‘This is my daughter,’ Mr Sundaram was saying proudly. ‘Very well-educated, MSc in Botany, gold medallist. Tara, you’ve already met Mr and Mrs Krishnan.’
‘Namaskaram,’ Tara said, folding her hands in the traditional gesture.
Both the Krishnans beamed back, clearly enchanted by her. Vikram could see why—Tara looked the epitome of good daughter-in-law material, and in addition she was vibrant, intelligent and very pretty.
‘This is their son, Vikram,’ Mr Sundaram continued. ‘Very successful lawyer.’
‘Thirty-three years old, six feet two inches,’ Tara said demurely. ‘Bengaluru-based.’
Her father glared at her, but Vikram’s parents burst out laughing.
‘I told you the ad was a dumb idea,’ Mr Krishnan said to his wife. ‘Vikram’s annoyed we put it in without telling him, and Tara thinks it’s a joke.’
‘Of course not, sir. How can you say such a thing?’ Tara’s father said immediately.
Vikram remembered that his father was Mr Sundaram’s boss. That went a long way towards explaining his overly eager-to-please attitude.
‘You can ask Tara what you want,’ he was saying now, the ingratiating smile still in place. ‘She’s been very keen to meet you.’
The thought of conducting a stilted conversation under the eyes of both sets of parents obviously appealed to Tara as little as it did to him, because she shot him a quick look.
‘I’d actually prefer to talk to her alone,’ Vikram said crisply, and before anyone could suggest that they move to another room—or, worse, go outside and talk in the garden—he continued, ‘I was thinking of taking her out for dinner tonight.’
Going by the stunned silence that greeted this, he might have been suggesting that he take her out and rape her in the bushes. Tara’s father was the first person to find his voice.
He said weakly, ‘But, son, we’ve made dinner. I mean Tara’s made dinner. I thought it would be a good idea for you to sample her cooking …’
‘I chop vegetables really well,’ Tara said before she could stop herself.
She knew she was going to get into trouble with her father later on, but really! Sample her cooking, indeed. Not that she couldn’t cook, but for this occasion her mother had done everything—other than chop the vegetables. The whole charade was beginning to irritate Tara intensely—right from the fake smile her father had plastered on his face to the ridiculous earrings she’d been forced to wear.
‘I’ll leave my mother to judge her cooking,’ Vikram said, as if Tara hadn’t spoken. ‘I’ll take the car, Dad, I’ll pick you up from here when I drop Tara off after dinner. OK by you, Tara?’
‘Can I change first?’ she asked. This time her mother gave her an appealing look, so Tara muttered, ‘Oh, all right. I look like a Christmas tree in this, that’s all.’
‘Have a good time!’ Vikram’s mother called after them as they left the room together.
Tara’s room was at the front of the house, and she stopped to pick up her handbag and a sweater before running outside. Vikram was holding the car door open for her, and she slid in with a muttered thank-you.
‘Where do you want to go?’ Vikram asked as he drove out of the lane.
‘Mmph,’ Tara said in response, her face obscured by the grey cashmere sweater she was trying to tug down over her head.
Vikram pulled to the side of the road, and waited patiently as she struggled. ‘Do you need help?’ he asked politely after a few minutes passed, and his prospective fiancée continued to wrestle with the sweater.
‘Darn thing’s caught on my earring,’ Tara panted, lifting a corner of the sweater to reveal her flushed face. ‘I should have taken the earrings off first. They’re like bloody chandeliers.’
‘Stop wriggling,’ Vikram said, clicking the car light on and reaching across to disentangle the earring. Tara obligingly leaned closer, and he was treated to a sudden glimpse of cleavage. Despite himself Vikram found himself looking—he had to tear his eyes away and concentrate on getting the earring out of the delicate wool. ‘Done,’ he said finally, his voice coming out a little thicker than normal.
In addition to the cleavage, there had been soft skin at the nape of her neck that he hadn’t been able to avoid touching several times. And she was wearing a perfume that managed to be sweetly innocent and madly tantalising at the same time—a lot like Tara herself, Vikram thought, before he shook himself. He’d been celibate too long, he thought cynically, if he was starting to get excited about touching a woman’s ear.
‘Thanks,’ Tara said, giving him a cheeky little smile. ‘I thought I’d be stuck inside that thing for ever, blundering around like a headless horseman.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he said, his voice sounding a little cold even to his own ears. ‘Now, where would you like to go for dinner?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tara said cheerfully as she tugged off the annoying earrings and deposited them in her handbag. ‘Dad always takes us to his club, but the food’s horrible and all the waiters have known me since I was ten years old.’
‘There’s a restaurant in the new five-star hotel, isn’t there?’ Vikram asked, mentioning the only decent hotel he’d seen in the city. ‘I don’t know Jamshedpur very well. This is my first visit since my father got transferred here.’
Tara was busy scrubbing the lipstick off her lips with a tissue. ‘I’ve never been there,’ she said. ‘It’s too expensive for the likes of us.’ A little too late she realised that the remark could be interpreted in several ways, and tried to correct herself. ‘I mean Dad doesn’t like eating out much. He says it’s a waste of money. And when we do go out …’
‘You go to his club.’ Vikram said. ‘You told me. How do I get to the hotel from here?’
‘You take the next left and go straight for around five kilometres,’ Tara said, sounding a little subdued.
Vikram glanced at her. She had managed to get her hair out of the complicated-looking braid it had been in and was now finger-combing it into obedience. It was really lovely hair, he thought, as she bent her head to dig in her purse for a scrunchie, and it fell over the side of her face like a jet-black curtain. An auto-rickshaw honked indignantly, and he turned his eyes hastily back to the road.
‘What’s the news on your PhD?’ he asked.
‘I spoke to my supervisor again,’ Tara replied. ‘She said she’s willing to wait for me till January, but after that she’s going to take on the next research applicant on her list.’
Vikram nodded, and she didn’t dare to ask him if he’d made up his mind. Presumably, as he was taking her out to dinner, he hadn’t decided definitely not to marry her. Or maybe he had, and he just wanted to tell her in person rather than on the phone. This was all very confusing, Tara thought, wrinkling up her nose and peeking quickly at his rather stern profile.
‘You look quite different now,’ Vikram remarked as Tara got out of the car at the hotel.
‘Different from yesterday, or different from five minutes ago?’ Tara asked.
‘Both, actually,’ Vikram said. ‘Though I meant your in-car makeover. An immense improvement, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
It was. Unlike the sweater she’d worn to the station, the plain grey one she was wearing now was clingy, outlining her slim curves perfectly. After several unsuccessful attempts at tying up her hair she’d let it hang loose—that and the kohl that she’d wisely not tried to rub off made her look older and way more sophisticated than she had earlier. Though a lot of the effect was neutralised by the way