Half Boyfriend

by Judy Balan, Kishore Manohar

  ‘I’m working with the Bill Gates Foundation for a sanitation project in my village,’ he lied. He didn’t need to work to live in New York for a couple of months. He was a goddamn prince. But if he was going to find Rhea, he needed to get Amar and Archu off his back. He couldn’t have them thinking he was some kind of psycho on the loose. As far as he was concerned he was only half a psycho without Rhea who completed his psychotic side. What was it about this girl and leaving people in halves?

  ‘Sounds good, let me know if you need a ride in the morning,’ Amar said as he bid goodnight.

  ‘No, won’t be necessary, but thanks.’ Manav couldn’t wait for them to leave him alone with his masterplan. He needed to get his thoughts in order and do some serious research before he started wandering all over New York looking for the love of his life.

  38

  Short Version: In which the Prince of Inconsequential Village becomes the Fresh Prince of Social Media

  Manav was beyond dejected. It had been a whole month of trying to track Rhea down and his quest had proven futile so far. Heck, he couldn’t even be sure she was in New York. He had tried desperately to make contact with Ozone but the man had been very clear when he had said he never wanted to see or hear from him again once he had delivered Rhea to the village and he was a man of his word. In fact, Manav couldn’t believe he had come this far with the bodyguard of the President of the United States. What an honour! ‘Sometimes,’ thought Manav, ‘I don’t give myself enough credit for what I can pull off if I set my mind to it.’ But all the optimism in the world wasn’t going to help him now. It’s not that he had imagined this would be easy but he had hoped to have at least made some progress by now. Instead, all he had done was familiarize himself with the pub culture of the Big Apple, given the number of bars he had to frequent day and night searching for his siren song. To make matters worse, Amar and Archu were onto him. Amar had been suspicious from the start so he had followed him to ‘work’ one day and ended up learning all about Manav’s special mission to New York. He wasn’t pleased, to say the least. He and Archu had decided to launch an intervention of sorts and explained to him how deluded he was. ‘You’re taking the thrill of the chase a touch too literally here,’ Amar tried to reason with Manav. They had even attempted to set him up on a date with a girl way out of his league but Manav ignored her and obsessed about Rhea for the entire duration of the date, because if there was anything he had learnt from Bollywood and all those easy-to-read books, it was that heroes loved only one girl. So things were a touch dicey with Amar and Archu. Manav had to set a timer on this and find a way to track her down. He had already tried social media but Rhea had really wiped her tracks clean. He couldn’t find her on Facebook or Instagram or any other social media platforms. But he did stumble on this campaign that the Internet seemed to love so much—Humans of New York. ‘This is just a collection of sob stories,’ Manav thought to himself as he pored over the endless list of stories on Facebook. He tried to see why people seemed to be so moved by this but couldn’t. ‘Regular people being heroes,’ he said to himself as he read and re-read stories of people you meet on a daily basis doing strange and beautiful things. ‘Maybe that’s it,’ he said out loud. There was a sudden glint of hope in his eyes. Or maybe it was just the light from his computer screen. But Manav knew exactly what his next move was going to be. This was heaven-sent. Someone up there was rooting for him. Check it out: he was a prince—an actual prince with a kingdom and everything—roaming the streets of New York like a crazy person, searching shady pubs in the middle of the night looking for the lost love of his life. WHO WAS DYING OF CANCER. Plus, he was a human. And he was in New York. If this wasn’t a modern day fairytale, he wasn’t sure what else could qualify. And what was the point of campaigns like this if it wasn’t about restoring hope and fighting cynicism? With a deep breath and trembling hands, Manav reached out to Humans of New York with his poignant tale of love and loss. And hope! Yes, hope was important because it was up to them now to decide if he had any. He carefully attached high-res pictures of himself and Rhea before he said a prayer and hit ‘Send.’ It hadn’t even been a couple of hours before strangers on the road started to recognize him. Love-struck women wanted to buy him drinks, teenagers wanted selfies with him and random do-gooders and wannabe hipsters offered to help him look for Rhea and not leave his side till his mission was accomplished. ‘What is happening?’ Manav asked but people were too busy being in awww of him to respond. One young thing informed him that he was “trending all over the place” and “everyone is shipping #RheMan.” Manav couldn’t believe the phenomenon that was unfolding before his eyes. This looked even bigger than the Ice Bucket Challenge. He was accustomed to people treating him like royalty back home because, duh, he was. But to have earned it all by himself? Wow, this was all new. And he loved every second of it. He felt the optimism surge in his chest as he greeted his new fan following. ‘Your move, Mrs Smith,’ he challenged Rhea in his head as he smiled and graciously posed for another selfie.

  Meanwhile, our heroine was dealing with a brand new crisis, which we will reveal with great fanfare at the end of the book but suffice it to say, she was looking for a shortcut as usual. Or for someone else to make her decisions for her. And considering she had driven herself into the mother of all corners, news of Manav in New York was actually the best thing that had happened to her. Of course, she knew he hadn’t believed a thing, which is why he was here, and no, she couldn’t imagine living the rest of her days as queen of some hardcore village but perhaps it was time to tackle her life one snowballing crisis at a time. Besides, going by how quickly Manav’s story had gone viral, she was going to be found out soon enough. And everyone would know that she was a fraud and she wasn’t sure she could handle the public humiliation. It’s not like she made up that cancer story so she could get attention and a book deal for a memoir. She had made that up to escape a relentless stalker. But not everyone was going to be as understanding as Oleksandra had been. Besides, she suspected Olek was only interested in her life because she seriously imagined she was a time-traveller. Olek was into that kind of stuff and she was always so fascinated by Rhea’s life and loved giving her helpful tips on life in the twenty-first century. But imagine the rest of the world—they were going to recognize her from the pictures soon enough and they were going to be furious when they found out that she didn’t after all, have cancer. No, she had to find Manav before he found her but of course, she’d have to make it look like he did. And then she’d have to collapse helplessly in his arms, give the world the story they wanted and once Manav was done revelling in his own awesomeness, she’d have to make a very important call to his mother and re-negotiate the terms of their agreement. Perhaps, she could have her cake and eat it too. Maybe this scarytale had a happy ending after all.

  ‘Thees is note a gud ideeya,’ Olek spewed wisdom as usual. ‘Yu mussst thake reyssponseeebility fore yur acxions.’

  Rhea nodded, lost in thought. Her mind was already made up. Olek meant well. She didn’t have a mother and she was raised by a grandmother who had escaped the Holocaust and had passed on her own view of the world as a scary place where bad things happened to people who didn’t watch out for themselves. So she was tough in a conventional sense. But what could she possibly know of beating a devious, persistent stalker?

  ‘Thanks, Olek, really,’ Rhea said sincerely, ‘for everything you’ve done. But I’ve made up my mind. I know what to do.’

  ‘Buth yu donth luurrve thees man,’ Olek pointed out the obvious.

  Rhea sighed. ‘The only thing I will ever love is my freedom. And right now, as hard as it might be to imagine, Manav is my only ticket to freedom.’

  ‘Buurth howww?’ Olek was clearly very invested in Rhea’s future.

  ‘Shhhh,’ said Rhea. ‘I have it all right here,’ she said, index finger to her head. ‘I’m losing the battle in order to win the war.’ Rhea thought the war analogy might hit home with Olek and it did.
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  ‘Ahhhhh,’ she said. Maybe this girl knew what she was doing after all.

  39

  Short Version: For the climactic chapter, we have the mandatory bicycle ride across town in sub-zero temperature (because, true love).

  ‘Honestly, I’m impressed, man,’ Amar said later that night. ‘Maybe we were wrong about this whole Rhea thing. It’s just that it seemed so … bizarre, you know? Like …’

  ‘Something that only happens in the movies?’ Manav completed his sentence.

  ‘Well … yes!’ Amar and Archu said in unison. ‘I really hope you find her,’ Archu said sincerely. This whole episode had confused her a great deal. She had always been the rational sort but this grand romantic quest that Manav had set out on had made her wonder about her own high school sweetheart. Where was he now? Had she broken up with him over nothing? She had even launched into her own little secret ex-tracking project that had led her to the news that he was now in jail. Right. That fantasy had lasted all of four hours but Archu really wanted Manav to find Rhea. It would give her the vicarious euphoria that was missing in her current relationship. And that’s pretty much how every person involved in Project #RheMan felt. This wasn’t a stranger’s story. This was a call to return to innocence—to believing in love and happy endings—to a generation that had lost its sense of magic.

  Amar and Archu were therefore delighted to host the most talked about social media party in town, in honour of the guy who represented the romantic in all of them. But of course, Manav wasn’t interested in the party except for the fact that there were rumours of getting media attention and he wanted all the publicity he could get. This sudden bout of popularity had been fun but he knew it could all end in the blink of an eye—a meme of a little girl holding an owl and looking like something out of Omen 2, a Twitter spat between Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj, the new royal baby, the season premier of Homeland, Donald Freaking Trump—there was always some inconsequential news waiting to take centrestage on the Internet and he knew he had to make the most of his time under the spotlight. Or the trending topics section.

  ‘You know, sometimes, the universe closes one door but opens another,’ said a drunk woman suggestively as she cosied up to the most popular man in town. Manav was revolted. He hated the idea of women hitting on men. It made him feel emasculated. Like the subtext was ‘I have to do this because you clearly suck at doing what God intended for you to do.’ It felt like a personal attack.

  ‘Please, madam, you are sitting too close to me,’ he said every bit like the charmer that he was. He didn’t want to be photographed with this loose woman and have Rhea stumble on it. Besides, she was probably an escort or something. You could never tell with the way the women dressed in this city. That was another reason he wanted to get Rhea out of here as soon as possible. He really couldn’t have his future queen defiled by this culture.

  ‘You’re such a bully, leave him alone,’ a brunette said to the loose lady. ‘He’s so devoted. I think it’s cute.’ Sometimes, he couldn’t tell if these women were in fact complimenting him. They liked to talk about him as if he wasn’t sitting right there. He felt like something inside a glass case at a museum.

  ‘You guys are monopolizing him!’ said a girl who looked like she really should be in her PJs tucked in bed by this time, except she was here showing way more cleavage than he was comfortable making conversation with, and wait for it—she was busy making herself comfortable on his lap! It was torture. It was like his values and his hormones were at such odds at this moment, he thought he might explode. ‘What is wrong with all these women!’ he thought to himself. ‘Where were their parents?’ And with that he graciously obliged when asked to pose for a few live Instagram updates and then ran out into the street with no jacket on to escape the debauchery that was going on at Amar and Archu’s.

  ‘Manav! Get back here! It’s cold!’ Archu called out from the balcony. ‘What the hell is he doing?’ she asked an equally puzzled Amar but Manav had taken off for a walk out in the cold. ‘Did something upset him?’ She asked genuinely confused. Every attractive woman in New York who was not a celebrity was at this party and wanted to see if she could replace Rhea in his life. How could he not be enjoying this just a wee bit?

  ‘How do I explain Manav to you,’ Amar smiled. ‘He thinks there is only one person for everyone and for him, it’s Rhea. Which might sound sweet on the surface but it means that he won’t allow her to be with anyone else either. Have you watched Darr?’

  ‘Holy crap,’ said Archu. ‘This is fucked up.’

  ‘Well, he did start something of a revolution,’ said Amar pointing at the crowd in the living room.

  ‘What has become of the world that we find this romantic,’ Archu was drunk and regretful. She was sad about the lack of drama in her current relationship, she was sad about her ex-boyfriend in jail and now she was sad about Manav being a psycho. ‘Where is the love?’ she asked out loud not expecting an answer but suddenly, there was a huge commotion and an excited girl screamed out loud, ‘At Jimmy’s 52nd Street!’

  Turned out, the massive network of #RheMan had managed to track Rhea down. She was going to be singing tonight at Jimmy’s and Manav had to get there before midnight if he was going to find her because rumour had it that, no, she was not going to turn into a pumpkin, but fly out to Amsterdam after her show. Actually, she wasn’t. She was too broke to even sustain herself in the matchbox, let alone buy a ticket to Amsterdam. But Rhea had seeded the rumour because she had missed being the centre of attention for a very long time and she liked the drama of a guy coming all the way from across town in sub-zero temperatures to find her before the clock struck twelve. Besides, she wanted to give the public the climax they deserved. And Manav, the good long run he deserved.

  The crowd went crazy trying to reach Manav who stubbornly refused to pick up his phone. It took almost an hour by the time Manav made his way back to Amar and Archu’s place. Amar and Archu waited in the car ready to drive him to Jimmy’s but Manav got on the nearest bicycle instead and decided to ride like a maniac all the way across the city. No one understood why because there were so many alternatives and it was highly likely that with a bicycle, he would either not make it in time or die trying, but Manav wasn’t one to listen. His heroes had always used horses to go after their women, failing which, they used a modest vehicle to show the world that they were running purely on adrenaline and true love. So, it was going to have to be the bicycle.

  It was time for the last song and Rhea was nervous. Had she pushed it with the whole Amsterdam thing? Had he given up thinking he’d never make it, given the crazy weather and ended up planning his future with a groupie instead? Rhea closed her eyes and willed Manav into the room. She needed him to find her this one last time. He was her ticket to … she wasn’t sure yet but it was definitely out of here and that was all she needed to know right now. And as she approached the last stanza of the last song, there he was, in the middle of the room, short of breath and half frozen. She dropped the microphone dramatically and threw herself in his arms as the bar burst into filmy applause. They hugged for a whole bonus song and when the excitement had finally simmered down and they could hear each other, Manav looked his precious Rhea in the eye and said, ‘I will always find you.’

  ‘Awwwwww’ went the deluded crowd who had misinterpreted his tone. They thought he had said it in a fairytale-esque handwriting font. But Rhea was the only one who heard it for what it was. He had used the Halloween font.

  40

  Short Version: The story ends with the chauvinist sleeping with the girl, of course. But at least you know now that the girl had her own agenda all along.

  ‘It’s rude to stare at someone while you’re kissing them,’ Rhea said in the middle of what was supposed to be a very passionate where-have-you-been-all-my-life kiss.

  They were at Amar and Archu’s living room but the two were fast asleep inside. Thankfully.

  ‘Sorry,’ Manav gasped. ‘It’s just
that I’ve waited for so long I want to take in every moment.’

  ‘So take it in with your eyes closed,’ Rhea snapped. She couldn’t believe what she had traded for this. Bloody amateurs. But she just had to tell herself to close her own eyes and look at the big picture. She needed to sleep with Manav now more than he wanted to sleep with her. Also, it’s not like she was doomed. She just had to improvise. Everything was going to be fine.

  In order to ensure that the book is not better than the movie, the whole steamy first-time sex scene that readers have been salivating for has been replaced by a photoframe on the wall with a picture of a bee sitting on a sunflower.

  Rhea woke up to the worst case of Morning After and Manav staring creepily at her face.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Better than okay,’ he said. ‘I’m great.’

  ‘Good. Now stop staring at me, it’s creepy!’

  ‘No, it’s romantic,’ Manav explained. He had watched it in a movie. An English movie! ‘Also, I love your perfect, evenly shaped, thick but not too bushy eyebrows,’ he added.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Now Rhea was really awake. She tried closing her eyes and shaking herself in the hope that she might wake up in her own matchbox of an apartment with Oleksandra complaining about the roaches but no luck. This nightmare wasn’t going away anytime soon.

  ‘You should stop using words like that,’ Manav said lovingly. ‘It’s very unladylike.’

  Rhea suppressed an urge to shove a pillow into his face and suffocate him to death. She tried not to say anything but the expression on her face said it all. She just wanted him to stop talking. Mornings were difficult enough to get through with no caffeine in her system. She really couldn’t deal with Mr Medieval Times right now.