.Friday Flyer | Serialized Stories | Astley Villa - Part 2
- Shikhar Sumeru
- Apr 15, 2021
- 11 min read
Updated: Jun 8, 2021
Part 2
A BRIDGE WITH THE PAST
It was an unusually warm Saturday in the later half of March. The remotely located hill house of Kasauli, being practically cut-off from population, lent a sense of being situated in a different world: a world without a fast-spreading pandemic.
The sun was halfway through behind the Dhauladhar peaks. Two men, appearing in their early thirties, on the first-floor balcony of the upper floor – the first -- of the villa had been watching the picturesque view, occasionally conversing without taking their eyes off the horizon.
The scarlet-yellow rays of the sun bounced off the large glass windows of the villa, occasionally reflecting the sun against the background, which consisted the inside of the room, a library-cum games room. The large and high room boasted of its antique, still preserved heritage and a modern outlook, exemplified by a battery of modern amenities, Wi-Fi, CCTVs, a buzz phone at the main gate etc. The other room on the western half of the balcony, similar in design and size, was locked. A similar plan of twin rooms existed on the eastern side of the first floor.
The inner side of all rooms opened to a hallway, with a stairway in the middle, leading to the ground floor, wherein as well, the rooms had been built around the large wooden staircase: four rooms, right under their counterparts on the first floor. The large ground floor hallway connected to a kitchen-cum storeroom, located right opposite the staircase’s landing and adjacent to the main house door. Overall, the house gave the feeling of a bridge between Victorian times and modernization.
NOTHING FORGES FRIENDSHIPS BETTER THAN COLLECTIVE DISLIKE
“What’s the point in going out? You know that we get a better view from here, Mr. Photo-artist,” said the taller, girthier, of the two men, lazing around in the rocking chair, facing the evening sun going down the hills.
The phone call had taken Aditya to the sunset of a decade ago: a similarly pleasant evening of March 2020. The two friends in their early thirties had been watching the evening sun.
“Come on, CK! Get your lazy frame out of the house for once,” said Aditya, nudging his old comrade, whom he knew to be the laziest man alive. Then he added enticingly, “come on, cycle all the way down and up; drinks on me.”
“I am not going to torture myself with uphill cycling just for a few beers,” replied CK pointing towards the crimson horizon with his last pint of beer, while his round, chin-dimpled bespectacled face looked immersed in the scenery; or, perhaps it was the beverage it was immersed in; it was hard to say.
Aditya cajoled his boyhood pal, “Ok, ok. How about this? We walk just till the Military Hospital,” Aditya attempted to sweeten the pot, “and, I will talk to the liquor shop guy about sending your beer home, on demand, whenever you want.”
“And, you do the cooking as well.”
“ahh yeah... as if I am going to let you in the kitchen,” Aditya replied as a reflex.
“That’s so racist, Pandit ji. But I will let you have this one,” said CK, adding in a whisper, “You are a hell of cook.”
“Alright, then do we have a deal?” said Aditya offering his hand to get his friend up from the chair.
“A ‘deal’! Someone is speaking American today,” said CK raising his eyebrows and smiling; and, then added, “Alright, we shall go for a walk.”
As both friends left the first-floor balcony of the vintage Victorian villa, the sun was nearly behind the Himalayas, its rays changing the color of the sky every minute. They entered inside into a large room, which had once served as a library, but now had a Table Tennis table in the middle. The two walls – on either side of the table had rows of books from top to bottom.
Aditya had so confidently made -- and won -- several bets thanks to the objects of this room. His guest had little affinity for books or pseudo sports (as he would like to call Table Tennis). His interests lay on the ground floor: a large home theater filled with an enviable film collection. Taking advantage of the situation, Aditya would often make bets involving classic literature or a game of TT, luring CK into obvious traps. His jolly natured pal – jolly more so after a few pints inside him – would be sporty enough to take him on, losing inevitably every time. It was his way of thanking Aditya for inviting him on the month-long vacation the photographer had planned for him, before he took up his next assignment and eventually moved to the other side of the globe.
Chirag Khanna – CK – and Aditya Tiwary had become friends not far from where they were today. Less than ten kilometers downhill on the other side of the town stood the place they had met almost twenty years ago – The Edwards School, Sanawar. Throughout their teens, they had been together, thick as thieves, laboring under the innocent revelry – the hallmark of childlike innocence -- that they would both remain close even after adulthood knocked. What bonded the two was their equal apathy for the harsh regimen the school had in place, aimed at fashioning out gentlemen out of unruly raw material: a bunch of teenaged boys.
Aditya, though composed and levelheaded, invited trouble for questioning the status-quo, while CK, the proverbial laggard, was carefree enough to often not even remember what his punishment sessions were for. There is one thing they agreed on, “when you do something, do it because you want to, not because someone makes you.”
Reality dawned soon. Having finished school, they had to part ways. Aditya, despite his straightforward approach, tried his hands at several things, a privilege his family’s financial status afforded him, before settling on photography. Chirag, on the other hand, followed a more traditional path of completing engineering and specializing in AI-driven imagery analysis, eventually landing a job with the most influential search engine in the world. Smartphone-induced customary messages remained the only link between the two friends.
During one of his photography exhibitions a few years prior, when Aditya had been busy interacting with visitors, he had seen a tall and slightly overweight man from the audience ask, “Is there a message, you would say, your images contain, or they are there because fans make you do it?”
They had both locked eyes, and with a broad smile, Aditya had replied, “Well, I believe that when you do something, you should do it because you want to, not because fans or others make you. So, the images are a reflection of that, I guess.” And, they had both laughed, leaving the other visitors somewhat bewildered.
“You know, it officially hurts when one learns about a best friend’s achievement from the Art section of the newspaper,” CK had said in a complaining tone.
“Since when do you read the Art section? Or, a newspaper, for that matter?” Aditya retorted.
That is when they had made the pact of taking a month-long vacation, as soon as both their schedules permitted. The wheels of time struck again, and the “as soon as” came only when CK had called Aditya to inform him that he had been chosen for heading a new project that would change image search as everyone knew it. He would eventually be moving to the Mountainview facility of his company; California had beaconed with new promises. Aditya had immediately put his photography tours and exhibitions at halt, and they had both decided to spend a month at the one place where it all had started: the small cantonment town of Kasauli.
BETWEEN BRUCE WAYNE & SCROOGE McDUCK
While walking downhill in the neat cantonment road on that March evening, reading the brave stories of Paramvir Chakra winners, carved on the hillside of the road, Aditya played in his head the conversation that had taken place when CK had finally arrived for the vacation.
“So, I knew you were loaded and were killing it on your own as a photographer, too. But dude this is a huge house!” were CK’s first words, over the buzz phone, when he had landed at the gates of Astley Villa.
“That’s because it’s a villa,” Aditya said, “Now, can I finish the rest of the story after I buzz you in,” he had added waving to his friend with his left hand while holding the buzz phone, located inside the house, with his left.
“Of course, of course!” CK had waived back.
In a couple of days, Adtya had given CK the tour of the house: a huge movie collection, home theatre, WiFi, Table Tennis, Karaoke, balconies with magnificent sunset view: pretty much everything that a high-end resort would offer.
“You know you can AirBnB the shit out of this place,” CK had said after a few days of his arrival.
“hmm… I do,” Aditya replied sheepishly.
“What?”
“Well, the villa was from my mother’s side. Her grandfather – my maternal great grandpa -- had bought it from a mate in the Royal Army: Captain Astley O’Connor. Our families were estranged. After the reconciliation a couple of years ago, this was passed on to me. Turns out the old great grandpa was fond of my mum.”
“So, just how much dough you actually got? Somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Scrooge Mcduck?”
“Much less than what you guys make out of scouring our search data,” Aditya retorted while adding, “Anyway, so, the place had potential. I dumped all the old stuff, trunks, paintings in the room next to the library. Updated, as you would call it, the whole place. And put it on AirBnB. For our reunion, I thought I would rent out the whole place to myself.”
“Wow! Seems like Bhool Bhulaiyya, except the AirBnB part and the tragedy that I could find any hot dancer’s portrait in the room; no Monjulika pour moi!" he sighed and continued, "And, for the record, I am into image analysis, bro. No dirty data mining for me. In fact, I am kind of the guardian angel of your photos online, saving them from uncredited usage.”
Aditya replied with a marginal frustration, “Okay, first, stop rummaging through the house without telling me. Not because it’s haunted, but because it needs to be rented, to other people,” the photographer had ended his remarks with more sarcasm than annoyance.
As they continued their walk downhill, Aditya chuckled to himself at their conversations and friendly banters. Both friends had walked up to the Military Hospital, when Aditya saw his friend holding his knee with one hand and asking for a lift with the other.
“Wait, what’s this? I though you agreed for a walk,” he said indignantly.
CK replied, “Ahh yeah, my friend, till the Military Hospital, and now I am hitching a ride back. I made no promise about walking back,” he laughed while adding, “And don’t forget your promise. I want beer on tap. Else I am giving a shitty rating to Astley Villa on AirBnB.”
Before Aditya could fashion a response, CK had stopped a motorbike and convinced the rider of his apparently busted knee. As the motorcycle started uphill, leaving Aditya alone, CK waived to his friend and shouted, “Don’t forget to ask the medicine-wallah for home delivery.”
A TÚATH
Aditya laughed at himself. Chirag had hardly changed over the years: carefree, lazy, and jovial. After attending to the special request of his friend, he headed back to the villa. Walking uphill enjoying the quietness the small town was seeping into as the evening turned into the night, he reached the villa just after eight. The front door was open: CK had forgotten to lock it, again. Aditya locked the door, checked it, and announced while putting the groceries in the large kitchen on the ground floor, “Your beer will be here any minute, your highness! I am making stew; shall we have a TT match after dinner? Loser does the dishes!”
“Bring it on, lad,” said the uncharacteristically gruff voice. Aditya tuned toward the staircase and said after a few moments of confusion, “What the heck!”
The tall and plump figure of Chirag Khanna was draped in an old dressing gown – something CK used to make jokes about. With what seemed like whisky in an antique looking glass in one hand and a pipe in the other, CK was descending the stairs looking at nowhere in particular.
“Is that a pipe? You have been rummaging again! By the way, since when do you drink hard liquor, Mr. Beer-is-the nector-of-life? And, that too in a whisky glass?” Aditya asked with bewilderment and derision in his voice.
CK continued his gruff voice impression, “Get your glasses right first. Not every stemware is for wine. It’s a Túath, meaning ‘family’ in Irish, used for tasting whiskey; comes handy by concentrating and capturing all the aromas and flavors which this liquid that passes off as whiskey has zero of, by the way.”
“Alright, Mr. Connoisseur, alright,” Aditya said joining his hand dramatically. “You win. Look, why don’t you go ahead and take that long overdue shower now. I will get on with the dinner,a fter which I will shatter your soul with a TT ball and perhaps we can agree to not fishing through random house stuff again.”
“A shower! At this hour?” CK looked surprised.
“Yes! And, it’s non-optional. And use the ground floor bathroom, next to my room. The first-floor heating looks a bit off. I will call the repair folks tomorrow.”
“I need to retire upstairs.” CK declared and started climbing the stairs without turning back.
“Thank God!” Aditya breathed, “Put everything back as it was and get the empty bottles from the balcony when you come down. The cleaning guy is not coming back till another week,” Aditya added while chopping vegetables, assuming that CK was still messing with him.
WHO TOOK A SHOWER?
For more than an hour, Aditya kept himself busy in the kitchen, measuring ingredients with as much precision as he exhibited when clicking a delicate shot. When the first whistle of the pressure cooker blew, the clock had struck nine.
Suddenly, the buzz phone rang.
‘That must be the beer,’ Aditya picked up the phone with his left hand and looked outside parting the curtains, for the window gave a clear view of the visitor at the gate, calling on the buzz-phone.
“What are you doing outside?” he said, surprised to see CK holding a box of beer.
“I forgot my keys, bro. Buzz me in.”
A confused Aditya buzzed CK in and fired a batter of questions, as soon as the latter entered, “When did you go outside? Did you put the glass back, the Túath? And that funny dressing gown? And why haven’t you showered?”
“Tooth what? My teeth are with me. Hope yours are fine in your mouth as well,” CK replied in his casual tone.
“Are you coming back just now?”
“Clearly. Hitching a ride backfired! I took the shortcut after the biker dropped me at the upper market and got lost. When I couldn’t find my way, I went back to the market where I saw the pickup truck of the beer guy. He was coming here, said something about Janta curfew tomorrow and a possible full curfew soon. So he was bringing us more than our usual supply. I hitched a ride with him. That reminds me. He had to go back; the rest of our stock is at the gate. Be a dear and fetch the boxes.”
“But you were drinking whisky and agreed to a TT match bet, and a shower!” Aditya said after a few moments, still puzzled, then added, “I knew it was too good to be true.”
“Whisky? Me? I am a beer man, bro. And besides, I already agreed to the walk today. One allowance a day keeps your neurotic friend at bay! Do you think I will grant you three allowances, in one day? Are you even listening to yourself? Now let’s go get the beer.”
“But…”
“No ‘if’, no ‘but’, only jatt; now come on,” CK imitated Sunny Deol.
Still perplexed, Aditya walked out with him. As both the friends picked up a case each and headed back to the villa, CK shouted, “You always nag me about saving water and electricity. Who has left the shower and the lights on now?”
“What? Where?”
“There," CK pointed at the ground floor bathroom window with his nose, holding the case with both his hands.
As Aditya’s eyes turned toward the direction of where CK’s nose was pointed, the beer case almost dropped from his hands: the exhaust fan of the first-floor bathroom was emitting hot steam in full swing and the lights were on. For a fraction of a second, Aditya could swear he saw a shadow through the tinted glass window: a shadow which appeared tall and somewhat round, not unlike the person standing next to him.
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