As I wanted, expected and hoped, Adira walked straight up to me after greeting the hosts. Despite the public spectacle that I had made of her at the coffee shop, she held my hand warmly and stood next to me as if nothing had happened. Piyush, Rohit, I and another friend of ours, Rishabh, stood sipping our drinks.
‘How did you come?’ I asked her shamelessly a little while later.
‘Uber,’ she gave me a look I was unable to decode. Is she fed up with me? Or does she want to know what am I feeling? Can she still read me like a book? Does she still look into my soul with her eyes?
‘About last evening . . .’ She began, and I interrupted her.
‘Let’s not talk about it, please, not here at least.’ I was the arsehole who did not want to apologize or even discuss the topic as I knew very well that I was at fault. Avoidance was my sole purpose.
‘Okay. But we need to talk,’ she told me, looking directly into my eyes, and I felt her arms shaking slightly as she held my left arm with both of her hands.
‘Sure, but why now?’ I asked her, surprised, as we usually reserved our private conversations to our secret places, mostly at either of our homes.
‘It is important,’ she told me in a serious undertone, and we headed towards the balcony.
Piyush and Tamanna’s house was on the thirtieth floor. It was a lavish penthouse gifted by Piyush’s dad to his son, yet it looked quite cramped with all the people in it. Piyush and Tamanna had invited all their friends and co-workers. The place was buzzing with conversations and laughter, and the balcony was the only place where we could spend some time alone as it was still sunny outside and no one dared to leave the comfortable, cool house and stand in the balcony.
I closed the glass door behind us, and suddenly it all went so quiet. The sun was directly in my eyes, so I quickly moved towards the chairs in the corner which were luckily under the shade of a few plants in the balcony. Adira quietly followed me, waiting for me to settle down before she said what she had to say.
‘Tell me,’ I said, sipping my drink which I had carried with me.
‘Sit down, it is something important,’ she paused, and adjusted the hem of her dress as both of us took our seats opposite each other.
‘I need to know where this is headed, Ronnie,’ she said.
‘What do you mean? Where is what headed?’ I went back to the fight yesterday evening in my head and tried to make sense of her question.
‘Where are we headed? Where is this relationship going? What is next for us?’ she drew a deep breath as she said the last bit.
I had wanted to talk to her about our future myself. My parents were coming back soon. And with almost all my friends and cousins settled into family life or enjoying matrimonial bliss, I too wanted to move forward. Marriage was the next step, of course, but her mother, with her resentment towards everything that I had done to win her over, was driving me nuts. This was probably one of the many reasons why I was so insecure about Adira too, and I took it all out on her, not that I am defending my actions but I know that there were many underlying reasons behind the change in my behaviour, and this was one of the most critical ones.
‘What do you want next for us?’ I was honestly nervous to talk about the ‘M’ word, but it had been the elephant in the room for quite a while, and the sooner we addressed it, the better.
‘Whatever you want, really,’ she must have been quite unsure of what I was thinking to have said this. Maybe it was the fight a night ago or my indifference towards the topic.
‘I want to get married.’ There, I said it, and I waited for her reaction.
‘To whom?’ she asked me with the most innocent expression on her face, and I realized how little she knew about my feelings for her. I felt some guilt too for not opening up to her recently.
‘To you, who else? I’ve wanted to get married to you all along but your mother . . .’ Before I could say more, she sealed my lips with hers, and I got an answer to my rather unromantic marriage proposal. She said, ‘Yes’! And then she cried a little, drenching my floral shirt around the shoulders with her tears.
‘What are these tears for?’ I asked her teasingly.
‘For yesterday evening . . . I thought that you had stopped loving me . . .’ This time I had to shut her up with a kiss, and we let bygones be bygones.
‘Come, let us go inside, or Tamanna will wonder where we are,’ I said after a moment of silence, but Adira wanted to tell me something more. She held my hand and made me sit in the same place again before she began talking.
‘Listen, my mother’s opinion matters a lot to me.’ There we go again, I thought, and rolled my eyes at her, knowing that this irritated her the most.
‘Can you not do that please?’ she scolded me rather severely and resumed. ‘So, I spoke to Mamma about us last night after our fight. She says that she has found a guy for me.’ Her statement filled me with more anger for her mother. The one thing that had done more damage than anything her mother had ever said or done was my unnecessary anger, which usually had no solid foundation whatsoever.
‘Really? Again?’ I mocked her mother and her choice in men at every given opportunity and was at it again, ‘Remember the last guy she found for you?’ I reminded her rather cruelly.
‘Can we not go there, please? I have something to tell you. We have . . . I mean my mother and I have come to an agreement,’ she said, choosing her words very carefully.
‘Agreement?’ I really wanted to know where all this was headed.
‘Yes, so . . . listen to me with a calm head, okay. I have told Mamma that I love you,’ she gave me a reassuring smile and continued. ‘My mother thinks that I am mad and says this is because I have not yet met any decent guys in my life. She does not understand jobs and a simple life. She is more of a business and farmhouses kind of a person . . . you know what I mean, right?’
I chose not to react as I wanted to hear her to the end, say no to the agreement, whatever it was, and present my condition in front of Adira. Tell her to choose her mother or me, and walk back into the party, my head was bursting with anger.
‘So, I told her, “Fine. I will meet the guy that you have chosen for me, and if I do not like him let me be with Ronnie,”’ she beamed at me, and that was it.
I lost control of my anger.
‘What! You have agreed to meet other men!’ I failed to understand why she was so happy about this stupid solution of hers. She’d agreed to meet other men to please her mother! She did not for once think how I would feel about it.
All I remember from the next moment is that my right hand went under the plastic table between us, which had two glasses on it, and I overturned the table. The glasses flew in the air and hit the ground, smashing into tiny pieces that could hurt someone, prick them and make them bleed, just like her words had pricked and wounded my heart.
‘Enough of you and your mother now. Go and get married to the guy she has chosen for you and do not bother to tell me where and when. You are dead for me now,’ I said, standing up and not bothering about the mess I had made in someone else’s balcony. ‘In fact . . . you know what . . . send me an invite to your wedding. I shall be there and see someone spoil their life by getting married to the girl who cannot think beyond her mother!’ the devil had possessed me, and I was talking nothing but shit.
‘It is just a meeting, Ronnie . . . and . . . and then she will see that I am not going to fall for any other guy . . . don’t you see?’ she started sobbing uncontrollably.
‘No, I do not see anything. What is the guarantee that you will not fall in love with this guy’s money, to say the least?’ that blow was way below the belt, but I did not care. For I was fighting with her mom and not her. I could not see Adira standing in front of me. I only saw her mother there, and all the venom was for her. The balcony door opened, and Tamanna walked in to confront us, or me to be more specific. She looked at all the broken glass with horror and immediately went to hug her friend.
‘Has he
hit you, Adira?’ she asked her sobbing friend.
Great! So now I am a woman beater. What do these women in Adira’s life think of me? Why am I such a monster for them?
Adira moved her head slowly, signalling a no, and Tamanna took her in, holding her tightly in her arms as if I were an armed terrorist. On their way back into the house, Tamanna stared at me as if she was going to burn me to ashes with her stare. Moments later, Rohit came out to talk to me, and Piyush followed. I told them it was a small fight which had escalated quickly and that there was no need to panic. The sun was setting. I saw it disappear behind the tall building and then joined the group inside to drink and pass out. It was turning into the worst night of my life.
10.30 p.m.
I had had way too many drinks that evening, and the world was finally a happy place again. Most people were more than a few pegs down, and we were all merrily talking about stuff that did not matter to any of us or to anyone else in the world and would be conveniently forgotten the next day. I expected Adira to go back home at around 9 p.m. as she usually slipped out of parties to be back home by 10 p.m. She stayed around her group of friends and Tamanna all through the night. Her friends stuck to her like hawks, protecting her from me. Finally, as people began dispersing, she walked up to me to ask if I could drop her home.
‘I am not driving,’ I told her rudely.
‘I know. We can take an Uber and go to your place. Tomorrow is Sunday, and we can talk about all this tomorrow, alone,’ she suggested politely.
‘There is no need to talk now. You are dead for me,’ I remember telling her, and I observed her face to see her reaction. She was unbelievably quiet and repeated her request to accompany me back home.
‘I told you—you are dead to me,’ I repeated the words that still haunt me.
‘Come, Adira, you are not going anywhere tonight. Stay with us,’ Tamanna interrupted our heated conversation. ‘He has lost his mind. He does not deserve you!’ she added. I mocked her once she turned her back at me. Rohit hit me with a newspaper on my head, and I remembered that she was also my sister-in-law and my behaviour with her was entirely improper.
‘I shall head back home, actually. I will take an Uber,’ Adira told her friend calmly, and started tapping on her phone to open the app.
‘No, don’t take a cab at this hour. I will tell Piyush to drop you,’ Tamanna instructed her, and left to go and look for her husband.
‘Come home,’ she said, placing her hand on my hand with such sadness in her eyes that it cannot be described in words. I felt nothing. Her feelings did not reach my stubborn soul. I picked up my drink, jerked my hand away, and did not look back at her even once till she finally got up to leave.
One of Piyush’s friends and his wife, who lived in Noida, were leaving the party and had happily offered to drop Adira back home. I was relieved to know that she was not taking a cab but was still angry with her. One by one, all the drinkers left my side, and I sat drinking alone. Later, it dawned on me that I had overreacted. But I would not apologize or accept that I was at fault. I knew that in the morning she would call me. It was a Sunday, and I would see her. We would make up, I knew. And it is not too bad, come to think of it. If she meets this guy once and says she does not like him, her mother will have no objection to her marrying me. It is more comfortable than going against her wishes and seeing Adira sulk all her life, I thought. ‘Let me wait till tomorrow’s call then,’ I said to no one in particular.
Fifteen minutes later, I was all set to head back home with Rohit and his fiancée. There was one more guy who was to accompany us in the car. He was a non-drinker and was our chauffeur for the evening.
11.45 p.m.
We had just got out of the building and taken a left turn when a speeding truck zoomed past us. Our driver who was not drunk could not manage the vehicle, and we almost crashed into the divider. ‘What the heck, man!’ Rohit screamed loudly at the guy whose name was Taran.
‘He came out of nowhere, and he was driving in the wrong side of the road. Trucks should not be here. It is a residential area,’ Taran explained, and we all knew that he was right. The truck had come out of nowhere and was not even supposed to be on that road. But in that one moment of panic and fear, my entire life flashed in front of me, and I realized the obvious—the importance of life and the reckless way it could be gone in seconds. I was shaken and could not utter a single word for a very long time. Taran got down to check the damage to the car. There were a few scratches, and one of the tyres needed to be changed before we could move on.
‘Has anyone noted down the registration number of the truck?’ I asked while Taran changed the tyre on the deserted road. No one had, even when we should have. Ten minutes later, we were on the road again, this time very cautiously.
We had not gone very far when we saw another car that was smashed into the divider. The two front seats were almost squashed, and there was blood everywhere. There were no people around, but looking at the car it was clear that it was a recent accident, and maybe the survivors or the victims were still in the car.
‘Maybe it was the same truck that caused this accident. It was driving in the wrong lane,’ Taran said to no one in particular. The car was badly damaged in the accident. Taran slowed down as we drove past the golden Maruti Zen.
‘What are you doing?’ Rohit asked Taran when he didn’t hit the brakes to see if there were any survivors. Looking at the condition of the car, it was difficult to imagine that there were any. Witnessing the amount of blood in and out of the car we were all scared. Upon Rohit’s insistence, Taran stopped the car, we were twenty steps or more away from it then.
‘There might be people in there,’ Sagarika uttered in a barely audible voice as she turned her head to inspect the horrific sight. She was the first one to open the door. Slowly she got down from the car.
‘Get back in here,’ Taran ordered her. He got out and pulled her back into the car. He came and sat behind the driver’s seat and locked the car doors so that no one could step out of the vehicle again.
‘We need to help them!’ she protested, and looked at Rohit and me.
‘Yes, we must,’ Rohit said, and I gave my unsaid vote to them. I was too scared to do anything and too drunk to utter something sensible.
‘Are you guys crazy? When you admit them in the hospital, the police will lock us all up. I have seen this happen to my uncle. No one is getting down. Rohit, you are drunk and so is Ronnie. The police are known to create false cases and extract money. I do not think anyone could have survived in that car. Look at it. Why invite trouble?’ Taran hushed everyone. Before we could think or do anything, we were on the move. Sagarika pleaded with him one more time to just go and see if there was someone we could save, but Taran was adamant. I turned around to look at the wreckage for any signs of a survivor. It was badly smashed in the front. ‘No one would have survived. They would not have been wearing seat belts. It is not uncommon to find people not wearing seat belts while driving in India, especially when there was no one around to check or fine them. Seat belts are not about safety but looked down upon as an imposition that cause nothing but inconvenience to people On top of that, the safety standards of small cars are appalling. Most small cars do not come with airbags in India,’ I stated the obvious absent-mindedly, and we left the scene with memories to haunt us forever.
I was dropped home first. Despite being heavily drunk, I could not sleep. The scene of the car accident and the sensations of our own crash kept waking me up. I was sorry for the people who had lost their lives. Finally, at 2 a.m., I decided to apologize to Adira for being so rude to her, for hurting her. I wanted to begin afresh, so I typed a WhatsApp message:
I am so sorry, Baby, please forgive me. We will do as you want and see how it goes. I am sorry for everything I said about your mother too. Love you. I wish you were here with me.
I pressed the send button and waited for it to deliver. It did, and two grey ticks appeared which never turned blue.
27 AUGUST 2017
I woke up at 9.30 a.m. The maid had called in sick the day before, and I did not expect her to return for a week. Like clockwork, I sat up, rubbed my eyes and typed the customary ‘good morning’ text to Adira. My message from last night had not been read yet. She must have slept late last night, I told myself. It was Sunday, and I had a very important meeting to discuss a start-up idea with a potential investor. I had to go and meet them at a mall in Gurgaon. I was really looking forward to it as it would kick-start my entrepreneurial dreams. I had kept it a secret from Adira as I wanted to surprise her, and her mother, who wished to marry her daughter to a businessman. So, without giving Adira’s absence much thought, I began my daily activities and prepared for the hectic day ahead. I was out of my house and in a cab at 10 a.m. sharp, and reached Gurgaon on time. I had checked my phone a zillion times to see if she had read my message, only to be disappointed every time with the same grey ticks next to my messages. The recollection of the fatal accident came in front of my eyes many times, and each time that happened I thanked the Almighty for my life, and also for the ones around me. It was an ugly sight to remember or describe to anyone.
Because of my clear recollection of the events the night before, which included my fight with Adira, the nasty things I had said in my rage that were uncalled for, and the condition of the car which horrified me more than anything had ever seen before, I valued the lives of all my loved ones and felt terribly sorry for all my actions. I had realized how valuable human life is, and how a stupid action can make one lose all, in a matter of seconds. I could not concentrate on my meeting that morning, and I dialled Adira’s number a few times to say sorry, but in vain. She did not pick up my calls. I could not blame her for acting that way. I knew if I had been in her place, I would have reacted in a worse manner.
When there was no response from her by 11 a.m., I decided to call one of Adira’s colleagues who lived in the same apartment building and ask her to put Adira on the phone—cheap move? I know, but the trick worked each time she stopped picking my calls. She never wanted me to involve anyone else in our fights, and the moment I did, she gave me a chance to explain myself. So, I called Swati—her work buddy. She told me that she was not at home and was heading out of town. ‘Thanks,’ I said, before disconnecting the call. I formulated a plan to surprise her.
Something I Never Told You Page 17