Half Girlfriend

by Chetan Bhagat

  I dreamt Riya would come around one day. She would realize I was her perfect partner—in terms of height, basketball, mental connect, how hours felt like minutes when we were together and how little we cared about the rest of the world. She never did. She slapped a wedding card on me and left. My Bihari gang had made me swear on my mother I would never contact her again. I didn’t. She quit college in a couple of weeks. She had a lavish wedding, Stephanians who attended it said afterwards. I’m sure Rohan spent the college’s entire annual budget on the wedding reception. I overheard that Riya had gone to Bora Bora for her honeymoon. The name of the place sounded like it was in Bihar. However, I googled it and discovered it was a set of beautiful islands in the Pacific Ocean, some reachable only by private plane. Which ruled out me going there and murdering the groom.

  However, the pain of the second year felt like a tickle compared to the third year. Third year sucked. I had zero ability to get over her. I couldn’t believe a girl who had left me a year ago had such a grip on me. We had not even slept together. However, it mattered little. She was the only girl I had played, walked, eaten, talked, studied and had fun with. I had peeked into Silent Riya more than anyone else, or so I thought. How could I forget her?

  Well, I could not forget her from two years ago, but I had forgotten the interview room I had entered two minutes ago.

  ‘I said, what brings you here?’ the interviewer repeated and sipped from his bottle of water.

  ‘Yes, sir. I am here because. . .’ I fumbled to remember the company’s name. ‘Because HSBC is a dynamic place to work in and I want to be a part of it.’

  Given my cut-paste answer, I thought he would splash his water on my face. However, he didn’t.

  ‘Madhav Jha, right?’ said another member of the panel, reading my résumé.

  ‘State-level basketball, impressive. Shortlisted for national team trials last year. Did you make it?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I hesitated for a second and then gave my answer. ‘I didn’t go for the trials.’ Basketball reminded me of her. After she left, I never went to the court.

  ‘Why?’ all three of them asked together.

  ‘I couldn’t. I was under stress.’

  ‘What kind of stress?’ said the first interviewer.

  ‘Personal.’

  The other interviewers cleared their throat. They nodded their heads at each other, communicating the need to skip that question.

  ‘Why do you want to do banking?’ the third panellist said.

  ‘Because that is what you want me to do.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ The panellist blinked.

  ‘Well, I need a job. Yours is one of those available. And you pay well. So yes, I’ll do whatever you want me to.’

  ‘You don’t have a preference?’

  ‘Not really.’

  I don’t know what made me talk like this. Perhaps it was the fact that I had given eight interviews over the past two weeks and I had lied in every one of them. I had finally had enough. I didn’t want to be in Delhi anymore. I missed my mother. I wanted to call her right now.

  ‘Madhav, do you want this job?’ the first panellist said.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’ I asked instead.

  ‘Shukla. I am Pramod Shukla. Regional manager for North India.’

  ‘Mr Shukla, are you happy?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You don’t look happy. None of you look happy. Nobody wants this job. Everyone wants the money you offer. You see the difference?’

  The panellists looked at each other. If I had a camera, the picture of their priceless expressions could have won any photography competition.

  ‘I like you. The first honest candidate we have had. I will hire you,’ Pramod said.

  The other two looked shocked. However, they were too junior to counter the boss’s whim.

  ‘But I don’t want it,’ I said and stood up.

  ‘Why?’ Pramod said. ‘Private banking in Delhi. Top clients. Six lakhs a year.’

  ‘No, sir. I am done serving rich people,’ I said and left the room.

  As I walked back to my residence after the interview, for the first time in a year, I felt respect for myself. I decided not to be a doormat anymore. I decided to stop moping over a rich girl who had left me. I had had enough of Stephen’s and trying to be upper class.

  You belong to Dumraon in Bihar. That is who you are, Madhav Jha, I told myself, and that is all you will ever be and need to be.

  I called my mother.

  ‘How are the interviews going?’ she said.

  ‘One company offered me a job.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘HSBC.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘Bank.’

  ‘They have a branch in Patna?’

  I laughed. ‘No, it is an international bank. The job is in Delhi,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ my mother said and her voice dropped. ‘You will have to be there then.’

  ‘I said no.’

  ‘What?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘I didn’t want the job. My heart is not here anymore.’

  ‘Where is your heart?’ My mother chuckled.

  London, said a voice in my head.

  ‘Dumraon. I’m coming back home.’

  I could sense the wide smile on her face through the phone.

  ‘You’ll come back to Dumraon? After finishing Stephen’s college?’ she said, her voice bright.

  ‘Yes. It is my home, after all.’

  ‘Of course. Everyone keeps asking about you: “Where is our prince, the rajkumar?”’

  ‘Please, Ma, I hope all that nonsense won’t start there.’

  ‘What do you mean, nonsense? You are the prince of Dumraon. People want to do your rajyabhishek ceremony.’

  ‘Ma. I don’t like such traditions. Royalty is dead in India.’

  ‘It’s just a way they express love. We know, and they know, we don’t have power. But we help keep the community together. You shouldn’t shrug it off.’

  ‘Anyway, I arrive in three weeks. I need to find something to do there.’

  ‘You can help with the school.’

  ‘You are running it well.’

  ‘For how long? Plus, there are so many issues I can’t solve at this age. Should I focus on the teaching or repair the roof? From teachers on one side to labourers on the other, everyone eats my head.’

  I laughed.

  ‘I’ll take care of the roof and any upkeep issues. You run the school.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, Ma.’

  ‘How much would it have paid you? The job you left?’

  ‘Let it be, Ma. How does it matter now?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Fifty thousand.’

  ‘A year?’

  ‘A month.’

  My mother gasped so loudly my eardrum hurt.

  ‘You really refused that job to come and help in a village school?’

  ‘Yes, Ma. I told you. I’m booking a ticket on the Magadh Express. See you in three weeks.’

  ‘I know what made you do this.’

  My heart stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your royal blood. You are different. You deserve to be a prince.’

  ‘Prince has to go. Doesn’t have balance in his prepaid phone.’

  My mother laughed as I hung up. Most Indian mothers would slap a child if he left a high-paying job like that. My mother wouldn’t. She knew life involved things greater than money. She had seen the lavish life. She had also seen her wedding jewels pawned to loan sharks. None of this mattered. What mattered to my mother, the Rani Sahiba of Dumraon, was respect.

  ‘Beyond a point, people want money to buy respect,’ she would tell me when I was a kid. ‘Respect, however, can’t be bought. You have to earn it.

  ‘Live with dignity. Live for others, that is how one earns respect,’ she used to say. She was right. Dumraon’s people lo
ved her. Not because she was the Rani Sahiba, but because she was the Rani Sahiba who cared. For the past fifteen years, she had given her all to the Dumraon Royal School in Nandan village, on the outskirts of Dumraon.

  I felt homesick. The dusty lanes of Dumraon felt more enticing than the colonial lawns of St. Stephen’s. I couldn’t wait to be home.

  ACT II

  Bihar

  15

  Dumraon, District Buxar, Bihar

  I wanted to surprise my mother, so I told her I was arriving a day later than the actual date. I reached the Dumraon railway station after a fourteen-hour train journey from Delhi.

  As I walked out of the station, the familiar smells of my childhood hit me straightaway.

  There is nothing spectacular about my hometown. It is a small place, less than three kilometres across on any side. Its only claim to fame is being one of the oldest princely states of India. My family had something to do with that achievement. However, I don’t know if I can feel proud for what my ancestors did ten generations ago.

  Dumraon is in Buxar district, around sixteen kilometres from Buxar town on the banks of the Ganges. If you were not sleeping in history class you would have heard of the Great Battle of Buxar in 1764. Frankly, it should be renamed the Embarrassing Battle of Buxar. The battle was fought between the British East India Company and the combined armies of three Indian rulers—Mir Qasim, the Nawab of Bengal; Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh; and the Mughal king, Shah Alam II. The Indian side had forty thousand troops. The British had less than ten thousand. Guess what happened? The British clobbered us. How? Well, the three Indian kings ended up fighting with each other. Each Indian king had cut a side deal with the British and worked against the other. In a day, the British had won the battle and taken control of most of India. I don’t think Indians have learnt much since that day. We remain as divided as ever. Everyone still tries to cut a deal for themselves while the nation goes to hell.

  Anyway, there is a reason I am telling you this. You may think things are not connected, but think about this. If there was no Battle of Buxar, or if it had had a different outcome, the British may not have ruled India like they did. There would be none of the ‘English high class, rest low class’ bullshit that happens in India. There would not even be a St. Stephen’s College. Just imagine, if only the jokers in Buxar had done things a little differently, maybe the white man would be speaking Hindi and Bhojpuri would be the new cool.

  I took an autorickshaw. ‘Raja ki haveli,’ I told the driver. He put the auto in first gear and drove off. In Dumraon, our house is a landmark by itself.

  It was the bumpiest ride ever. A cloud of dust surrounded us as we drove through the city.

  ‘What happened to the road?’ I asked the auto driver.

  ‘There are no roads,’ he said and laughed.

  Twenty minutes later, the auto reached the haveli’s main entrance. Fifteen years ago, we had a guard post here. Now, we just had pillars on each side. Along with my three fat suitcases I stood in the central quadrangle, once a beautiful garden. My childhood picture, which Riya had seen, had been taken here. I noticed a stack of bamboo poles and bundles of cloth kept in the quadrangle. Two labourers sat in a corner, smoking beedis.

  ‘What’s this?’ I said.

  ‘We are putting up a tent,’ said one of them.

  Ma wasn’t home when I arrived. I entered my old room. The large wooden doors creaked more than before. The cupboard doors had become stiff. I opened the windows. Sunlight fell on the posters of Shaquille O’Neal and Magic Johnson stuck on my wall for the last five years.

  I lay on the bed, staring at the basketball champions. I wondered if I should have focused more on the national trials.

  A few hours later my mother returned from school. ‘Ma,’ I screamed from the window.

  My mother saw me as she entered the haveli gate. She waved at me. I rushed downstairs and gave her a big hug. Girlfriends come and go but, thank God, mothers don’t break up with you.

  ‘You said tomorrow,’ she said. We sat on one of the living-room sofas, frayed but still elegant.

  ‘I thought I would surprise you,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nice. But you spoilt our surprise.’

  ‘How?’

  Savitri tai, one of my mother’s oldest helpers, brought in tea and sweet litti.

  ‘Your coronation. You saw the tents outside, right?’

  ‘What?’ I said, a half-eaten litti ball in my hand.

  ‘It’s an auspicious day, Ashad Krishna.’

  ‘Ma, I don’t want this drama.’

  ‘It isn’t drama. It’s tradition,’ my mother said in a low, emotional voice, the perfect starting point for female drama.

  ‘I’ll feel like a joker, being anointed a prince in a democracy.’

  My mother stood up and walked to the dining table, her back to me. She remained silent, her most potent weapon. Standing tall at five feet, eight inches, in her starched saree, my mother did look royal. She clenched her fists tight.

  I walked up to her.

  ‘Ma, you shouldn’t have sent me to college if you wanted me to keep following such rituals.’

  My mother spoke, her back still towards me. ‘Funny, I was thinking the same thing.’

  I went around the dining table to face her. ‘We have an MLA,’ I said. ‘What’s his name?’

  My mother looked at me in defiance.

  ‘What’s his name, Ma?’

  ‘Ojha. Useless fellow.’

  ‘Yes, Ojha. We also have an MP in Buxar and a CM in Patna.’

  ‘The villagers still care for us. You know why?’ she said.

  ‘Because they are old-fashioned and uneducated?’

  My mother looked at me sharply. ‘You’ve become like them.’

  ‘Like whom?’

  ‘The over-educated idiots in big cities. Whenever they don’t understand villagers, they call them uneducated and old-fashioned.’

  I listened to her reprimand, keeping my head down. The Rani Sahiba’s rare loss of temper could not be taken lightly.

  ‘So why do they want to coronate me? Nothing else entertaining happening in Dumraon?’

  ‘They want to because the so-called government doesn’t seem to care.’

  I poured a glass of water and handed it to my mother.

  ‘Ma, I have finished college and come back. Can you not shout at me within the first hour of meeting me?’

  ‘Your actions deserve it, so what can I do?’

  ‘Okay, sorry. I am sorry, Ma.’

  She relented and we sat on the sofa again. I placed four more littis on my plate.

  ‘There’s dinner. Don’t stuff yourself with these,’ Ma said.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said, and put my plate back on the table.

  ‘Anyway, it is just a two-hour-long ceremony—the rajyabhishek puja and lunch. What is the problem?’

  ‘No problem at all. I’ll do it.’

  The fan in the room stopped. In seconds, sweat beads appeared on our foreheads. In minutes, mosquitoes hovered over us.

  ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘Load-shedding. Go thank your government for this,’ my mother said.

  16

  ‘How much longer, Pandit ji?’ I said. My back hurt from sitting cross-legged on the floor for over two hours. Marriages get done faster than this. The village priest chanted holy mantras for my peaceful and successful rule. Whatever.

  Around two hundred people from Dumraon and nearby villages had come to attend the ceremony. People sat on red plastic chairs. Giant pedestal fans recirculated the hot air.

  I recognized a few important guests. MLA Vijay Ojha, a sixty-year-old man who had been in local politics for over forty years, sat in the front row. The district collector and the police inspector sat next to him. Local press reporters took pictures and hovered around them.

  Finally, my mother presented the royal crown to Pandit ji; she had taken it out of our family safe. It was one of the few precious items w
e had left.

  Pandit ji placed the two-kilo crown on my head. The crowd applauded. My mother burst into tears. She gave me a hug—an embarrassing public display of affection.

  ‘Happy now?’ I said, whispering in her ear.

  ‘My rajkumar.’ She hugged me even tighter.

  I was sweating profusely in my velvet bandhgala suit. ‘Rajkumar is melting in the heat. Can I change?’ I said.

  I came down from the stage. Reporters made me pose for photos. My mother introduced me to guests even as reporters took my pictures.

  ‘Mubarak, Rajkumar sahib,’ said a young man in his twenties. My mother introduced him as Akhtar Hussain, one of the two teachers in her school.

  ‘Call me Madhav,’ I said to Akhtar, shaking his hand. He seemed embarrassed at the suggestion.

  ‘Madhav, meet Tej Lal, another teacher at our school, and Tarachand ji, the administrative officer,’ my mother said.

  I folded my hands to wish both men, each in their fifties. ‘I will be joining the school too,’ I said.

  My mother’s staff looked at her in surprise.

  ‘I thought you went to a top college in Delhi,’ Akhtar said.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘You can get a good job anywhere,’ Akhtar said.

  ‘This is not a good job?’ I said. Everyone grinned.

  MLA Ojha reached us. He had a thick moustache, upwardly mobile on either side.

  ‘Congratulations, Rani Sahiba,’ he said.

  ‘Ojha ji, thank you so much for coming,’ my mother said.

  He folded his hands to take permission to leave.

  ‘But what about lunch?’

  ‘I have two other functions in Buxar. Please excuse me,’ he said, hands still folded.

  My mother looked at me. She wanted me to persuade him to stay.

  ‘Ojha ji, stay a little while. We can eat together,’ I said.

  ‘No, Rajkumar ji. Besides, you won’t be done soon. See, the line has built up.’

  I turned around to find a queue of about fifty villagers waiting to seek my blessings. A few kids came up to me. They wanted to touch the sword attached to my waist. I guess if you look like a clown, you do attract some attention.