Bias

Saturday. Night was a few hours away.

I was excited because I was going to meet M. It wasn't that kind of lavish, longing sort of excitment―that I reserve for you―but it was an uncomplicated sense of anticipation. M. One of the most heterosexual women I know―she loves her men―and because of that, I could never understand how we often manage to call up offbeat and erotic innuendos―with each other.

There is no woman-to-woman jealousy between us: I sense a natural, sated attraction instead, more sensual than sexual, an attraction that we use to galvanise our friendship, which is categorically different from the familiar warmth I share with my girls, or the deep, comfortable attachment I have for René.

Perhaps it is that quality she has―one that eludes simple definition―a certain nostalgia for the fallacious paradise, a tempestuous child-woman perseity; she's free but fangled, neither young nor old, at once naive and wise. It's a quality that I recognise and most likely possess, in varying degrees of similiarities. We gravitate towards tragedy: more Atremis than Aphrodite. We delight in our flaws. We are incurable romantics and recovering addicts.

Perhaps it is the shared misery in loving our distant men, the sisterhood of having lost faith and babies and dreams seaming up the hearts we had once worn on our sleeves. Now we bind these hearts into secret scrapbooks and pocket journals, hearts that we trade and share over cheap red wine and the cheaper recounting of the origins that have both bruised and blessed us.

I'm always thankful for our candor and our liberty―we've told things to each other that will never see light of day in the hours of our sobriety. That sort of artless honesty―never to a lover, seldom to a friend, but often to those we see as our alter egos.

I am protective of M; she has a fraility that even she does not appreciate. Her midnight eyes are lighter than mine, and her smile is as frank as a child's. She can be unexpectedly tender towards me: an understanding of the presence of my gordian complex, I suppose, if not of my complex itself.

She was two hours late, but I did not blame her; only got anxious because I feared for her safety. My mom is sick but I have to see you. I understoood. Sat like a statue and nursed my wine―and of course I was thinking of you, of the martini dusk last Saturday, of how my hands fit perfectly with yours―while leafing through magazines that I could not clear my head enough to read.

She turned up, suddenly, a vortex of energy, her black t-shirt and satin pants hugging her lanky frame, loose curls in a bun, a cluster of jade and beads around her neck. Her face was free of make-up; she smelled of soap and jasmine. We embraced and kissed, and I was aware she looked me over the way a man would a woman. ('I'm with a really hot chick,' she later cooed to her brother on the phone, smiling pointedly, knowingly, at me, a perennial flirt, always burning, always simmering, with that fire.)

We got the wine. We tucked into our cakes. We held hands, touched knees: your usual girlfriends, now getting slightly drunk, peppering our conversation with hushed whispers and loud giggles. She had a way of throwing her head back when she laughed, exposing her throat; I held my wine glass like an aristocrat, and grinned like a minx to the two young waiters serving us.

She dreams of Italy, with the Tuscan sunshine and a pleasant, temperate existence, free from the chains that have decreed her so far. Maybe her own vineyard, a man: no one to tell her what a good Indian girl should be doing, no cultural baggage to cuff herself to, no family honour to answer for. In her own way M is as much of a free-spirit as I am, maybe even more. She loves the risk of risk, and my bohemian sentiment finds a kindred soul in her want to run, to be a child of the world:

'Otherwise, what? You go to school, get a degree, find a job, support your parents, marry some guy, pop out some kids, pay the government, and then you die.' Was M's unpoetic but succinct summary at our immediate prospects.

And then, training those eyes―those eyes, liquid with hope―onto me: 'Jean, we should just do it. Let's start with a trip. A getaway. Get away from this.' She searched my face, brushing the stray strands of hair out of my eyes with her quick, boyish fingers: such a child! Is this what you see when you are with me, dear heart? When you cradle my face and call me a child―this? The cocktail of sequestered hope and a muddle of sadness and fear?

I smiled at her, suddenly a mother, a man, the protector, for which you lie, because you know―'Of course we will.' She seemed satisfied and her expression became piquant, as she sat back and dreamt of cobblestone streets and colourful flea markets, nights of Brunello and Bolgheri, and days flavoured with society and song.

Maugham had branded the notion of La Vie Boheme vulgar before―an ill-written fancy, a mean, mediocre promise, a worthless lie spun to seduce the restlessness of youth. With M I see now that for so many of us, life is nothing more than a bargin-counter, with our catchpenny dreams and two-bit ambitions. La Vie Boheme is our drugstore guarantee, a sort of an insurance, a vaquished hope, for the something other than this.

I took her by the hand and we poured our turbulent, efficacious spirits onto the smoky dancefloor. She draped her arms around me, shutting out the madness and the men, and our circle of sisterhood was now swiftly, sweetly, complete.