Indrani and I wrote this

RED.

She is red. only. He is obsessed with red. She dances. because dancers are red..she dances bharathanatyam. with so much vigour and so muchness. as if her entire being is in the dancing. she is red because she has to be red. she has to. Its hard to imagine somebody like her not to be red. She is Vijayanka.

He is obsessed with red. he isn't red. because he doesn’t feel anything. nothing surprises him. he deals with life as if it's routine. there is nothing new. he has to pretend to be loving, caring, angry, to want. because he doesn’t really want to do all those things. that's why he is obsessed with red. He wants to be passionate. he is constantly aware of himself. aware of where he is. He can never get lost. he knows where each road leads to. but he doesn't know he is obsessed with red. He is Dr. Pandey.

It was at a party of partyness make-up, lip stick. tinkling of glasses. White. laughter in a room full of husbands, wives and parents. Men and women. everything is white. Except the balcony which is black.

So quietly without being noticed he walks outside to the balcony and lights up a cigarette and throws the match stick. That’s when he notices her. She is dancing. teaching dance to a somewhat twenty-ish boy. Showing him a dance pose. And then she breaks into the dance.

He is mesmerized. By the vigour and the lost-in-the-danceness of the woman. And there is so much now in her dance as opposed to his yesterdayness and tommorowness.

He stands there watching her. Only her. Only her movement. The fire. The green saree. Oblivious of the presence of the student. That’s the first time he sees Red.

She finishes her class. The student leaves. He stands there till the light goes off and she goes in.

Dr. Pandey wakes up everyday at the same time that he woke up yesterday. His slippers are exactly so. He brushes his teeth for 2 min and three seconds. and his paper reading follows the same ritual. The sports pages are always left for the evening 6 o'clock drink.

9:00 am. he in his not so big and not so small car traveling to his not so big and not so small clinic in the not so big and not so small residential locality of Sheikh Sarai. The Hauze Khas red light is red again. No matter how much Dr. Pandey calculates he never misses the the Hauze Khas red light. RED. He lit a cigarette and flicked the match out the window and thought briefly of the woman he had seen the night before. Dance teacher. Red

She wakes up at 7 or not at 7. every day is a day unlike yesterday. drinks coffee sometimes. sometimes she doesn't. sometimes she leaves and sometimes she doesnt. but always always there is the dance. The dance thats never done. Her dance is red hot fire because of her Unfinishedness,her no routineness. Only the mundane can be finished. Vijayanka never finished anything. she left behind her a string of unfinishednessess. There was a whole stack of charcoal sketches lying in her cupboard. Black and white. Ranjit was unfinished as well, as he still sat waiting for her to decide or not. Book marks marked the halfway and three fourth points in the books that littered her house. she read but never the whole book. Vijayanka was the girl of unfinished business. But dance dance was new everyday. Dance could never finish so there was never any need to try. Dance didn't have an end that Vijayanka could run away from. With dance Vijayanka was neither beginning nor ending neither finished or unfinished, with dance she was.

She walked out onto the balcony and saw the matchstick that had sailed onto her balcony the evening before. She remembered looking up at a face peering down at her. The face was all blackness and awayness against the whiteness of Verma's party.

The light was no longer red and Dr. Pandey drove past the florist and then stopped at pan shop at the corner before his clinic. A man spat out his red pan peak just as Dr. Pandey opened the door and got out of the car.RED. He skirted the pavement and walked past the dripping remains of the mans paan. The pawari already had Dr. Pandey's 4 classic ultra-milds layed out in front of him.

She woke up.

He walked into his clinic and got a call. Hysterics. Again hysterics why is it that mothers feel the need to tell the whole colony about their child's not so stable stool. All attempts to pacify were fruitless in the face of such volume. He agreed to go over and take a look at little Sanket. He couldnt believe he was at going to travel half way across town again, he had already done it the night before and was not looking forward to the drive, there were too many red lights.

He walks past the big kirane ke dukan with the big sacks of chillis and spices in the front.RED. Unhyginic he thinks as he walks up the narrow lane that leads to the house. He would not have found parking if he had driven up. Reflected in the mirrors of a mirror shop. He catches a glimpse of her eyes. And her hand. as she grabs a fist full of chillies. red. she has lovely long surgeon fingers, with the chillis blood red in her hand.RED.He walks past the mirror shop and into the courtyard.

Mrs Khandelwal was still weeping and wailing when he entered. He conducted his routine check, patted the stunned infant and then gave her a placebo.

She switches of the glarey whitness of the television nothing hold her attention for more than a minuet. He settles down with his 6:00 'o'clock drink and the unread sports pages. She puts on her payal.

Dr. Pandey was getting on in life. He was a man of reasonable means and in his chalked out, planned to the last detail life he realised that it was time to get married. So he puts and add in the paper. It was a simple add not one of the biggest but nothing that some one reading the classified section could miss.

Ranjit called and then Ranjit called again. Ranjit was always the one to call. Vijayanka wasnt sure. She never was with these things but when Ranjit asked her all she said was no. He asked her why and she said because there is something else, look in the paper, the supplements.

Dr. Pandey had had his add answered, she seemed lovely. He went to see her perform on Tuesday evening at the habitat and then they decided to meet at Lodhi Gardens on Saturday.

He walked into Lodhi gardens past the stone sentinals up the winding path to one of the tombs. He saw her sitting there. Green and red sindhuri mango in her hand. Sitting under the mango tree. As Vijayanka bit into the fleshy fleshyness of the mango she looked up at Dr. Pandey.

He saw Radhika sitting on the steps of the tomb. He hurridly walked past the attractive woman in the red cotton sari. She seemed familiar perhaps he had seen her somewhere. He walked past the red.