BENGALURU: The sun dipped past the horizon, and Dava’s bedroom dimmed into the darkness of an early evening. Sita had already delivered the rasam to her, distractedly kissing her on the cheek before saying she would return after checking on the twins. Dava was so focused on the music she barely noticed Sita come and go, only registering her brief appearance as Dava stared at the bowl of rasam on a metal tray, which she had left on the ottoman. Dava knew she should drink the rasam while it was still hot, but Deserter’s Songs was nearing its midway point, and she listened with her hands folded on her lap, eyes closed with a faint smile on her lips, lost in a reverie.
Each new song awakened a memory from that night on the cliff with Arvid and sent her searching for more memories, like a fisherman casting his line despite the choppy currents. When the opening notes of “Opus 40” began, delicate and celebratory, Dava’s eyes opened in recognition, and she let out a laugh. She remembered during their fourth listen of the album, the sun long gone and night surrounding them like a warm blanket, he had asked her to dance. So they had swayed slowly back and forth, the Discman pressed between their bodies as they took care not to trip into the fire crackling next to them. She had just laid her head on his shoulder, her lips relaxing into a smile of pure happiness, when she heard Arvid say, “Whoops”.
“What is it?” Dava lifted her head and saw Arvid looking startled and bug-eyed. “I think I stepped on something. I felt a crunch. But I’m afraid to look.”
She sucked in her breath. “Let’s look together on the count of three. Okay?” He nodded reluctantly, and Dava stifled a giggle. After two years of greeting lizards and frogs in her bathroom like they were her roommates, and once waking up to find a snake at the foot of her bed, Dava no longer scared easily. “Okay. One, two... and three. Let’s see. It might be nothing.”
Arvid lifted his left foot, and they both spied something vividly green oozing down the tread of his boot. He let out a yelp and jumped back on one foot, but since they were con- nected by the shared headphones plugged into the Discman that was sandwiched between them, Dava had jerked back with him and they both fell down onto each other, creating a circus of dust and leaves upon colliding with the ground.
They had laughed until they couldn’t breathe, the chorus of “Opus 40” spilling into their ears as they lay on their backs and stared up at the blinking stars in the welcoming darkness, and they had listened to the rest of the album in that position, tangled in each other. In the seconds as they were falling and before they hit the ground, Dava worried that if something dangerous was lurking on Arvid’s foot or in the jungle beyond, or if one of them twisted an ankle, they could be in serious trouble, especially since they were miles from the nearest town and had neglected to bring a first-aid kit. That fear was accompanied by a thought that gave her solace. If something bad is about to happen, he’s the one I want to be with.
(Excerpted with permission from Dava Shastri’s Last Day by Kirthana Ramisetti, published by Grand Central Publishing and Hachette India)