Taking four long strides, he had just reached the house door when he saw a lock hanging on it. Great, another problem. Now the taxi driver would haggle for money. He'll think I'm trying to cheat him, Bhatanagar was flustered.
He felt a bit annoyed at his wife too, who had locked the house and left, not to be seen anywhere. But it wasn’t her fault, was it? He had gone to the office; how was she to know he’d return like this? She must have gone out for something.
What to do? Should he call his wife? He should at least find out who that person was who had called him earlier, and whether they had come to meet her at home again or not. What business did he have? And had his wife gone out on some errand, or was she in some kind of trouble?
A solution occurred to him. For now, he could borrow some money from a neighbor and get rid of this taxi driver. He hesitated as he prepared to leave through the gate. The moment he stepped outside, he would have to face the driver, and the man would surely think he was making excuses.
He decided to climb over the side wall to the neighboring house of Mr. Saxena. Since Saxena must be at college, at least his wife would be there, and he could borrow the money from her.
Bhatanagar had just begun to climb the wall when the taxi driver, it seemed, had come inside and grabbed him from behind. The driver was pulling his shirt.
Bhatanagar was not prepared for this situation at all. He tried hard to leap over to the other side. But the young man had a firm grip on his shirt, and he couldn’t move forward. Bhatanagar gave one last tug when suddenly his eyes opened.
He blinked in confusion and saw his wife standing in front of him, holding a cup of tea in one hand and trying to wake him by tugging his kurta with the other.
He rubbed his eyes vigorously and looked at his wife as if he had arrived in a different world.
"What are you staring at? Don’t you have to go to the office? Yesterday you were raising a ruckus about how you had an important meeting in the morning and needed to leave early."
Once he understood the situation, Bhatanagar, still half-lying down, took the cup of tea from her and, trying to cover his embarrassment, said, "Actually, I stayed up late watching a movie last night, so I just couldn’t wake up in the morning."
"Which movie? What are you talking about? You haven’t taken me out in six months, and now you’re saying you watched a movie? When?"
Bhatanagar scratched his head.
"Watching a movie in your sleep, were you? Which one did you see?" his wife laughed.
Bhatanagar remembered that yesterday he had gone to bed early due to a headache right after dinner, and his wife had stayed up watching TV. It must have been some dream.
He had just started sipping his tea when his wife handed him two 500-rupee notes and said, "Keep these in your pocket."
"For what?" Bhatanagar asked, startled. "What are these for?"
"Seventy rupees to the rabri vendor, fifty to the auto driver from whose rickshaw you jumped off halfway, and one hundred and thirty to the taxi driver," his wife said.
Bhatanagar began to tremble. The cup in his hand started rattling as well.
Gathering some courage, he asked, "And the rest of the money?"
His wife replied, "Strange man, aren’t you going to the traffic police control room to get your car back? Or have you donated it away somewhere?"
Bhatanagar, clutching his pajama, rushed towards the washroom. Sweat was dripping from his forehead.
(To be continued...)
