“You’ve to convert into Islam.”
“What if I assume that pseudonym for nikah?” she said after reflecting for a while.
“I thought about it myself but they say nikah is for the believing couple,” he said helplessly.
“So, I must become a Muslim to be your wife, right.”
“That’s what they say.”
“What do you say?” she said looking into his eyes.
“I’m in a dilemma.”
“I know about you but I don’t know about Islam.”
“You know I’m not a practicing type.”
“But still, a bits and pieces Muslim, as I’m a bits and pieces Hindu.”
“I can’t’ put it any better and I’m sure we’ll remain that way.”
“So I believed, as Syed and Gayatri but not as Syed and Ayesha.”
“Believe me; it won’t make any difference,” he said taking her hand.
“Let me think about it,” she said withdrawing her hand.
As she sat beside him with eyes closed, he kept riveted his eyes on her in anxiety.
“Take me to the Higginbothams,” she said at last. “I want to know what Islam is all about.”
“That’s my Gayatri,” he said admiringly.
“Not Ayesha, as yet,” she said smilingly.
When they reached the bookshop, she asked him to guide her but as he expressed his ignorance about things religious, she rummaged through the book shelves and picked up Marmaduke Pickthall’s Holy Koran, Martin Ling’s biography of Muhammad, Roland E Miller’s Muslim Friends - Their faith and feeling, An introduction to Islam and Puppets of Faith: Theory of Communal Strife by BS Murthy. As though on cue, Syed followed suit and zeroed in on The Upanisads by Valerie J. Roebuck and Bhagvad-Gita: Treatise of Self-help by BS Murthy.
After a minor scuffle over footing the bill, and having agreed to make presents out of them to each other, they drove back to ‘their’ favourite café. While they sipped their coffee, seeing her leaf through the Quran, he saw the irony of the scripture he himself hadn’t read held the key to his love-life, and that amused him. When the waiter brought the bill, showing an unusual eagerness to move out, she said smilingly that she would allow him to settle it ‘out of turn’. Sensing her intent to pore over the books before all else, Syed said, in half-jest, that he was jealous of her ‘bookish love’.
“Blame faith for poking its nose into love,” she said in repartee.
“Wish we were born into the same faith, whatever it is.”
“Then, instead of my lover’s religious texts, I would be reading his love letters,” she said smilingly.