volume and density of that part of the brain had become wrong, and his skull had become distressed as a result.
Two hours ago, in the emergency room of Care & Cure, the vet on duty confirmed the death of Brat. Only this fact did not reach Charan's senses. He begged and begged, cried in whispers, fell into Tarak's arms and barely managed to get up again. He pressed his face next to Brat's nose, claiming he could still hear him breathing. He hoped the EMTs could still save Brat. Tarak himself surprisingly didn't manage to speak a single phrase, a single word of disapproval of what Charan was doing.
He didn't know why he had to witness this after being called up in the middle of the night.
For a few brief moments, he was swept up in a sort of tremulous anger. He wanted to rush up and squeeze the young man's thin, slightly inwardly curled shoulders in his hands and shake them hard, telling him that it was enough, to wake up, to stop being capricious, that you were wasting everyone's time. Enough, you cried, the doctor made an assertion, let's just fucking call it a day he couldn't look at this any longer.
For a few more moments, he was firmly strangled by an urge. It was a primal impulse, deep in his body, almost like a mind-flow state of concentration while performing, but more brutal than that - because of its ruthless authenticity - he wanted to drop all sense of dignity and propriety, all rationality and self-containment, to cry, to make a sound, to squeeze all the air out of his chest, to join Charan.
The fawn-eyed, dark-haired man, who looks like he has just reached adulthood, cried like he was about to melt away. In the cold silence of the early morning, in the small square room with the white lime dust on the top half and the grass-green lime dust on the bottom half, his body feels like it has been drained of strength. He even felt feverish when held in Tarak's arms. As if some insidious illness with a sense of fatalism, as often happens in an infant, was dangerously threatening to consume everything within the young man. He could really be feverish. Perhaps from crying too long, perhaps from kneeling in the cold wind for too long. His forehead was flushed and his wet hair clung haphazardly to his face, dividing his sorrowful face into several different small sections, the tail of his eyes and cheekbones, the flanks and sides of the nose, the lips and the jaw, each part telling a scene of complete and utter sadness, superimposed and ruptured apart, leaving his beauty in tatters.
Tarak was not the only one whose empathetic soul could hardly hold the weight of such sadness.
The two veterinarians on duty at the emergency centre, eventually, performed CPR on Brat's rigid body for close to an hour. They even dutifully administered a shot of epinephrine. That's why they stayed tuckered out until seven o'clock. In the end, the emergency services people said that they would only charge a small fee to take care of the cremation of the pet. Tarak signed the confirmation paper and agreed to come and pick up the ashes later at dusk.
He then took Charan and left. As he helped the wobbly young man into his Porsche and closed the door, Charan's eyes remained fixed on the closed roller shutters of the veterinary hospital. Both of his eyes were red and Tarak found it very unethical to think that at such a moment, but he still helplessly thought Charan looked like a bunny. "I'll take you home, okay?" He asked softly.
Charan nodded, and then shook his head. Looking over to Tarak, who was holding the steering wheel beside him, as if he was standing on the edge of a precarious cliff, so close that he could just lean back slightly and fallen to his death in pieces.
Tarak turned the wheel and drove the car towards his own flat.
*
"Not as nice as your dad's mansion, small yes, but just think of it as your own home." Pushing the door open, Tarak realised he still had his underwear, cleaned a while ago, spread out on the sofa, unpacked. The sink hadn't been brushed either. There were three or two used plates sitting inside. The flat showed signs of prolonged disorderly usage, and the many small, haphazardly placed objects disturbed the neat lines of his inner pride, which wanted to impress the young man, as much as they disturbed the neat lines of the white furniture set itself.
However, his "acquaintance" friend did not notice this. Charan stood in the doorway of the house, looking like he had forgotten how to walk. When Tarak went to take his hand he found that his whole body was still shaking. He had stopped crying, but his eyes were still wet. His palms were also very wet.
Tarak led Charan into the flat and settled him carefully in the corner of the sofa. Charan collapsed almost as soon as he touched the cushion, his body curled into a tiny huddle. His hands were still wrapped around his chest, as if he was still holding an invisible dog in those arms.
By the time Tarak returned from cleaning up the kitchen, he found the man had passed out against the armrest. The clothes, stained by Brat's blood, were still on him. He gingerly walked over and shook Charan awake.
"Charan... how about getting up and wash off, and go sleep in my bed?"
The other man nodded exceptionally meekly. In actual fact Tarak suspected that at this point he would have nodded even if he had been asked anything at all. Tarak thought about calling the young man's father or his good friend Rana Daggubati, whose reputation for their fond friendship was a known fact in the industry - but ideas were ideas, he didn't act on them. He was just a little too worried to let Charan out of his sight.
But Tarak wasn't very experienced in looking after a young man who was so devastated that seemed would fall apart at the slightest touch, and who Tarak had just found to be a little too attractive to handle, neither. Now, for example, when the young man received the only instruction that could distract him slightly from the tragedy that had just happened, and did his best to execute it, Tarak was slightly at a loss as to what to do on his side.
Fortunately, some of the seemingly unorthodox actions somehow became much more justified in the absence of the young man's intact consciousness. Tarak helped Charan to get up from his seat, helped him to remove his sweatshirt and gym shorts, led him to the bathroom, and showed him in detail how to regulate the hot and cold water in the shower.
The young man wore an extraordinarily normal pair of linen-grey flat-bottom underwear with black lettering edge on the waist, a brand Tarak hadn't seen before, which wasn't really surprising to Tarak. For that was the impression Tarak had of Charan: a premature young man who speaks appropriately. He was told that Charan had been a rebellious teenager, doing some outrageous things and changing schools on an average of every single seasons, so when he first met Charan he had different expectations, expecting him to be a difficult kind of fop, but was not expected the man to be so quiet and shy in person. It was about that fallout that made Ram Charan stand out to Tarak for no other apparent reason, and somehow left a lasting impression on him.
Because of this unseemly excess of attention left by first impressions, Tarak also allowed himself to look down at the young man's naked body with his trousers removed - a little more dismal than he had expected, with a thin, tiny waist, the shape of his crotch bones jutting out from the sides of his body at one end, and the lower half hidden at the edge of his trouser waist, and his bare legs so frail that Tarak found it hard to look at them - what has he done to lose weight? Pure dieting or what? Tarak couldn't help but think indignantly. He needed to ask Charan about it at some point later on, when he feels better. Maybe it was time to sit down and have a thorough chat. Tarak bet that Charan wouldn't be surrounded by people of his own age and professions, who could talk to him about these kinds of topics. Young actors often fall into the trap of being overly critical of their physical features, and if they are not properly guided, the industry's harsh and demanding will be a bottomless abyss that will run through and crush their entire artistic lives. Tarak has a strange sense of vocation about this.
"Bath towels are in the wardrobe above the sink. Call me if you need anything. " Tarak finally said, and seeing Charan nod woodenly, exited from the bathroom and flicked up the latch's back-locking kin so he could open the door from the outside. He then shut the door behind him. He stood against the bathroom door for a moment, until he heard the faint sound of pattering water inside, before turning back into the living room to remedy his still poorly put-together homely man image.
After gathering his things, he picked out a slightly smaller t-shirt from the clean laundry and folded it in his hand. As if putting it back and picking it out again would delay something important. Then he started watching TV, and the t-shirt sits on his lap, gradually warming up and the edges that are a little dry and hard from the residue of the washing-up liquid loosening, becoming soft and squishy.
For a long time, no one came out from the bathroom, only the sound of the water clattering.
Fearing that something might have gone wrong, Tarak sprang from the sofa and pushed his way into the bathroom, not caring about manners. Once inside, he was surprised to see that the temperature there was even a few degrees cooler than outside. Cold water brushed and splashed from the open shower stall. Charan was, as expected, cowering in the corner of the shower, knees hugged to his chest, his half-closed eyes filled with something that looked like it was about to spill out, but the traces of the water covered them more visibly, his eyes seem hazy by the look on his face, still abruptly wet even under the curtain of running water.
Tarak stepped quickly up and dragged the man off the floor and wrapped him in a bath towel. Charan was shaking uncontrollably, his lips and nails an unhealthy shade of purple. Tarak decided to use the hairdryer to dry his wet, cold hair first. He sat Charan on the closed toilet lid.
As he rubbed his hands through the young man's black, tousled hair, Tarak felt he should hold Charan, in a way that brooked no argument and with an outlandish amount of force, so that the young man would not just pass him by, even though he was still sitting under there, unmoving. Tarak turned the hairdryer off for the moment, rubbed his hands through Charan's hair, which had been blown half-dry, and knelt down in front of Charan, gazing up at his younger friend.
"Cry if you want to." He said. "The hair needs to be blown for a while longer."
Charan pouted his lips, unable to make a sound. His eyes were a little drier than before, in fact the tear ducts had been working for too long and seemed fatigued, cold water rushing in from the shower made his eyeballs astringent, but Charan could finally see a little better, he dropped his eyes to see a pair of quiet, round, dark eyes. The desperation of waiting for the phone call to be picked up came back to him. The muscles in his throat, which had just been slackened by exhaustion, tightened again. Vision blurred rapidly anew, and tears broke away from his body, taking some of the weight with them, and falling downwards.
Tarak sighed and cradled Charan's head as he had planned to do earlier. The tide of wet hair and tears left patches of water on the shirt on his stomach, so abundant was the moisture dripping from Charan that the wetness penetrated the fabric and crawled beneath Tarak's groin, and the trousers on the front of his thighs were wet too. The surface tension of the water forced out the air between the fabric and his skin, and the heat of their bodies thus exchanged and merged with each other.
Charan slept for nearly thirty hours in Tarak's house. After Tarak had fished him out of the bathroom, dried him off and buried him under the covers of his own bed (also unmade, but fortunately unnoticed), he did not appear to move any more, much like a mammal in hibernation.
During this whole time Tarak went in to check on him twice.
The first time was that afternoon, just before he was due to go out to collect Brat's ashes - it was his name that was signed on the confirmation document. He found Charan not asleep, staring open-eyed at the walls of the darkened room where the curtains were closed. The pillowcase was wet. Completely shattered from body to heart, the young man's body was damp and tacky, and the small circle of his neck peeking out from the edge of the duvet was burning. His hair, which hadn't long been blow-dried, was mushed back onto his forehead, limp and looking very depleted in spirit.
Tarak wondered if he should make a detour to the supermarket to get another set of beddings and buy some food. He poured a glass of water for Charan and placed it on the nightstand.
By the time he returned from outside and checked on Charan the second time, it was well into the night and the young man had finally drifted off to sleep, the corners of his eyes shimmering crystalline beneath the faint light peeking in through the cracks between the curtains. The glass of water on the nightstand showed no sign of being touched. Tarak turned on the overhead dim light to the lowest level and looked closer at the young man's disturbed sleeping face, noticing that even the ends of his eyes were a bleak, dull red, the heat in his body had not subsided but was growing worse.
Tarak woke Charan, it took nearly ten minutes for the other man's eyes to gradually become clear, and with Tarak's reassuring and caressing guidance, he pecked away two pills from Tarak's hand, not knowing what they were, but he didn't want to think about it, and besides, if Tarak was asking him to take the pills, he would take the pills. Then took two small sips of water before realising he was so thirsty he was about to pass out.
Seeing that young man under his care had taken the pills and drunk water, Tarak left the room. Before leaving the room, he leaned over the soon-to-be-closed door seam and said, "If you're not feeling well, just make a little noise, or if you really cannot, call me, I left your phone on the bedside. I'll be right outside in the living room."
The parlour's apricot cream floor lamp light struck the entire doorway golden behind him, before the regular rectangle was broken in two by the line of Tarak's dapper profile. His eyes remained bright amidst the diffused glare of the backlight.
Charan lay on the bed, staring at the only pillar of light across the darkness in front of him, feeling as if he were lying inside a tiny paper box filled with soft and warm shredded wooden scarps and cotton wool. He was tucked in, hiding by nature like a little guinea pig, and his nose even caught the scent of some kind of dry wood. Perhaps it was the natural smell that Tarak carried. He thought.
"Taraka ...... could you leave the door open a crack?" The young man asked in a still broken, off-key voice. He felt Tarak's face, half hidden in the shadows, seem to smile a little. "Sure." He heard the other man say, and then heard the sound of slipper-clad feet moving the wedge of the door.
The door to the room was left open by Tarak with a moderately sized gap.
This left Charan in the darkness, without being completely engulfed in it. Through the crack, he could faintly see the figure of Tarak moving back and forth around the open kitchen, the light and colours shifting as they were imaged in the crack. The door gap became his only connection to the rest of the world, and like a solid golden rope tied around his wrist, he was allowed to sink slowly in the dark depths of the pit, knowing that at the end of the deep waters of despair, a definitive answer would hold him, keeping him afloat, yet harnessed. And it would eventually pull him back to the shore.
He thus finally enters a period of dreamless repose.
*
Like someone who is living an extraordinarily peaceful life with a spouse, Ram Charan woke up to the pervasive, maddening aroma of food. A few missed calls lingered on his fluorescent phone screen, showing the time of twelve forty-three midnight, while his body was stuck in the morning languor after a long night's sleep, a prolonged slumber and the deep exhaustion of heavy mourning cries causing him some biological clock inversions. On his back and chest there was a weak refreshment of cleared sweat of the fever that had smothered in him. The sweat had dried, his skin was slightly chilled, but light. He sat up straight from the bed and tried to stand on his feet, but the legs were still weak and he fell forward at once, bracing both hands on the soft carpet without causing much damage, except for a muffled "thump" as his knee knocked lightly against the edge of the nightstand.
Quickly the door was pushed open and Tarak was really as close as he said he would be. " Woke up from your nap? Are you alright?" Tarak lifted Charan between his arms for who knows how many times. Charan seemed to have slept till even his bones were crisp, his hair was a mess, and the arm cupped in Tarak's palm was flimsy and soft, pulling Charan up from the ground was almost effortless.
Watching Charan re-sit on the edge of the bed under his own lent strength, Tarak had a sudden and dangerous urge to just lunge straight up and let the man fall face-up onto the centre of the bed. But on the contrary, Tarak took a half step backwards to make room for Charan to get up, and then invited him to come in the living room and try to eat something.
Charan, of course, did not refuse.
Tarak returned to the kitchen counter where he was intently cooking two dishes: an Udupi-style ash gourd coconut curry, and briyani, both of which were both fully-vegetable based. He wasn't sure if Charan was vegetarian, but he had watched him in the middle of a dinner party and had memorised Charan's preferences as precisely as a supercomputer - Charan lingered longest over several different combinations of Greek salads; Charan was also interested in vegetables like string beans and artichokes; Charan has a relatively light palate and a penchant for some meatless continental cuisines.
But these were not really Tarak's areas of expertise. So he chose those two dishes, after a blend of variations. For anyone who hadn't eaten for nearly two days and was mentally drained, Tarak believed that the aromatic and delicious food would always have a healing effect.
Tarak uses Basmati rice as the base material for his briyani, the long rice has a fluffy and dense texture, with a distinctive aroma of firewood when steamed. Unlike the traditional briyani, which is flavoured with saffron water, Tarak has taken the liberty of replacing it with rose water. It is his own creation, used in an all-vegetarian briyani recipe, the effect is akin to a delicacy composed of flowers and leaves, with floral wintry layers added to the crispness, "much like something made to feed a nectar-eating little birdie." As the object of the cooking was Charan, Tarak suddenly imagined it in such a fanciful way.
Ash gourd coconut curry was a little more mellow than the briyani, a pairing that added satiety and energy to the meal. It was also easier and quicker to produce as there was no need to boil through the meat, except for the tamarind water, which required boiling water, which took a little time. Tarak glanced over at Charan, who was sitting on the sofa in the same position same spot when he first arrived at Tarak's flat the previous morning, but his eyes were much clearer than they had been then, and his gaze was no longer fixed on a single point, but was instead in a slightly dazed, unfocused way, tracking Tarak as he went to and fro in the kitchen.
"Hungry?" Tarak asked.
Charan nodded piteously.
"No problem. Fifteen minutes tops." Tarak expertly dipped his pinky into the pot of simmering curry, put it in his mouth and took a sip, then replied. He smacked his lips, stopped in his tracks and muttered, "It seems a little too bland." Then naturally, he turned back to the pot, dipped it again, pocketed it under his soup-soaked pinky with his other hand and passed it across the back of the sofa to Charan's mouth. " Try it?"
Charan leaned over and wrapped Tarak's pinky into his mouth.
Tarak noticed that the mucous membrane inside Charan's lips was extremely delicate and soft, almost causing tickling from the contact - and the tip of his tongue was even softer, like the flesh of some kind of shellfish's meat hidden in a hard crust, brushing against Tarak's finger and immediately retracting behind his teeth, Tarak's pinky then falling slightly, pressing against the top of Charan's hard, smooth crest. "It's super, super delicious." The young man's glowing eyes now looked to be a solid expression of admiration and adoration.
Desire is a strange sort of thing. It can call one to covet the riches of the world, or to crave the merest hint of obsession despite life and death, but sometimes its presence is so subtle as to be almost comical. Now, for example, Tarak's desire is only on the scale of "one more lick". Perhaps it is too feeble of a human will to place such a petty hope in the hands of fate, when he could have asked for something a little more than the customary: Is it really not bland? Try it again. He could have used such excuse.
Yet in the presence of this young man who was inexplicably disintegrating before his eyes and quietly slowly putting himself barely together, Tarak found that all he did was hope. He could not ask him for anything. He just wanted to give him everything. The remnants of the young man huddled beneath the cold water in the bathroom still stung to his heart.
But fate had not failed him. Having made his assessment, Charan needlessly moved a little closer to Tarak's hand again, licking off the bit of curry that had fallen behind the knuckle of Tarak's pinky as well, before giving another confirmation of his earlier conclusion, "It's delicious. How on earth did Tarak do that?"
Tarak couldn't believe his ears. The tingling sensation and warmth on the skin of his pinky finger seemed to be engraved under the skin and forged into his very being.
The meal was superb, cooked exactly as Tarak had expected it to be, he even did it exceedingly well with Charan's attention. Though the flavours were a little under-seasoned by Tarak's own standards, they still made both men's mouths water. They sat at a small square table by the floor-to-ceiling glass window and ate. The cream-coloured living room, illuminated by warm floor lamps in the deep, overlapping shadows, stretched behind them into the distance. The vibrant tips of a few leafy green plants break the flat lines of the space they are in, rustling in the breeze that the lifted curtains let in. The midnight temperature in Hyderabad is low, perhaps not even fifteen degrees Celsius.
As Tarak ate, he glanced up uneasily at the small dark brown wooden box hidden behind a few cinematography magazines at the top of the bookshelf. It held Brat's ashes. He hadn't shared it with Charan yet, and wasn't going to mention it for a while. It was too soon, too soon. The young man's tumultuous mind had not yet smoothed out its folds, and despite his efforts to conceal it and appear calm and natural, Tarak could feel it.
At the very least, the healing effect of the gourmet meal was still appreciable.
"Thank you." Charan finally gave a soft, delicate smile. It was as if a shaken off string of doves' fluff had floated down to the tip of the green grass.
"It's nothing. I don't usually get much of a chance to cook for others anyway." Tarak finally felt his mood brighten a little, and he looked at the slowly shallowing plate of biryani, raised his eyebrows in amusement, suddenly remembered something, and got up to rummage in the fridge for a moment. He remembered that he had some chapatti leftover from cooking at home the other night. The coconut curry was strong in flavour and needed to be accompanied by some clean starchy food to be most palatable. Besides, he now had a very strong urge to feed Charan whenever he saw him.
Tarak placed a small plate of well-preserved chapatti, about four to five sheets left, on the table as if offering a treasure. "Here, this is also good with curry. Take a bite."
Charan froze for a moment, mumbled a small "thank you", took the plate of food from Tarak's hand and took a piece from it. Surprisingly, he ate it quickly and without dipping it into the sauce. After finishing the first one, he picked up the second one and continued. The dry chapatti was slightly difficult to swallow, and his throat fluctuated effortfully, fingers all pinching into the edge of the bread, curled up in a clench, uncharacteristically tight, the knuckles slightly bluish, wrists trembling unsteadily.
This was not eating at all, but a completely repressed form of self-torment.
By the time he had managed to swallow the second piece of chapatti and reached for the third, Tarak's eyebrows were fully furrowed together, they were so tight that his forehead seemed to crinkle a little. Without thinking, he reached for the remaining food in Charan's hand. The action was made before he read his anger from the force and speed with which it was held.
But the young man's strength was suddenly surprisingly strong and he did not let go of the food from his hand.
Shocked, Tarak tried to snatch it away again, and suddenly he heard Charan let out a series of extremely muffled, mournful whimpers from the base of throat. His hand snapped back as if he had been burned, not daring to snatch it again. After he eased his gesture, the other man seemed even more aggrieved, hands squeezing the pastry and refusing to let go. Soon tears flooded from under Charan's eyes and then rolled down in large globs. It was the first time he had cried since waking up. While whimpering and crying, he was still taking small bites of the half piece of chapatti he was holding, his shoulders twitching.
"Sorry about..." He apologised to Tarak as he struggled to chew. The words squeezed out were barely discernible between the mass of food and the sobbing.
"You don't have to apologise to me for a few pieces of bread. It's just that the way you eat can be harmful to your body."
"I'm sorry. Really sorry." Charan said again, apologising twice and recounting incoherently, "Brat likes to chapatti. Weird, isn't it? He took a bite out of this thing as a Frisbee toy when he was little. There's so much of it here... apparently... and it's really tasty too. It's so simple to eat. It's right in front of you, just pick it up. But he's never gonna... " Charan's voice choked in his throat.
Tarak's body, which had been leaning forward in an attempt to snatch the food from Charan's hand, fell back and dropped onto the chair with a thud. He was the one who should be apologising. Perhaps he wasn't the type of person who handled life and death well himself. When it came to situations like this, avoidance was the only way he had mastered.
"You loved Brat very much." He said at last.
Charan nodded and buried his face between his arms, his fingers finally easing, the dry, hard food falling loose from between them and collapsing onto the table. Tarak stood up and came around to Charan's side, lifting his palm to squeeze the other's shoulder gently.
"I went to 'Care & Cure' yesterday afternoon to collect Brat's ashes." Tarak paused, a little caution gathering in his tone, "Do you... want to see it?"
"Hmm." Charan said. He got up from the chair and followed Tarak to the double opening cabinet bookshelf standing in the south side of the living room, eyes following Tarak as he retrieved a small wooden box and handed it to him. Charan did not cry any more. He held the wooden box and ran his fingers over the metal flaps stapled to the back of its seams. Then he dropped his head and rubbed his cheek against the surface of the box. "Brat will be fine, won't he?" Charan said softly, like a query, like a line.
"Either way, Brat had a beautiful time with you. He's a lucky doggo." Tarak didn't dare answer directly.
"I think he will be. When I'm down, Brat always has every way to cheer me up. He's an expert at that." Charan, Tarak wondered what he had figured out just now by himself, suddenly tilted his face up with great confidence. There was a renewed light started to spark from his eyes.
Tarak realised that Charan had more courage than he had thought. It was a courage that he did not have, a courage that was straightforward and honest. His mind was so clean that the gloom and mire could hardly find a crevice in which to land and breed. His frankness was startling, and enviable. Just as Tarak was overwhelmed by the bitter comparison that was flooding his mind at this very moment, his hand was suddenly held.
Charan looked up, and his gaze seemed to burn through them like the silk fabric was burnt by a core of fire, and in the centre of a clear, open vision formed by the scorched, curled and faded edges of the barrier, something organic grew and spread in all directions as Tarak's eyes met it. That beautiful courage grew into the heart of his friend, whom he did not yet know well, and laid the groundwork for a wonderful arrangement of destinies that neither had yet foreseen, floating in a space-time dimension many years away. Tarak suddenly wanted to cry. But they were not tears of sorrow. But rather than crying, he wanted to do something more ceremonial, something more intimate, committed, synergistic, communal.
It was a language that belonged to them.
Charan's body was suddenly wrapped around. Naturally, his face fell into Tarak's chest. One of Tarak's hands rested on his waist. The other hand clasped into the five fingers of Charan's dangling hand. The small wooden box was held in one hand by Charan in the space between their chests. It was a relief to Brat that he would no longer have to face a desolate, burdened departure and permanent absence.
Outside the window, on the road where the street lights were turned off one by one in the early hours of the morning, the moonlight was finally showing its strength of presence.
There is no music in the living room. Only the footsteps of two people move to the beat of silence. Normally, it is perhaps not even fifteen degrees Celsius in the early hours of dawn in Hyderabad. The blood cools quickly in the air. But this night, everything was the other way round. The air, scented with roses and food, warms up to twenty-two degrees Celsius or more. The streets were silent, not a single car passing.
The blood in the two men clung to each other, was slowly boiling.
The presence of death is ought to remain silent on such a night like this.
*
(The End)