Discovery: Day Two

June 25

06:00

"Can you believe it? We've managed to successfully wake up early for two days in a row!" Akshaya exclaimed.

"I can now back myself up with proof beyond any reasonable doubt in declaring that sunsets are definitely more romantic than sunrises," Vidhi groaned.

"Nooo, early mornings are so peaceful. We just need that little push, or shove in your case haha, to step out of bed and get going about the day."

"What's so good about this morning, huh? I could have easily slept for another hour..."

"For starters, the best part is that since you're too worked up about mornings, I'm the one who gets to drive," beamed Akshaya radiantly as Vidhi squinted hard towards her.

"Keep driving honey, I'll go back to my beloved sleep, wake me up when we reach Udaipur."

"I don't suppose that will be possible," Akshaya sniggered, "these roads don't support the sleeping-in-car feature yet."

"Whatever."

9:45

Vidhi was still fast asleep when they reached the majestic city of Udaipur. Akshaya brought the car to a halt at a roadside eatery, switched off the air conditioning and relaxed a bit while adoring her partner's sleeping beauty. She caressed her hand gently over Vidhi's forehead and awakened her with a fanciful kiss of true love. Vidhi's eyes flickered open-and-shut twice before she could gain complete control over them and her mental faculties. Once she had though, her hands immediately clutched her abdomen and Vidhi began to squeal in pain.

"What's wrong Vidhi?"

"Oh it's that usual suspect," she sighed.

"I don't understand," Akshaya looked nonplussed.

"Stomach's feeling bloated and fatigue's kicking in...I'm PMSing. Ughhh."

"Ohhhh, right, yes, I should have remembered this Vidhi, I'm so sorry! Do you want me to get you something?"

"No, it's okayyyy, don't worry about me. I'm ruining the day for you too now, aren't I?" Vidhi said sorrowfully.

"Awww, don't hold those tears back, let them flow babe and tell me all about how you are feeling, come here," Akshaya did her best to make Vidhi feel comfortable with a warm embrace, "and no one is ruining anything for anyone, okay? It's all good."

"You're very sweet Akshaya, I'm gonna make it up to you some day!"

"Really?" Akshaya curled her lips into a tight smile, her dimples basking in their glory.

"I love you so, so much, but please stop showcasing your dimples lady, they steal all the limelight," Vidhi quipped.

"PMSing or not, ladies and gentleman, she's always got the wit by her side," Akshaya responded and intertwined her fingers into Vidhi's.

"Not just the wit, I also always have you by my side Akshaya. Seriously, I love you a lot," Vidhi said, "and as an expression of this love, I hereby permit you to drive for the entire day."

"You dirty devil, permitting me to drive since you do not want to with all of that pain...what other tricks do you have up your sleeve?" Akshaya questioned mockingly, breaking into laughter.

13:00

Once Vidhi had recovered a bit to a stage where her pain was of manageable proportions and she felt comfortable enough to endure the next few hours in transit, they took a quick sightseeing tour of the city's palaces and lakes. Among the places they checked out were the City Palace, Lake Pichola, Saheliyon Ki Bari and Fateh Sagar Lake, all of which managed to live up to their expectations of royalty from Udaipur.

"Random thought, but looking at the magnificence of these palaces, I really feel we should head over to Agra as well, after all, there's no clue when those maniacs will bring down the Taj Mahal in order to unearth their temples underneath," Vidhi opined.

"Look at that romantic in you, the Taj Mahal. Wow!!"

"You don't want to go?"

"I do, I do...I've been there thrice and yet the excitement to visit again is unparalleled," Akshaya jumped on to the bandwagon eagerly, "and of course, there is the issue of those maniacs whose drive to spew hatred won't spare anything that poses an obstacle."

"What's more dreadful for me as a lawyer is that the judicial institutions are hand-in-glove with them as well...it completely shatters the remnants of my trust in the judiciary's ability to dispense justice."

"Such a shame."

13:45

On their way out from Udaipur, Akshaya noticed an old couple, probably in their late sixties, trying to hitch a ride by the highway-side. It was certainly odd to come across hitchhikers in these parts especially on an access-controlled expressway. They were still more than a kilometer-and-half away when Akshaya spotted them and began to contemplate the idea of offering a lift. She was troubled with the thought of leaving them behind trudging along the road in the scorching summer. There wasn't going to be any rest-stop either for a while since they were only at the beginning of the highway. Vidhi, having preempted Akshaya's intentions to stop as she had already begun to slow down the car, objected astutely.

"Don't tell me you're seriously thinking of giving those oldies a ride with us?"

"I am, what's the big deal about it?"

"You are perfectly aware of what the big deal is about this.."

"Come on, I'm not buying any of that dangerous and unsafe crap. We're out on an adventure, you should treat this as another chapter that we didn't bargain for. I'm stopping."

"No...urghhh, you're getting on my nerves now Akshaya."

"This is unchartered territory for me as well you know, I hardly ever sign up for stuff until I have had the chance to process dozens of iterations of what could possibly go wrong with it. Now this is something I'm doing on a whim after a long time. Here we go!!"

Akshaya stopped the car a few steps ahead of the old couple and rolled down the passenger side window - "Do you need a lift, where are you heading to?" she shouted out once they had caught up.

"Umm...Jaipur, we want to go to Jaipur. Can you help us out?" the woman spoke tentatively, appearing to be as afraid of Akshaya and Vidhi as they were of her.

"Of course we can, please hop right in, I'll open the boot for your luggage," Akshaya responded with a smile and ignored the faces Vidhi was making towards her. Their journey resumed in a short while once the couple had settled in properly, which seemed invariably difficult for some time due to the old man's visible discomfort, for no apparent reason, with Akshaya's driving. It wasn't until Vidhi displayed a bit of hostility in asking the man to put up with it or leave, that he compromised on his position.

15:30

"So, I can't help but ask how you ended up on the road in this manner?" Vidhi breached the brooding silence in the car, letting curiosity get the better of her at last. The woman, more at ease now than before with the passage of time, proceeded to describe their ordeal of the past couple of hours in such great detail that Vidhi was beginning to regret she ever asked. The man kept interrupting at frequent intervals to exaggerate the plainest of facts and spice things up with irrelevant information. Vidhi felt captivated at the idea of mincing this superfluous man's evidence testimony apart piece-by-piece in a cross-examination if she ever got the chance of calling him into the witness box at a trial.

Courtesy the couple's inquisitive nature, Akshaya and Vidhi ended up divulging a lot of particulars about their personal lives which they would have rather not. The couple's combined dexterity and experience from handling numerous similar interactions over the years made it seem like their victims didn't have any authority in refusing to give up information about themselves. Akshaya perceived that a stranglehold had been placed upon them to let out as much information as they could and also to seek the old couple's counsel in all matters. It was in such a hypnotic setting that the topic of conversation shifted to relationships, marriage and the likes. The couple had obviously put two-and-two together by now and realised that the two women had more going on between them romantically than they had first imagined. Now, their fishing expedition had reached a phase where the two fishes had blindly swum towards the bait and it was all about patiently drawing them in for a while until they got stuck, before viciously pulling them out of their habitat.

"So, Mumbai's quite an expensive place to live in for young, working men and women...I bet you two share an apartment together to save on costs," the old man tried to surreptitiously broach the subject of their relationship by clothing it in money talk.

"We do, yes, we've been living together for a couple of years now!" Vidhi let out.

"Ohh, it's great that you girls found a trustworthy friend in each other to reside with, but I've heard many youngsters nowadays, especially young ladies like you, go to these metropolitan areas and start living with their boy-friends, as you people refer to it, even before they've found their feet in the city," the old man continued patronizingly.

"I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Like you just said, as long as the other person is a trustworthy friend you can be comfortable living with, then it shouldn't be a matter of concern if its a boy or a girl. Simple as that," Vidhi explained gently at first to see if the old man could be reasoned with.

"That's very bold of you to say. Okay, even if I am for a minute to accept that there is no issue in living with a friend of the opposite gender, the issue is that you lot don't ever set boundaries for yourselves. You get carried away and engage in sexual activities too... a woman having sex before marriage, that's blasphemous."

"These people have also come up with a fancy, new term for it to create a halo of modernism around themselves: live-in relationships are what they call it," the old woman chimed in.

"WOW!! I'm equally disgusted and horrified at what you just said. It's so, so wrong on multiple levels, I don't know where to start."

"You should start by thinking about your own welfare for once.. what would happen if you were in a live-in relationship and got pregnant? Who would marry you?"

"Explain something to me, why do all the reasons you've recited against live-in relationships target only the liberty of a woman? A woman having sex before marriage is blasphemous, and what about the man? It takes two to tango mister. I cannot believe how patriarchal your concerns are about young ladies like us going to metropolitan cities and choosing to live with their partners, or even alone for that matter. It seems to me that you lot don't want women to have their taste of freedom but keep them confined to the chaar-deewaari of your minds so that they can continue to serve you," Vidhi spoke succinctly, "and that is precisely why you find it abhorrent that we, the subjects of your domination, try to find an escape route from a world that is populated by people like you."

"Come on there, this is not what I meant, you're misinterpreting my anxieties," the old man uttered, "it is a father's solemn duty to look out for his daughter and ensure that she is timely married off to a good man who will then take over the reins of taking care of her."

"I'm stunned," Akshaya felt nauseated at these hollow, deceptive words, "it's so easy to exploit us, isn't it? We're drowned in household responsibilities and made to cater to every need that our fathers or husbands may have, something that our man-made economic system has no value for. That's a serious flaw in this society's programming."

"Akshaya, I think that escaping from their world and finding refuge in transitioning metropolitan societies isn't enough anymore, we ought to be cutting such people off from our lives entirely and go about constructing a better world," Vidhi elaborated.

"Cheers to that!" Akshaya appreciated the idea.

"The best way to start that reconstruction would be to dump our old guests out of the car, sounds like a plan?"

"Right now, here? It's in the middle of nowhere Vidhi..." Akshaya reasoned.

"I don't care one bit about them. Besides, as far as it goes for the old man, its not like some creepy pervert will sneak up and harass the shit out of him. Only women have to face that crap, all because of the free hand given to men like them."

"Well, can't argue with that. Even so, you can't punish the woman though, she's a victim of patriarchy as well. It's evident how he doesn't even want her to let the world hear her voice and even if she does have to speak, it should only be to parrot him."

"It doesn't seem like she's a big fan of ours for taking a stand against it..." Vidhi was in a foul mood now.

Akshaya could sense her increasing displeasure and offered a suggestion, "You know exactly why she is unable to put up a fight herself and can't support us either, so stop bickering about it. Let's drop them off at the next rest stop from where they can catch a bus to Jaipur and that'll be an end to this fiasco."

"Fine," Vidhi accepted glumly. The two fishes had finally recognised the bait that had been thrown in to catch them and managed to strike together a fierce chord of resistance which forced their anglers to back off from fishing further in those troubled waters.

16:40

The past half-an-hour had snailed past slowly and it looked like everything had been frozen altogether, for there was no perceptible difference in the scene inside their car. They had been driving steadily on cruise control at ninety-five kilometers per hour yet no one inside the car had budged an inch. Akshaya was driving but there wasn't much to do there either on a straight, empty road in the middle of a barren desert. Her hands, sitting on the steering wheel in a nine-to-three position, had begun to ache. The weather wasn't so joyful either, with the heat catching up with them quickly as they moved further up north. Vidhi was looking out of the passenger side window dejectedly, her left elbow resting on the arm-rest and fingers fidgeting with strands of her hair. Akshaya felt sad for her, having had to begin the day with such sharp pre-menstrual pain and then dealing with these nut jobs! It would be another twenty minutes to reach the nearest bus halt where the old couple could be counted out of their lives as a good riddance. In the meantime, they were still there in the back-seat, sharing an earphone connected to the woman's phone and bobbing their heads to the beat, probably listening to some cheesy Bollywood songs.

It's an old adage that curiosity killed the cat, but Akshaya was a firm believer of its modern rendition where satisfaction supposedly brings the cat back to life. Akshaya needed this satisfaction desperately as she felt that they had earlier been a bit fearful of letting the old couple know of the depths of their relationship and had sub-consciously tried to divert their attention from this aspect. If she could gather the courage to speak of their love openly with those villains sitting right behind her, it would be a glowing testament to their bond. Beginning this hot pursuit, Akshaya drew in a deep breath in preparation for tackling a barrage of moral assaults and then asked them, "What do you think about same-sex relationships?" Vidhi momentarily raised her eyebrows in repulsion, but kept quiet, she was interested as well.

"What about them?" the old man responded.

"Do you approve of them? Is it, like, okay...or is it something that's unnatural and stuff like that?" Akshaya tried to piece words together.

"Does it matter to you if I approve of them or not?"

"Not even a bit."

"Well then, there we go, it doesn't look like I need to volunteer my opinion," he shot back in a very matter-of-fact tone. He clearly valued his opinion highly and was too drunk in his ego to openly preach it to someone who clearly harboured the polar opposite viewpoint.

"Alright, that's fair. I simply intend to let you know that Vidhi and I aren't just friends who happen to live together, we have chosen to live this way out of the desire to be together all the time, to enjoy the fruits of our mutual company and to understand one another far more intimately. I love her, no matter what you think of us. I've always been slightly worried about how the society perceives us, but thankfully, this interaction has destroyed the very core of that thought," Akshaya made an emphatic declaration of her feelings. It was meant to provide more of a re-assurance to Vidhi of their faith in each other, even though it ran the risk of sustaining collateral damage by kindling another war of words with the old couple.

"There's no need for us to hide from despicable, judgemental minions like you who create thorns in between the path of love. We're going to fight back," she continued her tirade.

20:15

"Phew, we've finally reached Jaipur. A long, winding day that I never anticipated could test us so much," Akshaya exclaimed.

"Yeahhhh... I guess it would be better not to act upon whims for the rest of this trip and trust that super-organised mind of yours instead," Vidhi smiled weakly, tired to her wits' end.

"We'll see about that. Do you want to go grab dinner?" Akshaya was still as lively as ever, making herself comfortable in their new surroundings at the resort.

"Not really, I've lost my appetite after all the food for thought those two have fed us."

"That's true. On the flip side, however, they've also given me so much to write about in my upcoming columns!"

"You literary freak...to imagine that this ordeal might just turn out to be the break you need to set wings to your writing aspirations. We'll have that couple to thank for your success, wouldn't that be fantastic."

"Stop stop... I'm going to have nightmares now about meeting them again," Akshaya lay down on the sofa with her head in Vidhi's lap.

"By the way, Akshaya, about all that you said earlier in the car - thank you, thank you so much. It really meant the world to me, and of course, I love you too!" Vidhi beamed, stroking Akshaya's forehead with her warm hands and staring into the oblivion of her eyes.