Free Love Across Borders by Naheed Hassan, Sabahat Muhammad Page A

screen.
    “What are you waiting for? Send him a message.
Invite him like you promised you would.”
    Without wasting a moment, Dilip wrote a message
for his friend in the comments section.
    ‘ Dear Pervez, your long-lost friend has found
you and is going to fulfill his promise very soon. We will meet again and talk of old times. India and I are waiting for
you. See you soon, my dearest friend. Dilip.’
    Six months later when Pervez visited India, he
didn’t need to look for a familiar name in a phone book. He had an
address and a place to stay that felt remarkably like his own.

    ∞

 
    ABOUT NIDHI
SHENDURNIKAR TERE
     
    Nidhi Shendurnikar Tere has a
masters degree in journalism and communication studies (MCS) and a
bachelors degree in political science from the Maharaja Sayajirao
University of Baroda, Gujarat. She was awarded the Mohanlal Mehta Sopan
Gold Medal and Shri Goverdhandas Chunilal Shah Gold Medal for
Excellence for her masters degree. Currently, she is a doctoral research fellow of the
University Grants Commission (UGC) with the department of political
science at M. S. U.
    She is currently pursuing a Ph.D in the
‘Role of the Press and New Media in India-Pakistan Conflict
Mediation’.
    Her publications and
presentations include research papers on gender and mainstream
Hindi cinema, new media and modern Indian democracy, to name a few.
She has also served as editor for ‘Souvenir’ – Yugaantar – National
Youth Conference on Youth for Socio-Political Changes in India. She
is a visiting lecturer for political science and
communication research at M. S. U. This is her first fictional
short story.
    ***
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    Twelve Months
    PERVIN SAKET

    There are a hundred and forty eight
ways to woo a woman. Not one of them involves a monkey and a
banana.
    And yet Shambu stood beside the
cage, nervously offering the yellow fruit through the bars, hissing
at her through his smile, “Click, click!”
    He continued leaning as she
fidgeted with the camera. “Come on! The monkey doesn’t know where
the banana stops and my fingers begin!”
    “This says don’t feed the animals.”
Munira looked around. “Stop it, they’ll see you.”
    “I’m not feeding. This is just
offering.” But Shambu already felt foolish and flushed. If only she
would click once he could end this ridiculous charade. Click woman,
click. Blurred, shaky, out-of-focus, no flash, anything. Just end
it.
    In his mind, the scene had been
heroic. He was supposed to be the poor but rakish youth, charming
in his disregard for rules, coaxing the older, upper-class widow to
leave behind her bland frowns and reach her bangle-less wrists
toward his sprightly, promising fingers.
    She slipped the camera into her bag
and shuffled ahead. This was a bad sign. The woman usually fished
out her camera at the smallest pretence, capturing random images.
Had she decided that he was pushing too much? He dropped the banana
and followed, his Bollywood montage shattered. Maybe in Pakistani
films the widows were different.
    This was Munira’s fifth visit
to India since she got married and her third since Salim died. She
did not have to come back really, since there wasn’t much waiting
for her here and her presence didn’t seem to matter to anyone else.
Salim’s parents had distanced themselves years ago on hearing their
son’s strange announcement . Salim had
been happy to discard what he called ‘their middle class anxiety’
and set up house with her in Rawalpindi.
    Yet, every summer break, once
she completed marking the undergraduate history papers, Munira
found her way back to Hyderabad, to the house where in the middle
of dinner, suddenly, shockingly, her husband had a heart attack.
She was scheduled to join him in another
week; a teacher’s strike had postponed exams. Though she rushed to
Hyderabad,